Plan to Force Suspected Drug Planes to Land Expected : Narcotics: White House to ask Congress for power short of ‘shooting the bad guys down.’ A private pilots’ group expresses ‘grave concern.’

The Bush Administration this week will seek authority to force planes suspected of carrying narcotics to land for inspection, The Times learned Monday.

The proposal, under which pilots who refuse to land would face a felony charge and up to five years in prison, stops short of allowing such planes to be shot down--as some have urged. But it is still likely to produce substantial controversy.

The provision will be part of the Administration’s new anti-drug bill, which is to be unveiled Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the plan.

An Administration official said that the new proposal would add an important new weapon for the Customs Service, the Coast Guard and the military, whose power to halt suspected drug smugglers is severely limited.

The official described the plan as a solution that would allow the government to do “everything we can short of shooting the bad guys down.” Authority to down planes was proposed in a plan backed by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) but opposed by the Administration on grounds that it posed an unnecessary risk to innocent pilots.

But the new law also would make it possible that such innocent pilots--whose planes represent the vast majority of planes identified by government radar as suspicious aircraft--frequently could be forced to land and submit to search by U.S. authorities.

And the Aircraft Owners & Pilots Assn. would “have grave concern” about such a law, said Cheri Farha, a spokesman for the organization that claims 300,000 members. “We’re all for efforts to stop drugs, but you have to be reasonable and fair.”

Under current practice, U.S. government pilots who intercept suspected drug smugglers over American airspace have no authority to order the planes to land. They can only follow such planes until they land, when a search is permitted.

Federal authorities have complained that such limits effectively permit pilots to air-drop drugs into the United States with little fear of prosecution. Once a pilot gives the “heave-to” to a drug load, one official noted, he typically turns around and returns to the safety of international airspace.

The stiff new penalty, officials contended, could serve as a major deterrent to pilots.

“In the grand scheme of things, it’s much more important to get some of these pilots in jail than to recover a little bit of cocaine,” one official said.

The Customs Service, with 100 interceptor planes, is the main agency responsible for airborne interdiction of suspected smugglers, but the U.S. military recently has devoted 50 planes at 25 different sites to the task. The Coast Guard has about 10 such interceptors.

One source said that the Administration has given extensive consideration to McConnell’s plan for allowing federal authorities to shoot down a suspected smuggler who ignored repeated requests to land but decided that such a system could put innocent lives at risk.

In particular, the source said, Administration officials are concerned that the new military interceptors--most of them advanced fighter planes equipped with sophisticated air-to-air missiles--might be ill-equipped to fire the warning shots that would have to precede any use of deadly force.

The Customs Service, the Coast Guard and the military use an extensive array of ground- and air-based radar to monitor air traffic in the Caribbean and along the Southwest border. Various agencies dispatch interceptors nearly every day to take a closer look at those suspected of drug trafficking.

At least four times a week, those planes pursue the suspected aircraft to their landing sites--often hundreds of miles from the U.S. border--and inspect them to determine whether they are carrying drugs.

McConnell criticized the Administration proposal as an “interim” measure that failed to address the “core problem” of airborne drug interdiction.