COAST GUARD LANDS 20-TON COKE HAUL

Saying the seizure was the largest ever in maritime history, more
than 20 tons of cocaine taken from a Panamanian freighter was
off-loaded and put briefly on display in Alameda on Monday by Coast
Guard officials.

Crewmembers from the cutter Sherman, who discovered the contraband
March 17 while patrolling about 20 miles off the coast of Panama,
stacked the 765 plastic bags containing the substance on the dock at
Alameda's Coast Guard Island as armed agents from the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration looked on.

The 42,845 pounds of cocaine could fetch an estimated $300 million on
the street, authorities said.

Along with seizing the cocaine, the Coast Guard took into custody 14
Panamanian and Mexican crew members from aboard the freighter Gatun,
and the men are now awaiting prosecution by American authorities.

"About halfway through counting the bags we knew we must be close to
the record in terms of seizures," said Boatswains Mate 1st Class
Michael Aguilera, who led the heavily armed Coast Guard boarding
party aboard the Gatun.

The cocaine was discovered in two of the 12 big rig-type cargo
containers lashed to the ship's deck, Aguilera said.

Initially, the boarding party was not sure just how much cocaine was
in the containers because the men could open the doors only about 8
inches, Aguilera said.

But Lt. j.g. Clifton Harrison, was able to squeeze in with a digital camera.

"He said, 'It's big,' and started chuckling," Aguilera said.

Among those on hand for the off-loading at Berth 2 were Rear Adm.
Jody Breckenridge, who commands the Eleventh Coast Guard District,
and Capt. Charlie Diaz, who commands the Sherman.

"It's heroic business and it happens every day," Diaz said about the
seizure. "Not just on this cutter but on cutters throughout the nation."

In addition to seizing the cocaine from the Gatun, the Sherman's crew
seized narcotics from two other vessels during the 101-day patrol and
rescued an American man who had fallen from his sailing boat off the
Mexican coast.

The Sherman, a 378-foot cutter launched in 1968 and stationed at
Alameda since 1979, has set records before. Its crew found 82 tons of
marijuana aboard a Panamanian freighter in October 1976, which was
then the largest drug seizure on record.

The Coast Guard's largest cocaine seizures before the discovery
aboard the Gatun were the 26,397 pounds from the Cambodian-flagged
Svesda Maru on May 1, 2001, and the 30,109 pounds from the unflagged
Lina Maria on Sept. 17, 2004.

Breckenridge said information from the DEA led the Sherman to the Gatun.

"They had intelligence that allowed us to target the vessel and to
follow through with the seizure," she said.

The San Diego-based cutter Hamilton also took part in the seizure of
the cocaine from the Gatun.

Uttam Dhillon, the director of counter-narcotics enforcement for
Department of Homeland Security and a former federal prosecutor in
the 1990s, was among the officials watching the Sherman crew off-load
the seized contraband.

"I never prosecuted, or dreamed of prosecuting, a 20-ton cocaine
case," Dhillon said.