Texans Seize 9 Tons of Cocaine Bound for L.A. : Cache, Worth $3 Billion, Is Third Major Drug Haul in Five-Day Period

Narcotics agents seized nearly 9 tons of cocaine bound for Los Angeles and arrested three men in the third major seizure of the drug in a five-day period, officials said Thursday.

The cocaine recovered here Wednesday, worth an estimated $3 billion or more on the street, was found after an unnamed informant’s tip led agents from the Texas Department of Public Safety to a modest three-bedroom home in a citrus grove about 5 miles from the U.S.-Mexican border.

Department of Public Safety spokesman Mike Cox said that the house was “literally stuffed” with one-kilo packages of cocaine wrapped in plastic and newspapers from Bogota, Colombia. The packages had been packed in duffel bags stacked so high that there were only two narrow aisles through the house.

List of Recipients Found

Cox said equipment and documents found in the house indicated that the cocaine was to be rewrapped and shipped to Los Angeles. Agents said they found a list naming seven intended recipients of the shipments.

“It looks like a real intelligence bonanza,” Cox said.

Meanwhile Thursday, a Panamanian-registered ship carrying about 6 tons of cocaine arrived under escort at New Orleans after it had been intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard in international waters off the Yucatan peninsula. The cocaine reportedly was stacked under bags of cement in several cargo containers on the deck of the ship.

Coast Guard officials said that the haul, worth about $2 billion, resulted from a cutter’s chance encounter with, and search of, the 185-foot ship several days ago. They said it was the largest maritime cocaine seizure ever.

9 on Ship Arrested

The eight men and a woman aboard the ship were arrested and turned over to agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Last Friday, in what was described as the largest drug haul in history, federal agents seized almost 19 tons of cocaine worth up to $6 billion at a warehouse in the Sylmar area of Los Angeles. Seven suspects were arrested in the Los Angeles and Las Vegas areas, but one of them was later released without being charged.

U.S. officials said that seizure of about 34 tons of the drug--about 9% of the estimated annual world production--in less than a week is evidence that Colombian traffickers, reacting to a government crackdown, are trying to move vast quantities of cocaine to the United States before their caches are uncovered by police.

“We’re seizing a lot more cocaine . . . because it’s not safe to leave it in Colombia any more,” Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner said at a waterfront news conference held Thursday in front of the confiscated Panamanian ship.

Agents said that, although the drugs recovered in Harlingen had been destined for Los Angeles, the drug operation uncovered in the citrus grove did not appear to be connected to the one raided last Friday in the San Fernando Valley.

Cox said that the farmhouse in the grapefruit grove was placed under surveillance Wednesday after an informant “told us he could take us to a house with a substantial amount of cocaine . . . .”

“He indicated it might be something like 1,000 pounds inside,” Mike Scott, chief of the Department of Public Safety’s narcotics division, said Thursday. “We had no reason to believe there would be anything like what we found.”

Resident Aliens Arrested

The three men arrested--all resident aliens from Mexico--were identified as Hermenegildo Rivas Sosa, 51, of Matamoros, Mexico; Alfonso Tristan Gonzales, 36, of San Antonio, and Guadencio Garcia Garcia, 38, of McAllen.

Agents said that none of them offered any resistance and the only weapon found with them was an old 12-gauge shotgun that apparently was not being used to guard the drugs. According to Cox, the search of the house began three hours after the arrests, when the agents obtained a warrant.

Agents said that no money was found in the house, but investigators said they recovered documents with the names and addresses of persons in Los Angeles to whom the drugs were to have been shipped. Cox said this information has been forwarded to law enforcement officials in Southern California.

Behind the house, buried beneath a chicken coop, agents found an empty armor-plated storage chamber about 12 feet square and 6 feet deep.

Edward Krafka, 73, who lives about a quarter of a mile down the road, said the new owner of the house, who moved in last March, used a back hoe to dig the hole for the chamber and brought in welders to build the chamber out of steel plating.

“When they were building (it), there were at least a dozen people over there,” Krafka told a reporter. “I compared them to bandidos-- they were the meanest-looking people you ever saw.”

Sosa, Gonzales and Garcia were arraigned here Thursday before Justice of the Peace Leo Longoria, who ordered them held without bail on charges of aggravated possession of cocaine and engaging in organized criminal activity. All three were transferred to the Cameron County Jail in Brownsville, about 33 miles from here.

Cox said agents were seeking “three or four other people, and we’re anxious to locate the owner of the house and visit with him about all this.”

Californians Fire Salvo

In Washington Thursday, several California congressman fired another salvo at the Bush Administration for its delay in deciding which areas will be given special status as major fronts in the war on drugs.

The lawmakers, all Democrats, expressed outrage that William J. Bennett, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, had not responded to their requests to include Southern California, even after last week’s unprecedented cocaine haul in Sylmar.

“They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned,” Rep. Howard L. Berman of Panorama City said during a news conference at the Capitol. “Now, Bennett fiddles while Los Angeles burns. It’s just about time . . . to call out the fire engines.”

The Administration has until February to announce whether Los Angeles will receive special status, which means extra federal assistance in the drug fight, and aides to Bennett have indicated that he may wait until then to make a final decision.

Eric Malnic reported from Los Angeles and Louis Sahagun from Harlingen. Staff writer Douglas Jehl in Washington also contributed to this story.