In Drug Strategy Shift, Mid-Level Operatives May Be First Targets

In another major shift in the government’s anti-drug posture, President Bush plans to recommend that federal agents target pilots, couriers and other middle-level operatives of narcotics trafficking enterprises rather than the drug kingpins who have been the focus of previous U.S. crackdowns, Administration officials said Wednesday.

The shift, to be made explicit in a sweeping drug strategy that Bush will outline next week, represents a belief that international drug organizations can more easily be disrupted through an assault on these middle-level figures than through the exhausting pursuit of the more elusive top leaders.

Besides being more vulnerable than their superiors, the pilots, couriers and money handlers to be targeted under the Administration’s policy may in fact be more crucial to drug trafficking enterprises because of their detailed knowledge of ongoing operations, the officials said.

“It’s gratifying to the soul to get some kingpin off the street,” one official said, “but it’s the other guys who really make a difference.”

In targeting middle-level operatives, the Administration plan also appears to steer federal efforts away from campaigns primarily designed to apprehend low-level smugglers as they carry drugs across U.S. borders.

The recommendation is contained in a part of the Administration strategy addressing international anti-drug operations. The contents of this part of the strategy have been more closely guarded than those addressing domestic aspects of the anti-drug effort.

The call for a stepped-up campaign against middle-tier operatives is part of a larger recommendation that the United States drastically increase its role in anti-drug campaigns abroad by providing some $300 million in new military and economic assistance to the governments of drug-producing countries.

As part of that process, the Administration plan also urges that the government signal its support for the efforts of those countries by providing them with direct financial rewards, the officials disclosed.

Such assistance would mark a departure from an existing certification process under which the State Department withholds aid from countries that fail to play an adequate role in the anti-drug effort, but offers no rewards for good behavior.

“The old pass-fail approach was just too simplistic,” one official said.

Disclosure of the new focus on middle-level operatives is the latest indication that the President’s plan will call for significant revisions in the way the United States plans to wage its escalating war on drugs, primarily cocaine produced in South America.

In addition to the dramatic increase in foreign aid--including a proposed tripling of assistance to Peru, Bolivia and Colombia--the plan is expected to devote unprecedented resources to cracking down on drug trafficking in America’s drug-infested urban areas.

The twin emphasis on countries that are the source of illicit drugs and the American cities that generate the demand contrasts with the efforts of the Ronald Reagan Administration to concentrate resources on intercepting drug shipments at the border.

Bush will outline the provisions of his anti-drug strategy during a nationally televised address next Tuesday evening. The plan, drafted by William J. Bennett, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, seeks to fulfill the President’s inaugural pledge that the drug “scourge will end.”

One official said that the focus on middle-level operatives is representative of an overall increase in emphasis--both at home and abroad--on apprehending those individuals most vital to drug trafficking operations.