Chertoff: U.S. tip led to "sub" seizure

MEXICO CITY — A tip from the United States led to this week's daring high seas seizure off Mexico's Pacific Coast of a drug-laden semi-submersible vessel, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday.

Speaking to a small group of U.S. media in Mexico City after spending the morning with Mexican national security officials, Chertoff confirmed that intelligence gathered by the U.S. government led to the seizure of the vessel off the coast of Oaxaca state on Wednesday.

The vessel, which looks like a cross between a submarine and a cigarette boat, was towed into the Pacific port of Salinas Cruz on Friday, where authorities removed what they said was 5.8 tons of cocaine. The drugs were wrapped in 257 plastic packages.

The Homeland Security chief also shot down a story by Mexico's El Universal newspaper that Thursday cited a classified Drug Enforcement Administration report alleging that Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel has since 2005 been sending gunmen to Iran via Venezuela for explosives and weapons training.

That story cited an unidentified State Department official saying that sometimes these drug henchmen use Venezuelan passports. Chertoff said he knew of no such link among the Mexican cartels, Venezuela and Iran.

"I'm not aware of any of any specific information that people are going to Iran, particularly drug gunmen," said Chertoff.

Jose Ruiz, a spokesman from the U.S. military's Southern Command in Miami, said at least 40 semi-submersible subs have been spotted by the United States and allies since 2006, mostly hugging the Pacific Coast of Central America or Mexico. The U.S. Coast Guard seized one in November 2006.

The pronounced increase in the use of semi-submersible vessels by Colombian drug traffickers points to the success of stepped-up anti-drug efforts in the Caribbean Sea. Traffickers have been forced to move drug loads via Pacific routes that involve more dangerous, easier to spot travel in open seas.

Chertoff declined to discuss how the U.S. intelligence was obtained or any other possible U.S. role in the unusual high seas arrests.

"We shared information with the Mexican navy, but the Mexican navy acted alone in actually executing the seizure.

"It was their marines, their helicopters and their naval vessels that captured the submarine," he said.

Wednesday's seizure stood out because Mexico was able to grab the green makeshift wood-and-fiberglass submarine before it was scuttled, providing a better sense of how traffickers are designing these odd drug-transport ships more commonly used to ferry drugs in Colombian jungle rivers. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates the cost of building one of the semi-submersible vessels at $2 million.

Four Colombian crewmen seized on the sub earlier in the week said they were forcibly placed on the vessel, which had apparently sailed from near Colombia's port of Buenaventura bound for the Pacific state of Sinaloa in Mexico. They claimed that their vessel was guided by remote, through the use of satellite technology.