DEA Details Cali Cartel’s Cocaine Distribution Network : Narcotics: Probe reveals the sophistication of the group’s methods of transporting the drug. Over two years, charges are brought against 166.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials partially lifted the veil Sunday from a two-year investigation into the ways the Cali cartel is moving large amounts of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and Los Angeles to distribution points throughout the United States.

The investigation culminated in narcotics charges being unsealed Friday in federal court in Los Angeles against two Colombians who allegedly served as transportation cell directors for the cartel, the organization based in Cali, Colombia, responsible for most of the cocaine distributed in the United States.

Related charges are expected to be brought against others today in San Francisco, Houston and New Orleans. Over the two years, the investigation has resulted in the arrest of 166 alleged members of the distribution network and the seizure of more than six tons of cocaine and $13 million in U.S. currency, DEA officials said.

But more than these usual benchmarks of anti-narcotics operations, the DEA regards the probe as important because of what it reveals about the sophistication and flexibility of the Cali cartel’s methods of distributing its illicit product.

“It is unequivocally clear that the cartels control every aspect of the cocaine trade, from the amount of cocaine to be shipped on consignment, right down to the markings on each package,” said DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine.

In what may be the traffickers’ sense of humor, some of the cocaine packages seized during the probe were stamped “Clinton,” while others bore a scorpion sign.

Following instructions from Colombia, some cocaine packages were covered with grease and then coffee because of the mistaken belief, one DEA official noted with a smile, that this would prevent dogs from detecting the contents.

Over the course of the investigation, the traffickers used commercial and private planes, trucks, cars and boats to smuggle drugs to and across the United States. They operate in a highly “compartmentalized” way so that those arrested did not know the names of those higher up the chain of command and thus “couldn’t give up the whole organization” in bargaining a deal for themselves, said William Mockler, chief of DEA’s major investigation section.

“The Medellin Cartel was never as compartmentalized,” Mockler said of Cali’s more violent predecessor in the Colombian cocaine network. Instead of restricting cocaine shipments to those already consigned for, which is the practice of the Cali organization, Medellin often would send a 500-kilogram load of cocaine by air to New York and then look for customers on a cash-and-carry basis.

In discussing the case, officials revealed some techniques they are using against the cartel, notably heavy reliance on electronic surveillance, particularly of cellular phones, and training state highway patrol officers to recognize the profiles of likely drug movers.

To be sure, the probe did not always operate smoothly. In early 1993, for example, DEA agents were forced to arrest prematurely a major suspect in the distribution network, Harold Luis Gresci, because he realized the agents had him under surveillance. He led them down a dead-end New Jersey street and then confronted them, demanding to know why they were following him.

“They said, ‘We’re just out here in the neighborhood. We’re not following you,’ but he didn’t buy it,” a DEA supervisor recalled. “He was intercepted on a cellular phone he carried,” allegedly instructing subordinates to “shut everything down.”

“We had to take him, because we didn’t want him out of the U.S., where he wouldn’t answer to the justice system,” the supervisor said.

“Most of these are a dead-end. You take down a cell or a couple of cells, and you’re usually not going to find where it picks back up.” But this time, the DEA managed to continue listening to Cali distributors as they turned from moving cocaine through Houston, after some major shipments were seized, to stockpiling it in Mexico and shipping it through Los Angeles.

Helmer Herrera-Buitrago, accused of being the Cali boss in charge of U.S. distribution, allegedly set up two parallel distribution networks in Los Angeles. DEA officials alleged that one was headed by Diego Fernando Salazar, known as Zorro, or the Fox, for whom the investigation was code-named, and the other by Ober Arturo Acuna. Both men were charged in the drug indictments unsealed Friday.

Before the latest charges, authorities arrested Zorro on an immigration violation when they overheard him allegedly pleading with his Cali bosses to let him return to Colombia. “He was beefing up his war chest and had ordered a 1995 BMW,” a DEA supervisor said.

DEA officials have no doubt that the Cali organization will replace the two damaged distribution systems, but they believe it will be a costly, time-consuming process.

“Where you really hurt these people is when you take down their experience,” the DEA supervisor said. “It’s hard to replace them.”