DRUG BUSTING SUCCESSES AT SEA RIVAL BEST EFFORTS OF YEARS PAST

U.S. authorities unloaded 8.8 tons of cocaine Sunday that they said was
seized on a rusty fishing boat off the coast of Mexico. It was the
government's fourth-largest such seizure ever.

The Coast Guard said a Navy destroyer with a Coast Guard law enforcement
unit on board seized the boat Feb. 24 about 250 miles west of Acapulco.
They then towed the boat to San Diego.

The seizure capped what the Coast Guard called one of its most productive
weeks of anti-drug patrols.

In six days, the Coast Guard - from Miami to the Caribbean, and in the
Pacific from Mexico to Washington state - seized 28,845 pounds of cocaine,
about what it captured in all of 1996.

"We've never had a week like this where our border has been assaulted all
the way from the Bahamas to Seattle," said Cmdr. Jim McPherson.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta praised the anti-drug effort.

"Those engaged in drug trafficking are attempting to penetrate all of our
borders," he said near a Coast Guard pier, where the 8.8 tons of cocaine
were stacked neatly in large blocks on wooden pallets.

The 10 crew members of the Belize-flagged boat, the "Forever My Friend,"
will face drug smuggling charges that carry a minimum 10-year sentence and
a maximum of life in prison, U.S. Attorney Gregory Vega said. They were to
appear in federal court in San Diego today.

Eight of the men are from Nicaragua, one is from El Salvador and one from
Ukraine. The cocaine was hidden in a secret compartment, buried under ice
and fresh fish, authorities said.

Agents wearing surgical masks and gloves and protective white jumpsuits,
spent Sunday morning unloading the large blocks of cocaine from the Forever
My Friend. Federal agents with automatic weapons guarded it on the pier.

The string of recent seizures reflects a general increase in the amount of
cocaine seized at sea by the Coast Guard working with the Navy, the Customs
Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies.

In 1999, the Coast Guard seized a record 55 tons of cocaine, which broke
the previous high of 40.7 tons. Then in 2000, the agency captured 66 tons.

The Coast Guard estimates it catches only a small fraction of U.S.-bound
cocaine.