CIA-RDP96-00789R000800100015-7

Approved For Release 200
SG1J
89R000800100015-7
Wirhington Post
16 ana '9/
7
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Pacific War
On Drugs
Foundering
Audit Urges End
Of Joint Task Force
By Michael Isikoff
Washington Post Staff Writer
When Congress and the Bush ad-
ministration stepped up the drug war
more than two years ago, a reluctant
Pentagon was pushed to the front
lines, named as the "lead agency" for
detecting and monitoring drug smug-
glers from the sea and air.
But now questions are being
raised as to how useful the military's
annual $1.1 billion anti-drug effort
has been. A blunt internal audit of
the U.S. Pacific Command's anti-
drug operations has found tens of
millions of dollars in wasted funds,
layers of needless bureaucracy and
the deployment of random ship pa-
trols that have been largely "ineffec-
tive" in finding smugglers and of lit-
tle use to federal law enforcement
agencies.
The report recommends that Joint?
Task Force 5, a much heralded Pen-
tagon command and intelligence cen-
ter in Alameda, Calif., be shut down.
One of three task forces created by
Secretary of Defense Richard B.
Cheney to oversee the Defense De-
partment's anti-drug activities, the
JTF 5 "duplicates counter-narcotics
capabilities at other (Pacific Com-
mand) activities and creates unnec-
essary operational overhead. .. . We
recommend that JTF 5 be disestab-
lished," according to the July 9 audit
by the Defense Department inspec-
tor general's office that was released
this week at the request of The
Washington Post.
Its findings are not entirely sur-
prising, according to some anti-drug
analysts. Commanders and budget
analysts in the Defense Department.
long have questioned the wisdom of
military participation in the drug war
and nowhere more so than in the
Pacific: Trying to use military assets
to detect drug smugglers in the
ocean's 100 million square miles was
always "a particularly implausible
effort," noted Peter Reuter, a Rand
Corp. economist.
Nevertheless, the Hawaii-based
Pacific Command last year allocated
$23 million annually through 1995 to
deploy radar planes as well as frig-
ates and other ships on random or
"routine" patrols in hope of finding
drug smugglers plying the Pacific.
Nothing has turned up. A separate
General Accounting Office study re-
cently found that out of more than
200 boardings of ships carried out by
federal law enforcement officials
(usually Coast Guard officers) who
accompanied Pacific Command anti-
drug patrols, none resulted in sei-
zures of drugs or the arrests of
smuggling suspects.
The inspector general's audit also
found no seizures and recommended
THE WASHINGTON POST
hard intelligence that a particular
ship is carrying drugs.
In yet another criticism, the audit
found repeated attempts by the
multi-service Pacific Command to
use the drug war to fund missions
that had nothing to do with drugs.
Out of $195 million in anti-drug
funds requested more than two years
ago, $152 million was subsequently
ruled "invalid" in part because it was
"unrelated to the counter-narcotics
mission," the audit says.
The Pacific Command later sub-
mitted a revised $47 million budget
request that was approved, but the
inspector general still challenged one
item: $4 million for a "secure video
teleconferencing" center for JTF 5.
The audit concluded the task force
could use secure telephones instead.
Michael A. Wermuth, deputy as-
sisstant secretary of defense for
drug enforcement, said JTF 5 pro-
vided important intelligence and de-
fended the Pacific Command's con-
tribution to the drug war as "very
useful."
"We're not in the process of mea-
suring our performance on the num-
ber of tons of cocaine seized," he
said. He cited recent congressional
testimony indicating that federal law
enforcement agencies were grateful
for the Pentagon's help.
But Wermuth acknowledged that
the Pacific Command's routine pa-
trols were "not effective" and that a
decision had been made to discontin-
ue them even before the inspector
general's findings were transmitted.
Although no announcement was
made of such operations being
stopped, Wermuth said "it was
months ago, not days."
But the inspector general's office
also questioned whether the use of
any naval assets in the Pacific makes
sense. According to the audit, JTF 5
has directed its efforts against mar-
itime smugglers, usually the oper-
ators of "mother ships" who off-load
their cargo to smaller boats hovering
off West Coats ports. These ships,
the audit notes, almost always carry
bulky marijuana, rather than easier
to conceal cocaine or heroin. Those
drugs are usually smuggled aboard
passenger aircraft
or concealed
aboard commercial cargo ships.
By directing its operations against
the maritime smuggler, the audit
concludes, "JTF 5 has, as a result,
limited itself to detecting and mon-
itoring marijuana smuggling," a mis-
sion that is "contrary to the guid-
ance" of the Central Intelligence
Agency that the military concentrate
on heroin and cocaine. The CIA had
concluded that programs against
marijuana "do not warrant substan-
tial new intelligence investments,"
Approved For Release 2000/08/08atCARDP96-00789R000800100015-7