Intelligence supports Peruvian counterdrug operations

Courtesy Photo | Coca plants grow in moist hot climates like Colombia and Peru. (DEA Museum photo)  

FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, UNITED STATES

01.30.2023

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian

On February 3, 1992, the Peruvian Air Force intercepted a private plane involved in drug smuggling. This successful interdiction and others like it were informed by intelligence analysis conducted by joint Tactical Analysis Teams (TATs) in Central and South America.

President Ronald Reagan declared a national “War on Drugs” in 1983. Countering drug trafficking was a law enforcement responsibility but, throughout the 1980s, the U.S. military’s role in supporting attempts by foreign nations to eradicate the illicit drug industry within their borders steadily increased. In 1989, President George W. Bush’s National Drug Control Strategy included a five-year, $2.2 billion plan that specifically targeted the Andean region of Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru. At the time, more than 60 percent of the world’s supply of coca leaves was grown in Peru, and the country was also one of the major refiners of coca leaves into coca paste and then into cocaine base. The air bridge between Peru and Colombia was one of the most active transportation routes for cocaine base in the region. Once in Colombia, the base would be made into the cocaine that found its way to American cities.

To assist the effort in Peru, in 1989, the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) Joint Interagency Task Force South, headquartered at Howard Air Force Base in Panama, formed a joint TAT within the U.S. Embassy in Lima. It was one of the first two TATs established as a link between SOUTHCOM, the U.S. ambassadors’ country teams, and host nation counterdrug forces. TAT members did not collect intelligence but instead provided all source analysis through association matrices, pattern analyses, and link diagrams to determine the scope, complexity, and participants of trafficking organizations. Flow charts helped them identify the most vulnerable stages of the illegal operations. Then, using collected imagery and signals, the TATs identified the locations of the growing fields, labs, storage sites, and transportation routes and passed these targets through the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to host nation law enforcement for action.

In late 1991 and early 1992, the TAT at the U.S. Embassy in Peru became so effective it was able to relay the day and time of a shipment retrieval. In one example, on January 29, 1992, the TAT members determined a plane from Colombia would arrive at Pampa Hermosa, Peru, on 1 February to take on a shipment of cocaine base and then return to Colombia. The Peruvian Air Force dispatched a fighter aircraft to intercept the plane and forced it to land at Santa Lucia. The police arrested three Colombian nationals and seized the aircraft and $150,000. Because the plane had been intercepted on its in-bound flight, however, no drugs were found on the airplane. The TAT then determined the Colombian drug traffickers planned a second attempt on 3 February. With foreknowledge of the aircraft’s planned arrival time, the Peruvian Air Force’s fighters again forced the aircraft to land at Santa Lucia. The pilot was arrested, and the police seized the aircraft and another $110,000.

Continuing over several years, operations of this type disrupted trafficking operations, raising the cost to transport the cocaine base out of Peru but drastically reducing the price paid to Peruvian coca farmers. Many of these farmers then turned to U.S. alternative development programs for their livelihood, helping to reduce Peru’s role in the cocaine industry at least through the 1990s.

Although the TATs had no direct role in the tactical counterdrug operations, their effective integration of all source intelligence supported successful operations in the air and on the ground. TATs were eventually established in Paraguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, and several other Central and South American nations.

• Date Taken: 01.30.2023
• Date Posted: 01.30.2023 15:42
• Story ID: 437475
• Location: FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, US