RANCH OWNER BANS MILITARY OPERATIONS

LAREDO - The military has quietly been kicked off a private Webb County
ranch where the federal government spent about $500,000 to improve roadways
and build a base camp from which military helicopters hunted drug smugglers.

Community leaders feared the work, which began in June 1998, would be a
beachhead for more military action on the Texas-Mexico border, and possibly
bloodshed.

But they were wrong. There was no violence.

And the military is now banned from the ranch with the base camp, which is
renamed Rancho del Zorro and advertised on the World Wide Web as a hunters'
paradise complete with a "helicopter landing pad and airstrip for your
convenience."

The military was told it was no longer welcome after the property's new
owner said he would not honor a oral agreement between the government and
the ranch's previous owner because no contract was signed to guarantee
property access.

"We bought the ranch for game, we did not buy it for military operations,"
Austin businessman Raymond Patschke said. "We were concerned about the game
- - that they would make the animals very nervous and we didn't want them there."

The about-face turns on a law regarding when U.S. troops can set foot on
private property.

The Border Patrol can enter any property within 25 miles of the border, but
military personnel must have the owner's permission.

Conceding they had no leg to stand on, military leaders in August
relinquished access to the Webb County ranch, on which it improved 20 miles
of road to help Border Patrol agents reach smuggling routes.

Federal officials concede they should have obtained a lease agreement for
the land and that such arrangements will be considered before any future
construction projects are carried out.

"We regret that the same agreement could not be maintained with the new
owner of the ranch," said Armando Carrasco, spokesman for Joint Task Force
6, the El Paso-based outfit that coordinates using military personnel to
help law enforcement agencies interdict drugs.

The work on Rancho del Zorro and surrounding areas was part of a
partnership between the U.S. Border Patrol and Joint Task Force 6.

In addition to grating and plowing ranch roads, troops built two
hangar-like buildings, complete with plumbing and electricity, including
one that could store several helicopters and the other that could sleep 80
and contained office space.

They also constructed 10 concrete landing pads, each 50 feet across.

It is tough to calculate how much money went into the facilities and
upgrading the roads.

Officials have estimated a military and Border Patrol cost of about
$500,000, but that doesn't include the salaries of construction troops who
spent more than eight weeks on the ranch.

Sixty worked full time on the base camp, and about 250 others did road work
on the Galvan and in other ranches in the region.

Operation Laredo Sands, as the work project was known, took place under a
five-year verbal agreement with the Ed Rachal Foundation, a
Corpus-Christi-based charitable foundation that owned what was then the
67,772-acre Galvan Ranch.

The foundation let everyone from Boy Scouts and birdwatchers to soldiers
use the land free of charge.

After being enticed by an opportunity to better utilize its assets, the
foundation sold the ranch for about $28 million in July 2000 - up from
appraised value of about $23 million, said Paul Altide, executive director
of the foundation.

The Galvan has since been divided into several parcels, including an
8,000-acre spread that was purchased by Paschke in August and renamed
Rancho del Zorro.

Lawrence Korbe, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan
administration and director of studies for the Council on Foreign
Relations, said the military's loss of access to the land illustrates the
problems of using soldiers in law enforcement.

"This doesn't seem like the best business transaction," Korbe said from
Washington. "That is what happens when you get the military into areas
where they're not familiar," he said of contracts and land deals.

Carrasco said that despite losing access to the facility, the military had
achieved some of its goals and gotten its money's worth.

He said the main purpose of the exercise was for soldiers from Fort Lewis,
Wash., to practice mobilization and construction of facilities that might
be needed in time of war.

"The more you train, the better you get," Carrasco said. "Did we realize a
return for our effort there? Most certainly."

Thirteen counter-drug missions were conducted off the ranch between April
1998 and July 2000.

The task force, which has conducted more than 1,211 anti-drug missions in
Texas since its inception in 1989, became controversial in 1997 after
confrontations between military and civilians.

That year, a Green Beret shot and wounded an undocumented immigrant
sneaking across the Rio Grande near Brownsville.

Five months later, the task force was thrust to the center of national
debate when a Marine leading a four-man patrol shot and killed Esequiel
Hernandez Jr., who was herding goats on the edge of a Big Bend area village.

The 18-year-old was armed with an aging .22 caliber rifle and allegedly
fired toward the camouflaged Marines.

One of the camp's benefits was being able to launch aircraft without
tipping a hand to the drug trafficking organizations, said George Gunnoe,
an assistant chief for the Border Patrol's Laredo Sector.

But the patrol has not let down its guard, Gunnoe said.

"There are other ways to skin the cat. It has not impacted us at all," said
Gunnoe, who declined to discuss current operations.

Gunnoe said the base was not only used for launching helicopters, but
housing military personnel working with the Border Patrol on other
missions, including sessions in which Special Forces personnel taught
patrol agents how to survive in brutal terrain.

The helicopter flights were seen as a way to assist the Border Patrol in
covering more territory and provide pilots an opportunity to fly at night
over unfamiliar territory, Gunnoe said.

As for signing a contract, Gunnoe said it didn't seem necessary to do so
with the Rachal Foundation, which openly supported the effort and had owned
the ranch since 1945.

When the construction was carried out, Laredo City Councilman Louis Bruni
and others raised concerns about whether the region was slowly becoming a
zone of military occupation.

Bruni now contends the military wasted a lot of taxpayer money with the
ranch project, but was pleased the area has remained peaceful.

"I was afraid of some international incident," he said of the prospect of
U.S. troops drawing reaction from Mexico. "I'm glad everything worked out."

He explained that he supports using the military in the drug war, but that
soldiers should not be deployed without diplomacy toward Mexico.