Intimidation Won’t Slow Anti-Narcotics Drive, DEA Official Says : Foreign Drug Dealers Step Up Attacks on U.S. Agents

Foreign drug traffickers, feeling the pinch of stepped-up U.S. efforts to cut the supply of drugs from abroad, are beginning to fight back against American agents overseas, top officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration say.

The kidnaping of a DEA agent in Guadalajara a week ago--combined with a near doubling of attacks and threats against U.S. agents last year--”proves that our investigations and techniques are hurting them,” the agency’s deputy administrator, John C. Lawn, said in an interview Wednesday.

“The abduction in Mexico unfortunately is not an isolated incident or an aberration of behavior by narcotics traffickers,” said Lawn, who is expected to succeed DEA Administrator Francis M. Mullen Jr. when he leaves the agency next month.

Use of Fear

“Traffickers survive in the communities of the world by fear, intimidation and, certainly, by corruption,” Lawn asserted. “It appears they’re trying to use fear and intimidation to shake the commitment of this country to seriously address drug abuse. They will not succeed.”

Last year U.S. drug agents were the targets of threats or actual assaults 32 times, up from 18 such incidents in 1983, according to the DEA. Of those incidents, eight took place outside the United States in 1984, compared to three in 1983.

The recent drug violence directed against U.S. agents and property has been particularly marked in South America and Mexico.

In the wake of traffickers’ threats to kill five Americans for every Colombian extradited on drug charges, the DEA adopted unusual security measures last month at its Washington headquarters and other agency posts. Although Lawn refused to discuss details, it is known, for example, that agents who accompany Mullen are armed with Uzi submachine guns.

Extradition Treaty

The United States and Colombia signed an extradition treaty in 1982, but Colombian President Belisario Betancur did not authorize any extraditions of Colombian drug suspects until after reputed drug kingpins authorized the gangland-style assassination of Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla last year. Bonilla had led a drive against Colombia’s growing narcotics industry.

In other recent incidents cited by Lawn, a car bomb exploded outside the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, killing a Colombian woman and injuring six other persons, and a machine gun was fired at a DEA agent’s car in Guadalajara. In Peru, a band of men armed with machine guns attacked a group of workers affiliated with a U.S.-backed project to destroy coca trees, and a plot was uncovered to kill the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia in retaliation for the American drive against coca, from which cocaine is produced.

The heightened attacks are occurring as the DEA has assigned nearly 200 agents to overseas posts--the highest number in the agency’s history, according to Lawn. The foreign-based agents, all with substantial law enforcement experience, represent nearly 10% of the DEA’s total agent force of 2,265. And, over the next few years, Lawn said, the number of overseas agents will be increased by 10%.

“In many foreign countries, corruption of law enforcement is a factor that increases the vulnerability of DEA agents” to attacks, Lawn said. “Traffickers know they can take these actions without fear of arrest or reprisal from enforcement agencies. This is true in more than one country.” However, he refused to specify what countries he had in mind.

Lawn indicated that he is pleased that Mexico’s attorney general had taken direct charge of the investigation into the abduction of DEA agent Enrique S. Camarena and had sent more than 100 Mexican judicial police officers to the Guadalajara area, which Lawn described as a stronghold for drug trafficking.

“Indications from our intelligence sources and from information in our files are that this abduction was in retaliation for our effectiveness against a trafficking organization that is operating in several countries,” Lawn said.

The DEA has adopted additional security measures in the wake of Camarena’s abduction, but Lawn said that he would not describe the steps “for obvious reasons.” He said that the agency could respond to the threats by keeping agents inside their offices reviewing files--a precaution that he described as amounting to surrendering in the drug war.

“The agent has to be out contacting his sources and his law enforcement counterparts,” Lawn said. “That’s the only way he can be effective.”