Cartels use indirect routes to smuggle narcotics into U.S.

(Testimony of Medellin drugtrafficker to Congress) (570)

WASHINGTON Latin American cartels smuggle cocaine into the United States
mostly through indirect routes like Mexico rather than directly from
producing countries like Colombia, because of risks posed by law
enforcement, a former Medellin trafficker told Congress October 16.

His head covered by a hood and given the temporary name "Mr. Rodriguez" to
hide his true identity, the drug operative was arrested by U.S. law
enforcement agents in 1996 and now is serving a prison sentence. He told a
House of Representatives Judiciary subcommittee that Medellin and other
cartels regard sending illegal narcotics directly into New York and other
distribution points as too dangerous.

Instead, the cocaine is usually shipped or flown through the Caribbean to
Mexico before being moved into the United States, he said. Rodriguez said
his distribution center was New York, where the drugs were sold on the
street mostly by people from the Dominican Republic, or from which they
were moved by road to other cities for local sale.

Rodriguez said that narcotics corruption among officials is rampant in
Colombia and other hemispheric countries, but not in the United States. The
cartels pay police and other authorities to help get the drugs out. But the
Mexican route is used because such corruption does not even exist in the
United States, making more direct entry points such as the U.S. coast far
too dangerous, he said.

Even in his familiar New York area the local law enforcement officials were
not approached with bribes to allow drugs through. "I do not believe they
are engaging in that type of corruption in the United States," Rodriguez
said to the subcommittee.

Nevertheless, local drug traffickers regard other local drug traffickers
who would take their money and wares as a greater danger than the police,
he said. "The greatest concern in the city was the robbers," said
Rodriguez, who told the subcommittee that he had been under consideration
to take over the New York operation.

Rodriguez said his New York distribution center was operated in a
businesslike fashion without guns or violence.

Subcommittee chair William McCollum said that "over the past decade,
Colombian drug cartels have posed one of the greatest threats to the United
States that this country has ever faced."

He said that "with untold billions of dollars at their disposal, the
technology often more advanced than that of our top law enforcement
officers and agencies and with a willingness to use unmitigated violence,
Colombian drug cartels have trafficked literally thousands upon thousands
of metric tons of cocaine into the United States through the last decade."

About 600 metric tons of cocaine will leave Colombia for the United States
this year alone," McCollum predicted.

"Lest anyone be tempted to conclude that this is a far away problem that
has no effect on theirs or her own life, I'd invite that person to
reconsider. When more drugs enter this country, the supply on the streets
increases. And that means prices drop making it easier for addicts and
particularly kids to get their hands on dangerous, mindaltering substances.

"And that leads to wasted lives, unacceptably high levels of violent crime,
and billions of dollars in a price tag annually for American taxpayers," he
declared.