GAO: DOD'S SUPPORT ROLE IN DRUG CONTROL EFFORTS HAS DECLINED

The Defense Department's efforts to support the national drug control
strategy have declined "significantly" since 1992 because of a higher
priority placed by the Clinton administration on peacekeeping missions and
overall reductions to the defense budget, the General Accounting Office
concludes in a recently released report.

The drug control strategy calls on the Pentagon to detect, monitor and
interdict maritime and aerial shipments of illegal drugs to the United
States, as well provide assistance to other countries to "stop drugs at
their source."

DOD spent up to $635 million on such supply-reduction efforts in 1998.

But from 1992 to 1999, "the number of flight hours dedicated to detecting
and monitoring illicit drug shipments declined from approximately 46,000 to
15,000, or 68 percent," the Dec. 21 report states. "Likewise, the number of
ship days declined from about 4,800 to 1,800, or 62 percent, over the same
period.

"Some of the decline in air and maritime support has been partially offset
by increased support provided by the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs Service,"
it adds. "Nevertheless, DOD officials have stated that coverage in key,
high-threat drug-trafficking areas in the Caribbean and in
cocaine-producing countries is limited."

GAO produced the study, "Assets DOD Contributes to Reducing the Illegal
Drug Supply Have Declined," at the behest of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA),
chairman of the caucus on international narcotics control, and Rep. John
Mica (R-FL), Government Reform subcommittee on criminal justice, drug
policy and human resources chairman.

The report identifies two reasons for the decline in DOD assets used to
support the counterdrug mission:

* "The lower priority assigned to the counterdrug mission compared with
that assigned to other military missions that might involve contact with
hostile forces such as peacekeeping; and

* "Overall reductions in defense budgets and force levels."

The Pentagon has maintained that the decline in assets used has been
partially offset by increased efficiencies in counterdrug operations.
"Because of a lack of data, however, the impact of the reduced level of DOD
support on drug trafficking is unknown," the report states.

Drug prices in the 1990s have been "relatively stable," it adds.

GAO also looked at challenges the Pentagon faces in providing counterdrug
assistance to foreign governments.

"These [countries] often lack the capability to operate and repair
equipment and effectively utilize training provided by the United States,"
the report says. "In addition, DOD faces restrictions on providing training
support to some foreign military units and sharing intelligence information
with certain host-nation counterdrug operations because of past evidence of
human rights violations and corruption within these organizations." The GAO
report recommends that DOD "develop measures to assess the effectiveness"
of its efforts in support of the national strategy for reducing illegal
drugs in the United States.

"DOD has not yet developed a set of performance measures to assess its
effectiveness in contributing to this goal but has taken some initial steps
to develop such measures," the report states. "These steps include the
development of a database to capture information that can be used to assess
the relative performance of DOD's detection and monitoring assets."

DOD could also "determine how often [it] detects known cocaine shipments
and the percentage of detected shipments successfully handed off to law
enforcement organizations. Analyzing trends in such measures could help DOD
better evaluate the effectiveness of its contribution to the national drug
control effort."

The Pentagon agreed with GAO that it needs to continue developing ways to
measure performance in the counterdrug mission, and stressed the
department's "aggressive action" taken to meet detection and monitoring
requirements despite a reduction in available resources.