U.S. COMMANDER'S WIFE ARRESTED IN DRUG CASE

WASHINGTON The wife of the commander of U.S. military forces that
fight drug trafficking in Colombia has been arrested on charges of
sending cocaine into the United States, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Laurie Hiett, 36, who is married to Army Col. James Hiett, was charged
with conspiracy to distribute narcotics after several parcels of
cocaine that she had allegedly sent from Bogota, Colombia, via the
U.S. Embassy post office at least one with her own return address on
it were discovered in the mail. The parcels were addressed to
recipients in New York, the prosecutors said.

Lee Dunst, assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said that Hiett, who
had been brought back to the country as part of the investigation,
surrendered Thursday and was released on a $150,000 bond. If
convicted, she faces up to 12 years in prison. She was ordered to turn
in her passport and was told not to leave the United States, he said.

In an interview with investigators, Hiett said she did not know the
contents of the packages and that she mailed them as a favor to a
Colombian who worked at the embassy.

Upon learning of his wife's arrest, James Hiett stepped down as
commander of about 200 U.S. soldiers who advise the Colombian military
on counter narcotics programs, according to an official of the U.S.
Southern Command, which includes the Colombia operation.

Although military investigators found no evidence to link the
commander to his wife's alleged plot, he requested a reassignment from
the sensitive post he has held for about a year, an Army official said.

Court documents allege that Laurie Hiett mailed six packages, each
containing about 3 pounds of cocaine, between April 13 and May 26.

That amount is minuscule compared with the hundreds of tons of drugs
that move every year from Colombia to U.S. cities. But the case
clearly will embarrass and perhaps hamper U.S. efforts to fight the
drug trade in Colombia.

With such charges pending against the wife of a senior military
commander, it likely will become more difficult for U.S. advisors to
persuade poorly paid Colombian soldiers to stay away from narco corruption.

Bob Weiner, a spokesman for Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said it would be
improper to prejudge Hiett's case. "We're not going to comment on the
specific case, but drugs are a very corrupting influence, and it is
why we are working so hard to control them," Weiner said Friday.

Earlier in the day, McCaffrey told a House Government Reform
subcommittee that Colombia faces a growing emergency with dramatically
increased cocaine production, a major economic crisis and violence
from guerrilla groups. He called for a $1billion increase in counter
narcotics aid to the Bogota regime.

Colombia now receives $289 million, all of it earmarked to combat
drugs. That ranks Colombia in third place among recipients of U.S.
foreign aid, behind Israel and Egypt.

According to court papers, Hiett told investigators that she mailed
the parcels through the Army Post Office in the U.S. Embassy in
Bogota. The service permits government employees and their families to
send mail from overseas without having to use foreign postal services.
The mail is handled from post box to delivery in the United States
entirely by U.S. postal workers.

Nevertheless, mail sent from overseas requires customs documents.
Investigators said that Hiett filled out customs declarations for the
parcels, using her own name. She also enlisted two friends to mail
packages for her, although investigators said they did not know what
the packages contained.

Hiett told investigators that she received the drugs from Jorge
Alfonso Ayala, a Colombian citizen and longtime embassy employee who
was working as her husband's chauffeur.

Ayala told investigators that Hiett was a cocaine user. He said that
he obtained packages of drugs for her from an unknown man on the
street and an unknown woman in a taxicab outside the embassy.

Prosecutors said that Hiett has denied using drugs Like U.S. soldiers
the world over, troops assigned to Colombia are subject to random drug
testing. But there is no requirement for tests of family members.

Clinton administration policy permits U.S. troops to help the
Colombian military combat the narcotics trade, but it does not condone
assistance to Colombian soldiers fighting a powerful, 25,000strong
leftist insurgency.

But McCaffrey, during his congressional testimony Friday, acknowledged
that because the rebels are heavily involved in the drug trade
movements or in some cases, paramilitary groups and international drug
trafficking organizations has created an unprecedented threat to the
rule of law, democratic institutions and the very fabric of society,"
he said.

Republicans on the panel complained that the administration was
unwilling to commit the force required to stop the narcotics trade.
Rep. Mark E. Souder (R-Ind.) said that, like U.S. assistance to South
Vietnam in the 1960s, military aid to Colombia "is just enough to
never quite win." House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin
A. Gilman (RN.Y.) complained that only two of 30 Black Hawk
helicopters authorized by Congress for Colombia in 1996 have been delivered.

But McCaffrey contradicted him, insisting that seven have been
delivered to the Colombian Army and 13 to the Air Force.