PENTAGON TO SCALE BACK DRUG WAR

NARCOTICS: Citing the war on terrorism, officials say they want to reduce
the resources used to fight drug trafficking.

WASHINGTON - Citing the need to redirect resources to the war on terrorism,
the Pentagon has quietly decided to scale back its effort to combat
international drug trafficking, a central element of the national "war on
drugs" for 14 years.

Officials are still weighing how exactly to pare the $1 billion-a-year
program, but they want to reduce deployment of special operations troops on
counternarcotics missions and cut back the military's training of antidrug
police and soldiers in the United States and abroad. And they want to use
intelligence-gathering equipment now devoted to counterdrug work for
counterterrorism as well.

But the military's counternarcotics effort is highly popular among some on
Capitol Hill, where the retrenchment plans could run into trouble. The plans
have not yet been spelled out for lawmakers; however, Defense Department
memos and interviews with current and former officials make the Pentagon's
intentions clear.

Congress ordered a reluctant Pentagon to enter the drug war in 1988, when
surging cocaine traffic from South America sparked a sense of crisis in the
United States.

"We should not be relaxing our efforts in the war on drugs," said Rep.
Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence
and an important advocate for the effort. "Terrorism is the highest
priority, but drugs are still insidious."

The Pentagon's plans have been couched in indirect terms. They were signaled
this summer in a memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and
distributed to senior uniformed and civilian officials.

He said the department had "carefully reviewed its existing counternarcotics
policy" because of "the changed national security environment, the
corresponding shift in the department's budget and other priorities, and
evolving support requirements." The Pentagon will now focus its
counternarcotics activities on programs that, among other things,
"contribute to the war on terrorism," he added.

But even before the Sept. 11 attacks, senior officials including Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had bluntly stated their lack of enthusiasm for
the antidrug mission, which they contend is better handled by civilian
agencies.

Thus, some experts believe the Defense Department may be taking advantage of
the war on terrorism to scale back a mission they never wanted.

In an interview, Pentagon counterdrug chief Andre Hollis emphasized that the
Pentagon wants to retain parts of the program that have worked well but that
all the pieces are being examined to determine if each "is still a priority
mission. The top priorities now are to defend the homeland and to win the
war on terrorism."

In its drug interdiction role, the U.S. military acts as the lead U.S.
agency for gathering intelligence on drug trafficking, and uses an array of
aircraft, ships, radar and other eavesdropping tools.

While barred from conducting drug raids directly, troops provide some
real-time technical help -- such as communications and intelligence analysis
- -- during antidrug operations being carried out by law enforcement and
foreign military organizations.

The military's counterdrug efforts have not exactly "won" the drug war, some
experts note. The price and supply of cocaine, for example, have been
relatively stable since 1989.

"They're certainly working at the margins in making a difference," said
Peter Reuter, a University of Maryland economist and former director of Rand
Corp.'s Drug Policy Research Center.

And liberal critics have argued that by training foreign police and
soldiers, the U.S. military has in some cases given new tools to brutal
regimes that often abuse human rights.

Yet the Pentagon's work has led to important drug seizures and arrests, and
has helped build U.S. ties and open doors for U.S. military access in many
countries.