IN COLOMBIA, THEY CALL HIM CAPTAIN NEMO

Authorities Say Enrique Portocarrero Was The Innovative Creator Of
Stealthy Submarines Called Semi-Submersibles, Used By Cocaine
Traffickers To Evade Detection.

Reporting from Tumaco, Colombia -- Squat, bull-necked and
sullen-looking, Enrique Portocarrero hardly seems a dashing character
out of a Jules Verne science fiction novel.

But law enforcement officers here have dubbed him "Captain Nemo,"
after the dark genius of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." They say the
45-year-old has designed and built as many as 20 fiberglass
submarines, strange vessels with the look of sea creatures, for drug
traffickers to haul cocaine from this area of southern Colombia to
Central America and Mexico.

Capping a three-year investigation that involved U.S. and British
counter-narcotics agents, Colombia's FBI equivalent, the Department
of Administrative Security, arrested Portocarrero last month in the
violent port city of Buenaventura, where he allegedly led a double
life as a shrimp fisherman.

A day later, they descended on Portocarrero's hidden "shipyard" in a
mangrove swamp 20 miles south of here and destroyed two of the
vessels, which police say were each capable of carrying 8 tons of cargo.

"He had a marvelous criminal vision," Colombian navy Capt. Luis
German Borrero said. "He introduced innovations such as a bow that
produced very little wake, a conning tower that rises only a foot
above the water and a valve system that enables the crew to scuttle
the sub in 10 minutes. He is very ingenious."

Authorities say they know little about Portocarrero except that he
was arrested in 2003 on drug charges and soon released, a fact he
relayed with a smirk when he was nabbed last month. Most important,
he once worked at a dry dock in Buenaventura, where he apparently
learned his craft.

Portocarrero was living well. Police, who reported finding $200,000
hidden in the spare tire of his car, say he had invested his reputed
$1-million-per-vessel fees in the purchase of five shrimp boats.

Administrative Security officials allege that Portocarrero helped
invent "semi-submersibles," as the narco-vessels are called, because
they don't dive and resurface like true submarines, but cruise just
below the surface.

Portocarrero's craft are difficult for counter-narcotics officials to
detect on the open seas because their tiny wake creates a negligible
radar "footprint." Also, authorities say, the exhaust is released
through tubing below the surface, frustrating patrol aircraft's
heat-sensing equipment.

"He knew the rudiments of boat design, but probably had help from a
naval engineer along the way," Borrero said.

Portocarrero developed a signature design, police say: a sleek
V-shaped hull; a sturdy keel, which is the boat's backbone; and an
exhaust system that makes the boat look like a monster from the deep.

There has been a quantum leap in detection and capture of
semi-submersibles in the last two years. Fifteen have been seized,
destroyed or scuttled this year in the Pacific and Caribbean,
compared with only one in 2006, said Rear Adm. Joseph Nimmich, head
of Joint Interagency Task Force South, the Pentagon's anti-narcotics
command center, based in Key West, Fla.

He estimated that as many as 60 of the vessels have slipped past
patrols to deliver cocaine to Mexico and Central America. Colombian
agents say Portocarrero may have been in charge of building as many
as a third of the subs this year.

The trend has U.S. security officials concerned because of the
craft's potential for ferrying weapons and terrorists.

"If they can't make money transferring drugs, they could always turn
to something else to transfer, other illicit cargoes," Nimmich said.

A conference on the issue last month in the Colombian city of
Cartagena was attended by authorities from 26 countries, including
Venezuela, which has forsworn cooperation with U.S. counter-narcotics agents.

The development is the latest in the cat-and-mouse game between drug
traffickers and counter-narcotics officials. Authorities believe
tighter controls on Colombian and Ecuadorean fishing vessels, often
used to move drugs, were a factor in the shift to subs. Since
mid-2007, all fishing boats in the region have been required to carry
GPS devices so police can track their movements.

The Colombian navy and police also say that so-called Midnight
Express speedboats, supplied by the U.S., have improved their chances
of chasing down "go-fast" outboard boats, once the preferred mode of transport.

"Speed was no longer winning the day," said a high-ranking U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration official based in Colombia who noted the
"exponential increase" in the use of stealthy semi-submersible
vessels in the last few years. He spoke on condition of anonymity
because of security concerns.

Police say several cocaine traffickers, looking to regain the
advantage, got together to combine their cargoes and buy
Portocarrero's boats, which took about six weeks each to build, said
an informant who led Colombian coast guard officials to
Portocarrero's mangrove shipyard. Each vessel was designed according
to the load of drugs, the informant said, with the maximum cargo of
10 tons of cocaine, worth $250 million in street value.

Portocarrero's vessels measured up to 60 feet long and were outfitted
with complex ballast, communications and power systems, officials
said. They were typically powered by 350-horsepower diesel engines,
and the four-man crew had state-of-the-art radio, GPS and satellite
telephone communications.

The subs have a range of 2,000 miles, more than enough to get from
here to Mexico's Bay of Tehuantepec, a favored destination, Borrero said.

Although the subs are taxing counter-narcotics officials' ability to
keep up, DEA officials say they are getting better at detecting the
subs, thanks to computerized systems in British patrol aircraft.

Law enforcement has also been helped by a law the U.S. Congress
passed in October making it possible to convict a boat's crew on the
basis of visual evidence that they were manning the subs. Before,
crews avoided prosecution by simply scuttling the craft and sinking
the drugs, depriving law enforcement of the evidence they needed.

Colombian authorities say they expect Portocarrero to be extradited
to the United States, though no U.S. charges have yet been filed against him.

Some officials fear it's only a matter of time before traffickers
take the next "logical" step: the use of real submarines. Although no
true submarines have ever been stopped with cocaine, authorities
discovered one in 1995 near Bogota being built according to Russian plans.

"As the interdiction rate against semi-submersibles increases, as it
has, will traffickers revert back to the ubiquitous 'go-fasts,' or
will they take it to the next level -- a fully submersible craft,
unmanned with remote guidance capability?" the high-ranking DEA
official said. "The latter has a lot more agencies than just DEA concerned."