2 Arrests Deal Another Blow to Drug Ring

Federal and state authorities said Friday they had cut off the tentacles of a major drug-trafficking organization, but that the key leaders of the ring remain at large and are believed to be in Mexico.

In bringing to light an 18-month undercover operation code-named “White Fang,” drug-enforcement officials announced the arrests of two women in San Jose and the seizure of three houses in the Los Angeles area in raids conducted Thursday.

They said sealed federal indictments have been issued for the arrests of seven others, the group’s ringleaders. There now have been 18 arrests since the investigation began in mid-1991.

“We have knocked out one of the largest heroin rings in California,” said Christy A. McCampbell, a special agent of the state attorney general’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

The trafficking organization, said to be members of related families in California and Mexico, was responsible for importing drugs that reached the streets in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties south of San Francisco, as well as Washington and Oregon.

The drugs--millions of dollars worth of black tar heroin and marijuana from Mexico and cocaine from Colombia--were smuggled mostly in the floors and ceilings of vehicles from the Mexican state of Michoacan to stash houses in L.A.