DRUG TRADE FUNDING TERROR GROUPS' ACTIONS, U.S. SAYS

Crime: Federal Data Offer 'Shocking' Insight into Links between Two
Threats, Ashcroft Says.

WASHINGTON -- The United States has determined that about one-third of
foreign terrorist organizations are trafficking in narcotics on a large
scale, providing authorities with "shocking" insight into how two of the
nation's most serious threats are connected, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft
said Tuesday.

"Law enforcement has been aware for some time of significant linkages
between terrorism and drug trafficking. But we have not had the tools to
quantify the drugs-terrorism nexus until now," Ashcroft said in a speech
before the annual conference of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement
Task Force.

Earlier this year, Ashcroft said, he asked federal law enforcement agencies
to draw up such a list, quantifying all the major trafficking groups
responsible for the U.S. drug supply.

"Following extraordinary collaboration and information-sharing between
agencies, this list has been developed, and what it reveals is shocking,"
Ashcroft said. "Nearly one third of the organizations on the State
Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations appear also on our
list of targeted U.S. drug suppliers."

Cross-matching the lists is providing authorities with substantial leads in
their ongoing global war on terrorism, Ashcroft noted, as well as helping
to combat the growing problem of traffickers responsible for selling
cocaine, heroin and other drugs worldwide.

Ashcroft's remarks came as U.S. authorities, working with state and local
officials and their counterparts in Mexico, announced that they had
arrested more than 2,120 fugitives along the Southwestern border in recent
months, as part of the largest nonterrorism dragnet in recent memory.

Ashcroft did not elaborate on which terrorist groups are suspected of being
involved in drug-trafficking. Justice Department officials would not
comment on what organizations are on the drug trafficking list, except to
say that Al Qaeda was one of them.

"They are definitely using the drug trade to finance their operations, but
it is not the major source of funding," one Justice Department official
said of Al Qaeda, which U.S. officials have said was responsible for the
Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. "They get more money from
donations and trading in gold and other precious metals. It's a serious
problem, but it's hard to say this is where we should be putting all our
resources."

Specifically, the Justice Department official said, Al Qaeda and the
Taliban regime that protected it made millions of dollars from the heroin
trade in Afghanistan.

Michael Chertoff, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's
criminal division, echoed Ashcroft's concerns in his own remarks at the
daylong conference of law enforcement officials from around the nation.

"Drug traffickers have a symbiotic relationship with terrorists," Chertoff
said.

Ashcroft said drug traffickers began engaging in terrorist activity as
their organizations grew in scope and sophistication. Conversely,
terrorists have expanded into drug trafficking to pay for travel and
expenses of operatives and weapons, according to Justice Department officials.

The State Department, in consultation with the attorney general and the
secretary of the Treasury, has designated 28 groups as foreign terrorist
organizations. Those groups include Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and other
Islamic groups, as well as militant organizations in Spain, Sri Lanka,
Colombia, Peru, Israel and Northern Ireland.

Authorities have long been concerned about the connections between
terrorism and drug trafficking.

In South America, for instance, paramilitary organizations suspected of
engaging in both terrorism and drug trafficking include the left-wing FARC,
or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and the right-wing United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.

Also at the conference, authorities announced that many of the fugitives
rounded up by teams led by U.S. marshals were "major narcotics criminals"
whose operations were responsible for a significant portion of the drugs
flowing across the Southwestern border.

They included the brother of celebrity murder victim Bonny Lee Bakley, an
allegedly dirty Drug Enforcement Administration agent who had fled to
Mexico, and an accused operative of a murderous Mexican drug cartel who
drove to visit relatives in San Diego.