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24–844 PDF 2005

2006 DOD COUNTERNARCOTICS BUDGET: DOES IT

DELIVER THE NECESSARY SUPPORT?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MAY 10, 2005

Serial No. 109–95

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

DIANE E. WATSON, California

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

MALIA HOLST, Clerk

TONY HAYWOOD, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on May 10, 2005 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Long, Marybeth, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Special Operations and Low

Intensity Conflict, Department of Defense; Colonel John D. Nelson,

Director of Plans, Joint Task Force North, U.S. Northern Command;

Captain Edmund Turner, Deputy Director for Operations, U.S. Southern Command; Captain Jim Stahlman, Assistant Operations Officer,

U.S. Central Command; and Lennard Wolfson, Assistant Deputy Director, Office of Supply Reduction, Office of National Drug Control Policy .. 13

Long, Marybeth ......................................................................................... 13

Nelson, Colonel John D. ............................................................................ 27

Stahlman, Captain Jim ............................................................................. 35

Turner, Captain Edmund ......................................................................... 34

Wolfson, Lennard ...................................................................................... 44

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Maryland, prepared statement of ............................................................ 10

Long, Marybeth, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Special Operations and Low

Intensity Conflict, Department of Defense, prepared statement of .......... 17

Nelson, Colonel John D., Director of Plans, Joint Task Force North,

U.S. Northern Command, prepared statement of ...................................... 29

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, prepared statement of ............................................................... 5

Stahlman, Captain Jim, Assistant Operations Officer, U.S. Central Command, prepared statement of ....................................................................... 37

Wolfson, Lennard, Assistant Deputy Director, Office of Supply Reduction,

Office of National Drug Control Policy, prepared statement of ................ 46

(1)

2006 DOD COUNTERNARCOTICS BUDGET:

DOES IT DELIVER THE NECESSARY SUPPORT?

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY,

AND HUMAN RESOURCES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:33 p.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Souder, Cummings, Ruppersberger, and

Norton.

Staff present: Marc Wheat, staff director and chief counsel; David

Thomasson and Pat DeQuattro, congressional fellows; Malia Holst,

clerk; Tony Haywood, minority counsel; and Teresa Coufal, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. SOUDER. Good afternoon. The subcommittee will come to

order. I want to thank you all for coming to this very important

hearing that continues our series of hearings reviewing the President’s National Drug Control Budget and Strategy for 2006. Today

we focus on the counterdrug responsibilities of the Department of

Defense.

Due to the jurisdictional responsibility of this subcommittee, we

pay very close attention to the drug supply and interdiction initiatives contained within the President’s National Drug Control Strategy and Budget. Our oversight activities evaluate departmental authorizations, appropriations, a well as the efficiency and effectiveness of the departmental efforts.

The President’s budget request for 2006, now before Congress, asks for approximately $121⁄2 billion for counterdrug initiatives. The President’s Drug Strategy has requested that nearly $900 million be appropriated to the Department of Defense through its Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict.

This budget request does not include the wartime supplemental

requests that will fund the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2006.

For fiscal year 2005, the Department of Defense received an additional $315 million in supplemental funds for counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan. However, it is too early to speculate what additional counterdrug funding requests will be presented to Congress in fiscal year 2006 for the Defense Department’s commitments to support the war on drugs.

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The subcommittee remains committed to the efforts of the U.S.

governmental agencies that combat the devastating effects of illegal drug usage within this country. According to the Center for Disease Control’s preliminary estimates for 2003, over 25,000 Americans died of drug-related causes.

To put this in perspective, we have never lost this many Americans annually to a post-World War II military or terrorist campaign. This staggering statistic is significant when we consider that

we have lost over 1,500 brave Americans in Iraq since Operation

Iraqi Freedom began, accounting for less than 3 percent of those

lost to drugs over the same time period. We have lost more Americans to drugs than were killed in all the terrorist acts to date.

Therefore, it is vitally important that we maintain vigorous efforts

to control the sources of supply for narcotics and to interdict them

before reaching the United States.

The explosion of heroin production and trafficking in Afghanistan

has caused some to believe that the Defense Department’s

counterdrug efforts in that country to have been too little and too

late. As the President’s Drug Strategy Report notes, ‘‘If all of Afghanistan’s opium were converted to heroin, the result would be

582 metric tons of heroin. By comparison, Colombia and Mexico

combined produced roughly 22 metric tons of pure heroin in 2003,

more than enough to satisfy U.S. consumption.’’

In 2004, United Nations opium poppy survey reflected that Afghanistan produced over 80 percent of the world’s heroin. If the situation in Afghanistan is not reversed, the destabilizing effects of

the drug trade there could reverse all of our gains in that country

since 2001. It takes little imagination to understand that a thriving

drug trade in Afghanistan is financing narco-terrorist forces, able

to threaten the government in Afghanistan and threaten the region. Here in the target market for illegal drugs, we may also see

a rise in the number of heroin-related deaths, and even more

deaths among European nations.

What the subcommittee hopes to learn today, in order to reverse

the deadly trends we are already seeing in Afghanistan, whether

DOD needs to refocus its priorities on the destruction of stockpiled

drugs and drug processing facilities, support aerial and drug eradication of opium, and interdict precursor chemicals necessary for

drug production. These efforts are essential for Afghanistan to be

firmly set on the road to democracy and away from corruption, tyranny, and terrorism.

While the subcommittee believes that DOD has needed to step

up its counterdrug efforts in Afghanistan, we have equally significant concerns about DOD’s continuing commitment to its responsibilities in the Western Hemisphere. In November 1989, Congress

passed the DOD Authorization Act of 1990, in which Congress directed the Department of Defense to serve as the single lead Federal agency for detection and monitoring of aerial and maritime

transit of illegal drugs into the United States, in support of the

counterdrug activities of the Federal, State, local, and foreign law

enforcement agencies. DOD accomplishes this task by providing

airborne and ground based detection in areas of known drug smuggling activities.

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However, DOD’s level of effort to fulfill this responsibility is evidenced by the sharp reduction in aerial support to the Source and

Transit Zones. According to records maintained by the Joint Interagency Task Force South, maritime patrol hours have dropped

drastically due to the U.S. Navy’s reduction of authorized P–3

flight hours in the Transit Zone. For example, Transit Zone naval

maritime patrol aircraft hours decreased from 5,964 hours in 2002

to 4,634 hours in 2003 to only 1,741 hours in 2004, a drop of 71

percent in the Transit Zone in only 2 years.

In the Source Zone, the Navy’s signal-intelligence capable P–3’s

provided only 403 hours in 2004, a drop of 35 percent from 2001

levels, while the U.S. Air Force E–3 AWACS flew a total of 81

hours for all of calendar year 2004. If we were to rely just on the

U.S. Navy and Air Force assets in the Source Zone, we would have

had planes in the air less than 9 percent of the time last year.

The continual degradation of the Tethered Aerostat Radar System [TARS] is a further example of concern with respect to DOD’s

counterdrug commitment in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. Air

Force, which took over control of TARS from the U.S. Customs

Service in 2000, has reduced the number of TARS radar sites from

14 to 8. This has left the United States nearly blind to air and marine smuggling activities along the entire Gulf Coast, stretching

from the east coast of Texas to the southern tip of Florida, and

from the eastern coast of Florida to Puerto Rico.

I personally inspected this dangerous lack of coverage in the Gulf

of Mexico when we visited Custom and Border Protection’s Air and

Marine Operations Center in March of this year. The lack of any

radar feed for the entire Gulf area highlighted just how vulnerable

we are to air and marine intruders transiting the region into the

United States.

In 1989, when Congress authorized DOD to support Federal,

State, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies, the Interagency

counterdrug assets and programs were not yet capable of primary

detection and monitoring duties. However, the world has changed

since then. The most obvious change happened in 2004 when Congress created the Department of Homeland Security.

Within the Department of Homeland Security, the Customs and

Border Protection houses the combined air and marine assets of

the legacy Customs Service and the U.S. Border Patrol. Similarly,

the U.S. Coast Guard has a full inventory of vessels and aircraft

capable of armed takedowns of vessels carrying contraband. Less

obvious is the maturation of the counterdrug capabilities within

the Department of Homeland Security. Even though the Department of Homeland Security operates aged aircraft and vessels, they

account for the majority of the aerial and marine patrols responsible for the majority of seizures in the Source and Transit Zones.

The subcommittee recently was made aware of the DOD-drafted

amendments to the fiscal year 2006 DOD authorization bill that

were prepared for the White House Office of Management and

Budget and they are very troubling. One amendment would effectively place DOD as the lead agency for detection and monitoring

of aerial and marine transit of illegal drugs outside of the Western

Hemisphere.

4

We have already seen how DOD support in the Western Hemisphere has declined over years. A second amendment would allow

‘‘Funds available to the Department of Defense for drug interdiction and counterdrug activities may be used by the Secretary of Defense for detecting, monitoring, interdicting terrorists, and other

transnational threats.’’ This language would allow DOD to take

funding Congress set aside for DOD’s counterdrug responsibilities

and use those funds for missions that may be wholly unrelated to

its counternarcotics commitments.

The drug interdiction capabilities within the Department of

Homeland Security and the Department of Justice compels Congress to reevaluate the counterdrug roles and responsibilities of

U.S. Government agencies. The fundamental questions the subcommittee needs to ask this panel are: One, has the appropriated

DOD counterdrug efforts yielded tangible results in our efforts to

stop the increase of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan? Two, have

the current commitments of DOD to engage in two separate conflicts hampered their ability to support the Nation’s counterdrug efforts in this hemisphere? Three, do DOD counterdrug assets and

capabilities provide services unique only to military requiring larger operating costs? Four, have we appropriately designed a Joint

Interagency structure that promotes DOD supporting law enforcement efforts? Five, is it still appropriate for DOD to be the lead

Federal agency for detection and monitoring of drug shipments in

the transit zone, or should this responsibility and funding be instead transferred to the Department of Homeland Security?

Today we have a panel of very experienced witnesses to answer

these and other questions posed by the subcommittee. From the Office of the Secretary of Defense we have the principal operator of

DOD’s counterdrug budget, Ms. Marybeth Long, Deputy Assistant

Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. From USNORTHCOM we have Colonel John Nelson. From

USCENTCOM we have Deputy Director of Operations. From

USSOUTHCOM we have the Deputy Director Captain Ed Turner.

From the Office of National Drug Control Policy we have Mr.

Lennard Wolfson, Assistant Deputy Director of the Office of Supply

Reduction.

We thank all of you for coming and appreciate that very much.

It was Captain Stahlman from CENTCOM. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I would now like to yield to Mr. Cummings for an

opening statement.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you

for holding today’s important hearing on the President’s fiscal year

2006 budget request for counternarcotics programs within the Department of Defense.

Our Nation’s military plays a vital role in many aspects of our

Nation’s drug control strategy.

In the area of supply reduction, the military provides essential

support for interdiction and eradication efforts both internationally

and domestically.

Much of the funding the Defense Department receives for

counterdrug activities supports interdiction efforts aimed at keeping illicit drugs produced in Colombia and other Andean region nations from reaching the United States. Nearly all of the cocaine

consumed in the United States and most of the heroin consumed

on the East Coast originates in Colombia. Throughout the transit

zone and at our borders, the military provides critical support to

Federal, State, and local law enforcement to help identify and stop

drug traffickers, as well as possible terrorist threats.

Since the toppling of the Taliban regime in response to the 9/11

attacks, Afghanistan has become a major focus of U.S. interdiction

and eradication efforts. Income derived from the illicit Afghan

opium trade supported the Taliban and al Qaeda prior to 9/11.

Today, narcoterrorism, fueled by the Afghan opium trade, represents the single greatest threat to the stability and the longevity

of Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy. The military support of interdiction and eradication missions within Afghanistan and throughout Central Asia are key to our efforts to counteract the recent explosion in Afghan opium cultivation and production.

The military supports similar missions in every part of the world

where drugs and narcoterrorism pose significant threats. But funding for Defense Department counterdrug activities also supports essential demand reduction programs to reduce drug use within the

military and military communities, in addition to providing vital

tactical, technical, and material support to domestic law enforcement and community prevention programs.

The President’s fiscal year 2006 budget request proposes to devote $896 million to counterdrug efforts within the Department of

Defense. These efforts are centrally coordinated by the Office of

Counternarcotics, with oversight from the Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict.

Apart from examining the adequacy of the President’s proposed

funding for DOD counterdrug programs, this hearing will address

questions about the effectiveness of the Pentagon’s counterdrug efforts and the extent to which the military recognizes and treats

counternarcotics as a high-priority mission. Key questions include:

Are resources being diverted from counterdrug efforts in the transit

zone, resulting in reduced surveillance of drug trafficking targets

bound for the United States?

Should the military assume a larger, more direct role in interdicting and eradicating opium in Afghanistan, or would this alienate the Afghan public and compromise counterterrorism missions

that depend upon Afghan intelligence and cooperation?

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Is there tension between the counterterrorism and counternarcotics missions or are they truly complementary?

How do we measure the effectiveness of these programs in the

context of a National Drug Control Strategy that states as its ‘‘singular goal’’ reducing drug use in the United States?

As you know, Mr. Chairman, I have expressed deep concerns

about the shift of emphasis within the President’s overall drug

budget request.

The President has proposed deep cuts for demand reduction programs and programs that support drug enforcement at the State

and local level. Safe and Drug-Free Schools and the High Intensity

Drug Trafficking Areas program are glaring examples. Even within

the President’s request for the Department of Defense, this trend

appears, as the National Guard’s Drug Demand Reduction program

is slated for a sharp cut.

Meanwhile, the President proposes substantial increases for

international supply reduction efforts that, despite yielding record

seizures and eradication estimates, have demonstrated no impact

on the availability or price of drugs in the United States.

Mr. Chairman, the President’s 2005 National Drug Control Strategy emphasizes ‘‘balance’’ and states that program effectiveness

will be the basis for drug budget funding decisions. Unfortunately,

testimony from our previous hearings on the President’s drug budget have cast doubt on the credibility of both of these themes in the

strategy.

Today’s hearing offers an opportunity to examine another important area of the Federal drug control budget and I thank you for

your close attention to this subject.

Finally, let me say this. Whatever our views on the President’s

budget and the direction of the National Drug Control Strategy, we

deeply appreciate the efforts and the sacrifice of the men and

women of the U.S. armed forces. We are grateful for their devotion

to the many missions they perform to keep America and its people

safe.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the testimony of our

witnesses and I yield back.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Ruppersberger.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. A lot has been said. I think basically the

bigger picture is that we know we are at war, No. 1, and we need

to support the war fighter. We also are at war with terrorism, and

that is another issue that we are dealing with. But if you look at

the statistics, I think you will find that drugs probably are our

worst enemy in the world. For example, in the United States of

America, more violent crime, about 85 percent of all violent crime

that is committed is drug related.

Now, the majority of these drugs come other parts of the world,

and we need to refocus and we need the team effort that we have

in Iraq and Afghanistan that we know is working well. And I am

not just talking about the military. The NSA, CIA; the whole team

effort. I think we need to refocus on that teamwork approach.

Right now, I think the evidence shows the majority of the drugs

that come to this country come through Mexico. I believe that is

the U.S. Northern Command’s jurisdiction. Now, if we could put

the same emphasis on Mexico with that teamwork approach that

we do in Iraq and Afghanistan, our country would be a lot better

off. We have not focused in that regard, and it is important that

we continue to refocus our priorities and where our money is going

to go.

My final concern is the issue of the narco-terrorist. The bad guys

say in Mexico—and I am focusing on Mexico now, Northern Command—are the ones that are getting the people across our borders

illegally are the ones that are dealing with the drugs. They are, I

am sure, the same people that an al Qaeda will go to in order to

get the people that we don’t want in our country, the cells that concern us for our national security, and we haven’t put enough emphasis in that regard.

Now, unfortunately, I have another hearing on national security

downstairs, but I would hope that this issue could be addressed,

the focus of a team approach—the DOD, which includes, NSA, CIA,

the military—and hope that we could refocus our efforts as it relates to drugs with respect to Mexico. We know a lot of the drugs

come from Colombia and other parts of South America, but they

are coming through in Mexico, and we have not done the job that

we need to do.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. We appreciate each of you

coming. As each of us have said, we appreciate the contributions

of the military, and we know we are multitasking everybody, and

we can feel it in our own districts.

The question is that to be able to do all these tasks, we need to

know what in fact we are doing and which things are being shorted. And if things are being shorted, then we need to be told, as

Congress, look, this is what we are being shorted and we either

need to spend the money or acknowledge we are shorting them. We

don’t expect people to do three things simultaneously without adequate funding, and that is really part of what we are trying to figure out and how to prioritize in our budgets and why we are having the budget hearings.

We are going to start with Marybeth Long.

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First, I need to swear everybody in. I forgot that. Let me do that

first.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each witness responded in

the affirmative.

I also ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative

days to submit written statements and questions for the hearing

record, and that any answers to written questions provided by the

witnesses also be included in the record. Without objection, it is so

ordered.

I also ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents, and

other materials referred to by Members may be included in the

hearing record, and that all Members may be permitted to revise

and extend their remarks. Without objection, it is so ordered.

We are going to start with Marybeth Long, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict for the Department of Defense. Thank you very much for joining us.

STATEMENTS OF MARYBETH LONG, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY, SPECIAL OPERATIONS AND LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; COLONEL JOHN D. NELSON, DIRECTOR OF PLANS, JOINT TASK FORCE NORTH, U.S.

NORTHERN COMMAND; CAPTAIN EDMUND TURNER, DEPUTY

DIRECTOR FOR OPERATIONS, U.S. SOUTHERN COMMAND;

CAPTAIN JIM STAHLMAN, ASSISTANT OPERATIONS OFFICER, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND; AND LENNARD WOLFSON, ASSISTANT DEPUTY DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SUPPLY REDUCTION, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY

STATEMENT OF MARYBETH LONG

Ms. LONG. Thank you very much, Chairman Souder, Representative Cummings, Representative Ruppersberger. I want to thank

you first on behalf of the Department of Defense for the opportunity to come here today to discuss our counternarcotics programs

and activities for fiscal year 2006. The leadership and, in fact, the

valued support that your committee and subcommittee give us,

quite frankly, are critical to us being able to maintain not only

what we are doing, but what we hope to do in the future as part

of our counterdrug efforts. And specifically, Mr. Chairman, I know

that you are in particular dedicated to this cause, and we thank

you.

As you know, the Department spends a tremendous amount of

resources on its counterdrug programs and activities, and these fall

into three general areas. The first is our obligation to reduce the

amount of drugs that come into our country; second, we need to

contribute to force readiness by our aggressive counternarcotics

and drug testing programs within the military; and, third, we believe it is our obligation to assist other countries in developing

their capacities and their resources to interdict the drugs in their

countries so that they never reach our shores. In doing that, the

Department, for fiscal year 2006, has requested $895 million in

order to continue these programs and activities.

I am told that there are those who believe that the Department

of Defense is either unwilling or unable to perform its counterVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:03 May 07, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24844.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
14

narcotics obligations and responsibilities, and I am here to tell you

today that those individuals are mistaken. I will give you five data

points in which I will substantiate my assertion.

First, last year, JIATF-South, the joint International Operation

Center down in Key West, FL, which I believe many of you have

visited, interdicted more cocaine than ever before, approximately

200 metric tons, which represents about a 43 percent increase over

the previous year. But I don’t think the JIATF-South success

should be measured solely in metric tons of cocaine, any more than

I believe the Department’s commitment to the counterdrug effort

should be measured in the number of ships or planes that on any

particular day are operating in that AOR.

The Department has been consistent in its support to Colombia.

It sends troops and Marines to Colombia to train and work with

the Colombians in interdicting the drugs in that country. In addition, overwhelmingly the infrastructure, funds, and personnel at

JIATF-South belong and are contributed by the Department of Defense.

In fiscal year 2006, in fact, the Department of Defense, out of its

internal budget, added $40 million, in a time of war in Afghanistan

and Iraq, toward augmenting the fight in Colombia and providing

our Colombian colleagues, who are doing so well there in the

counternarcoterrorist fight.

Likewise, although there are problems with the P–3 that all of

you are aware of—and these are problems in the entire P–3 community—the Department has been diligent in seeking other ways

to fill the P–3 gap by using other resources for the MPA problem.

And I am going to be deferring to Captain Edmund Turner to give

you details on those gap fillers.

And, finally, as you are aware, the National Guard last year, despite an incredible up tempo, supporting our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, increased their aviation hours by over 600 hours in support of domestic law enforcement.

Turning just a moment to our domestic support. A total of about

$200 million of our budget request will be for domestic support programs. As you are well aware, most of those programs are executed

through JTF-North out of El Paso, TX, in conjunction with the National Guard. I recently had the opportunity to go to El Paso and

meet with JTF-North and visit with the Guard, and I believe, Mr.

Chairman, that you are correct that, in particular, the Guard’s efforts toward demand reduction and their outreach toward schools

and those who may be less fortunate and involved in drug programs at a very grassroots level are important.

JTF also works closely with the Mexico. In particular, we provide

literal training to the Mexican forces. In addition, our domestic programs include classified information systems to the HIDTA, which

we think are integral to our support of State and local law enforcement.

The southwest border is not the only place where drugs are

crossing into our country. The northern border is another area of

critical concern. JTF-North and the National Guard are both working with the Canadians in order to enhance our cooperation toward

all smuggling events across that border.

15

On the southwest border, as in our other borders, smugglers

transport drugs, criminals, illegal aliens, arms, and cash. They

take advantage and exploit the openness of our society and pose a

threat to our way of life. Other countries suffer the same problem,

and we are attempting to engage those countries, particularly Colombia and Afghanistan, in helping them interdict those smuggling

events so that the drugs that are leaving their country never reach

our borders.

Our programs are focused on providing assistance to those democracies where the drug networks are or support threats to democratic institutions and free societies, such as Colombia, and in our

request approximately $429 million will go toward these international counternarcotics programs worldwide.

I gave you a brief outline of our SOUTHCOM efforts, with a

focus on JIATF-South. As you know, SOUTHCOM does much more

in its AOR, and I will again defer to Captain Turner to provide you

with additional details on that.

In the Central Command area of operations, you are correct that

we have a huge explosion of poppy growth, and this has raised

fears that not only is that heroin exploding for the normal consumers that are Russia and Europe, but that there is so much opium

coming out of Afghanistan that at some point it will reach our

shores. That is my fear.

In addition, the moneys gained from the opium production out of

Afghanistan I believe are directly contributing to insurgent terrorists and other efforts to subvert the democracy there and pose a direct threat to our coalition forces in Afghanistan. To that end,

President Bush and President Karzai have made fighting drug trafficking a priority in Afghanistan, as have we.

In fiscal year 2006, we will buildupon our efforts that were funded last year through the supplemental and assist the Afghans in

building their capacity to address this threat. The Department will

provide substantial counternarcoterrorism support to the infrastructure of the police, in particular, training and equipment, and

logistic support to those facilities and teams that are supported by

the United Kingdom, as lead country, as well as those that are

being led currently by our sister law enforcement agency, EDEA.

To date, the Department has been responsible for the only U.S.

trained counternarcotic interdiction force in Afghanistan. The Department funded, financed, and actually provided the training of

the National Interdiction Unit, which now is currently approximately 130 people in Afghanistan. That unit is being led successfully by the DEA, and I will defer to Captain Stahlman from

CENTCOM to provide you with additional details on those efforts.

Since July 2004, our coalition forces have reported at least 21

events in which they have come across drugs or drug paraphernalia

in the course of their normal duties and disposed of those drugs.

In addition, those do not count the times when our forces are encountering drugs in the company of provincial reconstruction teams

[PRTs] when those drugs or individuals were turned over to local

Afghan authorities.

In short, the intelligence packages that are developed CFCAlpha, Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan, in conjunction

with our CIA, DEA, and U.K. colleagues, have formed the foundaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:03 May 07, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24844.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion of the Interdiction Unit’s successes to date, not only the National Interdiction Unit, which is working with the DEA, but the

Special Narcotics Force led by the United Kingdom.

One note in particular. Afghanistan is a complex and difficult situation, and, like the drug problem in the United States, it is absolutely critical that the Inter-Agency cooperate and integrate its efforts. The Department of Defense cannot succeed in Afghanistan if

every other department likewise does not succeed. Our sister agencies—the State Department, the DEA, USAID providing alternative

livelihoods, United Kingdom, and the Afghans themselves—are absolutely critical to our efforts there. Without the support of President Karzai, and without the alternative livelihood and economic

resources that are to be made available to Afghans as an alternative to drug production, we will all fail.

In the Pacific Command AOR, the Department will bolster well

established counternarco efforts, particularly those in Southeast

Asia, where the United States and Asian partners face challenging

combinations of terrorism, narcotics trafficking extremism, and a

serious need for increased maritime security. Currently, PACOM

and JIATF-West—which, as you know, was moved last year from

California to Honolulu—are focusing their operations on the more

mature programs that we have operating out of Thailand, but are

also developing new programs in nations of interest such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

In Europe and in the African AORs, the Department will increase its cooperation and information exchange with new and old

allies in Europe to become more effective in these theaters of operation. We are also developing a Trans-Saharan initiative that is designed to train and equip the military, Coast Guard, and other

partner nations interdiction in that area.

Integral to our efforts are the intelligence and technological support that the budget that you provide us allows us to develop. A

total of approximately $139 million of the moneys that we are requesting are for intelligence programs to collect, process, analyze,

and disseminate information required for counternarcoterrorism

operations. I believe, Mr. Chairman, you are aware of the Pulsed

Fast Neutron Analysis that we have in Texas, which may very well

be the first nonintrusive interdiction effort that may have applications for our sister customs and border agencies worldwide. Likewise, the Athena project is a revolutionary integration of maritime

radar and other capabilities that we believe will be applicable to

increase maritime security worldwide.

Again, the basic nature of smuggling threat mandates the need

for actionable intelligence, and the Department is working hard to

develop and increase our capabilities in this area.

In conclusion, on behalf of the Department, I appreciate your

continued support of our counternarcotics programs, in particular

your support for our Afghan and Colombian programs. If it were

not for the support and for the leadership of this committee, we

would not have made the advances that I believe we have made

particularly in Colombia over the last years.

I stand by and look forward to answering your questions.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Long follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Our second witness is Colonel John Nelson, Director of Plans,

Joint Task Force North, U.S. Northern Command. Thank you for

being with us.

STATEMENT OF COLONEL JOHN D. NELSON

Colonel NELSON. Thank you. Chairman Souder, Ranking Member

Cummings, members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to testify regarding U.S. Northern Command’s efforts to

support civilian law enforcement agencies in the fight against drug

trafficking and other transnational threats.

Support to law enforcement is an important element in U.S.

Northern Command’s mission to deter, prevent, defeat, and mitigate threats to the homeland, because it has direct applicability to

the global war on terror.

Transnational threats include international terrorism, narcotics

trafficking, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and organized crime. Terrorists are known to use drug trafficking conveyances, smuggling networks, and money laundering to achieve their

goals and fund their activities. As U.S. Northern Command supports law enforcement agencies in the fight against drugs, we want

to ensure that our efforts are focused on the nexus between terrorist organizations and drug trafficking.

U.S. Northern Commands supports the global war on terror right

here at home by providing military unique capabilities to support

civilian law enforcement agencies. By doing this, we support not

only the National Defense Strategy with terrorist interdiction support, but also the National Drug Control Strategy by simultaneous

providing drug interdiction support.

The lynchpin of U.S. Northern Command’s counterdrug efforts is

the support provided by Joint Task Force North. Established in

1989 as Joint Task Force–6, Joint Task Force North was transformed and redesignated in September 2004. The mission of JTFNorth is to coordinate military support to law enforcement agencies

and enhance interagency synchronization in order to deter and prevent threats from entering the homeland. Its area of operation runs

from border to border and coast to coast, but focuses primarily on

the approaches to the homeland.

The support provided by JTF-North includes more than 50 different missions that can be broadly grouped into three categories:

intelligence support, operational support, and theater security cooperation.

Intelligence support includes employing military intelligence analysts to develop operational intelligence products that can be used

across the interagency for early cuing, warning, and interdiction

operations. A supporting effort is training and collaboration between DOD and law enforcement intelligence analysts, consistent

with intelligence oversight requirements, to ensure seamless coverage within the operating area.

JTF-North has intelligence liaison personnel with the El Paso Intelligence Center, the Border Patrol Field Intelligence Center, and,

most notably, at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. These intelligence professionals provide a real-time link between JTF-North

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and key centers of intelligence in North America in order to develop situational awareness for early cuing and warning.

Operational support includes detection missions using a variety

of sensors that are unique to DOD in order to improve a supported

law enforcement agency’s ability to detect, monitor, and interdict

transnational threats. Construction of roads, brides, and fences, as

well as installing area lighting to improve the ability of law enforcement officers to move, identify, and respond to threats crossing

the border are also part of this mission category.

The third JTF-North mission category, theater security cooperation, made significant progress with Mexico last year through the

export of a maritime basic intelligence course to the Mexican Navy.

This effort was in addition to JTF-North’s continuing membership

in the U.S.-Mexico Bilateral Interdiction Working Group.

Our relationship with Canada is developing and strengthens

with each collaborative engagement as part of our work with the

Integrated Border Enforcement and Intelligence Teams. JTF-North

also performs cooperative efforts with Canada through Project

NORTHSTAR.

U.S. Northern Command is particularly proud of its efforts in cooperation with Mexico. These include counterdrug personnel in the

Office of Defense Coordination. Mobile Training Teams form a substantial element of our theater security cooperation efforts with fiscal year 2006 funding of approximately $2.4 million requested.

These teams assist the Mexican military with tasks such as maintenance, training, repairs on aircraft, night vision equipment,

counterdrug sensor packages, and ex-Knox class frigates in order to

improve their national capacity to defeat transnational threats before they attempt to enter our homeland.

Another USNORTHCOM effort in conjunction with the National

Guard Bureau is to support the Air and Maritime [sic] Operation

Center through Air National Guard radar surveillance operators

who provide detection and tracking data and forward to law enforcement agencies air tracks suspected of smuggling activities

across U.S. borders.

I would like to emphasize that in most U.S. Northern Command

support activities, we are not the primary Federal agency. Our job

is to support civilian law enforcement agencies based on the support requested. We believe that our relationship with our interagency partners are excellent and growing. An important element

in these relationships is JTF-North as U.S. Northern Command’s

agent for coordination with border-focused civilian agencies. With

a 15-year track record of success, and expanded mission into an organization focused on all transnational threats, it is postured to

take the next step with increased interagency collaboration to secure the Nation.

Again, thank you for this opportunity to describe U.S. Northern

Command’s support activities with regard to interdicting terrorist

and drug traffickers. We are proud of the efforts of our men and

women in military uniform, our civilian employees, and our civilian

law enforcement partners working together to protect our borders

against drug trafficking and other transnational threats to our Nation.

[The prepared statement of Colonel Nelson follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Our third witness is Captain Edmund Turner, Deputy Director

for Current Operations, U.S. Southern Command. Thank you very

much for being here.

STATEMENT OF CAPTAIN EDMUND TURNER

Captain TURNER. Good afternoon, Chairman Souder. Thank you

for allowing me a few minutes to make some opening comments.

We at U.S. Southern Command are fully committed to meeting

DOD’s responsibility in the fight against drugs and narcoterrorists.

As specified in Title X, U.S. Code Section 124, we fulfill our role

in the National Counterdrug Strategy as lead in detection and

monitoring. We accomplish this through close interagency coordination, by supporting law enforcement interdiction, and building longlasting security capabilities in partner nations.

Our programs cover the entire SOUTHCOM area responsibility,

including Central and South America and the Caribbean Basin.

Our principal command agent in the planning and execution of the

detection and monitoring effort, as you know, is Joint Inter-Agency

Task Force South, or JIATF-South. JIATF-South is a model organization for multiservice, multiagency, and multinational support to

the counterdrug mission. Their operations in conjunction with

USSOUTHCOM deliver an integrated approach to meeting DOD

missions in the war against drugs and narcoterrorists.

Successfully executing these counterdrug missions would not be

possible without the fiscal resources you provide. USSOUTHCOM

is planning on receiving a total of $350 million from DOD’s central

transfer account in fiscal year 2005 to fund our principal CD activities. In fiscal year 2006 we have requested about $368 million.

As you are aware, in the transit zone of the Eastern Pacific, Central America, and Caribbean, we conduct daily interdiction major

surge counterdrug operations. As for the source zone, we continue

to promote military cooperation that focuses on improving partner

nation capabilities. In addition to providing counterdrug training

teams to vetted units in our partner nations, we provide a variety

of assistance focused on operational, logistics, and communication

self-sustainment.

Colombia is the source of 90 percent of the cocaine and approximately 45 percent of the heroin entering the United States. For Colombia, the granting of expanded authorities was an important recognition that no meaningful distinction can be made between the

terrorists and the drug traffickers in our region.

In concert with U.S. Department of State and several agencies,

we continue to provide a full range of support to the Colombian

government, its security forces, and its people. This includes training and equipping of both military and police, as well as assisting

the Ministry of Defense in the development of modern budget and

logistics organizations.

I would like to emphasize that all of our training, planning, and

assistance programs operate under strict rules of engagement that

prohibit U.S. service members from participating directly in combat

operations in those countries. At times, measures of effectiveness

are difficult to gage. However, over the past year we have seen

very encouraging results. Transit zone disruptions, as you have

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mentioned, which include maritime and air seizures and mission

aborts increased from 156 metric tons in calendar year 2003 to 222

metric tons in calendar year 2004, an increase of over 43 percent.

In 2004, Colombian security forces captured nearly 180 metric tons

of cocaine and cocoa base. Between the transit zone disruptions and

the seizures of Colombian security forces, this equates to over 400

metric tons of cocaine that did not make it to the streets of the

United States.

Additionally, the security situation in Colombia has greatly improved: homicides have decreased 16 percent, the lowest homicide

rate in Colombia since 1986; robberies have decreased by 25 percent; kidnappings are down by 46 percent; terrorist attacks have

decreased by 44 percent nationwide in Colombia. We are encouraged by Colombia’s success and recognize that they are at a critical

point in their history, which is central to our counternarcoterrorist

fight.

With the assistance of the U.S. Government and under the leadership of President Uribe, the government of Colombia continues to

build on their military and social successes. The government of Colombia has established a security presence of all of its 1,098 municipalities, arguably for the first time in their history. Colombia

is an example of an establishing democracy that we must continue

to support.

In summary, we continue to press forward successfully in our

fight against narcoterrorists and the drug trade. Despite the decrease in some asset allocations to U.S. Southern Command due to

global priorities, we continue to leverage all available resources to

accomplish our mission. We continue to derive benefits from mature command and control network, effective information sharing

infusion, and a robust logistical infrastructure that is the backbone

of our detection and monitoring capability.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to

highlight the critical counternarcoterrorism work done by the men

and women of U.S. Southern Command for U.S. national security,

as well as regional security and stability in the partner nations. I

look forward to your questions, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Next question is Captain Jim Stahlman, Assistant Operations

Office of U.S. Central Command.

STATEMENT OF CAPTAIN JIM STAHLMAN

Captain STAHLMAN. Chairman Souder, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you in support of the President’s fiscal year

2006 Department of Defense counternarcotics request and to discuss Central Command’s role in support of the counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan.

U.S. Central Command provides support to the government of

Afghanistan and to the Department of State’s Embassy Kabul

Counternarcotics Implementation Action Plan in construction of

the foundation of an Afghani capacity to fight the destabilizing influence of a narcotics trade.

In the fiscal year 2004 supplemental budget initial CN funding

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ternarcotics capacity. In just 10 months, CENTCOM has committed

these funds to provide training to the National Interdiction Unit of

the Afghan Counternarcotics Police to provide additional helicopter

lift capacity for Afghani and Coalition CN units, and to begin construction of infrastructure for border control.

In coordination with the Department of Justice, DOD has commenced construction of a training and operations facility for DEA

foreign advisory support teams, FAST teams, and has provided predeployment training at Fort Benning, GA for five DEA FAST

teams, including 32 personnel en route to Afghanistan.

The fruits of these foundational labors are showing on the

ground in Afghanistan. Over 100 NIU CN police have been trained

and equipped, with 30 more in the training pipeline. We have contracted two MI–8 HIP helicopters and associated air crew and

maintenance personnel to provide internal Afghani CN airlift capacity, and are refurbishing three more helicopters.

CENTCOM has established a dedicated CN intelligence fusion

cell embedded in the Combined Forces Command Afghanistan intelligence organization. Military and DEA liaison officers have been

exchanged and are standing watch in the CFCA Operation Center

in Bagram, and the DEA Operation Center in Kabul.

CENTCOM has tested and implemented mission planning and

coordination mechanisms which synchronize the CN efforts of the

government of Afghanistan, United Kingdom, Department of State,

DEA, and CENTCOM forces. When U.S. military support is required, DEA knows how to get it.

This initial investment showed tangible results on March 15th

with the execution of the first NIU counternarcotic operation on

three drug labs in Nangarhar Province, one of the primary sources

of Afghan opium. Target selection and development and planning

support were provided by the CN intelligence fusion cell. The operation was supported on the ground by DEA FAST team advisors.

Helicopter lift to and from the operation was provided by the combined effort of both DOD contracted MI–8s and CENTCOM helicopter assets. In extremist defensive support and medical assistance was immediately available from CENTCOM assets.

This first effort results in the destruction of 2 metric tons of

brown opium, 15 kilos of high-grade white opium, as well as the

collection of a significant amount of legal evidence.

CENTCOM continues to support Afghan CN operations. Since

March 15th, the NIU has conducted three additional missions. The

MI–8s have provided over 100 additional flight hours of CN lift

support. The CENTCOM intelligence fusion cell provides daily

analysis of potential CN targets and mission analysis for planned

targets. Biweekly coordination conferences sponsored by the embassy and supported by CENTCOM synchronize the overall CN effort.

Since March 2005, all formal requests to CENTCOM for CN airlift support have been met, to include use of C–17s and C–130’s to

provide transport for the Afghan Special Narcotics Force.

CENTCOM is leaning forward to support this critical effort.

I look forward to your questions. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Captain Stahlman follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Our last witness is Mr. Lennard Wolfson, Assistant Deputy Director for Supply Reduction, Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Thank you for coming.

STATEMENT OF LENNARD WOLFSON

Mr. WOLFSON. Chairman Souder, I am honored to appear before

you today to discuss the fiscal year 2006 DOD counternarcotics

budget.

The President’s Drug Control Strategy details the policies and

programs designed to meet the goal of reducing drug use in the

United States. That is clearly our objective. It is not to run programs, it is to achieve the end result of reducing drug use in the

United States. In this context, the Department of Defense plays a

critical role in the Strategy by disrupting the market for illegal

drugs and also through an internal demand reduction program that

has made a tremendous difference within the Department of Defense.

The fiscal 2006 request from the Department of Defense, almost

$900 million, will continue to fund an array of effective programs

that support the National Strategy. Moreover, they are vital to

achieving the National Strategy. DOD provides essential planning,

command and control, communication, intelligence, and integrated

op functions that are the core of national counterdrug interdiction

efforts. But DOD does not act alone. DOD contributions are complemented with the special resources and capability of U.S. law enforcement and also our allies.

Put in this context, DOD’s unique capabilities cannot be replicated by any other department or agency. No organization in the

world can conduct the integrated intelligence planning and operations like the U.S. Department of Defense. No other U.S. agency

has the breadth of staff with the specialized capabilities. Highlighting this is the DOD-funded and principally staffed Joint InterAgency Task Force South, JIATF-South.

As indicated already, JIATF-South seized a record amount of cocaine this last year, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. They have

been seizing huge amounts of cocaine every year for the last 10 or

15 years. They are just getting better and better at it each year.

More so, JIATF-South is not just a center managed by DOD and

having interagency and international participation. It is a national

asset and it works. The unique cadre of dedicated, motivated, and

effective intelligence, planning, and operational staff focus on stopping the movement of cocaine toward the United States.

Most important, they just don’t do the mission, they achieve results, outstanding results. And that is what it is all about, to

achieve the results of our National Drug Control Strategy. We don’t

just want programs, we don’t just want funding, we want operational results like JIATF-South and DOD are achieving.

In Colombia, DOD has trained police, military, and also that is

achieving results. As indicated already, a lot of drugs seized in Colombia, but also the DOD-trained Colombian military has been

transformed from a defensive-minded military of 1999 into a force

capable of launching sustained and successful offensive operations

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throughout the country against the FARC narcoterrorists. This is

a dramatic change in just a few years.

In regard to Afghanistan, DOD is also playing a vital role in the

overall strategy, interfacing with Afghans, Department of State

programs, DEA, other Federal agencies, and also our coalition partners. The administration and also the Afghans’ plan really involves

five pillars: deterring poppy cultivation and heroin trafficking, justice and law enforcement programs, eradication, alternative livelihoods, and interdiction. In many ways, DOD is participating effectively in support of each one of those programs, although one can

argue DOD is not the lead for any one of them.

In conclusion, while at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, DOD has

remained committed to the counternarcotics mission and continues

to achieve real results. Moreover, DOD’s efforts cannot be replaced.

The efforts are critical in reducing the amount of illicit drugs entering the United States and also in denying millions of dollars of illicit drug profits that could find their way into narco or into terrorist hands. Efforts in Afghanistan, cocaine transit zone, detection

and monitoring and interdiction programs, intelligence programs,

training of Colombian military and police, domestic support to law

enforcement all contribute directly to disrupting the market for illegal drugs. All are critical elements in implementation of the National Drug Control Strategy.

Most importantly, DOD is simply not funding and executing programs, they continue to deliver results, and we would expect 2006,

when funded, would be no different that we would expect results.

Especially in the Western Hemisphere against the cocaine threat,

DOD programs, as requested in the 2006 budget request, should

continue to provide the critical element for reducing cocaine availability in the United States.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wolfson follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I thank you all.

I am going to try to divide up the questions a little bit, because

basically if you look at this, Northern Command basically has our

borders, Central Command is Afghanistan and the regions in that

zone, Southern Command has Colombia and the South American

and transit zone regions, Secretary Long is overseeing from the Department of Defense all the different operations, and Mr. Wilson is

over at the ONDCP trying to interrelate this with our overall National Drug Control Strategy.

First, let me kind of lay this statement out, because I want to

acknowledge that, in fact, we have been doing well among seizures,

and we should congratulate everybody who is doing well among seizures. Mr. Cummings has raised something that we are hearing on

the floor in an increasing pressure from Members of Congress,

which is why, if we are seizing all this, haven’t we seen a change

in supply and haven’t we seen a change in price and haven’t we

seen a change in purity, of which we have offered a number of

things.

Director Walters said a number of years ago we were turning a

corner, and if we didn’t see a turn soon, we have major, major problems—that would be basically next year—that we seem to have

learned what we didn’t know. In other words, there may have been

stockpiles, but the question is that we seem to be seizing more because we didn’t realize how much there was.

The question is are they also producing more or did we just not

realize how much they were producing, which becomes a relevant

question in the sense of—which many Members of Congress have

asked at this subcommittee year after year—is are the seizures just

a form of bad debts that the drug dealers take as a writeoff. In

other words, they figure we are going to get 5 percent. If we move

that to 6 percent, they just increase the amount they are growing.

Or, in fact, are we getting to some kind of a point where we come

to that tipping point that increased seizures put us over the top.

Now, the reason I say all this is because my questions are going

to be more on the difficult side, not praising those who have been

doing the interdiction. Because I appreciate that we are doing the

interdiction, but the fact is that we are being told that right now

we have more actionable intelligence than we have the ability to

respond to, which is a unique thing that we did not hear in this

committee in the past few years. In other words, we have now

learned that we can see the drugs coming into the United States

and we are not stopping them, as opposed to ignorance was bliss

before—they were coming in and we couldn’t see them. And part

of my opening statement was trying to reflect that knowledge, that

our intelligence and knowledge of what is coming.

Furthermore, as we try to sort through this different process, it

appears that in spite of reductions at least in the transit zone of

intelligence and in spite of holes in intelligence, much of this actionable intelligence is coming from one small agency, Panama Express, and that is what is providing a lot of our interdictions; it is

not all these other operations that we have been talking about

today. And that presents a challenge because it means that when

we look at this governmentwide, our interdictions may be up, but

it may be disguising actual cutbacks for whatever reason.

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So let me first start in the Western Hemisphere with Colombia

in particular.

I am going to diverge from where my questions were originally

going to go and let me ask Captain Turner this question. You, in

your statement, had quite a bit about extraditions and how important extraditions are in Colombia and how we have made progress,

talking about things are in the public record.

We now have people from our State Department and other people

in Colombia who have been picked up dealing, and the Colombians

are saying they should be treated under Colombian law. This is

going to be discussed in general. I have supported the military position that we have to be careful about not exposing our guys to

all sorts of harassment in countries around the world. Yet how are

we going to continue this extradition policy with the Colombians if

the Colombians see Americans dealing on their soil and then aren’t

held accountable by Colombian law? Could you elaborate any on

that thought? And Secretary Long too.

Captain TURNER. I appreciate the question, sir; it is a good one.

Those instances you talk about are presently under investigation,

and that is about as much as I know. I know as much as you do,

sir, I think on as far as where that is, and I can’t tell you anymore

than that. Regarding extradition, that is really out of my bounds

as far as an operator. Those get into policy issues that I can’t really

answer for you, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Secretary Long, do you know anything on how we

are going to approach if people in American armed forces violate?

We had a little bit of this in Okinawa, but in our area here, in narcotics, it is really going to complicate our extradition life if we tell

countries they have to extradite to the United States, but we won’t

allow American citizens who have been drug trafficking on their

soil to be prosecuted.

Ms. LONG. Thank you. I am going to refrain from commenting on

any specific instances, as you well know, that are under criminal

investigation, but I think it is important to point out several

things. While there have been some recent unfortunate instances

of military and other personnel in Colombia who were engaged or

apparently engaged in activity, these have been the exception over

a very long period of time.

So to compare them, as some in Colombia want to do, with the

extradition procedures that they have with the United States for

long-term, high level narcoterrorists I believe is inappropriate; and

I think, from a policy perspective, that we should refrain from

drawing those parallels. They are inappropriate.

To the extent that I am aware, these are individual allegations

of some low level involvement, they do not in any way rise to the

very high level, very complex and well negotiated positions the U.S.

Government and the Colombians have taken, which is that those

at the highest level of the FARC and the other threats to the Colombian democracy will be extradited, when appropriate and extradition is requested by the U.S. Government.

That is not the case in these instances, and I would fear discussing them in terms of that, and I feel fairly assured that whatever

problems we may have in our countries in which we operate, they

will not rise to that level, sir.

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Mr. SOUDER. We may have followup questions as we find the extent of it. I understand the basic principal, and it certainly would

not be compared to the primary cartel leaders. At the same time,

we extradite more than just cartel top guys.

In the Western Hemisphere—maybe, Secretary Long, you could

start—given the increased demands of the Department and some

reluctance, of which you have been a champion of keeping the Department more aggressively involved in narcotics, but how do you

see the Department of Defense role on things like the aerostats and

other things? Do you believe more of that ought to be transferred

over to the Department of Homeland Security? Clearly, we are

looking at pressure in Iran; we are looking at pressures in Korea,

all around the world. Is it realistic to expect the Department of Defense to continue as the lead agency in a lot of providing this intelligence?

Ms. LONG. I think, sir, that while some people have taken the position that the Department was reluctant to engage in

counterdrugs, that is clearly not the case now. In fact,

NORTHCOM, under the very fine leadership of that combatant

commander, as well as the Secretary, are absolutely committed,

particularly in North America, in our home, of making sure that

we do everything—and that means everything possible—to protect

the American citizens not only from the drugs that are coming

across our shores, but from all transnational threats.

And one of the things I think the Department has discovered perhaps post-September 11th, as the rest of the Government has discovered, is that the traditional stovepipes and separation of military, law enforcement, and who does what where aren’t going to

fulfill that task in the way that we are going to need to have it fulfilled.

In pursuance of that, the Department has reached out and is

working very closely, I believe, with the Department of Homeland

Security, our own Department of Homeland Defense, with DEA,

with law enforcement in attempting to come together with an absolutely integrated approach to securing our borders not only from a

narcotics perspective, but from a homeland security and defense

perspective.

To the extent that any of those functions, once integrated, are

more appropriately law enforcement functions, I think it is absolutely appropriate that those functions be headed by the appropriate law enforcement agency; and to the extent that those are national security and functions that are militarily unique, I think

they should remain with the Department of Defense.

But I guess my point would be I don’t think the Department is

looking for a turf battle. I think what we are looking for is the best

integrated approach, and that we are willing and looking forward

to working with our law enforcement partners to get the right mix.

Mr. SOUDER. I am not interested in a turf battle either. I am interested in assigning whose turf it is on.

Captain Turner, has the Department of Defense or SOUTHCOM

requested additional money for the aerostats in the area that we

are completely blind on the Gulf or on the eastern side of Florida?

Captain TURNER. As any agency would attest, more resources

would be better. Of course that would be the case. With the inteVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:03 May 07, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24844.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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grated systems that we have, the ROTHR—the Relocatable Overthe-Horizon Radar—in conjunction with the ground-base radar programs that we have developed within the partner nations which we

are actually working to sustain over time so that the partner nations can take over. The integration of that system and with the

sharing ability that we have put in place, the architecture that we

are putting in place is creating a fusion of effort.

Certainly resources could be provided for that we could work, but

we want to concentrate, from my perspective and SOUTHCOM’s

perspective, try to get to the threat as far away from our shores

as possible. So we have concentrated more to the south of that to

intercept those particular threats as far south as we can, and that

is our particular goal, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, let me see the chart up there. And I want to

say up front Congress bears part of this responsibility because they

did not give adequate funding for the aerostats at different points.

My question at this point is you can see where it was as it moved

to the Department of Defense. The fact is while we have multiple

ways of tracking ways and different things, we can see where the

planes are and we can see our gaps in the system. Those gaps are

public because it is unclassified information that is in front of you.

We have charts that have been shown at our hearings that show

the drugs flowing from Colombia over in the Cancun area of Mexico

and the eastern side, and you see all this red, and we see it coming

up the northern border. But part of the reason we don’t see any

arrows coming up the Gulf Coast is we don’t have the slightest

idea, and you can’t publish a chart that shows where the drugs are

going if you don’t have an idea whether any planes or boats are in

that area, because we can see them and then they are gone.

So the question is repeated, have you requested additional money

for aerostats? And if not, why not? And what do we need to do to

close some of that gap? Not to mention the fact that I had one of

the heads of BP Petroleum tell me that they are looking in that

area south of New Orleans and east toward the panhandle of Florida, out 100 miles, as possibly the biggest oil find, bigger than

Saudi Arabia. We are going to have all those oil derricks out there

and we don’t know what is going on in that area.

And the question is are we going to request something? Is there

going to be something? If the Department of Defense is going to

take the lead, this becomes a huge homeland security question as

well, with the all the oil derricks out there. And the question is if

the Department of Defense isn’t going to request it, then why

shouldn’t it be over in the Department of Homeland Security, because somebody has to request something.

Ms. LONG. Mr. Chairman, if I might interrupt for just one moment.

Mr. SOUDER. Yes, Secretary.

Ms. LONG. I believe NORTHCOM has some interesting insights

on this issue, and then I can close the loop.

Mr. SOUDER. Yes, I guess actually it is more NORTHCOM in this

case, once you get up to aerostats. I apologize for that.

Captain TURNER. But, sir, if I could, before we transit——

Mr. SOUDER. You are going to have it out when it is out 100

miles.

56

Captain TURNER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. But who is going to have it at the border?

Captain TURNER. What this does not show is the ROTHR coverage that we have as well. If you are going to make this chart

really complete, I believe it would have to show all our radar capabilities, which would include the ROTHR, which is significant.

Mr. SOUDER. I have to say, though, that when I have gone to the

areas and you are watching, that may be true and either one or

two things is happening: either agencies aren’t sharing intelligence,

which is another problem, or, in fact, it covers part of that, but not

the zone that we have. Because in the Joint Intelligence Centers

which are kind of known entities, the fact is that we are blind in

some areas; we aren’t in the places and we lose them. We have

ways to pick them up again, but we spend a lot more money trying

to pick them up again than it would take to not lose them.

Colonel NELSON. Mr. Chairman, to address your question about

TARS from a NORTHCOM perspective, that is part of the U.S.

NORTHCOM AOR. It is actually a NORAD managed system; it is

part of our binational arrangement with Canada, U.S. Northern

Command through continental air defense region, and Tyndall Air

Force Base receives those feeds from the Tethered Aerostat Radar

Systems.

Department of Defense has directed that we maintain status quo,

and we have planned on maintaining the system until such time

as we desire to upgrade to a system called the wide area surveillance system, to increase our coverage at low, slow flyers below

2000 AGL. It is more reliable, not necessarily relied upon good

weather conditions.

As you are probably well aware, during high wind situations we

have to take the tethered aerostat system down, so that also presents gaps in seams as well. So we believe that the solution longterm is the wide area surveillance system to provide better coverage for the area in question.

Mr. SOUDER. And what is the timetable for that?

Colonel NELSON. Right now, I know it is programmed, but I will

have to get the specifics on that for you.

Ms. LONG. Mr. Chairman, if I might add, as you well know, years

ago when the Department took over the Tethered Aerostat Radar

System, there were various times in its development when it was

considered that the system in its entirety be provided to the homeland defense, and it is my understanding that the homeland defense did not have the funding nor the expertise in order to maintain the systems and, in fact, had contemplated in their assumption of the system actually turning it back over to the Air Force

and having the Air Force assist them with the system, which didn’t

seem to make much sense from a taxpayer and national security

perspective.

I can tell you, sir, that even in the last months, as part of a

homeland defense, homeland discussions of our overall air and

maritime awareness picture for the United States, we have reexamined the Tethered Aerostat Radar Systems as part of this overall framework which NORTHCOM is advocating, looking at even

the possibility of upgrading, making tweaks to the system while we

are waiting for the other system to come online.

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I don’t have a timeframe for you, but it is something that we are

painfully aware of, as well as we are painfully aware of that with

the increased derricks and oil gas activity in the Gulf, maybe even

the traditional radar system isn’t going to be sufficient because we

end up with so many bogeys, if you will, with planes and helicopters flying into those platforms.

So we are taking a look at it from a defense perspective and

working with homeland defense and homeland security to make

sure that where we know there are gaps—and these are gaps, you

are absolutely right, sir—that we are working to address them.

Mr. SOUDER. And we have looked at ROTHR radar in different

places—South America has been my most exposure to that—there

are different things you are looking for for long-haul flights and

short-haul hops; what the altitude is, what the speed is, very precise information as they near the border. It is a little different than

when we have the entire Caribbean with which to catch them.

It is a whole other thing when they are about to come into the

United States and we want to know precisely where they are landing, what altitude they are, how fast they are coming, because they

are headed to local law enforcement. It is not a theoretical person

coming in somewhere from Colombia, it is a very precise thing we

are trying to nail. And, also, while they do try to fly in stormy

weather, the fact is that if you can’t get an aerostat up, it is also

harder to move these small planes around, and they become more

conspicuous when they are landing because there is less activity in

many of those areas because the same thing that makes it difficult

for the aerostat makes it difficult for small planes. Not to say that

drug guys aren’t going to try to hop that, or terrorists, obviously,

whenever we are dealing with it.

And I want to make it clear, as will become clear in my questions

and in my past comments it is certainly true, Department of Homeland Security I am not always pleased that they don’t divert from

narcotics as well. So it isn’t a given place where it is going to be

better for narcotics having the resources, which agency should have

the resources. What we want is an agency that isn’t going to divert

them, is going to understand that homeland security is a part of

this, but narcotics are a key part.

Captain Turner, if you could talk a little bit about the P–3 hours,

because P–3s also serve actionable intelligence, in addition to

broader intelligence, and our ability to interdict as it moves. I don’t

think we have any disagreement that the farther away we can get

the drugs, if we can eradicate it, that is our first choice, if we can

get it before.

But as it moves closer to us, we need to have higher odds of

interdicting, because now it is basically a skate, it is a skate the

eradication, it is a skate the transit inside Colombia; it is now

headed to the United States. And the Navy has played an absolutely critical role in having adequate resources over time to act on

the actionable intelligence, and yet that is where we have seen the

declines in this transit zone.

Could you address some of that and how you intend to make up

for some of these gaps of the things that we now see moving toward

ups?

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Captain TURNER. Yes, sir. Certainly, the loss of the legacy aircraft, the P–3—and it is a legacy aircraft, and that is predominantly why we have seen such a decrease in its numbers, but that

is worldwide. It is an MPA platform that has seen its best time,

and we have realized that from across the DOD spectrum, that the

P–3 has been radically cut in deployment across the globe. And the

Navy is aggressively working for replacement of that aircraft.

In the meantime, we have addressed our concerns with interagency partners, the customs, of course, the custom P–3s, as well

as looking for other assets that can support that internationally,

deployment of Nimrods is very important to us, as well as looking

for other sources perhaps at some other platform that could fill

that gap.

This is a constant concern on our end, and we work very closely

with the interagency aspect—whether it is Coast Guard, Customs,

and the international community—to help with this concern. But

this is a legacy aircraft that was on its way out, and the Navy is

working to replace that particular aircraft.

Mr. SOUDER. You said it is system-wide. If you were to compare

the execution orders of last year and this year, what percentage reduction would we see in DOD aviation assets dedicated to the

counterdrug mission in the Western Hemisphere?

Captain TURNER. Well, you are looking at one platform, sir, and

there are many platforms out there that are just as important. For

instance, the AWACS was mentioned earlier. The numbers that

were given representative of the AWACS we just got back in

SOUTHCOM deployment in support of the CDX order that we

have. AWACS just came back into our theater at the end of November. Thanksgiving was its first deployment date. That was one aircraft. So the numbers that you see for 2004 reflect only 1 month

of activity.

In March we got our second AWACS. What this has allowed is

that in support of air bridge denial program, we can put an

AWACS up for that and redirect the Customs aircraft that were

completing that mission to support the MPA deficiencies that we

have. So it is an efficiency of assets and resources that we are

working with here.

Mr. SOUDER. So I interpret your question—to paraphrase Mark

McGuire—you are not here to talk about the past, what you are

saying is that lots of drugs got through last year, but this year you

are going to do more because you have the AWACS?

Captain TURNER. Well, sir, it was a record year last year, so——

Mr. SOUDER. Not a record year for percentage. In other words,

percentage of what we saw we got less. What we got was——

Captain TURNER. Are you talking about the intel aspect of this?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes. In other words, we saw last year more than

we ever saw before and got less of a percentage of what we got.

We got more, but that is like saying a baseball player got 100 hits

and the next year he got 150 hits, but 1 year he had 300 at bats

and the next year he had 500 at bats. He had 500 chances to get

it, he got 150, but that means your batting average has dropped.

And I am not criticizing the men and women of the armed forces,

I am just saying what we see—as a practical matter, what we

know on the streets is that more must be coming in because we are

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interdicting more and the price and purity isn’t, and the ONDCP

is saying that drug use is down somewhat.

So if drug use is down, price and purity are there—drug use at

least in marijuana is down—that we have some kind of a mismatch

in the numbers. And part of the question is if everything was going

this great, we wouldn’t need the AWACS back there. Clearly, we

had them diverted. What we are trying to establish is in the multitasking of missions, when you move AWACS away, when assets

that are older are declining, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t

say we are covering everywhere in the world with less and an

equal amount. We made certain decisions in the United States that

we were going to move AWACS and other things to higher priority

targets. In that period we did the best we could in narcotics. And

now we are moving those assets back because we don’t need them

in another place. Isn’t that what you just said?

Captain TURNER. Well, sir, we are getting our AWACS, but it is

the first time since September 11th that we have gotten AWACS

back, and that is a true statement, yes, sir. And what we are also

seeing is the intel infrastructure that we have put in place, the assets that we are putting toward intel, the collection of the intel information, the analysis of the information is giving us a better

product; and it is right, we are seeing more now, and that is because of many years of building to this point. Also, we have more

DOD assets in there. EP–3, EC–130, C–26, CSS, ARL, these are all

assets that we are now, from a DOD perspective, putting into the

fight, and we are seeing more, yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. And what we are in effect saying is that, to some

degree, if we are seeing more, we want to get it, and how can we

get precise as we get more intelligence to try to—because in the

Navy we also have a fundamental question of, in addition to the

air assets, are water assets, which are critical in our ability to execute. Have you seen a change in any of the oilers, other types of

assets that the Navy Department uses to assist?

Captain TURNER. No, sir. That has been pretty steady state. We

have been receiving the requested amount of surface assets and we

are pretty much steady state as far as our maritime assets go.

What you have seen is a depreciation in one particular asset, and

that is the P–3, is the concern.

Mr. SOUDER. And you don’t have the numbers for how much it

went down?

Captain TURNER. Of the P–3? What numbers you stated are true.

Mr. SOUDER. OK, thank you.

Let me move briefly to Captain Stahlman for Central Command,

and once again, Secretary Long, if you have comments. I have a

couple of kind of fundamental questions.

You stated in your testimony that there were three different

groups that were threats to stability in Afghanistan. How do you

think these different groups are funded? In other words, as these

groups exist and as groups that exist to destabilize Afghanistan,

since they don’t seem to have much of another economy and since

we shut down the finances, isn’t it logical to assume that the heroin is likely to be their fundamental funding source?

Ms. LONG. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Actually, we have spent a considerable amount of time in the last months developing intelligence,

60

and I think it has come to support in many respects what appears

to be a common sense conclusion: that when you have an economy

that is upwards of 60 percent, either directly or indirectly, narcotics-driven, that anyone operating in the area in practically any

kind of commercial transaction or activity is at least in some respects deriving if not direct benefit, indirect benefit from the sale

of drugs.

The Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, the HIG, as you are aware and

the Taliban and some of the other terrorist organizations, we have

been developing linkages between those organizations and narcotics organizations. Because we are an open forum, I will leave it at

that. The ties with al Qaeda may be less strong, and we are still

developing those, but importantly, and I think the point that you

are attempting to make, warlordism and other insurgents or other

anti-government groups are getting their funds and support from

somewhere, and I think it is logical to conclude that they are at

least in part narcotics-driven.

Mr. SOUDER. And I understood, Captain Stahlman, did you say

the first raid was in March?

Captain STAHLMAN. The first raid for the NIU, their first operational mission was March 15th, yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. And what are we to do before March 15th?

Captain STAHLMAN. Sir, we were developing a capacity with the

Afghanis for the capability to do this. The U.K. was working with

the Afghan special police units creating that capacity and essentially we had a new Afghani government in place in December, and

these were the first organizations that were in there available to

them under their forestructure to conduct these kinds of missions,

sir.

Mr. SOUDER. We have somewhat of a policy difference here—I

appreciate that the administration is evolving with this, but let me

ask Mr. Wolfson do you agree with the basic thrust that seems to

be out of the Defense Department and, to some degree, the State

Department, as they approach Afghanistan, that before we arrest

any inner-city kids in the United States, we ought to have an alternative development program and they ought to have jobs that are

well paying, or do we treat American citizens different than we

treat people overseas?

Mr. WOLFSON. Clearly, the Afghan situation with the economy

and the desperate situation after literally 20 years of destruction

is a unique situation. Per capita income in Afghanistan is a little

over $200 a year. The people are desperate. Clearly, there are some

individuals that emphasize the essential need for alternative development before you enforce the rule of law.

Our view is there has to be a combined effort; you have to raise

the deterrence, for instance, of eradication and blend that with an

appropriate level of alternative livelihood. You can’t just go out

there and suspect that you are going to ever, either with U.S. funding or international funding, find enough money to give everyone

in Afghanistan a better job.

Mr. SOUDER. I don’t have them in front of me, but I am happy

to look up and put into the record administration statements about

how we view the Taliban and not cracking down on heroin. We

didn’t say, by the way, Taliban, create a bunch of alternative develVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:03 May 07, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24844.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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opment, we said stop the heroin. And I am not arguing we don’t

do alternative development, but 60 percent of minority males in

many urban areas don’t have a job. That is roughly the same as

Afghanistan. Different standard of living comparisons, but we don’t

say we are not going to arrest somebody on the street corner until

they have an alternative job in the United States.

And I am not arguing we shouldn’t do alternative development.

What I am arguing is that Colombia, which has been heralded as

a reasonably good example and a very tough neighborhood where

I believe a 200-year democracy has been more or less destabilized

by our drug habits in the United States and Europe, and you all

are trying to train people who have had a history of a democracy—

shaky democracy, but probably the most steady in that whole region—where they have a police department, they understand the

difference between a police department and a defense department

in Colombia. We are now going into a country where they have

none of that and we are saying we are not going to eradicate until

they have alternative development, until they have stood up their

police department? I mean, this may take 50 years.

Now, I believe President Karzai is absolutely committed to trying

to do what he can. Realistically, you know full well we don’t control

the ground there, we own the ground there; that the DEA can’t go

into operations without the military protecting them, the State Department can’t fly in there and eradicate without our military protecting them. They don’t have black hawks. Colombia has black

hawks of their own; Colombia has trained military operations. And

we need to train the Afghans as far as we can.

But, meanwhile, the standard with which we held the Taliban,

who never allowed this much heroin, as the U.S. military allowed

on our watch—the Taliban never allowed that. We yelled at them,

we screamed at them, we said eradicate it. And when it came to

our government, we say, well, it is complicated; we have to work

this through; they need to have alternative crops. This used to be

the bread basket of the world. They can plant other crops now.

The king told us multiple times in meeting with him in Rome

and in Afghanistan that this area can grow other crops, it has

grown other crops. They can’t make as much money with other

crops. That is the problem. It isn’t that they need an alternative

development; they need to grow wheat like they used to grow

wheat, but they can’t get the same amount.

So what is the double standard in the United States? We tell

kids, well, you can’t make as much at McDonald’s as you do selling

cocaine, so until you can make as much in a job selling cocaine?

They can grow other things. These fields that grow heroin can grow

other things. There is a market for food. We are having to import

food in.

I am seeing a disconnect with this, and part of it is we can’t tackle the heroin problem without the military. And I understand it is

an awkward position for CENTCOM and our government to be flying around the country and to do that, but we have spent $343 million to eradicate 2 tons, to get rid of 2 tons, basically. That is a

very costly rate. It is a start, and I want to applaud you on a start,

but it has to go faster, and you can’t do it with three DEA agents

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and a little tiny task force tackling the biggest heroin production

in the world.

Then, in your testimony you talk about the money being spent

in Azerbaijan. Why are we spending money in Azerbaijan? Because

we screwed up in Afghanistan, now the heroin is moving across,

leaving a path of destruction as it moves through Uzbekistan and

Kazakhstan and into the Balkan region, where everybody realizes

it is mostly going to go into Europe and probably squeeze more Colombian heroin back into the United States. This is a huge problem, and we have to, I believe, push at, at least, double, triple,

quadruple the efforts you are going. I am not arguing that you

haven’t made a start. I am still upset about the past, because it

is there, and it isn’t a matter just going, hit a lab or two, it is hit

the cotton-picking stockpile; not as an afterthought on a raid where

you happen to see it, go find it and hit it.

Secretary Long.

Ms. LONG. I just want to correct what appears to be perhaps a

misperception, and perhaps we have been less than diligent in explaining the administration’s position. It certainly isn’t my understanding of the administration’s position or the Department’s position that we are waiting to interdict drugs or make arrests until

alternative livelihood or economic alternative programs are in

place.

And in fact, the U.K., as lead nation, has been undertaking interdiction, and very successful ones, for some time now. And it did

take longer than it should have for us to stand up the National

Interdiction Unit, but it is stood up and operating.

One of the problems and the tensions that exists, sir, is that in

a country like Afghanistan, where you don’t have a judicial system

and no capability to arrest individuals, you are sort of in a catch–

22 with interdiction activities. You can arrest the individuals and

destroy the drugs, but when you don’t have a place to even put

them or a system in which to put them, the effort becomes somewhat farcical at a certain state, and that is why we are attempting

to develop all the prongs of the five aspects of the program that Mr.

Wolfson pointed out in order to move these along in a coordinated

and integrated manner.

On the issue, however, of interdiction, your point is well taken

in that we need to interdict more. There is a problem with Afghanistan that is somewhat unique, and the king, as you pointed out,

I think may have jumped over a slight issue which is unique to Afghanistan, and that is, unfortunately, during the Soviet occupation

and thereafter, many of the farmers turned to opium and poppy

growth eventually and, in fact, their rents and mortgages were

based on poppy prices.

So they are in fact indebted to poppy, and, unfortunately, due to

the 20 years of destruction, there are no alternative financial resources for them to substitute that debt. And with the war prices

have increased, not only the prices of mortgages and rent, but foodstuff. So you have the farmer in a very vicious inflationary cycle,

where if he plants wheat—and you are entirely correct that at one

point this area in Central Asia was the bread basket—he will still

starve because he can’t make his basic payments or feed his family.

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That is not to say, sir, that eradication is not being pursued; it

is. The State Department, as you well know, is pursuing eradication, and the Karzai government has been adamant and

unfailingly supportive of all aspects of their counterdrug campaign,

and we are supporting them the best we can. But it is somewhat

complex, and we perhaps haven’t done a good job and we were a

little late getting started, as you pointed out, but I do believe that

the mix that we are examining and working every day is the appropriate mix by moving forward with all of these prongs at the same

time.

Mr. SOUDER. You raised a number of other issues. I think it is

important to point out that the amount of heroin that came out

since we removed the Taliban is more than 4 years previous. In

other words, for your theory to be financially an explanation, the

question is why was there so little production and why were there

zero years under the Taliban, and it happened 1 year? A second

part of that is to whom do they owe the debt, which is another fundamental question which means that basically we don’t control the

ground. What you are saying is that the heroin poppy people control the ground because they can still enforce those debts, which

any legal society would not honor because they are debts for peddling poison that murders people and based on a false premise.

And if in fact we controlled the ground and destroyed the assets,

and would 100 percent eradication, now you basically told me, what

I got out of that was alternative development isn’t really the problem here, it is dealing to the degree, what percent that is at debt

structure and an elimination of the drug lords who have a choke

hold and are not going to be impressed that they are now growing

wheat. It doesn’t change the debt question just by the fact that we

are going to push alternative development, because we will never

be able to retire that debt, the same holds true.

But it is interesting and it shows its complexity, but it addresses

the question of we have to get control of the ground, and without

getting control of the heroin, we are not going to get control of the

ground because the equipment they are purchasing with which to

shoot at the planes when we come in to eradicate, the equipment

they are purchasing increasingly to shoot at us as we go try to destroy a stockpile now that we have the will to do so, is being

bought with heroin money because they don’t have any other economy with which to buy it, and we have shut off their foundations.

So we have to get at the core of the heroin problem or we cannot

stabilize Afghanistan. And I understand it is a poor country and we

have to understand that.

On the other hand, that doesn’t give them the right to ship more

death out. We are going to have more death from the heroin coming out than we did on September 11th, and that is a tough statistic to handle, that there will be more deaths from the heroin coming out than happened on September 11th.

Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I very much regret that a

groundbreaking in the District and another hearing made it impossible for me to hear these witnesses, because this is an important

hearing and one I am particularly interested in, and I appreciate

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plexed by it and hope to learn something from the testimony. I certainly will take the testimony with me. But I do have a question

simply based on the explosion of poppy since we have occupied the

country.

It looks like we have gone from an Afghanistan we found as a

major supplier of terrorists to a major supplier of poppy and heroin. If history records that was a result of this heroic war, I think

we will have only ourselves to blame. We had to do what we did,

and America is grateful for what we did.

And the chairman asked, well, how come it exploded once we got

there. Well, of course, the Taliban would probably cutoff your

hands and everything else it could find. So we knew what kind of

society they were looking in, so we were on notice that if we wanted to keep things anywhere close to where they were, we would

have to try something very different in keeping with, of course,

their culture, but with our democratic mores.

I am concerned that, on Homeland Security Committee, for example, the way we are approaching WMDs is we want to keep—

we don’t talk about what happens when they get here, we talk

about what we should be doing abroad to make sure the explosives

on WMDs don’t get in cargo. Of course, when it comes to demand

for drugs, we are long past the point, and really lays the basis for

my question. I am very, very concerned that this word that is

thrown around, narcoterrorism, is something we don’t know what

we are talking about. We know that there is some illicit trade with

people who would be committed to terrorism going on. We know

that. We know that drug dealers often engage in other kinds of

trades. That is their MO. You don’t have to have ties to al Qaeda

to know where to sell the stuff.

So I am just very worried that all this word talk about

narcoterrorism doesn’t have anything under it, because we certainly wouldn’t be looking at the same places we look for terrorists.

These folks are out selling it, I am sure, in the way they sell drugs,

wherever they can, and in places that we would not suspect.

The warlords are the functional equivalent of kingpins here. We

always say we are trying to get them. We don’t do a very good job,

but at least we know that you have to go at them or you don’t do

anything. Very sensitive when you are talking about a foreign

country, and one that we have very good relationships with.

My question really goes to whether or not we have even found

our way to a military role here. That is not the kind of role we

have traditionally played, but the chairman’s memo describes statistics that lead me to believe this issue is so out of control that

we simply ought to face it and talk about a wholly different approach.

For example, if it is true that 87 percent of the world’s illicit

opium this year comes out of Afghanistan, with a $2.8 billion return, 60 percent of the GDP of the country, I would say this is so

far beyond us that it kind of looks like where we are in the innercities. You know, can we get rid of drugs in Harlem and Southeast

Washington? Yes, if this were 50 years ago.

It has gone so far that so many other issues that impinge on it

now, some of them the chairman has mentioned, you know, when

the economy of inner-cities went, jobs go offshore, a new economy

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set in, it was the drug economy. It looks like that is what happened

here big time.

I have to ask you whether or not there is any way short of an

explicit military role or, in the alternative—let me give the only

other alternative I can think of, one akin to what we do. We pay

farmers not to grow stuff. So the alternatives I see here is a much

more explicit military role, on the one hand, or, on the other hand,

real subsidies to the country so that, in fact, warlords and everybody else get some kind of legal tender, the rationale of which

would be not only will this hold them in place until we perhaps get

a real economy going there, but it will help us with the rest of the

world who gets the 87 percent of this narcotics traffic that we have

helped to create.

So I want to know if, with these figures, you see any alternatives

besides a more explicit larger military role or a huge subsidy role

of the kind that would hold the country until the economy got

going.

Ms. LONG. With your permission, Representative Norton, I will

take that on. I think that some of the questions that you point out

are particularly insightful, and those are ones that we discuss practically everyday as we all get together and talk about the various

roles that the Department, along with the other sister agencies, are

playing.

I do think the Department plays a critical role in interdicting

drug, monitoring and detecting drug movements into the Western

Hemisphere, in particular the cocaine, which is our principal concern, coming out of Colombia. And as you pointed out——

Ms. NORTON. Where does the 87 percent go, by the way?

Ms. LONG. I beg your pardon?

Ms. NORTON. Where does all this opium go?

Ms. LONG. I think the 87 percent that you are referring to is the

Afghan opium. Most of that actually goes to Europe and to Russia.

Thankfully, thus far, my understanding from DEA is that not

much, if any, of that opium has reached our shores, which brings

me to my point. We can’t abandon the effort in Afghanistan because, as the chairman pointed out, with such an explosion, the

market being as it is, it is our great fear that eventually such a

surplus may result in the opium products coming to the United

States.

I think——

Ms. NORTON. Or going to terrorists, who then shop it around

anywhere they can find.

Ms. LONG. That is correct, and are looking for easy means and

illicit means of support because it is easier. And, as we all know,

narcotics is a fast way to gain lots of money.

I think probably the answer is not to pay farmers. You might be

well aware that was an approach that was applied by the Colombians and actually was advocated at one point by some of our colleagues in Afghanistan, and what was found was when you pay a

farmer not to plant, he depends on that and may not be telling you

that he is planting elsewhere, and what it actually ended up resulting in was some misrepresentations in the reporting and not a substantive decrease in the actual plantings. The Karzai government

has been clear. Because of religious and other principles and moral

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values that they share with us, they are adamant that not only will

they not pay farmers not to plant opium and buy it, but, in fact,

the illicit use of opium worldwide wouldn’t lend itself to actual licit

production and utilization of the opium out of Afghanistan, it is

just too much.

I think——

Ms. NORTON. Nobody would plant it if you said don’t—well, if you

can’t police it, I can understand it, but nobody would say plant it

and then we are going to take it and do something. Are you suggesting plant it and then burn it or something? Because that is not

what I was suggesting.

Ms. LONG. Well, the alternative would be plant it and not take

it and allow the——

Ms. NORTON. Well, how about not planting it?

Ms. LONG. Well, actually, the U.K. also tried that, they paid

farmers not to plant in Afghanistan. They have tried various approaches, and that also didn’t work in that what the farmers did

was not plant where it was easily ascertainable, and then plant in

places that were further up in the hills; and the result was the increase that we are all seeing, at least in part.

So I think what the international community has come up with

is basically a better integrated effort: more participation by coalition members, including our allies; a stronger effort by the Karzai

government; and a stronger effort by the actual region to attack the

drug trade. It is critical—and I sense your frustration—to note that

the Karzai government really has been in office for less than a

year, and, in fact, their regional and their other elections are not

even coming up until this fall.

They have made tremendous strides, I believe, in the last year,

and I believe with the concerted effort of the integrated U.S. governmental entities that are working with the U.K.—the Italians,

the Germans and other coalition partners—that the better effort is

going to be the better integrated effort.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, that is my question. All I can say

is this jargon about integration still does not in fact say that there

is a strategy. With all due respect, this country is hooked on opium,

and I can only tell you if any sector, the way inner-cities, for example, are hooked on opium, once you get hooked on opium and opium

money, the notion of extracting people from that—at least if our experience in this country is any example—is virtually impossible.

I see this, frankly, getting worse over the years, not getting better without some fresh strategy that looks at a country that is now

so ensconced in opium production that without a radical new approach, just us all working together to do good things we have already done—if that is going to be our approach, Afghanistan will

look like the inner-cities of America, except they will be growing it

instead of simply distributing it.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

I wanted to comment briefly too that one thing about paying people not to grow wheat, for example, or corn as a legal substance,

so what happens sometimes is when you pay them not to, they

grow more of it, and that is likely what will happen here. As we

come up with alternative development, as we pay them not to grow

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it, other countries will start to grow it so they can be paid not to

grow it. And it is a problem in the agriculture area of the United

States, let alone worldwide.

I want to just make sure this is on the record. What I think personally is going to happen is that the world market can’t absorb

much more heroin than it is, although they will market it, so they

will warehouse it, and we will see 3 years of people coming up to

hearings telling us what a great job we are doing of eradicating

heroin in Afghanistan, and how we are doing such a wonderful job,

and we have seen the amount of heroin poppy decline not because

of anything we are doing, but because they have plenty of it.

So unless we go after the warehousing—and then 4 years from

now we will see another surge of planting because we haven’t dealt

with the fundamental question of if we see a poppy plant, we are

going to eradicate it and talk later. An aggressive interdiction

strategy, if we blow up the stockpiles, if we go after that—will send

a message of aggressiveness, and then we need to work at how to

help in alternative development and other areas.

Now, I have a couple of other questions for Mr. Wolfson. The National Interdiction Command and Control Plan is an interagency

effort that ONDCP coordinates. Since September 11th, we have the

whole rise of Customs and Coast Guard and DHS and a whole

changed landscape. What is the status of the National Interdiction

Command and Control Plan now, and what steps are you taking

to ensure that the new plan is sufficiently comprehensive, and do

you plan to issue it soon?

Mr. WOLFSON. Yes. Actually, we went through quite an evolution

to make sure it met all the different needs. And, as you point out,

there are competing requirements to make sure just the right level

of counterterrorism is in there, just the right level of drugs are in

there so that the correct latch-ups exist. We are at the point now

where the final version is actually available, and I would estimate

that it will actually be signed within the next couple of weeks.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Also, in the General Counterdrug Intelligence Plan, the last time a thorough one was pulled together was

under President Clinton, and you did an update in 2002 on the

progress of the original plan. Are you working also to review that

all-encompassing National Drug Counterdrug Intelligence architecture? We have passed legislation in Congress of concern about this.

We are dealing with this, the seemingly proliferation of agencies

that are collecting intelligence that will overlap with counterdrug

intelligence.

Mr. WOLFSON. The existing plan and the steps forward are being

reviewed. At this point I can’t tell you definitively what action is

being taken, but clearly that document, the original document, in

my recollection, just be 5 or 6 or 7 years old. It had something like

80 important issues that had to be addressed. Many of them were,

but I think we are reviewing what should be the appropriate next

steps.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

I also wanted to come back again to Captain Turner. In the first

quarter of 2005, what was the percent of air patrol hours provided

by DOD compared to what was provided by Homeland Security, do

you know?

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Captain TURNER. I don’t have that exact answer for you, sir. It

was less.

Mr. SOUDER. Can you get us a particular for the record?

Captain TURNER. Yes, we will give you that.

Mr. SOUDER. Also, was this a decrease or increase over 2004, if

you took it by quarter?

Captain TURNER. Are you talking about the ratio?

Mr. SOUDER. No. Ratio would be interesting, but I was more

wondering you said you have the AWACS back, but in your air patrol hours will the first quarter of 2005 show the changes? And I

didn’t think about the percentage. Is there also a percentage?

Would this alter the percentage too?

Captain TURNER. Yes, sir. And certainly with the AWACS back

it does increase the Custom Border Patrol aircraft usage for MPA,

as an MPA asset. And what I want to make clear is that it is an

integrated effort. JIATF-South takes its resources and best puts

them into the right mission mix, and that is why they are there.

And it is not a competing effort; we don’t compete with Department of Homeland Security, DOD. This is a team effort that JIATF

puts together and a coordinated effort that they take what they

have, whether it be international Nimrods, Customs P–3s, Navy P–

3s, Navy S–3 Vikings, whatever it is, the put those together to best

support their mission, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. I wasn’t really looking at it as competing. What I

think the data is likely to indicate—and we would appreciate the

supplemental data. There are two questions. If you take what you

have been putting in as raw hours, what DHS agencies are putting

in as raw hours, the DHS hasn’t been substantially increasing.

What has been happening is you have been decreasing. So we have

seen a percentage flow over to DHS.

And part of the question is, Mr. Wolfson, as you see this shift,

what are you proposing to do about it over in the drug czar’s office

from the supply interdiction question? Part of this may be because

post-September 11th we had assets that left because we needed

them in Iraq and Afghanistan, and none of us are going to put that

many troops in harm’s way and not have adequate intelligence. But

on the other hand, if Iran or Korea changes 6 months from now,

we are right back to where we were. What we have seen is a shift.

In this plan that you have coming out in a couple weeks, are you

addressing that question? Also, you said that you are looking at an

intelligence question. Is this one of the things you are looking at?

Because this has been a rather significant switch in percentage of

resources without increasing the resources at the Homeland Security side, but yet in creasing their percentage of the resources that

are out there.

Mr. WOLFSON. Let me add some general comments and then I

will try to answer your specific questions. Successful interdiction

over what amounts to 6 or 7 or 8 million square miles of ocean and

maybe 20 or 30 sovereign countries is terribly important.

We hope to have enough ships, enough aircraft to have blanket

coverage that will be in the right place at every time when a drug

shipment is moving. JIATF-South makes a every effective effort

trying to move assets around to be at the right place based on cued

intelligence. For this maritime problem, the cued intelligence is

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critical. You mentioned earlier one source of cued intelligence.

There are other sources that JIATF-South uses.

Regarding the specific assets, the way I would look at it is not

based on any decision, budgetary decision at Department of Defense, but more based, as indicated earlier, by the fact that the P–

3 asset themselves were just running out of available life expectancy. They had to cut back on P–3 hours. That was not really a

budget decision, appropriation decision, it was the asset that had

been used simply was not usable at the rate it was being used before for counternarcotics, or for any other purpose, for that matter.

What did occur is, as mentioned also, the maritime patrol portion

of the entire problem—you have to have the cued intelligence, you

have to get a ship and aircraft to the place where the target is expected to be, and then you also have to do an end-game. All three

of those have to be done in increasingly more effective levels to increase seizures. The maritime patrol portion was always a complement of DOD’s P–3s, also, to some extent, DOD’s P–2s, and Customs P–3s.

And in some ways the Customs P–3s has a better sensor suites

and in some ways can actually do some missions more effectively.

Last year, my recollection is that DHS actually increased the Customs P–3 hours for counternarcotics. Clearly, Coast Guard has put

more 130 maritime patrol hours on it, meaning the counterdrug

mission.

So even though DOD went down, there is an aggregate of maritime patrol capability for counternarcotics in this vast transit zone

that has been up to the task. Would we like more? Surely. But it

has been up to the task.

Mr. SOUDER. This is one of the things that we have been battling

over in the Department of Homeland Security Committee, what

constitutes terrorism hours, what constitute drug hours, when the

Coast Guard boats are pulled in, is the time steaming out into zone

and steaming back counted as counterdrug hours or not?

Clearly, last year was better than the year before, but I am interested in seeing the numbers that you have that show that the net

hours coming out of DHS that are specifically counterdrug related

have increased that substantially to offset the P–3. Obviously, we

have also had these discussions.

I remember now Speaker Hastert, when he headed this subcommittee, having discussions about what the military was going

to do to replace the P–3s nearly 10 years ago. This isn’t something

that we just came up and said, oh, this asset is declining, we suddenly have a problem. The question is you all are in charge of it.

What was your proposal to replace the P–3, not just to sit and ring

your hands and say, well, we don’t have the P–3? Who was responsible for saying—I mean, these assets were declining. Who was

coming forth and saying here is what we are going to replace them

with? As I asked the question about the aerostat, we know there

are problems with the aerostat. The answer to the question of the

replacement system is, well, maybe someday, we are not sure.

And when we see an asset declining over time, what it means

is—and I want to grant this absolutely for the record because this

absolutely needs to be praised—for a variety of reasons, the cooperation is a lot better. There is much less concern, when assets

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are down, as to who gets particular credit for a particular thing.

There is much more sharing of assets.

If somebody doesn’t have enough hours over here, all of a sudden

it is not who is going to get there first and we are going to run

two boats there, it is who has a boat that can run there. So partly

adversity has helped with it. Second, we have become better. We

should become better.

But the fact is that we are told that there is actionable drug

things that we aren’t seizing, and, no, we can’t get all of them, but

our goal should be to try to get as many of them as possible when

we can see them, and this is a relatively new phenomena that has

occurred that says now that we can see them and we are not getting them, and it should then be up to those who are in charge of

the antidrug efforts to come to us and say this is what we need in

order to do this. If, at the end of the day, we don’t have the appropriation dollars to do it and we say we can’t fund that because we

have these priorities and the American people have to make a decision, we are going to let this many boats go through without putting the assets to them because that money can be used in Head

Start, that money can be used in other projects, we have to do that.

But if you aren’t telling us precisely what you need to interdict

the assets, if you don’t come to us and say, look, here is what we

need to try to do the aerostats, here is what we need to try to figure out how to seize these different boats, here is what we need

to replace the P–3s—we are not going to have these P–3s.

Here is another aspect that is specific that we need in the drug

war, because what will happen is, with all due respect, inside DOD,

this is the challenge that Secretary Long has and that each of you

has, that inside DOD, we are the poor little sister at the table. And

when they are looking at designing a new platform in the miliary,

counterdrugs are not the primary thing that they are looking at.

And that comes back to the fundamental question of can the military really be in charge of this if what you are telling me is your

assets that you use are depleting, that you can’t get inside the

budget high enough priority to say what is going to replace it. Do

we have to have an agency that is more focused, where the drugs

aren’t the 20th priority, they are least in the top three?

On the other hand, you have the most assets. You have historically done this. I have tried to encourage you as much as possible

to take the leadership back, but it isn’t enough of an answer to say,

look, our assets are going down, we don’t have them. We have

known that for a decade. The question is what are we doing about

it.

Anybody have any comments on that you would like to address?

Captain TURNER. I know a little bit about the P–3 issue from

Naval aviation. I am exposed to it in some degree. And it was a

relatively quick phenomenon. When they established it, there was

a long, very concentrated test and assessment done on the aircraft

life, and that is where we took our hit. We took our hit when the

final assessment came out on the aircraft. It was a year and a half

ago, and they said we have to decrease the number of hours on

that platform by almost 50 percent a month. So that was a massive

decrease. And that decision happened over only a couple months.

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The Navy has been working toward getting a replacement MPA

aircraft for some time, as you described, and the P–3s were judged

to be able to fill that gap even though there was going to be some

decrease in their numbers, but not until they opened up the airplane and did that assessment did they determine that this aircraft

is going to become dangerous to fly. So it was a relatively quick reaction on the DOD’s part to cut back that.

We immediately, of course, went into the, OK, we have to replace

that particular platform and capability with international support,

Department of Homeland Security support. This is what we do.

And that is only one aspect of the counterdrug mission down there.

There is so much more than just the MPA asset that we deal with

and what DOD brings to the table on this, and we have described

a number of things that DOD principally brings to the table. We

are talking about one asset.

And we realize in naval aviation, where the money had to go to,

whether it is for F–18 ENFs by bringing up the MPA, that is where

it went. That is an internal Navy decision and that is their prerogative. We are constantly engaged with the services to provide the

capability that we require, and that is what we are going to continue to do.

Mr. SOUDER. I appreciate your comments, but I do think it is important to point out that as I have had the privilege to go with our

people in multiple locations, both in the United States in interdiction zones and in the transit zones, this equipment is old. This is

Vietnam War stuff in many cases, 1960’s plane. What you are telling me is we just discovered a year and a half ago that a plane

built in the early 1960’s is starting to wear out? That is ridiculous.

Captain TURNER. No, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Or what you are saying is they are wearing out

faster than you thought——

Captain TURNER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. Because somebody thought they were

going to have new platforms 5 years ago, so they kept using these

things at higher and higher intensity, more and more hours because we had multiple tasking. So the obsolescence that we passed

some time ago, when they went in to check, they discovered that

these things were basically dying, which we knew 10 years ago.

Now, the specific that you are referring to a year and a half ago

is how much time they precisely had left and how dangerous they

were to fly, but it doesn’t take too long flying in Colombia or in the

transit zone or along our border in some of these planes to realize

that many people would not get on that plane in the morning necessarily if they saw it at their airport.

What you all have done in the military has extended the life of

this stuff through incredible people working with these planes

through coming up with new types of stuff and take risks that average Americans wouldn’t take. But it isn’t a shock that all of a

sudden you have to cut back the hours of these things. They are

old. Some of them have been rehabbed and reclaimed to try to go

into the drug war.

And we want to get you better and more equipment, but to do

that there needs to be some specific requests and saying forthright,

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look, we don’t have enough stuff here. And trying to come up with

all kinds of explanations.

I am not arguing that you don’t do a great job with old assets

that you are stitching together. The problem is, much like the

Coast Guard, we can’t expect the Coast Guard to guard the port,

be out in the middle of the Caribbean, by the way, catch every sailboat that turns over and every fishery, but with the same number

of boats. We have to face it here, we either have to prioritize some

of the missions, in which case we argue about prioritizing missions,

or get them more boats.

Same thing with you all. If you have multiple missions and we

need something to do the intelligence for the drug zone, we need

to get the platforms to do it or we need to figure out the agency

that is going to be responsible for that, get them the platforms, or

acknowledge publicly that we can’t stop a big percentage of this

stuff.

And then the question is—if I can make a last editorial comment—we doggone better not, well, cut back local and State law

enforcement in the budget and get rid of Safe and Drug-Free

Schools money, because if we aren’t going to be able, as Mr.

Wolfson has eloquently said, to stop all this stuff, we better not be

wiping out our local guys who are trying to stop it once it gets

through.

With that little editorial comment, does anybody want to have—

I very much appreciate your coming. It is not easy to come up,

when you are struggling with so many different tasks in the budget, and defend and explain everything you are doing. Our job in

this committee is to make sure the war on drugs and the efforts

on narcotics do not get ignored as we are tackling other types of

things.

As we all know, in the budget process these things go up and

down, and 1 year it is gangs, another it is missing children, and

then we are at war and then everything is terrorism. But the war

on drugs is a constant, and we have to stay vigilant with it or it

just overwhelms us, and then we spend 3 or 4 years trying to catch

up.

Anybody have any closing comments you want to make?

Ms. LONG. On behalf of the panel, Mr. Chairman and your staff,

I want to compliment you on your excellent efforts in this arena.

The Department of Defense is committed to our counterdrug programs and our counterdrug operations, and I think the alternative

view of some of the points you just raised are because the Department does have so many anti-smuggling, detection and monitoring,

and intelligence, and infrastructure, communications—and all

those things that we all know about—capabilities, that it is my job,

quite frankly, as Deputy Assistant Secretary, to make sure that I

leverage all the resources of the Department in an effective way in

order to further this mission. It is an important mission.

I am painfully aware that every year that a greater number of

people in the United States die from drug overuse or drug-related

problems than were killed in the September 11th bombings, and

you have both my support and the Secretary’s support in making

sure the Department plays its role and that we continue giving you

the adequate support and giving our sister agencies the support

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that they deserve, they need, and they require to perform this function.

Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank all of you for your efforts, and I am sure

we will continue to ask questions both formally for this hearing,

some written questions, but also in the regular give and take, and

I appreciate your coming today.

With that, the subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:40 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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