Pubdate: Thu, 11 Jul 2002
Source: Tribune Review (PA)
Copyright: 2002 Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://triblive.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/460
Author: Bill Steigerwald

COLOMBIA'S DRUG LORDS ARE ALL BUSINESS

If you and Grandma are among the 12 Americans who still think America's War 
on (some) Drugs is going to be won any day now, don't read "The Technology 
Secrets of Cocaine Inc." in Business 2.0.

Your dream of victory against evil drug smugglers is sure to be busted by 
writer Paul Kaihla's eye-opening dispatch from the Colombian front.

It seems that while North America's New Economy was bubbling and breaking, 
the $80 billion cocaine industry in Colombia was appreciably boosting its 
productivity by learning modern business tricks and hiring gangs of 
computer geeks.

Don't worry. Colombia's nasty drug cartels haven't joined the Better 
Business Bureau.

They still assassinate drug cops and judges and do Wild West things such as 
stealing a government helicopter and trying to drop a 440- pound bomb of 
TNT on a rival trafficker (while he was in jail).

But Business 2.0 makes painfully clear that Colombia's drug exporters have 
not doubled their shipments of cocaine to the United States since 1998 (to 
450 tons) by asking their human drug mules to swallow a few more condoms 
filled with drugs as they jet off to Miami.

The drug cartels have grown their business by employing such New Economy 
ideas as decentralization, outsourcing and pooling financial risks. And by 
building a sophisticated information technology infrastructure that Kaihla 
says would be the "envy of any Fortune 500 company - and of the law 
enforcement officials charged with going after the drug barons."

One of the sharpest Colombian drug barons is Archangel Henao of the North 
Valley Cartel. Thanks to his visionary leadership, authorities say, drug 
cartels now use multimillion-dollar IBM mainframes and data- mining 
communications software that can conduct perpetual searches for snitches 
within their organizations.

They also use password-protected Internet sites to allow black-market money 
brokers to buy and sell dirty drug dollars and use unbreakable encryption 
devices to send 1,000 messages a day to their far-flung work forces.

With bush pilots communicating via laptops and using Fuzz Busters and 
computer programs to find holes in the radar coverage of government planes, 
the drug lords are way ahead in this technological war within the drug war 
in Colombia.

But as Kaihla's piece shows, the weaponry being used is escalating to 
absurd levels. Cartels already have a little fleet of mini-subs to take 
drugs offshore to the toxic-waste freighters that are commonly used sneak 
them into America.

And using what Kaihla describes as "a narco research and development 
program," Henao's powerful cartel has tried to develop semi- submersible 
boats that can slip under Navy radar. Several probably have sunk at sea, 
which is why narcotics officials think the drug traffickers have upgraded 
to submarines.

Yet even subs are nothing new. It is thought that in the early 1990s, the 
Cali Cartel bought a used Soviet sub, which apparently sank because the 
crew didn't know how to operate it.

That was only a temporary glitch, however. As shown in a photo on Page 80, 
the evil drug CEOs of Colombia - who make the bosses at Enron and WorldCom 
look like scrupulous pickpockets - already have been caught building 
80-foot drug subs that could carry tons of dope to Florida or Southern 
California.
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