WAR ON DRUGS LOSES OUT TO WAR ON TERROR

WASHINGTON - The war against terrorism is diverting federal agents, patrol
boats, and other resources from the war on drugs, the nation's chief drug
officer said yesterday.

"It's a battle of resources right now," said Asa Hutchinson, chief of the
Drug Enforcement Administration. It's particularly an issue for the Coast
Guard and the FBI, he said. "When the dust settles, there will be discussions."

The FBI has yanked agents off drug cases for counterterrorism duty,
Hutchinson said, and Coast Guard cutters that once were dedicated to
patrolling for drug shipments now watch over vulnerable seaports.

"We've tried to make up the slack," said Hutchinson, a former Republican
representative from Arkansas who became the DEA's administrator three
months ago.

He said it remained to be worked out whether "functional shifts" in the
duties of federal agencies are required. A "formal reworking of the
jurisdiction lines" may be needed, he said, if the FBI, a major ally in the
drug war, withdraws permanently from drug investigations.

Since Sept. 11, the FBI has shifted 7,000 of its personnel, or about 1 in 4
employees, to new missions involving terrorism, FBI Director Robert Mueller
said Oct. 24.

Stuart M. Gerson, a former assistant attorney general, said he thought the
FBI may eventually hand off antidrug and some other functions to other
federal agencies or to state and local law-enforcement authorities.

"The driver of this is the need for the FBI to transform itself almost
overnight from a criminal-investigations agency to a counterterrorism
function," said Gerson, a private litigator in New York.

Hutchinson noted that the Coast Guard had pulled as much as 75 percent of
its cutter and aircraft fleet from the Caribbean to handle security for
seaports.

"That has an impact," he said. "I don't want Miami and the Caribbean to go
back to the way it was in the 1980s."

Hutchinson lauded federal counterterrorism efforts but noted there was
growing evidence that cash from the drug trade finances organizations that
sponsor terrorism, including the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"We recognize that we have to fight a war on two fronts: counterterrorism
as well as counterdrug. And you can't neglect one," he said.

Hutchinson said drug smuggling had diminished right after Sept. 11, then
increased.

"The smugglers were saying: 'Hey, this is a bad time. There's just too much
heat along the border.' So, they slowed it down. Then they got desperate. .
. . They said, 'Well, we got to move it.' They've got a payroll to make. So
they started moving it," Hutchinson said. Seizures rose along the border
and at airports, he said.

On another matter, Hutchinson said U.S. authorities had yet to see a
positive impact in Colombia, the world's main source of cocaine, since that
South American nation received a $1.3 billion package of U.S. aid last year.

"We cannot say that there's been a reduction of the supply of cocaine
coming into the United States from our efforts at this point," he said. "We
do not anticipate that impact for a number of years."