Odds Still With Smugglers in U.S. Air War Against Drugs

When Richard Lawrence Peterson, 68, a thrice-convicted drug smuggler, flew his twin-engine Cessna 320 into U.S. airspace from Mexico on a winter evening in late 1986, he took precautions befitting an accomplished contrabandist and former World War II Army Air Corps pilot.

He was flying low, without lights, in an area west of Calexico known as the Laguna Salada, where surrounding mountains render ground radar useless against low-altitude fliers.

His mission: Drop off more than 700 pounds of marijuana for a ground crew waiting in two pickup trucks at a remote airstrip along the California-Nevada border. And then get out, quickly.

It didn’t quite work that way.

Spotted by Customs

A U.S. Customs Service jet, equipped with radar and night-vision devices and based at North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado, spotted the Cessna’s entry above Imperial County and followed the aircraft to its landing site, where help was summoned. Soon, high-powered searchlights from a Customs Blackhawk helicopter illuminated the area and agents with automatic weapons alighted from the choppers and made the bust.

“Everything worked like it was supposed to in this case,” recalled Brian L. Simon, a Customs special agent who was at the scene.

If only it were that way every time.

The Peterson case was, in fact, one of the relatively few successful recent aerial interdictions along the U.S.-Mexico border in California, where, officials acknowledge, the lack of radar coverage and, to a lesser extent, insufficient interdiction aircraft and personnel leave the area highly vulnerable to airborne drug traffickers from Mexico. Despite vows that the situation should improve as more radar and other equipment comes on line in coming years, critics are skeptical about Customs’ abilities to keep up with ever-adaptable smugglers, who routinely fly below the porous radar umbrella and rig their craft with extra fuel tanks and other features allowing them additional time in the air before landing on dry lake beds, roads and small airstrips on the U.S. side.

As pressure mounts for expanded use of military equipment to fight the drug “war,” congressional scrutiny of Customs air operations is increasing.

Frank Kapitan, director of Customs Aviation Operations Division in Washington, acknowledged in an interview that an experienced smuggling pilot is unlikely to be caught entering the United States from Mexico.

Odds in Smugglers’ Favor

“If he (the smuggler) knows what he’s doing and he wants to fly across, the odds are pretty small that he’ll get detected,” conceded Kapitan, whose division, with a current budget of about $175 million, includes about 100 aircraft and 800 personnel nationwide, deployed mostly along the nation’s southern borders.

In fact, Peterson and his three accomplices, all of whom have since pleaded guilty to various smuggling-related charges, may well have avoided detection themselves during their flight in December, 1986, had an informant not tipped federal authorities beforehand of their planned clandestine crossing. The tip alerted officials--and authorities are now able to cite the case as a “model” of air interdiction.

The reality, however, is that there has been only a handful of such aerial interdiction cases in the last year along the border in California, despite daily patrols of Customs aircraft based at North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado and March Air Force Base in Riverside.

“Customs was never designed to combat an aerial invasion,” said U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado), who has been at the forefront of the congressional effort to deploy more military resources to assist in the interdiction program. “Customs simply does not have the equipment, the personnel or the wherewithal to repel this aerial invasion.”

Using figures from various sources, Hunter estimates that between 10 and 27 “drug planes”--mostly small aircraft, flying at night--penetrate U.S. airspace each day, mostly through the nation’s southern borders, from Florida to California. Their success rate is more than 90%, Hunter maintains.

Called Guesswork

Customs officials, defending the air interdiction effort, characterize such estimates as guesswork. They note that in the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30, the nationwide program resulted in the seizure of 23,000 pounds of cocaine and 170,000 pounds of marijuana; the seizures of 66 aircraft and 74 ground vehicles, and the arrests of 250 suspects. However, most of those numbers reflect law enforcement action in the East, particularly the Florida-Caribbean area, as there were comparatively few aerial interdictions along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Federal authorities also cite the deterrent effect of the Customs air patrols, which, officials say, force many traffickers to land their loads in Mexico and attempt to bring them into the United States by land.

“What’s happening is that they’re stopping south of the (border) fence because they’re aware we’re up there,” said Joe Maxwell, who directs U.S. Customs air operations in the Western United States from his office at March Air Force Base.

Others, noting the ample supply of illicit drugs on the streets, aren’t convinced. They see an alternative: greatly escalated use of additional military aircraft, such as the sophisticated AWACS reconnaissance planes, to patrol the southern border, providing enhanced radar and chase capabilities. That proposal, which has gained widespread support in Congress during the election-year anti-drug fervor, has met intense opposition from the Reagan Administration, including from Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, who has voiced concerns about its potential effect on military preparedness and strictures against Pentagon involvement in law enforcement.

Different Procedures

The military is ill-equipped and ill-trained to do what is essentially police work, according to Administration officials, who note that monitoring a single-engine drug aircraft flying at 500 feet is quite a different mission from tailing supersonic Soviet MIGs at 30,000 feet. Various studies have shown that the military’s limited involvement in aerial interdiction to date has been exceedingly costly and largely ineffective.

Meanwhile, Customs will likely maintain its lead role in interdicting airborne drug smugglers. The U.S. Coast Guard also flies interdiction routes, but its resources are concentrated in the south Florida, Caribbean and Bahamas areas.

Responsibility for airborne patrol of the border area in San Diego and Imperial counties rests largely with about a dozen Customs aircraft based at North Island and March Air Force Base.

The Riverside facility, which is being greatly expanded, is one of three so-called Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence centers nationwide, all with sophisticated electronic gear. The San Diego air branch, housed in modest offices at North Island, is one of eight such branches nationwide.

“Smuggling’s been going on since the time of Marco Polo,” noted one of the facility’s fixtures, Harry T. Coates, 60, a retired Air Force veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars who is one of the Customs pilots at North Island.

On a recent late afternoon, Coates and his co-pilot, James Nauman, 31, a former airborne ambulance pilot in Long Beach, took off on their daily patrol from North Island along with Rod Moore, 58, another retired Air Force pilot, who monitors and controls radar and infrared equipment.

Turboprop Aircraft

The trio, equipped with automatic weapons and bulletproof vests, lifted off in a turboprop Piper Cheyenne.

Because of its radar and infrared capabilities, the Cheyenne can provide some coverage in mountain-shrouded passages that are favored by smugglers, such as the Laguna Salada area of Imperial County. But the Cheyenne, along with the Customs Cessna Citation jets that are also in wide use, have a major limitation: The aircrafts’ radar only looks forward, meaning they cannot detect smuggler aircraft to their rear.

Moving to correct such shortcomings, Customs recently received two Navy E2C Hawkeye aircraft with radar capable of sweeping 360 degrees; the agency has also purchased other aircraft with bolstered radar capability. However, such planes are costly--one aircraft on line may cost $30 million.

Customs also is proceeding with construction of additional ground radar units and the launching of radar-equipped blimp-like “aerostats”--huge balloons that hover at up to 12,000 feet, providing radar coverage of low-flying aircraft. One of the devices, which cost $18 million each, was put into operation last month at Ft. Huachuca, near Tucson. The eventual plan is to post aerostats at intervals up and down the border.

But detection is only part of what officials refer to as a “triad” of forces to be employed against airborne drug traffickers. U.S. authorities are also building up the campaign’s other two components: interception, by addition of new aircraft, such as the Cheyennes, with limited radar but excellent tracking capabilities; and apprehension, by the purchase of equipment such as Blackhawk helicopters, including two now based at March Air Force Base, which carry armed interdiction teams to smugglers’ landing sites.

Customs officials are confident that once such a complete system is in place, possibly within the next two years, the skies above the southern border will be largely sealed from drug fliers.

“I believe that we’ll make a substantial impact on airborne drug smuggling, so much that 70%-80% of the airborne smugglers will get out of the business,” Kapitan predicted.