Cocaine Rolls Down America’s Interstates : Drugs: After last year’s record Sylmar bust, the DEA finds that it is stopping only a small portion of the massive coast-to-coast flow.

An investigation into last year’s record cocaine seizure at a Sylmar warehouse shows that Colombian drug cartels have shipped vast quantities of cocaine along America’s interstate highway system despite law enforcement efforts to choke it off, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

In the last two years, Operation Pipeline, a joint DEA, state and local program designed to interdict drug-laden vehicles traveling coast to coast, has netted about five tons of cocaine annually, according to DEA figures.

The Sylmar raid, however, revealed that 77 tons of the drug were shipped to the warehouse in the three months before the seizure. Of that amount, only 21 tons were confiscated.

In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 1989, the DEA said, 10,113 pounds of cocaine were seized on the nation’s interstate highways as a result of Operation Pipeline. That figure represents about 5.6% of all the cocaine seizures reported to the DEA by federal, state and local agencies for that year.

DEA investigators believe that big-rig trucks have become the vehicles of choice for drug cartels shipping cocaine from Mexico into the United States and say Operation Pipeline cannot completely shut down the massive flow.

“I don’t expect, or in any way consider, Operation Pipeline to be the panacea of the cocaine problem,” said Charles Gutensohn,

chief of cocaine investigations for the DEA. “It’s one part of a strategy that goes from the hills of Bolivia to the streets of Boston. Each part of the strategy makes the transport (of cocaine) to the streets of the U.S. more difficult.”

The Sylmar raid was the world’s largest cocaine seizure. About 21.4 tons of the drug were found in the San Fernando Valley warehouse. Six men subsequently were indicted in connection with the cache and are currently on trial in federal court in Los Angeles.

One law enforcement source said the Sylmar operation sent much of its cocaine to New Jersey hidden inside tractor-trailers.

Ten days after the Sept. 28, 1989, raid, for example, authorities in Port Newark, N.J., seized a truck carrying 871 pounds of cocaine that originated at the Sylmar warehouse.

The cocaine seized in New Jersey was packaged in 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) bricks concealed behind 27,000 pounds of red delicious apples. The cocaine, discovered by a drug-sniffing dog, was in a 45-foot tractor-trailer parked in front of a local hotel. The cocaine’s street value, at the time, was estimated at $40 million.

Although the apples ostensibly were bound for Albany, N.Y., investigators said they believed the cocaine was going to be distributed in the northern New Jersey-New York City area.

DEA investigators now believe that the Sylmar cocaine originated with the Medellin cartel in Colombia and was flown to Mexico, where it was temporarily stored in warehouses and “stash ranches” not far from the U.S. border. From there, it was driven across the border to El Paso, where investigators say it was shipped in big-rig trucks along Interstate 25 to Albuquerque, N.M., and then on Interstate 40 to Los Angeles.

“You can drive throughout this country without fear of being stopped or going through police checkpoints,” Gutensohn said. “(Drug dealers) certainly make use of the freedoms we have.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph P. Walsh Jr., who is prosecuting the Sylmar defendants, told jurors in his opening statement that “unimaginable quantities” of cocaine had been arriving at the warehouse for about two years.

What the Sylmar cocaine operation underscored, according to government sources, is that Los Angeles has become the cocaine shipping center for the country. In years past, most of the drug was shipped to Miami from South America.

“Los Angeles is the hub with the spokes going out,” a government source said.

Two weeks before the Sylmar raid, a top DEA official told Congress that the Colombian cartels are distributing huge amounts of cocaine through organizations that appear to be structured like legitimate businesses.

“They manage all aspects of the cocaine supply chain, from cocaine cultivation and cocaine . . . production to security, from transportation and distribution to money laundering,” said David Westrate, at the time the DEA’s assistant administrator for operations.

“As in a legitimate business structure, the . . . cartels have investors, bankers, lawyers, logistics experts, exporters, importers, chemists, wholesalers and retailers,” he added.

According to prosecutor Walsh’s presentation to jurors, the Sylmar raid netted ledgers and notebooks that could provide intelligence on the cartels’ organization. The agency has declined to comment on the value of the information.

Complicating the work of law enforcement is the fact that many of the Colombian kingpins and their underlings vanished after the Sylmar raid. “They disappeared like cockroaches into the night,” a federal investigator lamented.

COCAINE SEIZURE SETS RECORD

Authorities say a 3 1/2-ton cocaine seizure is the biggest border haul. B4