Accord Near on Using Military to Fight Drugs

Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci and Senate leaders were nearing agreement Thursday night on a plan to give the Pentagon a greater role in the war against illegal drugs coming over the southern border of the United States from Latin America.

The talks were expected to yield a bipartisan compromise that is likely to be approved by the Senate today as part of a $299.5-billion defense spending bill for fiscal 1989.

Pentagon Reluctant

The Pentagon, which had fiercely resisted pressure to get involved in the interdiction of drugs, was forced to consider a compromise when it became clear earlier this week that the Senate was on the verge of approving one of two such proposals, both of them flawed from the viewpoint of the military.

Nevertheless, Carlucci was said to be a highly reluctant participant in negotiations with the senators. “They are not doing cartwheels over there (at the Pentagon),” Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N. Y.) said. “They are not that happy.”

Using the military to interdict drugs has become a popular election-year issue in Congress. On Thursday, Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who once opposed a greater role for the military, said that the Pentagon must become involved because drug trafficking is a form of “chemical warfare” that threatens our national security.

According to Senate members, the final compromise amendment will state that the Defense Department must take a greater role in surveillance of drug traffickers who cross U.S. borders. In addition, Congress will pledge to provide the Pentagon with sufficient funding to carry out the job.

Still unresolved on Thursday night was the controversial issue of whether the armed forces should be empowered to arrest or detain drug-trafficking suspects who are halted on the high seas as a result of military surveillance. Pentagon officials and civil libertarians oppose such arrests, which are advocated in an amendment proposed by a group of conservatives, including Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.).

The amendment, introduced Wednesday by Wilson, D’Amato and several other conservatives, would also require the armed forces to dedicate at least 2,000 additional hours of radar surveillance aircraft flying time to drug interdiction.

Alternative Plan

In response to the Wilson-D’Amato amendment, Nunn and Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, introduced an alternative Thursday that would put the Pentagon in charge of detection and monitoring of all illegal drugs coming into the United States by sea and air. But the Nunn-Warner plan would give the Pentagon no role in arrests.

Warner said it is necessary to designate the Pentagon as the primary agency for detection of drug traffickers because “somebody in this government has got to take charge.” He added that the Nunn-Warner amendment would allow members of Congress to “point your finger” at the Pentagon if the war on drugs is not being carried out properly.

Neither of the two Senate proposals is as radical as a House-passed measure written by Rep. Duncan L. Hunter (R-Coronado) that would permit the military to make arrests inside the borders of the United States--reversing a Civil War-era law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from enforcing civilian law.

Still, many members of the Senate are likely to oppose any military role in arrest or detention of drug traffickers, even outside U.S. boundaries.

GOP Senator Castigated

Although Carlucci is believed to favor the Nunn-Warner proposal because it would not authorize arrests, the Defense Department did not publicly side with either plan. Sources said that Warner was privately castigated by other Republicans such as D’Amato for co-sponsoring an amendment with Nunn, a Democrat, on an important election-year issue.

The role of the military is a matter of debate within the Administration, as well as in Congress. On Wednesday, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III became the second high-ranking Reagan Administration official to endorse an increased role for the military. The first official to speak out was Education Secretary William J. Bennett.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Dan Howard noted that no amount of effort by the military can halt drug trafficking as long as there is a demand for drugs in the United States. Or, as he put it, “drugs are like mercury--like quicksilver--they flow to wherever . . . there is an opening.”

Drugs in Cargo Shipments

Howard said that increased efforts to interdict drug shipments by air and small boats will not necessarily yield more drug seizures. An increasing amount of drugs is coming into the country in ordinary cargo shipments on commercial freighters and airliners.

“Last year, this country had something like 7.5 million containers arrive in its ports,” Howard said. “The U.S. Customs Service does not have enough personnel to inspect more than 1% of those containers.”

The percentage of cocaine coming in on small planes has fallen from 60% in 1986 to less than 50% last year and is still falling, according to Administration figures.

Howard said that there is a “law of diminishing returns” in the use of air and sea patrols to interdict drugs. “It is not a situation where you can put in 100% more resources and you get 100% more return,” he said.

Ban on A-Tests Rejected

In other action on the $299.5-billion defense spending bill, the Senate voted:

--57 to 39 against a House-passed proposal to ban most U.S. underground nuclear testing if the Soviets refrain from similar tests.

--64 to 32 to retain a “Buy America” requirement in current law that has forced the Pentagon to purchase 300,000 tons of anthracite coal a year that it says it doesn’t need, at a cost of $20 million.

--60 to 37 against a House-passed proposal that would have prohibited the Administration from sending any U.S. combat troops to leftist-ruled Nicaragua or its neighbor, Honduras.

--61 to 36 against a proposal to reduce spending for the railroad-mounted version of the MX nuclear-tipped missile to $200 million from $700 million. The $500-million difference was to be used to buy more non-nuclear weapons.

--82 to 13 against a proposal to end U.S. naval escorts of Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf unless the American warships are part of a multinational force.