Bush Takes Anti-Drug Effort to Smuggling Site

President Bush on Tuesday used more than $4 million in seized cash and the dry, brown hills of a reputed drug smuggler’s confiscated ranch in southern Orange County as background for a stern anti-drug message, declaring that the nation’s efforts “won’t stop until we nail every coward who deals in death and put them all where they belong.”

Helicoptering into Rancho del Rio in the Santa Ana foothills southeast of El Toro, Bush, Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, Customs Commissioner William von Raab and Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates praised the work of law enforcement agents and a federal law that allows officials to confiscate assets from drug dealers and turn them over to drug-fighting efforts.

And posing in front of a large mound of seized cash--10s, 20s, 50s and 100s--and bags representing seized drugs, Bush called on Southern California’s entertainment community to increase its anti-drug efforts.

“You’ve raised your voices so effectively in the cause of so many issues,” he said. “Can you not raise them once more, in support of a cause so important?”

The need for entertainment industry figures to become more involved in drug fighting has become a repeated theme for Bush. “Television, music and film are a positive influence,” Bush said. “My entreaty is, use that influence wisely--to do good.

“I never want to see a movie again that makes drug use into something humorous. It is time that they got behind this crusade.”

Later in the afternoon, Bush traveled to UCLA for a meeting with a mostly Republican group of Latino community leaders, thanking them for their support in last fall’s presidential campaign.

“As America’s fastest-growing minority in the 21st Century,” Bush said, Latinos “more than ever will help tell the American story.”

But, although the hastily organized Latino event was an opportunity for Bush to pay back a political debt, the main emphasis of the afternoon was on drug fighting.

Southern California, Bush told his audience at Rancho del Rio, is “one of the largest and toughest drug markets in the country.” Drug-related incidents take the life of one person every other day in Orange County, he noted.

Federal officials charge that a large share of the area’s drug traffic was masterminded from the 213-acre Rancho del Rio until it was raided in July, 1985. Prosecutors subsequently persuaded a federal judge to declare the ranch forfeited under terms of the federal Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which allows the government to seize the proceeds of illegal drug sales.

Daniel J. Fowlie, the ranch’s former owner, was indicted last November on 26 felony counts and is in jail in Mexico fighting extradition. The ranch has been turned over to Orange County by the federal government for possible use as a law enforcement training center.

“These houses and buildings that would have given respite and comfort to dealers of death” will now be used “to win more victories,” Gates said, as he introduced Bush to the crowd of several hundred area law enforcement officials and dignitaries.

Thornburgh said: “There is justice and there is poetic justice, and we are here to observe both.”

Asset forfeiture laws have become one of the most powerful weapons in the government’s anti-drug fight. Because the standards of proof are lower in forfeiture cases than in criminal proceedings, prosecutors often find seizing assets alleged to be drug-related considerably easier than convicting dealers and smugglers themselves.

In addition, the forfeiture laws have become a major source of equipment and facilities for police agencies. Since 1984, when the drug forfeiture law was enacted, the government has seized about $250 million in drug-related assets, Thornburgh said.

Before his speech, Bush toured part of the facility with Thornburgh and Gates, inspecting lavish furnishings seized from drug dealers, looking over pickup trucks with false bottoms used for smuggling and peering into a trap door that once concealed a large storage tank for cocaine, marijuana and heroin.

“This operation had commercial packing equipment, underground storage vaults, large vans with hidden compartments, jet aircraft, oceangoing vessels,” he said later. “Once a warehouse of death, now it is a source of hope.”

Bush presented Gates with a check for $4.3 million, representing the county’s share of the proceeds forfeited by Fowlie. At the end of his speech, he signed an anti-drug pledge card, then accepted a black-and-white jacket with the anti-drug slogan “Drug Use is Life Abuse” emblazoned on it.