WASHINGTON -- Updating a tactic last employed during Prohibition, the Coast
Guard is using sharpshooters on helicopters to disable the engines of drug
smugglers' boats with rifle fire, the service disclosed on Monday. The
Commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. James E. Loy, said that the
sharpshooters were deployed in recent weeks and that their bullets had
brought two drug-laden boats to a stop in the Caribbean. Admiral Loy also
said law-abiding boaters or fishermen need not fear getting shot at because
rifle fire is used only after repeated warnings to stop and only after a
boat's pursuers are certain it is a drug-runner. "If there's a new risk on
the part of the bad guys, that's terrific," he added. The admiral's press
aide, Comdr. Pat Philbin, said the tactic -- reminiscent of the days when
the Coast Guard occasionally fired at rum-runners from aircraft -- was
decided upon after Coast Guard patrols wearied of seeing smugglers' boats
race by at nearly 70 miles per hour. "They would go by and wave at us," he
said. "Literally."

Commander Philbin said that law enforcement agencies had noticed an increase
in recent years of super-fast boats, 30 to 45 feet long, equipped with up to
four powerful engines and carrying enough extra fuel for a 700-mile round
trip as they brought drugs from Columbia across the Caribbean and to the
coast of Florida.

The boats, usually with a crew of two to five, have been known to carry up
to 3,000 pounds of cocaine, Commander Philbin said. He estimated that before
turning to airborne snipers, the Coast Guard caught perhaps one boat in 10
- -- "and that might be when they blew an engine."

The Coast Guard estimates that 85 percent of all maritime drug shipments are
made on the new speedboats, whose use has doubled in the last three years.
At a news conference today the Coast Guard was a bit coy, as Commander
Philbin was in a telephone interview.

How many airborne marksmen are there, and from what range do they fire, and
what kind of weapons do they use? "I'd rather not say much," the commander
replied.

One sharpshooter, Charlie Hopkins of Winslow, Me., was credited with
disabling a smugglers' vessel on Aug. 16 with three shots from a .50-caliber
rifle. The news conference today featured Transportation Secretary Rodney
Slater, whose department is the Coast Guard's parent agency, and Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, director of the White House's office of drug-control policy.

They talked of the 53 tons of cocaine that had been seized by the Federal
authorities since last Oct. 1 (the beginning of the current fiscal year),
and the $17.8 billion that the Clinton Administration wants for anti-drug
efforts in the next fiscal year.

The Coast Guard officials talked about nonlethal weapons like a "stingball"
that explodes into a shower of rubber bullets, and a special net that can
ensnare a boat's engines.

Besides the two boats disabled by bullets in recent weeks, two others
surrendered after a helicopter pursuit before bullets had to be used, the
Coast Guard said. Together, the four seizures yielded about 2,600 pounds of
drugs and 13 suspected smugglers. And would Commander Philbin at agree that
hitting an engine in a moving boat on a bobbing sea from a vibrating
helicopter requires pretty good shooting, even with a laser sight? "No," he
said. "It's very good shooting."