effectiveness of the Customs operation in interdicting drugs should show a tremendous increase in the future. We have six pilots, three air officers, the chief of the Air Support Branch and a clerical assistant at the Jacksonville office.

The Customs Service in Savannah has little evidence to indicate that heroin is being smuggled into this district directly from foreign countries in any significant quantity. Significant seizures of cocaine, hashish and marihuana, based on our high interdiction priorities, has failed to uncover any heroin in recent years.

SUMMARY

We feel, and the statistics appear to confirm, that drug trafficking in this district is on the increase. The large number of drug seizures in the other areas of this Region, primarily south Florida, appears to have forced smuggling operations to resort to other areas to penetrate the borders of this country. The close proximity of Florida and Georgia to Colombia, a major source country of marihuana, continues to fortify our belief that marihuana smuggling in this district will continue to increase. The effectiveness of the Miami Air Support Branch in seizing small aircraft landing in south Florida leads us to believe that the 190 airport or landing strips within this district will be utilized on a more frequent basis. We certainly anticipate the Jacksonville Air Support Branch to be an effective deterent to this utilization. It is our desire that through the effective utilization of our equipment, patrol officers and inspectors we will continue to deter the importation of narcotics into the Savannah District.

Again, I appreciate the opportunity to appear here today and will attempt to answer any questions the Committee may have. With the Chairman's indulgence, additional members of my staff are here today and they are also available to provide any data required by the Committee.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF REAR ADM. BENEDICT L. STABILE, COMMANDER, 7TH COAST GUARD DISTRICT

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am Rear Adm. Benedict L. Stabile, commander, 7th Coast Guard District. As district commander it is my responsibility to insure the successful execution of the Coast Guard's varied missions in an area which extends from the North/South Carolina border to and including the Greater and Lesser Antilles. While we have many important missions in this geographic area, I will limit my remarks today to our law enforcement effort directed towards drug interdiction.

In the past few years, the 7th District has emphasized drug interdiction. We concluded calendar year 1979 with a total of 83 vessels seized, 1,513,443 pounds of marihuana, 3.5 kilograms of cocaine, and 3,805,750 Quaalude pills seized, and 397 arrests for narcotics trafficking. In the first month and a half of this year, 23 vessels and almost one quarter of a million pounds of marihuana have been seized, and 61 arrests have been made. While these figures are impressive by themselves, we are still only stopping a small percentage of the drugs destined for the United States.

I would be remiss if I failed to give credit for part of our success to other law enforcement agencies. We continue to enjoy an atmosphere of open cooperation with Federal, State and local agencies. Some of our seizures were the direct result of intelligence information passed to the Coast Guard from these agencies. I do not hesitate in stating that cooperation between agencies is better and more productive now than in the past and it is improving daily. Though the Coast Guard has no major facilities in Georgia, there are two small boat stations, one air station, and one 95-foot patrol boat. Each of these has good rapport with Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies. Also, it should be noted that the Coast Guard interests in Georgia are split between group offices in Charleston, S.C., and Mayport, Fla.

Colombia continues to be the primary source country for marihuana and other drugs, while aircraft smuggling of marihuana does exist and may be on the increase, smuggling by vessels remains the principal method of shipment. The vessels involved in this activity remain as previously reported to you with

the exception that there may be more large vessels, those in excess of 100 feet, involved than previously estimated. Several of our recent seizures have been vessels in this size range.

This shift to larger vessels may be occurring for several reasons. First, our successful interdiction efforts in southern Florida appear to have caused a gradual shift in smuggling to other coastal areas. Over the past year there has been a documented increase in smuggling along the Gulf Coast and in the MidAtlantic and New England areas. Larger vessels are required to make the trip to these more distant off-load locations. Second, it is much more difficult for our patrol vessels to detect smuggling aboard larger vessels. Often these vessels carry legitimate cargos as well as marihuana and other drugs. Without specific intelligence information these vessels can at times, pass our patrol vessels without being identified as a smuggler.

Another change we have seen in the last year is a shift in smuggling routes. In the past, the windward passage, between Cuba and Haiti, was the primary route utilized because it provides the shortest trackline between Colombia and the southern United States. With the shift of off-load sites away from southern Florida, there appears to be a definite increase in smuggling through the Mona Passage and passages in the Leeward and Windward Islands. This shift to longer routes is yet another reason for an increase in the use of larger vessels. This shift in routes has presented the Coast Guard with a much tougher enforcement problem. We do not have enough patrol vessels to cover all of these areas at the same time and thus we use aerial reconnaissance to provide surveillance. We find ourselves in a position where we need additional intelligence information to make our patrols more productive. We have initiated several actions to assist in this area:

(1) The Commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. John B. Hayes, has personally visited several of the Caribbean countries affected by narcotics trafficking to explain our enforcement effort and to solicit their assistance in improving our program.

(2) As a follow up to the Commandant's visit, the Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics Matters arranged for experts from nine involved countries to meet in May 1979 to lay the ground work for a regional narcotics intelligence network. This meeting resulted in a joint agreement to communicate information on vessel movements.

(3) The Chief of Naval Operations has directed his field units to submit intelligence reports to the Coast Guard to provide surveillance platforms, aircraft and ships, when military operations permit, to assist our units. Coast Guard personnel are visiting individual Naval commands to brief them on our interdiction program. In June 1979, a Coast Guard/Navy exercise was conducted to determine the feasibility of joint operations for ocean surveillance to detect suspect vessels. The results were very promising.

Colombia's current enforcement effort along their northern coastline is having an effect on smuggling operations. Information indicates that they have successfully shut off some traditional smuggling areas, making it much more difficult to load drugs along their coastline. The smugglers are responding to this enforcement effort by shifting their loading areas, even to the point of ferrying drugs by small vessel from shore to the mothership at sea, the same concept utilized to off-load many of the drugs along the United States coasts. The Colombians. like us, do not have the resources to completely stop the flow of drugs from their shorelines. We do however, feel their efforts have been effective to date and we strongly support their continuation.

Recent intelligence indicates the eastern Caribbean has become a primary smuggling route. Successful interdiction efforts in the Windward Passage. Yucatan Channel and in southern Florida have, as I indicated earlier, forced the smugglers to expand their area of operations. The Mona Passage and other passages to the east of Puerto Rico are their alternate routes.

The Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies have been alert to this shift in routes for several months. We are reacting to this shift by increasing our patrols in the eastern Caribbean and Mona Passage. Additional vessels will be temporarily deployed from northern ports to allow us to expand our patrol area while at the same time maintaining a presence in the Windward Passage and Yucatan Channel. I hesitate to provide details of these deployment in public session, but would be glad to discuss them with you in private.

While Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are ideally located as major transhipment point for drugs, we do not feel this area compares at all in the tempo of operations with the CONUS portions of the 7th District. Within this portion, the area of south Florida has proven to be the most active. Patrolling of this area by both vessels and aircraft has resulted in the majority of seizures made during the past year.

Speculation that the coast of Georgia is an active area has been put forth and we have observed considerable suspicious activity in the area. For example, some units have encountered stripped out vessels traversing the coastline, vessels having no papers aboard to prove ownership or registration, and people on board some vessels are sometimes unable to produce any personal means of identification. Intelligence confirms suspect vessels do operate off the coast of Georgia. There are a number of obstacles encountered by the Coast Guard in pursuit of its mission off the Georgia coast. First and foremost, it is the expanse of isolated coastline which is both undeveloped and unpatrolled on a routine basis by any law enforcement agency. Just as in the Florida Keys this provides smugglers with undetected access to this territory. The coast of Georgia opens to the vast reaches of the Atlantic Ocean, making the detection and location of smuggling vessels difficult.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that we are faced with a continuously changing problem. As we become successful in one area the smugglers change their method and area of operation and we must be capable of responding positively to that change. I feel we are responding to those changes. As the geographic area of interest expands, we may place heavier emphasis on aerial reconnaissance and intelligence resources.

Our one hope to counter this expansion in geographic area is to develop better and more timely intelligence information. We are hopeful that our efforts to develop a regional narcotics intelligence network and our expected reports from Naval units will help fill this gap.

I would also like to take this opportunity to endorse the current legislative efforts in closing some of the legal loopholes which have hindered our enforcement efforts to date. The enactment of this legislation including H.R. 2538 is mandatory to help insure continued improvements in our drug interdiction program.

Thank you. I will now be glad to answer any of your questions.