[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 64 (Friday, May 20, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                            THE WAR ON DRUGS

                                 ______


                        HON. BENJAMIN A. GILMAN

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, May 20, 1994

  Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, the Clinton administration is apparently in 
full retreat in the war on drugs. In a Washington Post op-ed article 
today, May 20, 1994, Lally Weymouth notes that the administration has 
permitted cuts in the budget of drug czar Lee Brown, the State 
Department's Bureau for International Narcotics Matters [INM], and the 
Drug Enforcement Agency. In addition the administration is reportedly 
no longer sharing real-time, i.e., contemporaneous, intelligence with 
Peru and other Latin American countries to help interdict planes 
carrying illicit drugs.
  We have also learned that the House Foreign Operations Appropriations 
Subcommittee has just cut the State Department INM budget by one-third 
again for fiscal year 1995. The United States must be able to fight the 
traffickers and producers overseas before unlimited supplies of cheap 
and high quality drugs reach our streets, schools, and workplaces. 
These budget cuts will hinder and harm our Nation's efforts in our drug 
war. Obviously there is a void in Presidential leadership on fighting 
drugs.
  Illicit drugs affect our crime rate, health care costs, worker 
productivity, and the very future of many of our Nation's youth here at 
home. By neglecting the battle against drugs overseas, our domestic 
problems will surely worsen.
  Mr. Speaker, I request that Ms. Weymouth's op-ed be inserted at this 
point in the Record.

                     The Drug War: Another Retreat

       One argument used by Randall Robinson in calling for a U.S. 
     invasion of Haiti--an idea popular among some Clintonites--is 
     that Haitian military officials are involved in drug 
     trafficking.
       But if the administration wants to cut down the flow of 
     drugs to this country, it can do better than invade Haiti. 
     Indeed, Haiti's a virtual nonplayer in the drug wars. The 
     real damage is being done elsewhere.
       It's already well known, for example, that the 
     administration has slashed the budget of drug czar Lee Brown. 
     The White House has also acquiesced in cuts in the State 
     Department's bureau for international narcotics, has made 
     deep personnel reductions in the Drug Enforcement Agency and 
     has reduced the Defense Department's drug budget--all of 
     which casts a measure of doubt on the Clinton team's 
     commitment to the war on drugs.
       What isn't known is that the administration is also in the 
     process of phasing out a key drug interdiction program that 
     has succeeded in preventing tons of cocaine from reaching 
     America's streets.
       During the Bush administration and indeed until recently, 
     Washington shared ``real-time'' (i.e. contemporaneous) 
     intelligence with Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia and 
     Guatemala, in an effort to allow those countries to force 
     down drug-carrying aircraft so their illicit cargoes could be 
     seized. The program also allowed the United States and its 
     Latin American allies to track planes loaded with drugs as 
     they flew north from Colombia. The goal was to apprehend 
     traffickers at transit zones in Mexico, the Caribbean and 
     Guatemala, to seize the planes and to confiscate their 
     cargoes. In addition, American AWACs and ships tracked the 
     drug-trafficking planes on their return to Colombia, so they 
     could be seized upon landing. Meanwhile, Washington developed 
     sophisticated techniques to allow U.S. authorities to 
     actually pick up drugs when planes dropped them--either in 
     the Caribbean or in southern Mexico.
       A key component of the war on drugs involved persuading 
     Peru to take control of its own air space. This was deemed 
     essential, since 70 percent of the cocaine that comes to the 
     United States originates in Peru. From Peru, the pre-
     processed cocaine (two-thirds of the world's supply) is 
     moved, primarily by small aircraft, to Colombia, where it is 
     processed and then shipped abroad--mostly to America.
       But on May 1, the United States stopped sharing ``real-
     time'' intelligence with Peru and other Latin American 
     countries, bringing the drug interdiction program to an 
     abrupt end. Administration lawyers--with Defense Department 
     attorneys in the lead--explained that a 1985 amendment to the 
     1948 Chicago airline convention forbids the United States 
     from sharing intelligence with a country that might use it to 
     forcibly shoot down civil aircraft.
       Clinton administration lawyers have elected to read the 
     amendment to include the entire spectrum of nonmilitary 
     aircraft, even the small civil aircraft used by drug 
     traffickers in illegal flights over foreign air space.
       Former Bush and Reagan administration officials regard the 
     Clinton team's reading of the 1985 amendment as overbroad in 
     the extreme. They believed there was no problem so long as 
     U.S. personnel were not knowingly involved in a decision 
     taken by a host country to shoot down a plane.
       Moreover, a high-ranking Bush administration official notes 
     that ``the U.S. has the ability to be certain that what we 
     give . . . foreign host countries . . . is a trafficker 
     aircraft.'' There are ways to identify drug trafficking 
     aircraft, adds a former DEA official.
       As things stand, there's a major interagency fight underway 
     in Washington, with State Department officials fighting to 
     preserve the interdiction program while both the military 
     Joint Chiefs and the Department of Defense staunchly oppose 
     doing so.
       Lacking `'real-time'' intelligence from the United States, 
     there's no way for Peru or Colombia to know where a drug-
     filled aircraft is flying or has landed. If these countries 
     can't force a drug trafficker plane to land, the result will 
     be an inability to prevent the movement of massive amounts of 
     pre-processed cocaine from Peru to Colombia. In the end, more 
     cocaine will enter the United States.
       ``If a substance from a foreign country was coming into the 
     U.S. and causing young white males to kill each other, we'd 
     take whatever measures would be necessary to stop it,'' says 
     John P. Walters, who was deputy director of the Office of 
     National Drug Control Policy during the Bush administration. 
     But Walters points out that most drugs go to inner cities.
       Race is often employed far too easily to explain unwelcome 
     policies. But in the case at hand, it may well be that 
     Walters has a point.

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