DOZENS HELD IN DRUG RAIDS

Major Network In 14 Cities 'Disrupted,' FBI Says

Culminating a year-long investigation, federal agents and local law
enforcement officers yesterday arrested dozens of people in 14 cities across
the country in a crackdown against what FBI officials described as a major
drug distribution network.

By late afternoon, the FBI said that 77 arrests had been made in an
operation dubbed "Southwest Express" and that more than 20 additional
arrests were expected. Those who were arrested were charged with drug
trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy.

The raids were targeted on an organization headed by Omar Rocha Soto of San
Diego. Rocha and his wife, Adriana Espinoza, were arrested early yesterday
morning as they left their home in a San Diego suburb, FBI officials said.

Law enforcement authorities also arrested in El Paso yesterday three
brothers involved in the operation--Daniel, Raul and Angel Sotello-Lopez.
The brothers played a key role in coordinating the transportation of illegal
drugs from the Southwest to Chicago, where the drugs were later shipped to
cities in the East and South, officials said.

"This makes what we feel is a significant dent," said Thomas Pickard,
assistant director of the FBI's criminal investigative division. "We think
this is one of the major drug trafficking organizations here in the United
States."

Pickard said that over the course of the investigation, law enforcement
authorities seized 2,727 kilograms of cocaine, 4,158 pounds of marijuana and
more than $1.1 million in cash. Yesterday's raids resulted in the seizure of
14 kilograms of cocaine, two Ferrari automobiles, a Land Rover and seven
weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle, he said.

According to Pickard, the drugs distributed by the Rocha organization
originated in a number of countries in Central and South America and
Southeast Asia and were smuggled into the United States through San Diego
and El Paso. From there, he said, the organization shipped the drugs to
Chicago in hidden compartments in automobiles, tractor-trailers and rail cars.

From Chicago, associates of the organization sent the drugs to Cleveland,
New York and Boston, and from those cities, some of the drugs were moved to
Nashville and Atlanta, Pickard said.

Pickard described the Rocha organization as one of the "top 20" drug
distribution operations in the country. He said Rocha was "loosely
associated" with a number of organizations that supply the illegal drug
market. "But he was in it for the profit purely; and whatever organization
would give him the best deal on the dollar, Mr. Rocha was there," Pickard said.

"This organization that we disrupted today embraced the American capitalist
idea and would sell any type of drug for a profit and did not discriminate
in its dealings with any other drug organizations," he added. "For example,
they sold to Dominicans, blacks, Middle Easterners and any other organized
crime group throughout the United States."

"He was definitely on his way to being a big, big-time trafficker," Errol
Chavez, chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration's San Diego office,
told the Associated Press.

Pickard said federal authorities were less concerned with the amount of
drugs they seized in the investigation than with disrupting the distribution
organization. "We were trying to disrupt the organization, the leadership
and the infrastructure. We weren't trying to count how much drugs we seized
or put on the table," he said. "Our emphasis here was on the
leadership--Omar Rocha and the Sotello brothers. We wanted to get them off
the street by taking out the hierarchy of this drug organization."

Officials said the investigation was conducted jointly by the FBI, the DEA,
the Justice Department, the U.S. Customs Service, the Internal Revenue
Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and more than 50 state
and local law enforcement agencies. Yesterday's arrests and searches of more
than 70 sites took place in San Diego; El Paso; Houston; Lufkin, Tex.;
Chicago; La Salle, Ill.; Cleveland; Dayton, Ohio; Allentown, Pa.; New York;
Albany, N.Y.; Boston; Nashville; and Atlanta.