Gibbons: Go after Latin American drugs

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2002 | 9:47 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Congress this year should spend more money busting up drug markets in South America that finance terrorists, said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Terrorists use drug trades and black markets in lawless pockets of South America to finance their operations around the world, Gibbons said. The Nevada lawmaker this month returned from a trip to Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Paraguay, where he got an up-close look at how some terrorists generate money.

In Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, local police along with Gibbons and U.S. intelligence officers walked right into the heart of a thriving black market, where cash flows out to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah. Officials had made a bust there a few days earlier, Gibbons said. Vendors hocking their illicit goods saw them coming, hurriedly locked up shop and fled, he said.

"They thought we were going to arrest them," Gibbons said. "You can buy anything in the world there. It's all stolen."

Gibbons also accompanied the Colombian navy and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officers off the coast of Colombia as they seized a ship carrying an estimated one ton of cocaine.

Congress approved $1.3 billion for counternarcotics efforts in Colombia in 2000. Lawmakers this year are likely to hotly debate whether to spend more money fighting drug trade and trafficking in the region.

Gibbons, chairman of the intelligence panel's subcommittee on human intelligence, analysis and counterintelligence, strongly supports more U.S. dollars for fighting South American drug and black markets that finance terrorists.

"I'm very convinced that we need more people in the trenches gathering intelligence," Gibbons said.