DRUG TRAFFICKERS RETURN TO OLD ROUTE

MIAMI - Last week, federal officials in South Florida scored what they
believed was their biggest cocaine seizure from a pleasure boat: 4,000
pounds, with a street value of $34 million, aboard a 62-foot-long luxury yacht.

The significance, however, was not so much the amount but rather its
discovery on a boat making a run from the Bahamian island of Bimini to a
private dock in Fort Lauderdale.

To federal officials here, the seizure was another indication that after
concentrating on other routes in the 1980s and 1990s, Colombian traffickers
are returning to the familiar routes between the Bahamas and Florida.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials say they seized more cocaine in
the first three months of 1998 in the Bahamas than in the previous three
years combined.

"They're coming back to the roots that they know," said Raphael Lopez, the
U.S. Customs Service's special agent in charge in Miami. "The infrastructure
is here. They've got the people, the smuggling and transportation routes,
the businesses to hide their smuggling and money laundering. And the
commanding control is here."

Although smuggling through the Bahamas and Florida has never stopped,
officials say, aggressive law enforcement in that corridor moved much of the
drug trafficking to Puerto Rico and the border with Mexico. Drug-enforcement
officials believe most cocaine coming into the United States passes through
the Southwest border, but a resurgence of heavy smuggling in the Atlantic
Ocean indicates the trade is being chased back by interdiction efforts and
tensions between the Colombian traffickers and their Mexican distributors.

The same dynamics have made Caribbean countries like the Dominican Republic
and Haiti major transfer points for cocaine destined for the U.S. market.

This ebb and flow of drug trafficking patterns underscores what officials
call the balloon effect: squeezing on one place only to have the drug
activity bulge in another.

But the deterioration of the Medellin and Cali cartels has fragmented the
drug trade, giving way to dozens of smaller trafficking groups that, while
not as big or efficient as the cartels, require more manpower and better
intelligence gathering to combat, some experts on international drug
trafficking said.

The traffickers have also grown more sophisticated and use new technology to
complement their home advantage in the 700-island archipelago strewn over an
area the size of California.

They use cellular telephones and 800 numbers. Airplanes and speedboats
rendezvous on schedule for airdrops of cocaine, thanks to state-of-the-art
navigation systems that pinpoint a meeting place.

The boats themselves are faster than ever, outfitted with three and four
outboard engines for extra horsepower and customized to carry up to 2,200
pounds of cocaine for delivery to Bahamian Islands like Bimini and
ultimately ports and marinas along Florida's east coast, from Palm Beach
County down to the Florida Keys.

The traffickers have also altered their lifestyle. In Florida, where drug
planes once landed on expressways and shootouts were so common traffickers
earned the moniker "cocaine cowboys," flamboyance is out. Increasingly,
officials said, drug-trade operators aim to blend in.

When Yolene and Savil Dessaint, a couple in their 40s, were arrested in
December on cocaine trafficking charges, they lived in an affluent Fort
Lauderdale suburb and their two children attended local schools.

But some things have never changed. When large loads of cocaine are received
in Los Angeles, federal officials said, directions on distribution come from
Colombian traffickers in Miami.

It is an indication of how little the flow of drugs has been disrupted over
time that cocaine prices have remained stable and even dropped in the last
15 years. In the Miami area, a kilo of cocaine, or 2.2 pounds, that sold for
up to $38,000 in 1984 sold for as little as $12,000 to $15,000 in 1988 and
for $12,500 to $18,000 this year, DEA figures show.

One DEA special agent puts it this way:

"They figure out a way to do it, we figure out a way to stop them," he said.
"They figure out a way to do it again. It's like a big chess game."

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett