POT-BUSTING TEAM FINDS WELL-ORGANIZED GARDENS

DRUGS: Mexican Cartels Are Taking Over Marijuana Fields,Lockyer Says.

Morgan Hill - As the helicopter clattered down a narrow canyon, Special
Agent Sonya Barna gestured toward a break in the forest canopy where the
ground cover shimmered with hues of blue and green.

"When direct sun hits a marijuana garden, you see that blue-green
iridescence?" she asked. "It's a sure sign there's a garden there."

Barna would soon be on the ground, leading the 144th raid this year by the
state Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, or Camp.

Agents, in the field only since Aug. 2, had confiscated nearly 100,000
plants as of last week. The Attorney General's Office estimated their street
value at $391 million.

With a harvest season extending well into October in some parts of the
state, CAMP seems to be on pace to eradicate more than the 136,000 plants
taken out last year. Gil Van Attenhoven, CAMP's operation s commander, said
his agents are finding bigger gardens on neatly terraced hillsides with
sophisticated drip-irrigation systems.

"With the exception of Humboldt County where we're still dealing with small
growers, in much of the state it's not just a couple of guys out there
growing marijuana any more," Van Attenhoven said. "It's Mexican-national
drug organizations. These are commercial operations."

Attorney General Bill Lockyer said drug cartels have seized control of much
of California's methamphetamine production. Now they're moving into
marijuana cultivation with the same brutal efficiency, he said.

Cartels recruit poor Mexicans and install them in forested areas of
California with the equipment they need, investigators have found. If
growers bring in a crop, they get a big cash bonus. The previous week CAMP
confiscated more than 10,000 plants in another Santa Clara County raid. The
growers got away, but the groceries they left behind included the beans,
tortillas and homemade chorizo that are staples for Mexico's poor.

It was an exception when federal agents arrested two Mexican nationals Sept.
7 in a large garden near Highland in the San Bernardino National Forest.
Usually, the growers are gone by the time a raiding party arrives.

In 17 years of CAMP operations, agents have never exchanged gun fire with
growers. Some helicopters have been fired upon and Van Attenhoven's agents
also frequently find assault rifles and other firearms in growers' camps.

And booby traps aren't uncommon. Agents find trip wires rigged to a rat trap
with a shotgun shell or pits covered with foliage. In Fresno County last
month, they confiscated a grenade with a trip wire strapped to a propane
tank. On the North Coast, agents have encountered fishing line with hooks
dangling at eye level.