by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
The numbers speak for themselves.
Between Feb. 12, 2000, and March 18, 2004, there were 136 boat seizures . . . 547 arrests . . . 263 tons of cocaine seized or lost at sea . . . and $3.94 billion in cocaine that had been headed to the United States from Colombia.
When it comes to stemming the tide of narcotics coming into this country, law enforcement officers are trying to hold back the ocean.
“One of the things you find out about drug activity is it’s tied to so many other crimes” — terrorism, violent crime and public corruption, Jim Klindt, first assistant U.S. attorney for Florida’s Middle District, said.
Klindt was the featured speaker at this month’s regular lunch meeting of the Jacksonville chapter of the Federal Bar Association, held at the Omni.
One of the “newer and more effective drug investigations” employed to fight drug traffickers is Operation Panama Express, said Klindt. With headquarters in Tampa, the operation, which began Feb. 12, 2000, has become “a model for interagency cooperation,” he said.
“As part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, state, federal and local agencies get together,” said Klindt. “There’s special funding for them, and they try to cooperate with each other in the investigation of illegal drugs.”
The task force include personnel with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FBI, U.S. Coast Guard and Joint Interagency Task Force.
Klindt touched on the arrests and trials of several high-profile drug traffickers who were involved in the trade locally and internationally. But he devoted much of his talk to the case of Jose Castrillon-Henao, who had been “the leading transporter of cocaine” for the Cali Cartel, which led the drug trade in Colombia after the Medellin Cartel was dismantled.
“As you find out in the illegal drug trade, transporting the drugs from Colombia to the United States, or to whatever country you’re sending them, is the challenge,” said Klindt.
Castrillone was jailed in Panama in 1998 on drug and finance-related crimes, he said. Panamanians were concerned that Castrillone would buy his way out of jail and passed a special law to expel him. The United States was waiting at the airport to give him a ride to Tampa, Klindt said.
The Panama Express operation got its name from the route Castrillone took to the United States.
Castrillone had operated a fleet of “fast boats” and large fishing vessels and used the eastern Pacific to smuggle cocaine from Colombia to Central America and Mexico, he explained.
He placed trawlers along the route to act as “roving gas stations,” said Klindt. “The go-fast boats would go from gas station to gas station until they unloaded their cocaine in Mexico or Central America.
“He never lost a load of cocaine during all the years he was the main transporter for the Cali Cartel. We wanted him on our team.”
Jailed in Tampa, Castrillone faced “some very serious” drug charges filed by U.S. authorities, was the target of charges worldwide and was the subject of continuing investigations in this country and by the CIA.
“We convinced him to cooperate,” said Klindt . “He’s helped us not only in the eastern Pacific, but in the Caribbean.
“He’s helped us with our intelligence and helped us with routes of cocaine, the methods of smuggling and with “a very successful ongoing interdiction program.”
After totaling all the arrests and tons of seized cocaine, “I thought we must be really making an impact here,” said Klindt. “Castrillone said we’re probably getting 12 to 15 percent of the cocaine that’s leaving Colombia.
“We have the intelligence, and we have the capability of tracking these loads. But with the military also fighting the war on terror and the war in Iraq, we don’t have what it takes in terms of the access at sea to interdict them as we need to.”
Critics of the operation say only the “worker bees” are being caught while the leaders slip away, he said.
“That’s not exactly accurate,” Klindt added. “We get a lot of cooperation . . . through sentencing guidelines and use it to build additional cases.
“What we’ve learned over the years is that most big cases started as small cases. You try to work them up, but you don’t hit a home run every time.”
However, officials feel they have hit a home run with Operation Panama Express.
“What it does is take the trafficker out of his or her home country,” said Klindt. “It eliminates the corruption , the violence and the protection of the home country.
“Once the illegal drugs enter the United States, you have all these other problems to try to enforce the drug laws in such a large country. But if you can catch them with the dope out at sea, where they don’t have any place to go, then you can really make a dent.”