Aid Law Enforcement Agencies : Guard Units on Front Line in Nation’s War on Drugs

This is the way the war on drugs is being fought: not with a bang but a thud.

Laboring in 90-degree heat under the vast roof of a U.S. Customs Service shed on the Miami waterfront, sweat-soaked Florida National Guardsmen in camouflage fatigues are heaving 75-pound burlap bags of Haitian orange rind onto a forklift. The aromatic bags, enough of them to fill a 40-foot cargo container, will be sniffed, poked, slit open and X-rayed in hopes of discovering illicit drugs hidden inside.

None will be found among the orange rinds this day. Nor will the guardsmen find any drugs in the next cargo van, containing hundreds of crates of organically grown Haitian mangoes. Nor in the boxes of T-shirts from Jamaica, nor in the cans of carburetor cleaner from Venezuela.

“This isn’t rocket science. This is labor. And it takes a lot of labor to find dope,” said Frank Mullin, a supervisor with customs’ Contraband Enforcement Team in Miami, who oversees the guardsmen down on the docks.

Calling out the National Guard is a new and still controversial tactic in the frustrating national campaign against narcotics. Congress ordered a reluctant Pentagon to spend $300 million this year to try to seal the nation’s borders against a tide of illegal cocaine, marijuana and heroin. State National Guard units will spend $40 million of the funds to assist local law enforcement officials.

And in this, as in most other approaches to the nation’s drug problems, there are sharp disagreements about whether the effort is effective or desirable.

“It’s really been a big help to have these guys here,” said the Customs Service’s Mullin. National Guard leaders, and a surprising number of participating guardsmen, also strongly support the program. Some of them offer deeply felt testimony about the ravages of drugs in their neighborhoods and their desire to respond.

“There’s a lot of crack cocaine and a lot of crime in my area,” said one guardsmen, an unemployed worker from northern Florida, as he unloaded boxes of gloves from Jamaica for inspection. “This is a good thing for the Guard. I’m behind it 100%.”

“My house was broken into” by drug users in search of money or goods to trade for dope, he said, explaining why he had volunteered for a form of duty so different from anything he had done in 12 years of service in the Guard.

Many career members of the regular armed forces are less supportive of using the military against drugs. They generally view anti-drug assignments as costly and unhelpful diversions from their real mission--preparing to defend the nation against foreign enemies.

“No sane person wants to sit on a dock and check suitcases,” said one active-duty Army general. “That doesn’t train you for (anything), unless you want to be a customs agent.”

Regardless of such opinions, Congress has become increasingly insistent on using the military in the war on drugs. And the Guard is likely to remain a part of that.

In all, Guard units in eight states have begun drug-interdiction efforts, involving about 800 Guard members, officials in Washington said. Florida, with $3.4 million earmarked for its program, has the largest share of the $40 million the Guard will spend this year. Texas and California have the next-biggest programs, using guardsmen at seaports, airports and highway border crossings to assist the Customs Service and Drug Enforcement Administration and Border Patrol agents in searching for dope.

In California, Guard members have been manning border checkpoints south of San Diego and have been sent to the docks at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego to inspect cargo, as they are doing in Florida. California’s program has a $1-million budget for this fiscal year.

About 100 Florida guardsmen have been working with customs agents at Florida seaports and airports since April 28 in a program dubbed “Operation Guardian.” They assisted in two seizures this month at Miami International Airport, confiscating a total of 385 pounds of cocaine being ferried in on flights from Guatemala and Panama.

“The object is to create some turmoil in these major cocaine cartels who are using cargo to ship their cocaine,” said Howard L. Cooperman, regional director of the Customs Service’s South Florida inspection unit. “Hopefully this disruption will cause them to make mistakes--and keep the cocaine out.”

Cooperman estimates that 40% of the cocaine entering South Florida arrives by air or sea, concealed in legitimate commercial cargo, sometimes without the knowledge of the shipper. Most of the freight arrives in sealed containers--20- and 40-foot trailers identical to those pulled by trucks on the highway--and inspecting them all is impossible, customs officials admit.

“We get 110,000 containers a year just in the port of Miami, most of them from Central and South America and the Caribbean,” Cooperman said. Nationwide, the total is nearly 8 million a year.

With its own current manpower, customs can inspect only about 3% to 4% of all shipments; with the help of the Guard, customs hopes to look at 10% to 12% of the containers. Customs is also upgrading its computerized tracking and target-identification systems, hoping to pinpoint suspicious cargo for thorough inspection.

In a three-week pilot program last summer called “Operation Flete” (Spanish for freight), members of the Florida National Guard worked with customs agents to inspect incoming cargo. But no drugs were found, Cooperman acknowledged.

“We still feel it’s helping, even though we didn’t make any seizures in last year’s operation,” he said. “The bad guys held off, according to our intelligence. Now we’re working with the Guard for an indefinite period of time. . . . They’re out there for deterrence.”

Down at the Miami docks, the guardsmen toil in brutal conditions. The temperature on the loading dock is 90 degrees. Inside the unventilated aluminum cargo vans, the heat rises to a suffocating 130 degrees. The only relief comes from big portable floor fans.

The soldiers would not allow themselves to be photographed or identified by name, fearing reprisals from local drug dealers. All are volunteers earning their normal National Guard duty pay of about $45 a day.

Most National Guard officials have enthusiastically accepted the anti-drug mission in marked contrast to their counterparts in the regular armed forces, who have shrunk from the assignment, arguing that they are soldiers, not cops.

The Pentagon contends that drug duty diverts the military from its chief job of defending the country against foreign enemies, wastes expensive training hours and consumes equipment that should be used for combat readiness.

“I think it is important . . . that we not expect men and women who are trained to function in military units to simultaneously double as law enforcement officers capable of making arrests and safeguarding the rights of the accused,” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said during his confirmation hearings in March. “So it is a delicate balance that is called for.”

The 19th-Century posse comitatus act forbids the military from carrying out domestic law enforcement duties.

“I would love to be part of a search-and-destroy operation--just blow these (drug dealers) away. Any good-thinking American would. But with posse comitatus, it’s illegal,” said an Army general.

Guardsmen see things differently.

“I feel very strongly this is the No. 1 priority facing the nation. The problem is so great that every resource that is available should be put against it,” said Maj. Gen. Robert F. Ensslin Jr., commander of the Florida National Guard and vice president of the National Guard Assn. of the United States.

“I think the Pentagon has been very reluctant to become involved and has tried to keep the effort at arm’s length. It is partially because of the professional military mind set that says we don’t get involved in law enforcement. Also, they see this as another one of these no-win situations. They don’t see a quick victory, and there isn’t going to be one regardless of what we do,” Ensslin said.

“They’re not out there in the communities where the guardsmen are and see the damage that’s being wreaked. If you live on an Army post, you don’t see the damage and the violence that drugs are causing,” he added. “My street leads to a hospital emergency ward. Guardsmen have a little different perspective.”

Although National Guard troops have been used in domestic police duties in the past--enforcing civil rights laws in the South, keeping order during urban riots in the 1960s--Guard officials are careful to point out that guardsmen are acting only in a supporting role to civilian agencies and have not been given arrest powers.

If a guardsman on a loading dock or highway checkpoint spots a suspicious package or vehicle, he is to report it to his counterpart at customs or the Border Patrol. A National Guard helicopter pilot flying patrol off the coast must radio the Coast Guard if he spots suspected drug activity. Guardsmen staking out suspected aircraft landing strips or marijuana patches report sightings to the local sheriff, state police, DEA or the FBI.

“It’s purely an assistance role that doesn’t confront us as soldiers with the civilian population,” said Missouri Adjutant Gen. Charles M. Kiefner, president of the National Guard Assn. “The rules of engagement are such that we’re taught to go to war and fight other armies, not our own people.”

Congress, which imposed the drug job on the military, is unhappy with the Pentagon’s apparent lack of commitment to the task. Of the $300 million appropriated for the fiscal year beginning last Oct. 1, only about $50 million has been spent, half of that for National Guard activities.

“That’s a disgraceful record,” said Sen. Alphonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.).

D’Amato and Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) 10 days ago introduced legislation to create an anti-drug task force within the Pentagon, complete with a joint staff and a three-star military commander. The Pentagon rejects the new unit as unnecessary.

“The Defense Department is AWOL when it comes to aggressively mobilizing its resources against drug traffickers,” Wilson said. “In the meantime, the number of casualties on our streets continues to rise.”

Back on Miami’s sun-seared docks, the guardsmen sweat and heave in a tedious routine whose reward remains frustratingly abstract.

“It’s not the money that’s the incentive for these guys,” said Capt. Tony Barbarette of the Florida Army National Guard. “It’s not glamorous. You’re not running around in speedboats and helicopters. You’re just out here busting your butt every day.”