May 09, 2011

Coast Guard cutter nabs mini-'narco sub' packed with 6 tons of cocaine

01:23 PM
Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY

The Seattle Times has a fascinating story in this morning's newspaper about a Seattle-based Coast Guard cutter that plows the oceans off Central America to intercept "narco subs," or home-made minisubs packed with illegal drugs for the U.S. markets.

Times reporter Erik Lacitis writes about the Cutter Midgett with a crew of 160 that nabbed one narco-sub -- known in Coast Guard parlance as an SPSS -- self-propelled semi-submersible -- in January carrying 6.6 tons of cocaine, worth $138 million wholesale on the West Coast.

Read the full story here and watch raw video of the Coast Guard seizing a cocaine vessel.

They also found inside four Colombians with no communication gear who used GPS to navigate. They were crammed into tiny quarters for the two-week voyage, subsisting on bottle water, canned goods and noodles.

Their biggest threat -- aside from vigilant Coast Guard cutters -- was being run over by merchant ships or fishing vessels.

These four could have faced up to 11 years if convicted of operating a narco-sub, Lacitis reports, but they pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and agreed to testify against others.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... -cocaine/1