COLOMBIAN DRUG CARTELS TAKE UNDERWATER ROUTE

Submersibles Are Used to Ferry Narcotics. Some in U.S. Fear the
Tactic May Inspire Terrorists.

CALI, COLOMBIA -- It was on a routine patrol that the Colombian coast
guard stumbled upon an eerie outpost amid the mangroves: a
mini-shipyard where suspected drug traffickers were building submarines.

Perched on a makeshift wooden dry dock late last month were two
55-foot-long fiberglass vessels, one ready for launch, the other
about 70% complete. Each was outfitted with a 350-horsepower Cummins
diesel engine and enough fuel capacity to reach the coast of Central
America or Mexico, hundreds of miles to the north.

The vessels had cargo space that could fit 5 tons of cocaine, a
senior officer with the Colombian coast guard's Pacific command said
in an interview.

The design featured tubing for air, crude conning towers and cramped
bunk space for a crew of four, he added.

Over the last two years, Colombian authorities and the U.S. Coast
Guard and Navy have seized 13 submarine-like vessels outfitted for
drug running. The five seized by American authorities were en route
to Mexico or Central America, each loaded with 3 to 5 tons of cocaine.

The seizures point to a security threat that goes beyond drug
trafficking. Many law enforcement officials are concerned that U.S.
ports and shorelines could be vulnerable to terrorist attacks using
such crudely built submarines.

"There could be 5 tons of anything on board these things," said a
senior U.S. military official involved in the war on drugs.

Added a senior official with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
in Colombia: "Any viable method to covertly transport large
quantities of illicit drugs over long distances such as these
[vessels] could conceivably be employed to transport other prohibited
materials."

The boats have become increasingly sophisticated, evolving from huge
tubes built to be towed by fishing or cargo boats to self-propelled
vessels with ballast systems and communications equipment that leave
no wake or radar profile as they glide just below the ocean surface.

The recent discovery in the Pacific Coast estuary about 25 miles
south of the port city of Buenaventura reflects drug traffickers'
growing use of such boats in the face of stepped-up operations by
Colombian and U.S. anti-drug forces, experts here say.

The subs were probably commissioned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, or FARC, in whose zone of influence the shipyard was
situated, according to the officer, who asked not to be identified
for security reasons. The FARC is thought to be Colombia's most
powerful drug-trafficking organization.

Military officials here and in the United States say the war on
drugs, financed by billions of dollars in U.S. aid, is forcing drug
runners to undertake ever more ingenious methods of transporting
cocaine from Colombia, which produces about 90% of the drug consumed
in the United States.

Proponents insist that the campaign is producing concrete results.
They cite a 24% increase in cocaine street prices this year as
reported by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The price bump was caused by the "disruption of cocaine flow," the
office's director, John P. Walters, wrote in a letter to Rep. J.
Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

Improved surveillance and intelligence have led to spectacular busts
this year, including the seizure last Tuesday in Manzanillo, Mexico,
of 23 tons of cocaine hidden in a freight container aboard a Hong
Kong-flagged vessel that had stopped in Buenaventura.

The bust "is going to have even more serious impact on cocaine price
and purity levels here in the United States," a senior U.S.
congressional aide said Friday.

Meanwhile, critics of the war on drugs warn that the price increase,
as in past instances, may prove only temporary.

John Walsh of the Washington Office on Latin America, a watchdog
organization, said a 45% price increase in early 2002 was quickly
reversed as suppliers adjusted.

Walsh and others say counter-narcotics efforts in Colombia should
focus less on interdiction and more on economic alternatives for coca
farmers and others caught up in the industry.

In any event, the ever-changing tactics of Colombian drug traffickers
targeting the lucrative U.S. market reflect a constant cat-and-mouse game.

"When we adjust to them, they adjust to us," said Rear Adm. Joseph
Nimmich, commander of the Key West, Fla.-based Joint Interagency Task
Force South, a multinational force set up to interdict oceangoing
drug shipments.

"Their reaction to our greater surveillance and increased
interdictions has been these self-propelled submersibles."

Are drug cartels resorting to submarines out of "desperation or just
diversification? It's a combination of the two, with the greater
emphasis on the former," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph Ruddy, who
heads Operation Panama Express, a Tampa, Fla.-based task force. The
task force's interdictions have resulted in more than 1,100 drug
traffickers being convicted since 2000.

The boats seized Oct. 28 are submarine-like, but officials here say a
more accurate description is "self-propelled semi-submersible" craft
because they do not dive and resurface like a true submarine.

Submarines are not new to drug trafficking, only more numerous, if
the increase in seizures is any indication.

In what was the most spectacular bust involving a narco-submarine,
police in September 2000 raided a warehouse near Bogota, the capital,
and found a 100-foot-long submarine that was being built according to
Russian plans.

The sub was thought to be a joint venture by Colombian and Russian
drug mafias and would have been capable of carrying 10 tons of
cocaine per trip had it been completed. Annual Colombian cocaine
production is now estimated at 500 to 800 tons.

In 1995, police broke up a deal in which Colombia's Cali cartel had
planned to buy a Russian submarine.

The know-how to build crude "submersibles" is readily available on
the Internet and in back issues of Popular Mechanics magazine.

Hobbyists in the United States have formed the Personal Submersibles
Organization; they conduct chats on the group's website, psubs.org,
and hold annual meetings.

But the vessels found on Colombia's Pacific shores last week were
built for anything but recreation and certainly not by hobbyists.

The Colombian coast guard official said crew members of a submersible
detained this year after their 55-foot vessel sank off the coast of
Tumaco, Colombia, told police that they viewed the craft as a death
trap but were lured by the $2,000 payment the drug magnates promised
to pay them to guide the vessel to Central America.

Asked to describe the men detained, the coast guard official merely
said: "Crazy."