NARCOTICS TRAFFICKING IN THE BAHAMAS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87T00413R000100150013-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 13, 2010
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: September 28, 1983
• Content Type: MEMO

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THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 98, 1983
U.S. -Bahamian Relations Are Straining Under Drug
By REGINALD STUART
vtOMWP4wYattI1 S
NASSAU, the Bahamas - Relations House Hearings to Be Held
between the United States and the
grow.
Bahamas are being strained !duct
ing controversy over the conduct of
American law-enforcement agents in
the Bahamas who are seeking to bring
against Americans suspected
of drug and tax violations here.
Prime Minister Lyndon 0. Pindling
and other top Bahamian officials have
responded with outrage in recent
weeks to now reports in the United
States that Federal agents this sum.
mer proposed an operation involving a
Bahamian Cabinet minister to trap
violators and reports that members of
the Pindling Government had accepted
bribes to ignore illegal drug operations.
Some top American officials have
denied the allegations,
In interviews, the Prime Minister
and Paul L. Adderly, Bahamian Minis-
ter for External Affairs, charged that
American agents had violated the
sovereignty of the Bahamas by operat-
ing covert drug and tax investigations
without the consent of the Bahamian
Government.
They also charged that the disclosure
of reports that Bahamian officials were
involved in these illegal schemes was
part of an effort to discredit and desta-
bilize the Pindling government.
'Conspiracy' Is Charged
"We believe there is a conspiracy
here, directed against the Government
of the Bahamas and the Prime Minis-
ter in particular," said Mr. Adderley,
who is also the country's Attorney Gen-
eral.
Although neither the American Am-
bassador nor State Department offi-
cials would comment on the situation,
top officials of the Drug Enforcement
Administration denied conducting any
operations in the Bahamas without the
knowledge and approval of Bahamian
officials.
"It is completely false and a viola-
tion of D.E.A. procedure for agents to
operate within the Bahamas, even in
Bahamian airspace, without notifica.
tion to Bahamian authorities," said
Frank Monastero, the drug agency's
assistant administrator for operations.
"The Bahamians have been totally
cooperative, so in any event, there
would have been no reason to operate
there without telling them."
Meanwhile, in the United States, a
group from the House Foreign Affairs
Committee is scheduled to hold hear-
f~e Wednesday in Washington an co-
came trafficking operations based in
the Bahamas. The conduct of Ameri-
can investigations here will be a sub-
ject of the said the panel's
chairman, Representative Edward F.
Feighan, Democrat of Ohio.
T e Bahamians themselves concede
that their nation's strict bank secrecy
laws may make It an attractive place
for people, many of them believed to be
Americans, who seek to avoid paying
taxes on their legal and illegal income.
They also concede that their nation, 700
islands that run from the Straits of
Florida to Haiti in the Caribbean, has
been used as a major refueling and
transfer. point for smugglers carrying
drugs to the United States from South
America. American officials have long
suspected that the source of much drug
money is being hidden by movement
through Bahamian banks.
Bahamian officials estimate that
$144 billion of all foreign assets held by
American banks are on deposit in
banks in the Bahamas and the Cayman
Islands. They also estimate that more
than 90 percent of the cocaine coming
into the United States is routed through
the Bahamas.
that Federal law-enforcement
des have become increasingly
crated in their efforts to slow this ille-
gal traffic, and they place some of the
blame on the Bahamian Government,
which in turn contends that the drug
and tax evasion problems are the prob.
lems of the United States.
Most Recent Incident
The latest strain on relations be.
tween the United States and the Pin.
dling Government followed an NBC
News television report this month
about drug trafficking in the Bahamas.
An NBC News reporter, quoting what
he said was a Justice Department intel-
ligence report, said Prime Minister
Pindling and other top officials of the
Bahamian Government were reported
to have been paid bribes to ignore a
suspected multimillion-dollar smug.
gling operation reportedly Involving a
purported associate of Robert L.
Vesco, an American financier who is a
fugitive.
TeNwYWkTtmr/a lAStye
Tilton Lamar Chester Jr., a profer
slonal pilot who says be covertly
flew U.S. drug agents to Bahamas.
According to the NBC News report,
Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, a Colom-
bian cocaine wholesaler who was
thought to be an associate of Mr. Vesco,
was suspected of paying Mr. Pindling
and other members of his Government
as much as $100,000 a month to ignore
Mr. Lehder's drug operation on Nor-
.man's Coy, an island in the Exumas
chain. .
Mr. Vesco and Mr. Lehder both lived
on the island in the late 1970's. In 1980
Mr. Vesco was declared "undesirable"
by the Bahamian Government and was
expelled. His whereabouts are un-
known.
- In Washington, John C. Lawn, deputy
administrator of the Drug Enforce-
ment Agency, and Mr. Monastero said
that information for the NBC News re-
port on alleged bribery was not con-
tained in a justice Department intelli-
gence report but in a computerized file
on Mr. Lender, which included it as
just one unsubstantiated allegation re-
ceived about him.
Mr. Lender, now considered a fugi-
tive, was indicted in 1981 by a Federal
,,grand jury in Jacksonville. Fla, in con-
nection with a cocaine ring in north
Florida.
Interview With Ambassador
? The NBC News report included an in-
terview with Lev Dobriansky, the
American Ambassador to the Baha.
mas, who said he quashed a recent plan
by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
to lure an influential Bahamian official
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onto a boat, take him to international
waters and try to get him to accept a
bribe. All of it was to be filmed by the
F.B.I., Mr. Dobrlansky said.
Mr. Dobriansky told NBC News that
one reason he stopped the F.B.I. plan
was that "it might upset delicate ne-
r ations with the Bahamians over a
U.S. Navy submarine testing base in
the Bahamas."
"This can be very embarrassing," he
said. "It could, naturally would be, and
it could be very destabilising. When
you look at the total picture, I mean,
our relations with the Bahamas is not
solely in the drug area. There are
other things which over the long
would be more important than the
1 .11
Mr. Monastero said there was no
plan to offer the official a bribe on the
boat.
The D.E.A. officials said the inquiry
in which the official's name came up
had nothing to do with the F.B.I. Rath-
er, they said, it was in connection with
an undercover operation that the
Miami office of the D.E.A. and the In-
ternal
Revenue Service had considered
AWUW wa w uacana Vl UIvvbUgsu[rsmoney aundering in the Bahamas. But
Ambassador Dobrianaky, whose per-
mission was sought, stopped the inves- I,,
setting up a phony bank to trap money
launderers, they said.
Other incidents that have contrib-
uted to the controversy include these:
9A declaration by Mr. Adderley, the
Bahamian Foreign Minister, that he
had not, authorized American officials
to proceed with the widely publicized
"Operation Grouper," a charged
denied by American officials. Opera.
tion Grouper was a Drug Enforcement
Administration undercover operation
staged from May 1975 to March 1981
that resulted in the arrest of 155 "high-
level managers" of marijuana busi-
nesses in New York, California, Flor.
ida, Maine, Georgia, Louisiana and
Puerto Rico.
9M attempt by a former Assistant
United States Attt~orney in Houston,
Frank Robin Jr., td sell Justice Depart.
ment documents to a lawyer represent.
ing Tilton Lamar Chester Jr., the sub-
ject of a grand jury narcotics investiga-
tion. According to a transcript of tape
told p in court, Mr. Robin
y Bogart of Atlanta, Mr.
Chester's lawyer, that the documents
he was offering to sell could prevent his
client from going to trial because they
showed violations of laws governing
the conduct of American investigative
agents abroad. The tapes were played
at the trial of Mr. Robin, who was con-
victed on Federal bribery and obstruc-
tion of justice charges last month in At-
lanta. The contents of the documents,
described as "sensitive," we not dis-
closed during the trial.
9Statements by Mr. Chester, a pro-
fessional pilot, in three recent inter-
views that he had flown Federal drug
enforcement agents to the Bahamas
from the United States without the
imowledge of the Bahamian authori.
ties. Federal drug officials deny this,
saying Mr. Chester would not have
been in a position to know whether
proper procedures had been followed.
9A finding by a Federal District
Court in Atlanta that Government law-
yers and other Federal employees had
released unauthorized information to
the news media about grand jury pro-
ceedings in Houston and Atlanta that
related to pursuits here of suspected
tax evaders and drug smugglers. The
Government did not contest the find-
ing.
Said to Have Cooperated
The drug agency, in a statement
issued at the end of Operation Grouper,
acknowledged the cooperation of the
Bahamian authorities. But Mr. Adder-
ley said in an interview that he had no
record of giving final approval to the
United States officials.
"Grouper was a major imrestigation,
but only a small part of It had to do with
the Bahamas," Mr. Lawn said. "We
wouldn't notify the Bahamas about the
whole operation, just the part in the
Bahamas."
Rear Adm. Donald C. Thompson,
southeast regional coordinator for the
recently organized National Narcotics
Border Interdiction System, said he
was "not aware of significant prob-
lems" between the United States and
the Bahamas over drug investigations.
"But it's sort of difficult sometimes to
always make sure we're in constant
contact," he said. "Whether there are
glitches from time to time, I'm not
going to comment on that."
Admiral Thompson coordinates ti
drug interdiction activities of the Coe
Guard, Customs Service, Central Into
ligence Agency, F.B.I., Immigratic
and Naturalization Service, Deter!
Intelligence Agency and Federal Avi;
tion Administration. His agency is it
offspring of the Vice President's Soul
Florida Task Force on drug interdii
tion.
Another area of friction between it
American and Bahamian authorities
in banking. The American Governer
has made it no secret that It feels tt
Bahamians have not responded sath
factorily to American demands fc
more cooperation on bank secrecy, a
serting there is a strong tie betwee
illegal drugs and money laundering.
Last March, Lowell Jensen, a top V
Tidal of the Justice Department, test
fled before the Senate Permanent Sut
committee on Investigations that th
department intended to get tough wit
countries with bank laws the
did not accommodate Unite
States.
The Bahamians also have tight se
crecy laws on the ownership of buss
nesses. Such information is not re
quired to be a matter of public record
but Mr. Adderley said that in the one in
stance when United States officials re
quested access to records from Baha-
mian courts, it was granted.
Mother obstacle is that because the
Bahamas have no taxes, there are nc
tax laws to be broken. Bahamian off!.
dais have been resistant for decades tc
accommodating other nations In caws
where no Bahamian laws have been
broken.
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