Word: deas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...local judge. The focus of the U.S. effort, though, would be on Peru, where attempts to eradicate the coca crop have been stalled since February because of attacks by guerrillas and traffickers. Some 34 eradication workers have been killed in the Upper Huallaga Valley since 1983. In May a DEA agent, five State Department contract employees and two Peruvian eradication officials died in a plane crash there. Until six months ago, the Peruvian army kept to its barracks in the Upper Huallaga, leaving Sendero insurgents free to terrorize the local populace. Now the army, trying to fight the guerrillas first...
...scene too. For one thing, Peruvian army officials say their primary mission is to defeat the Sendero movement. "Wherever drug traffickers get close to the guerrillas, we will get them," says one. "But don't ask us to go against the people growing coca." Another obstacle is corruption. DEA agents and Upper Huallaga residents say traffickers pay "landing fees" to certain police officials to use local airstrips...
Nonetheless, the DEA is already plunging ahead with Operation Snowcap, a hemisphere-wide program that shifts emphasis from crop eradication to search- and-destroy missions against clandestine labs, airstrips, riverboats and warehouses. Last year DEA chief John Lawn, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Watson and Peruvian officials agreed to build a secure base for Snowcap activities in the Upper Huallaga. The deal called for the U.S. to haul bulldozers to a settlement called Santa Lucia, where an airstrip would be cleared so that cargo planes could land supplies. The State Department, however, objected to having U.S. Army Engineers air-drop the bulldozers...
...putting pressure on friendly governments to crack down on the drug trade. But where the drug fight runs counter to other foreign policy objectives, the record is decidedly mixed. Standout example: in Burma the State Department last fall suspended support for Burma's antiopium campaign and ordered the DEA not to deal with Burmese officials. The action was meant to register displeasure with a repressive military regime, but some DEA agents contend that it disrupted still productive DEA-Burmese operations...
...powerful Federal Security Directorate was arrested in Mexico as a suspect in the 1984 assassination of journalist Manuel Buendia. Now a U.S. grand jury is investigating allegations that Zorrilla was also involved in the death of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena Salazar in 1985. According to DEA informants, Zorrilla knew in advance of Camarena's kidnaping. One source added that Camarena's interrogator was in direct contact with Zorrilla. If proved, the allegations would support the theory that Camarena's murder was approved at the highest levels of the government...