HOOSIERS PROTEST END OF DRUG-CHOPPER PLAN

Two Hoosier lawmakers have asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to
reverse his plan to end Army helicopter support next year for a
program that intercepts drug deals in the Bahamas.

In a letter last month to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Rumsfeld
said it was time after more than 20 years to shift the equipment
elsewhere. The military is being stretched thin by the fighting in
Iraq and Afghanistan and other commitments around the globe.

"If you withdraw the assets," Reps. Mark Souder, R-3rd, and Dan
Burton, R-5th, wrote to Rumsfeld with three other Republicans, "no
other agency is capable of filling the void, and another smuggling
route will be left significantly undermanned."

Since 2000, the U.S.-Bahamas program has resulted in seizure of more
than 25 tons of cocaine, 82 tons of marijuana and the arrests of 786
people, according to DEA statistics from April.

The Army's seven Blackhawk helicopters and their crews form the
backbone of Operation Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, which the Drug
Enforcement Administration credits with helping drive cocaine and
marijuana smugglers away from the Bahamas and its easy access to Florida.

The Bahamas anti-drug program, Rumsfeld wrote, "now competes with
resources necessary for the war on terrorism and other activities in
support of our nation's defense, with potential adverse effects on
the military preparedness of the United States."

He said he wants to complete the military pullout from the program by
Oct. 1, 2007.

The DEA has only one helicopter in the Bahamas. The Coast Guard has
three Jayhawk helicopters assigned to the program, but DEA officials
said the equipment would be insufficient to provide quick response
along the vast, 700-island Bahamas chain.

When the program began in 1982, up to 90 percent of the cocaine
smuggled into the U.S. from Latin America came into Florida through
the Bahamas and Caribbean. Now, most of the cocaine moves across the
U.S. southwestern border, in part because of the pressure on
traffickers operating off Florida's coasts.

Sylvia A. Smith of The Journal Gazette contributed to this story.