Sweeping Anti-Drug Plan to Be Urged by Crime Panel

WASHINGTON — To combat traffic in illicit drugs, the President’s Commission on Organized Crime will call next week for unprecedented measures, including expanded military involvement, electronic surveillance, drug testing and pursuit of airborne drug smugglers into Mexican air space, The Times learned Friday.

In a report to be presented to President Reagan at a White House ceremony Monday, the commission acknowledged that some of the proposals “reach to the most fundamental levels of government agency operation and community life.”

‘National Crisis’

But the panel, headed by federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman, said that such sweeping measures are justified because “we are confronted with a national crisis.” Illicit drugs, it said, rank as the nation’s most serious organized crime problem.

In urging greater military participation in the drug war, the report said that the Joint Chiefs of Staff “should be instructed by the highest levels of government” to expand their definition of national security to cover the war against drugs.

The Joint Chiefs’ current definition includes “a defense posture capable of successfully resisting hostile or destructive action from within or without, overt or covert.” Under the amendment proposed by the commission, hostile or destructive action “shall include the airborne, amphibious and overland invasion of this country by drug smugglers.”

Bugging Laws Urged

In expressing satisfaction with the drug intelligence gleaned from federal electronic surveillance, the commission said that the 23 states, including California, that have no law permitting court-ordered bugging and wiretapping “should immediately enact one, consistent with current technology.”

State and local jurisdictions “will have to increase expenditures for such critical resources as prison facilities, increased manpower and sophisticated equipment” to meet the drug threat, the commission said.

In addition, the report called on states to consider forming statewide grand juries “to improve their investigations of drug-trafficking organizations.”

In proposing that widespread drug testing be adopted, the commission said that Reagan should direct heads of all federal agencies to establish “suitable drug-testing programs, expressing the utter unacceptability of drug abuse by federal employees.”

The report said that state and local governments and private sector leaders should “support unequivocally a similar policy.” Companies that fail to implement drug programs, including testing, should receive no government contracts, the commission said.

Would Cut Off Funds

Direct or indirect federal, state and local government funds should be cut off from programs that counsel “responsible” drug use or condone illicit drug use in any way, the commission said. “Laws in certain states which ‘decriminalized’ the possession of marijuana constitute a form of such condonation and should be reconsidered,” it said.

The commission said that immediate diplomatic initiatives should be taken to facilitate U.S. pursuit into Mexican air space of suspected airborne drug traffickers.

The Customs Service, a branch of the Treasury Department responsible for stopping drugs at the border, “has for some time found itself frustrated by its inability to pursue suspected smuggler aircraft into Mexican airspace after detection on the American side of the border,” the commission said. “Although this has been the subject of numerous diplomatic discussions, there has been little progress to date.”

The commission called for the repeal of the 1961 Mansfield Amendment, which restricts activities of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents outside the country. The amendment, it said, has “unduly and unnecessarily hampered” the capabilities of DEA agents stationed in foreign lands.

Factor in Foreign Aid

A “primary consideration” in deciding whether to extend U.S. foreign aid should be “the willingness of a country to engage in and actively implement drug-related extradition and mutual assistance treaties,” the report said.

That recommendation and others indicated that the commission was unhappy with the low priority that some State Department officials are giving to the fight against narcotics.

“All necessary steps should be taken to ensure that consular officers can and do deny U.S. entry visas to individuals suspected of drug trafficking,” the commission said. Subject to an agency’s “safeguards of reliability, information provided by any agency of the United States, without further corroboration, should be sufficient to require such denial,” the report said.

Cost of the stepped-up efforts to eradicate illegal drugs from the nation can be subsidized to a great extent by the seizure and forfeiture of drug traffickers’ assets, the commission said. Forfeited assets from drug traffickers should be devoted entirely to anti-drug programs, and the current ceiling of $10 million on such funding should be removed, according to the report.