Bahamas Rating as Foe of Drugs Decried

The chairman of a congressional drug task force, warning that he will contest the Reagan Administration’s certification of the Bahamas as cooperating in anti-narcotics efforts, declared Wednesday that U.S.-bound cocaine shipments through the Bahamas have doubled in the last year and that U.S. and Bahamian authorities have ignored the problem.

Rep. Larry Smith (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Task Force on Narcotics, cited State Department estimates indicating that 50% to 60% of the cocaine imported into the United States last year came through the Bahamas.

Smith also noted recent drug trial testimony in Florida suggesting involvement by the islands’ prime minister, Lynden O. Pindling, and asked Administration officials how they could justify the certification of the nation as a drug-fighting ally.

Abrams Testifies

“Governments in the Caribbean are doing more and more” to fight drugs, “but I think it’s difficult to say they are making a hell of a lot of progress,” Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams said at a committee hearing. Maintaining that the nations do not have the resources to repel the sophisticated Colombian smuggling operations, he said: “The good guys are trying harder, but the bad guys were so far ahead.”

The committee is examining the Administration’s certification of anti-narcotics efforts in a number of nations with drug-trafficking problems. The certifications, announced recently, allow the nations to avoid restrictions on U.S. foreign aid and to receive U.S. support for international loans.

Smith said that he will introduce a resolution disapproving the certification of the Bahamas as a government cooperating in the fight against narcotics.

Against Decertification

Ann Wrobleski, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics affairs, testified that the Bahamas are the only government in the hemisphere that has allowed U.S. law officers to chase narcotics violators into its territory. Decertification of the commonwealth would be “counterproductive,” she said.

Smith questioned the State Department officials about testimony in the Florida federal court trial of accused Colombian drug trafficker Carlos Lehder, alleging that Pindling was bribed by Lehder. Gorman Bannister, son of a close Pindling associate, Everette Bannister, testified that his father was the “bag man” for the payoffs. Another U.S. government witness, George W. Baron, testified that he paid $400,000 directly to Pindling.

Wrobleski conceded that “government corruption is a problem” in the Bahamas, but Abrams cautioned that accusations against high Bahamian officials have not been substantiated.

The Bahamas also got support from Rep. George W. Crockett Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Western Hemisphere affairs.

“If there is corruption in the Bahamas, we should get the evidence and indict the officials as we did with (Panamanian military leader Manuel A.) Noriega,” Crockett said in a statement.

But Smith cited the Bahamas’ failure to extradite any of the 18 accused drug traffickers in that country sought by U.S. authorities. He cited the case of Nigel Bowe, a Bahamian citizen whose extradition the United States has been seeking since 1985.

“That somewhat outweighs the fact that they are cooperating on the operational level,” Smith said.