Coast Guard Drug Traffic Links Probed : Narcotics: At least 10 guardsmen are suspected of having peddled cocaine or having sold sensitive information while on duty on the Florida Keys.

At least 10 current or former members of the Coast Guard have been targeted in a secret federal investigation of charges that they peddled cocaine or aided traffickers while on anti-drug duty in the Florida Keys, the service’s commandant announced Tuesday.

The Justice Department probe, code-named Operation Tempest, marks the continuation of a narcotics corruption investigation that resulted in the 1988 conviction of four other Coast Guardsmen who had been stationed at the Islamorada base, Coast Guard officials said.

The latest disclosure suggests that federal investigators now believe that about half of the Coast Guard personnel at the key South Florida outpost were directly or indirectly involved in drug trafficking in the mid-1980s.

“We have had a few bad apples,” conceded Adm. Paul A. Yost, who said he had only recently learned of the extent of the federal probe. Yost ordered Coast Guard commanders throughout the fleet to warn subordinates about “the need to remain above compromise and the tragic consequences of failure.”

Federal officials refused to identify those under suspicion in the probe, but said four are members of the Coast Guard and six others have left the service since the alleged wrongdoing took place.

The existence of the investigation was first reported by NBC News. While confirming that it focused on Coast Guard corruption, Yost said he was confident that broad-based drug interdiction efforts by the 38,000-member service had not been jeopardized.

“We’re a good outfit, we’ll stay a good outfit, and we’re going to hang in there,” Yost said.

According to federal sources, the Operation Tempest probe now focuses on charges that some of the 10 guardsmen sold sensitive information--including details about Coast Guard call signs and radio channels--to the traffickers they were assigned to thwart.

The sources said indictments in the case, which is being pursued by a federal Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force in Miami, were expected to be handed up in the next several weeks.

The four other guardsmen already convicted in the investigation had stolen four kilos of cocaine from a Coast Guard seizure and attempted to sell it to an undercover agent in North Carolina. All four are now serving prison terms for their actions, which received little publicity at the time.

The federal sources said the events now being scrutinized took place between two and four years ago when all 14 Coast Guardsmen were serving together at the 30-man Islamorada station, an outpost with responsibility for a principal smuggling corridor.

The Coast Guard commandant refused to comment Tuesday about the extent of past corruption at Islamorada, but indicated that most if not all of those targeted in the probe have since left the Florida Keys outpost.

Yost confirmed that one of those guardsmen had until recently been assigned to a Coast Guard vessel in New England that helps provide protection for President Bush when he visits his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Me.

But the commandant insisted that the vessel had performed no more than a “backup role” in the presidential security detail, and said he had ordered the guardsman transferred to a less-sensitive post.

Of the three other current Coast Guardsmen under suspicion, Yost said only that they were stationed “at some places in the United States” and had not yet been disciplined.