ArmoredD.com

By ELAINE SILVESTRINI

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 16, 2008

Working under the cover of pre-dawn darkness, a group of Coast Guard law enforcement officers climbed atop a semi-submersible vessel in the waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean early Saturday.

Suspecting drug smugglers, the officers knocked on the hatch, surprising the crew, officials said.

The officers heard the crew members threatening to kill the lawmen.

The vessel went into reverse and sped up. The officers grabbed what they could and held on, fearing they would be pitched into the vessel’s propellers and the sea. Eventually, the sub stopped.

“This was the most dangerous operation of my career,” Lt. j.g. Todd Bagetis, officer in charge of a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment, said in a written statement issued by the Coast Guard.

Working as part of a Tampa-based investigation, the Coast Guard over the weekend seized the semi-submarine carrying about 7 tons of cocaine, worth about $80 million, about 350 miles west of Guatemala, officials said.

Navy aircraft directed the Coast Guard unit on the USS McInerney in the dark Saturday to a position where it could launch two small boats near the semi-sub.

The smugglers tried to scuttle the craft but complied with orders from the boarding team to close the valves that were flooding it, officials said.

“This just exemplifies the dangers involved,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Ruddy, “the sophistication of this vessel.”

The 59-foot-long, steel and fiberglass, self-propelled, semi-submersible was detected by a Navy aircraft as part of Operation Panama Express, a Tampa-based international drug investigation aimed at Latin American maritime cocaine traffickers, according to the Coast Guard and Steve Cole, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa.

A novelty a few years ago, the semi-subs, which travel 99 percent below the surface of the sea, are becoming the method of choice for drug lords to smuggle cocaine from Colombia, Ruddy has said.

The latest seizure was the sixth for the United States, Ruddy said. All the crew members are prosecuted in federal court in Tampa. Those who have been sentenced have received terms of from nine years to 17 years and six months in federal prison.

The vessels are becoming so common that a bill was passed by the U.S. House to make it a crime punishable by up to 15 to 20 years in prison just to be on one, regardless of whether there are drugs onboard. That’s because authorities think the only purpose for the vessels is to smuggle drugs. The bill is awaiting Senate action. An earlier version of the bill called for the penalty to be up to 20 years in prison. An amendment changed the maximum penalty.

Ruddy said the danger exemplified by the latest case was one reason behind the proposed law. He said a semi-sub has as many as three scuttle valves that the crew can open to sink the vessel when it is spotted, sometimes leaving investigators no choice but to rescue crewmen and later release them, with the evidence lost at sea.

The vessel seized over the weekend was only the second taken by U.S. investigators, Ruddy said. Vessels involved in the other prosecutions sank, but not before investigators gathered enough evidence to make a case.

The other semi-sub that was seized was taken to Key West, where it remains, Ruddy said. It’s possible, he added, that the new one will also be taken there, but that’s still being decided.

It will take about a week to 10 days for the crewmen to reach Tampa, he said.

In addition to the six cases where evidence was gathered, investigators spotted four to six other semi-subs by air in the past year, but by the time officials got close enough, the vessels had been scuttled.

According to the Coast Guard, the vessel seized Saturday is capable of traveling from South America to San Diego without stopping for fuel or supplies. The vessel also is reported to be equipped with state-of-the-art navigation and communications equipment. Authorities think the four crew members are from Colombia.

Reporter Elaine Silvestrini can be reached at (813) 259-7837 or esilvestrini@tampatrib.com.