COAST GUARD COCAINE SEIZURES SET RECORD

WASHINGTON - Shifting its resources from the Caribbean to the Pacific
and making use of armed helicopters and beefed-up intelligence, the
Coast Guard seized record amounts of cocaine in the past 12 months.

As of Monday, the Coast Guard had seized 125,904 pounds of cocaine
worth about $4 billion - more than four times the bounty seized in
1996. During the same period in 1999, the agency seized 111,689 pounds.

The Coast Guard will announce its total haul from the past year at a
ceremony today honoring 12 officers and crew.

Coordinated intelligence among agencies and enforcement pressure in the
Caribbean and along Mexico are pushing smugglers from their traditional
and easiest routes, says retired general Barry McCaffrey, head of the
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"What we see now is smugglers going 600 miles into the Pacific to get
out from the Coast Guard surveillance, and they can't do it," McCaffrey
says.

For the first time, the Coast Guard made most of its busts - 82% - in
the Pacific, compared with 38% last year, says Cmdr. Jim McPherson, a
Coast Guard spokesman. He expects smugglers to react to the increased
patrols in the Pacific by altering their routes again. "It's a very
complicated cat-and-mouse game," he says.

Despite stepped-up patrols and improved intelligence, plenty of cocaine
gets into the USA. Intelligence reports from the Defense Department,
Coast Guard and other agencies estimate that 690,000 pounds flowed into
the USA in the first six months of 2000.

The Coast Guard, the primary maritime enforcement agency, patrols a 6-
million-square-mile transit zone roughly the size of the USA with 43
cutters; 49, 110-foot patrol boats; 44, 82-foot patrol boats; and two
attack helicopters.

"Smugglers outnumber the Coast Guard," McPherson says. "But I think
that we can conclude from this year that the Coast Guard and other law
enforcement agencies can be very successful."

"We're a long way from having shut them down," says Coast Guard Vice
Adm. Ray Riutta. "We've taken a lot of cocaine off the water. But we
just don't have enough resources, and there's an awful lot of ocean out
there."

Cocaine smugglers generally travel at night, often using "go-fast"
motorboats painted the color of the sea. The smugglers have
sophisticated radar, night goggles and black wetsuits. The powerboats,
which can carry 2,000 pounds of cocaine, travel at 50 knots, more than
twice the speed of a cutter.

This year, the Coast Guard began trailing the "go-fast" boats with
armed helicopters. If the boat outran a cutter, the helicopter crew
dropped nets to trap the boat and shot into the boat's engines until
the cutter could catch up.

In six helicopter attempts, the Coast Guard made six seizures,
McPherson says. Without the attack helicopters, the Coast Guard stopped
about one in 10 "go-fast" boats.

"They would go past our cutters and wave," McPherson says. "They can
outrun our boats, but they can't outrun our helicopters."