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| Drug Czar Says Nogales Tunnel was Potential Terror |
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Posted by FoM on February 16, 2002 at 08:05:25 PT By Arthur H. Rotstein Source: Tucson Citizen 
John Walters, the White House's drug czar, toured half of the Arizona-Mexico border yesterday for a sample of challenges posed in the battle against drugs and terrorism.Walters, whose official title is director of drug policy, came to listen, look and learn. He flew from Tucson to Nogales by helicopter and then along the stretch of rugged, sparsely populated border over Naco and beyond Douglas, southeast of Tucson. Walters received a briefing from the Tucson High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federal program that coordinates drug control efforts among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. It tracks drug seizures, small-plane flights and smuggling operations by backpackers and horse, using sophisticated intelligence-gathering and technology. At Nogales, Walters checked out vehicle, personal and gamma-ray rail cargo inspection systems, as well as scanners that read license plates. U.S. Customs Port Director Joe Lafata explained strategies used to foil or counter efforts by smugglers. Walters also viewed the entrance dug beneath a Nogales home to a drug tunnel found in December. The house is about 25 yards from the international border where a U.S. Customs Service-led task force discovered the tunnel nearly four months after learning it was being dug. The 85-foot tunnel, the eighth uncovered in Nogales since 1995 but the first that ran directly beneath the international boundary, was operational for about a month. Customs Special Agent Jon Ruttencutter said an ongoing investigation has determined that an organization or a few individuals paid to have the tunnel built. Separate marijuana- and cocaine-smuggling organizations then paid them to smuggle 840 pounds of marijuana and 956 pounds of cocaine through it, he said. Agents seized those amounts in four hauls. Walters said the tunnel could have been a terrorism threat. "From a counterterrorism perspective, since the owner of this was not purely a drug trafficker but a tunnel entrepreneur, this could have been a vulnerability," he said. Walters last visited the Southwest border more than eight years ago, as an assistant to the first drug czar, Bill Bennett, and he said much has changed. "The technology at the border is greater. I think the task is obviously daunting, given the openness of our border and, frankly, the volume and size of the trade that's operating on the other side. "If it's possible to try to create subcontractors to the drug trade with that amount of ease, it's pretty clear that the market is now operating in an environment that allows deal making and support services to be connected up pretty easily." Keys to success will be better intelligence and information sharing that allows coordination of federal, state and local agencies, he said. He said his office is stepping up drug-use prevention and treatment efforts. Some local law officers joined the tour. "Our perception of Washington officials is that they don't view life outside the Beltway very realistically," said Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. "It always helps when the top dog gets to see the border problems firsthand." Source: Tucson Citizen (AZ) Related Articles: Authorities Find Arizona Drug Tunnel Drug Runners' Tunnels Test the Agents in a Border Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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Comment #4 posted by Jose Melendez on February 17, 2002 at 07:56:57 PT:
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| I cannot believe I am going to take sides with the CIA, but fair is fair, and I dont think they can be held accountable, at least not directly.
Hear, hear! Pray for drug peace, encourage good government employees to do their jobs, and current as well as former ones to blow the whistle. Perhaps then people like C. Everett Koop and David Kessler would speak out publicly and clearly on the disparity between cannabis and tobacco...
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| Comment #3 posted by xxdr_zombiexx on February 17, 2002 at 06:01:51 PT |
| Drugs, whatever the kind, are smuggeled to make money. Thwarting the process, making it more difficult to do only makes the prohibited commodity more lucrative to the trafficker. Risk determines profit: Any Harvard MBA knows that. Close up the tunnel, a new one will be dug somewhere else by a different individual with the resources to transport said prohibited product because they want the money. All the more reason to END PROHIBITION: there is probably less financial stimulus to sheer acts of terrorism than there are to trafficking drugs - especially chemical drugs (heroin and cocaine) because of their volume-to-profit ratio. It takes moving and selling a massive amount of weed to replicate the profits made by moving the same weight of heroin or cocaine. Do we really think that Walters, Bush, Hutchinson, and Ashcroft do not know this? If they are aware of these dynamics, why then do are they redoubling efforts to prop up the drug trade? What is in it for them? The political nonsense - looking tough on drugs - is not the big payoff, I don't think. All drug trafficking creates INVISIBLE funds for those who can do the deed. Invisible funds are wonderful things to have because you can do anything you want and not have to answer for it. By being kept illegal, there is ample opportunity for powerful people to profit greatly by using business techniques now coming out of the Enron Scandal. Bet you a box of donuts Enron has, among other wildly creative things, laundered substantil drug money, in addition to robbing the people of the USA. Secondly, the head of the CIA was recently grilled on Capitol Hill for NOT PREDICTING the 9/11 attacks. I cannot believe I am going to take sides with the CIA, but fair is fair, and I dont think they can be held accountable, at least not directly. The FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2001 documents that over 750,000 people were arrested for cannabis possession that year. That is more than all the people,arrested for all violent and "white collar" crimes combined. While snffing your bags for pot, terrorist who dont smoke pot waltzed through airport security - many times, it turns out, practicing for their deadly mission. Thus ending cannabis prohibition and the war on drugs is a matter of NAtional Security. FREEDOM ENDURES [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by SirReal on February 16, 2002 at 17:21:47 PT |
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When will the prohibition addicts admit....just like a drug addict admits,..a problem exists. The prohibitionists problem is that NO AMOUNT OF CASH, NO AMOUNT OF "STEPPED UP INTERDICTION EFFORTS",...NO AMOUNT OF "INCREASED COOPERATION BETWEEN FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT"....will ever outpace the tenacity of the drug smuggler. All they succeed in doing is reduce the competition between them, drive up profits, giving the remaining smugglers an even better opporunity to further the networking of "subcontractors" in the smuggling effort. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #1 posted by MikeEEEEE on February 16, 2002 at 08:58:24 PT |
| "Our perception of Washington officials is that they don't view life outside the Beltway very realistically," said Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.
Most of the hired soldiers aren't dealing to too much up there, they only need obey their masters. [ Post Comment ] |
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