Pentagon Said to Reject Bigger Anti-Drug Role

WASHINGTON —  The Defense Department has rejected a White House plan for the military to take a new leadership role in the war against drugs, setting back Administration efforts to give fresh impetus to a lagging program, according to senior officials.

The refusal leaves stalled a proposal by the White House Office of Drug Control Policy that would have created a unified military authority to coordinate most U.S. counter-narcotics operations in Central and South America. It also raises renewed questions about the Pentagon’s commitment to anti-drug efforts.

With new obstacles threatening progress made after President Bush escalated the drug fight, the Pentagon posture disappointed officials who had hoped that a military-style battle plan would help the Administration wage a more effective campaign.

“I do not understand why they can’t act a little more forward-looking,” one senior Administration official complained.

The Pentagon had jumped to the forefront of the drug fight three years ago in a burst of enthusiasm sparked by concern that its traditional war-fighting mission was evaporating with the sudden decline of the Soviet threat.

Its reluctance now to take on a bigger role was described by senior government sources as a consequence, in part, of the Persian Gulf War, which made some military officers scornful of mere anti-drug operations. But it was said to reflect also a Pentagon wariness about becoming too closely identified with the failure to make inroads against a potentially intractable problem.

The rejection of the plan by the Pentagon deprives the White House of what had been envisioned as the centerpiece of its fourth annual anti-drug strategy, to be unveiled at a news conference today.

In a separate case of wrangling within the Administration, another high-profile White House proposal--to make public a most-wanted list of the nation’s top drug criminals--also was turned down, in this case by Atty. Gen. William P. Barr.

Barr, who blocked the plan during a meeting of the White House Domestic Policy Council, was said to have been concerned that such high-profile publicity could undermine law enforcement efforts aimed at cracking the drug rings.

What remains intact of the new anti-drug strategy, to be released by Bob Martinez, director of the Drug Control Policy office, includes an unexceptional call for a 6% increase in federal funding on counter-narcotics operations, with much of the spending directed toward efforts to crack down on large drug organizations.

Coming in the wake of disappointing news on the drug front, the unveiling of the strategy also is expected to be marked by Administration efforts to claim new successes.

At a news conference today, Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan plans to release a new survey of high school seniors showing declines in their use of drugs and alcohol, a glimmer of good news in contrast to studies last year that showed new increases in cocaine and heroin use among hard-core addicts.

As the Administration broadens its focus from the stubborn area of drug use, the strategy will propose for the first time plans to discourage use of alcohol among underage minors.

Also, to stir new enthusiasm for its three-year-old “Andean strategy,” the White House plans to convene a drug summit next month in San Antonio. Bush would meet there with the leaders of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and other Latin American nations to urge increased cooperation in anti-drug efforts.

But in its renewed bid to fulfill Bush’s inaugural vow that “this scourge will end,” the Administration has been confronted in recent months with sobering indications that the job may be more difficult than it appeared.

Despite a near-quadrupling of spending for U.S. anti-drug efforts in Latin America, the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a classified report last year that there had been no appreciable decline in cocaine production. More recently, an internal Pentagon memorandum concluded that the “attainment of U.S. objectives is impossible” in Peru, a primary front in the Administration’s counter-narcotics strategy.

In warning that the Andean strategy had “only marginally impacted on narco-traffickers,” the report warned against deeper Pentagon involvement in the drug war, advising against “relatively ephemeral military solutions.”

In the latest setback, Administration officials said that U.S.-backed anti-drug efforts in Peru have been forced to a halt in the last two weeks by concerns about the role of Maoist Shining Path guerrillas in the fatal crash of a U.S. helicopter operating as part of a State Department-funded air wing.

The accident, in which three American civilians were killed, remains under investigation, but the guerrillas have claimed that they shot the aircraft from the sky, and at least one witness has reported hearing gunfire before the crash.

If the claims are true, the American deaths would be the first from guerrilla action in the Administration’s drug war in Peru, where the Shining Path has waged an 11-year war against the government.

Senior U.S. officials this week sought to cast doubt on claims by the guerrilla group that surface-to-air missiles were used in an attack against the helicopter. They said there was no indication that the Shining Path has gained access to such weapons and said that the helicopter crash may simply have been caused by mechanical problems.

But the incident--in a section of the Upper Huallaga Valley where U.S.-backed coca-eradication efforts have long been hampered by the presence of the Shining Path--has added to longstanding concerns that a clash was inevitable.

At the same time, it has focused new questions about whether the State Department and its private army of helicopter pilots and technicians who assist Peruvian authorities in the anti-drug missions ought to be involved in what amount to military missions.

Administration officials said that the plan to give the Pentagon power to establish “unified authority” over U.S. international anti-drug operations was designed, in part, to impose more central control over that and a host of other little-coordinated missions.

Apart from the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Customs Service, the CIA and the military all play major parts in the U.S. anti-drug activities in Latin America in roles ranging from jungle-based eradication efforts to aerial surveillance.

But while the agencies serve together on a variety of separate task forces, anti-drug officials have long complained that there is no overarching authority with the power to coordinate operations and dispatch aircraft, ships and personnel where they are needed.

In turning to the Pentagon, officials at the White House drug office had hoped to rely on the expertise of the military to create “a unified command authority and a unified plan” to give a new boost to the drug war, officials said.