A Shaky Operation Alliance

By Ed Magnuson

"We shall fight you on the land, on the sea and in the air, and we shall never surrender." With that Churchillian warning to smugglers, Deputy Commissioner Michael Lane of the U.S. Customs Service formally accepted two E- 2C Hawkeye radar planes from the U.S. Navy in San Diego. The ceremony was designed to showcase the high-tech weapons the Reagan Administration has committed to its war on illegal drugs. Making a similar pitch in Houston, Customs Commissioner William von Raab invited some 65 Texas lawmen to inspect a sophisticated new communications center for coordinating surveillance against smugglers. Alive with radar screens, computers and scrambled-speech telephones, the Blue Fire command post will eventually anchor a "radar picket line" along the porous 2,000-mile. border with Mexico, the passageway for one-third of the drugs entering the U.S.

The two ceremonies this month were part of the fanfare that has accompanied Operation Alliance, the sweeping antidrug effort launched last August with tough speeches by Vice President George Bush and Attorney General Edwin Meese. The multiagency border interdiction program would include the addition of hundreds of new personnel, the purchase of up to seven aircraft-spotting radar balloons, the use of four Hawkeye surveillance planes, the modification of four older P-3 Orion radar aircraft for border watching and the transfer of six Black Hawk helicopters to chase drug-running planes. State and local police were to receive grants from a separate $225 million fund authorized by Congress.

To many of the lawmen who work the border, the high expectations raised by Operation Alliance have been belied by the program's shaky start-up. Since the kickoff, there have been few significant increases in the number of federal agents deployed in the Southwest by the Customs Service, Drug Enforcement Agency and Border Patrol. The radar picket line is at least two years from completion, and other promised equipment has yet to be delivered. The Administration has even proposed eliminating promised federal funds for state and local police in next year's budget. "The Government isn't really serious about stopping drugs," charges a veteran Customs officer in southeast Texas. "Something is damn wrong." Declares Leo Samaniego, sheriff of El Paso County: "I have no concrete evidence that Operation Alliance even exists." Asks Carlos Tapia, chief deputy sheriff in Cameron County: "Where's the money? We haven't seen any. We feel like the bastard son abandoned."

Many federal agents, as well as state and local police, complain that they are fighting smugglers without the paraphernalia they need, including night-vision devices, secure radios and electronic sensors to plant in remote airfields and along footpaths used by smugglers. The Customs Service in McAllen, Texas, has only one rubber raft to patrol a 170-mile stretch of the Rio Grande. Declares Silvestre Reyes, chief Border Patrol agent for the McAllen sector: "The crooks are better equipped than we are."

Operation Alliance was also billed as the beginning of a new era of cooperation among the long-feuding agencies charged with interdicting drugs. But there are widespread complaints that this has not happened either. The rivalries remain so intense that the Administration has decided to rotate the chairmanship of Alliance among DEA, Customs and the Border Patrol. DEA, an arm of the Justice Department, clears all search warrants. The other agencies have accused DEA of moving slowly when its agents are not part of the action. Suspected drug caches, and the dealers, sometimes vanish before the papers are in hand to make a raid. "The DEA won't work with us," complains a Customs agent in Texas. "We can't even talk to them."

The Coast Guard has also demanded its share of the antidrug gear; it has managed to secure two of the four Hawkeyes for use on the East Coast, cutting the Southwest air surveillance. Amid all this tension, Peter Kendig, chief of the Customs Aviation Operations branch in San Diego, protests that "nobody knows who is in charge."

Commissioner Von Raab insists these complaints are premature. "We're pouring in millions," he declares, while predicting that the new gear and personnel will soon be visible. Von Raab says that "hundreds" of secure "voice-privacy" radios are being shipped to the Southwest and that 400 new Customs employees -- a 40% increase -- will be on the job within four months. Despite the cumbersome process of awarding contracts, he promised that radar planes and balloons will be in operation by next year.

Von Raab's rosy predictions may yet come true, but only if Congress insists on providing money for Operation Alliance that the Administration does not want to spend. The President was widely criticized when his budget for the coming fiscal year called for a $150 million slash in drug education and other cutbacks. Very quietly, the Administration has also asked Congress for permission to "postpone" the spending of $32 million designated for Customs to use this year. This would mean that Customs would have to restrict flights of the Hawkeye radar planes it has just received with such a splash from the Navy.

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty/San Diego and Richard Woodbury/San Antonio