U.S. to Assist Bolivia in Massive Drug Raids

The United States and Bolivia plan to launch a massive anti-narcotics operation here later this week, using U.S. Army helicopters flown by American pilots to raid up to 50 clandestine Bolivian cocaine laboratories that are a major source of the world’s cocaine supply.

Six Black Hawk helicopters, which were transported to the Santa Cruz airport in eastern Bolivia on Monday, will carry agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and special Bolivian anti-drug police officers, U.S. and Bolivian sources said. The pilots will be under orders to disengage--even to the extent of not landing the police--if any hostile gunfire is directed at the aircraft.

25% of World’s Cocaine

The operation, set to begin Friday, involves up to 140 U.S. personnel, including agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration whose intelligence helped pinpoint the secret facilities. The factories, which produce most of the 100 tons of cocaine that Bolivia ships abroad each year--25% of the world’s supply--are located in desolate jungle areas of eastern Bolivia.

The joint operation had been a closely held secret until the arrival at the Santa Cruz airport of a huge C-5A Galaxy transport that unloaded the six helicopters. The Galaxy was accompanied by a C-130 military transport carrying trucks, jeeps, communications equipment, tents, field kitchens and other equipment for a sustained campaign against Bolivia’s drug factories.

“Anti-Drug Operation on a Grand Scale,” headlined the La Paz afternoon newspaper Ultima Hora on Tuesday. In Santa Cruz, the morning newspaper El Mundo published photographs of the U.S. Army helicopters and reported that they had arrived for a joint narcotics operation aimed at the clandestine laboratories.

The Times learned of plans for the operation last week, but decided to withhold the story to avoid premature disclosure of the raids. The Times decided to publish the story only after the plans were revealed in the Bolivian press on Tuesday.

The U.S. Embassy here issued a brief statement acknowledging the arrival of the U.S. helicopters and personnel but declining to elaborate on their purpose. “American helicopters and United States personnel have been sent to Bolivia at the request of the government of Bolivia to provide transportation support to Bolivian civil authorities,” the statement said. “No further details are available.”

Bolivia’s minister of interior, Fernando Berthelemy, who oversees internal security, confirmed the arrival of the U.S. aircraft but declined to comment further.

As of Tuesday night, U.S. officials in Washington said “the operation is go,” despite the publicity in Bolivia.

Other informed sources said the helicopters would transport anti-drug police officers who were trained by the U.S. anti-narcotics mission here and are known as “leopards.”

The sources said U.S. air support was required for these strikes because Bolivia’s national police force has only two helicopters, and both have been grounded for repairs for months. Each of the U.S. UH-60 helicopters airlifted here from the U.S. Southern Command in Panama can carry 12 fully equipped police officers.

The Bolivian operation is the most ambitious effort the United States has mounted since March, 1982, when U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships were deployed off the coast of Florida to intercept small boats smuggling drugs into the United States from Latin America. The operation succeeded in reducing some of the traffic, but other smugglers simply moved their operations to other coastal states farther north and began bringing drugs in by air.

Approved by President

The operation has been approved by President Victor Paz Estenssoro and the Bolivian Cabinet, according to a high-level government source. Paz, who took office last August, previously had taken a low profile on fighting drug traffickers, showing little enthusiasm for an all-out campaign.

Cocaine is the largest single component of Bolivia’s $3-billion economy. The drug traffic is estimated to bring in $600 million a year in revenues for coca leaf farmers, processors of coca paste and suppliers of chemicals and transport used in producing the drug.

More than 400,000 peasants grow coca leaf, mainly in the Chapare region of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz and in the Yungas area of northern La Paz department.

The decision by Paz to attack the major factories, which operate mainly in Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Trinidad, the capital of Beni department, marks a new stage of cooperation by Bolivia with U.S. international narcotics control efforts.

Previously, Bolivia had failed to live up to a commitment made in August, 1983, to eradicate 10,000 acres of coca plantations in exchange for U.S. economic aid. In fact, coca plantings increased by about 50,000 acres during the government of former President Hernan Siles Zuazo, whose anti-drug efforts were feeble. This year, the United States withheld $7 million in economic aid as a result of Bolivia’s failure to meet the target.

The failure of the eradication effort in the face of massive peasant resistance apparently led Paz to attack the factories themselves. The elimination of the big laboratories that buy paste from the small local producers supposedly will bring a sharp fall in coca leaf prices. The loss of this lucrative market could lead farmers to give up coca production for other crops, with some government financing of such legal activities.

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, in an agreement signed last Thursday, certified that the cocaine labs constituted an “emergency circumstance,” allowing the use of U.S. personnel and equipment outside the United States, sources familiar with the operation said.

The scope of the lab operation, the agreement said, indicates suspected criminal activity of a magnitude that poses a serious threat to the interests of the United States. Under Sections 374 and 372 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, U.S. military equipment and personnel may be used to deal with such a threat outside the United States.

Bolivia requested the U.S. assistance at a meeting in Buenos Aires last April of the International Drug Enforcement Conference. “Bolivia is running the show,” said one Washington source. “We’re there with expertise, assistance and intelligence as to where the clandestine labs and airstrips are located.”

Airstrips Are Targets

During the operation, which could last as long as 60 days, Bolivian forces will attempt to “pothole” several small airstrips that traffickers have been using to transport the cocaine from the labs, another source said.

Vice President George Bush, acting in his capacity as head of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System, played a key role in persuading reluctant Pentagon officials to take part in the operation, government sources said Tuesday. “It was his muscle that got the thing going,” one source said.

Several congressional committees that oversee foreign affairs and drug enforcement have been briefed on the operation, and no objections appear to have been raised, according to Capitol Hill sources familiar with the briefings.

“There were some concerns about what could happen--you know, Murphy’s law,” said John J. Brady, chief of staff for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “There would be concern if U.S. troops would be involved in any fighting that would take place.”

Brady said no one indicated any legal or diplomatic objections, such as those based on provisions of the War Powers Act, which requires the President to consult with Congress before committing U.S. forces to combat, to report to Congress within 48 hours after hostilities begin and to obtain congressional approval if fighting continues beyond 60 days.

“It’s not that kind of war. It’s a surgical operation,” Brady said.

Shortly before the information about the impending raid was published by the Bolivian press, the Drug Enforcement Administration was debating whether to pull back the six DEA agents it had assigned--one to each helicopter--from the operation for fear that secrecy had been broken, one source said.

But another official noted that “these areas are so remote” that the operators of the laboratories might not be able to evade the attack.

Jack Cusack, chief of staff of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, said that, based on the briefing the committee received, the operation would be “in compliance with the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961,” to which Bolivia and the United States are signatories.

“The (U.S.) military personnel are supporting the police,” Cusack said. “The police action is, as we understand it, being carried out by Bolivian police forces. The U.S. military support is logistical. It’s not operational. . . . Technically, if you want to call it a military operation, you can, but I don’t see it that way because it’s being run by the Bolivians,” Cusack said.

Juan de Onis reported from La Paz and Ronald J. Ostrow from Washington. Times staff writers Michael Wines and James Gerstenzang in Washington also contributed to this story.