TERROR MAY PUSH DRUGS ASIDE

Rumsfeld: Use U.S. Choppers Elsewhere

MIAMI . Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wants to end Army
helicopter support for a joint U.S.-Bahamas counterdrug program,
raising questions about the future of a decades-long effort that has
resulted in hundreds of arrests and the seizure of tons of cocaine
and marijuana.

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

But in a May 15 letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Rumsfeld
said it was time after more than 20 years to shift the military
assets elsewhere. The letter comes as the Defense Department is
increasingly stretched thin by ongoing conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan and multiple military commitments around the globe.

The Bahamas counterdrug 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."

The letter asks Gonzales to help identify "a more appropriate agency"
to provide the air support. Rumsfeld said he wants to complete the
military pullout from the program by Oct. 1, 2007.

The DEA is the other major player in the program, but it has only one
helicopter in the Bahamas. The Coast Guard currently has three
Jayhawk helicopters assigned to the program, but DEA officials say
those combined assets would be insufficient to provide quick response
along the vast, 700-island Bahamas chain.

"We would need some resources to be able to do that," Mark R.
Trouville, chief of DEA's Miami field office, said in an interview.
The Miami DEA office oversees U.S. counterdrug efforts in the
Caribbean and Latin America.

The Justice Department, of which DEA is a part, declined to comment
Wednesday on Rumsfeld's letter. Trouville said discussions were under
way regarding which agency might assume the military's role in the Bahamas.

Defense Department officials at the Pentagon and the U.S. Southern
Command in Miami did not return telephone calls Wednesday seeking
further comment.

When the program began in 1982, up to 90 percent of the cocaine
smuggled into the United States 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.

"If we start letting our guard down here now, and we reduce our
presence here, it will be more economical [for smugglers] to come
back this way. And certainly the state of Florida is ground zero for
that," Trouville said.

Since 2000, the program has resulted in the 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 and Coast Guard
helicopters operate from three bases in the Bahamas, coordinating
with Bahamian police vessels and DEA agents to interdict drug shipments.

The program also plays a role in identifying and stopping human
smugglers, particularly those from Haiti that are often caught on
old, overcrowded vessels.

Bahamian officials did not return telephone calls Wednesday seeking
comment. The Bahamas' ambassador to the United States, Joshua Sears,
was returning from an Organization of American States summit in the
Dominican Republican and unavailable for comment, said embassy
officials in Washington.