Traffickers Using High-Tech Subs To Smuggle Cocaine

Drug smuggling has sunk to new depths: the new Self-Propelled Semi-Submersible (SPSS) is an innovation in drug smuggling that’s giving the U.S. military a run for its money.

It resembles a submarine but doesn’t sink completely underwater, with the vessel rising just a foot above the water line. That makes it a stealthy ride for smugglers, and very difficult to spot in choppy seas.

Authorities estimate that 50 tons of cocaine leaves the coast of Colombia in these drug subs each month. If a run is successful, it can mean as much as $200 million worth of cocaine on U.S. streets. Law enforcers have their eyes on the radar, and they’re determined to put an end to these operations.

Smugglers have shown that they know how to stay one step ahead of law enforcement technology. In the 1990s, rumors circulated that drug subs were on the move, but authorities couldn’t get a lock on one.

They searched waterways stretching from South America, through the Caribbean and around Western shores, with no luck. The drug sub was so elusive, search teams started calling it Big Foot.

By 2006, Big Foot could no longer fake out authorities.

The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Steadfast made the first U.S. capture of a drug sub, intercepting it 90 miles off the coast of Costa Rica.

There were 3.5 tons of cocaine on board, worth more than $60 million on U.S. streets. The four-person crew, made up of two Colombians, one Guatemalan, and one Sri Lankan, was arrested.

Authorities then knew exactly what they were looking for, and where they needed to start searching.

»AMW.com Exclusive: The Anatomy Of A Drug Sub

The subs’ journey starts deep in the jungles of Colombia, where they’re built far from the country’s coastline. It’s the perfect hideout for an illegal operation.

“The jungle is so thick, they call it broccoli,” says Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s Minister of Defense. “These are very tall trees, and many times you're under there and you don't even see the sun. That's how thick they are.”

Santos says the sub builders are protected by the notorious rebel group FARC, known by the Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. They own cocaine fields neighboring the shipyards, and cocaine sales pay for FARC’s guerrilla warfare, so it pays for FARC to protect traffickers.

Authorities believe the subs are constructed of wood or fiberglass by more than a dozen local craftsmen. They say builders learn the trade from a guest nautical engineer, who’s brought in from Eastern Europe or South Asia.

“We've seen boats like this in Sri Lanka,” says Admiral Joseph Nimmich, Director of the Joint Interagency Task Force South, JIATF. “What they do is they come in, they teach them how to do it, and then they leave."

"They get paid very well for their services and then the cartels now have the skill set and then they just continue to build them the way they were taught,” Adm. Nimmich said.

Adm. Nimmich spoke to John Walsh from atop a captured sub at the headquarters of JIATF South. The operation was formed after the 2001 terrorist attacks to defend the United States against threats to national security, and it’s made up of more than a dozen agencies including the Coast Guard, Navy, Southern Command and Customs and Border Protection.

Between them, these agencies are on the lookout for smugglers every minute of every day.

“They’re very sophisticated, they’re well-funded, and they’re extremely organized,” says CBP pilot Drew Duff. “So we’re fighting a tough enemy.”

»AMW.com Exclusive: The Anatomy Of A Drug Sub

Radar Tested to the Limit

The CBP crew of a P-3 Orion search plane glides just 300 feet above the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. They’re on a training mission to test radar, infrared equipment and maneuvers to intercept drug smugglers. Next week, this same crew will launch an actual search mission from Ecuador.

Their skills will be tested to the limit as operators struggle to spot drug subs in the unpredictable seas below.

“If we have sea states and white caps it makes it all the harder to detect them,” says Carlos, a radar operator who asked that we not release his last name in order to protect his safety. “Normal vessels show very distinctively on the radar but the drug subs look like marine life.”

Carlos was on the lookout this past January when authorities managed to intercept three subs in one week. It’s a rare bounty.

“We have to go and check each and every hit on the radar because you don’t know which one is going to be the actual SPSS,” Carlos said.

The subs are considered “low-profile” vessels. Their flat top is coated with a special paint that avoids radar detection, and blends in with the ocean’s azure hue.

Only about a foot of freeboard sits above the surface of the ocean, and even other boats have trouble noticing a sub cruising by.

Authorities say the mastermind behind the sub’s design is an infamous Colombian shrimp boater, Enrique “Captain Nemo” Portocarrero.

Law enforcers nicknamed him Nemo for his nautical skills, after the sub captain character in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Colombian authorities arrested Portocarrero in 2008 after he allegedly designed a fleet of subs to carry up to 10 tons of cocaine, and they can cross oceans without re-fueling.

Authorities believe they travel from the west coast of Colombia to drop points near the southern border of Mexico, with only a store-bought GPS system as their guide.

These are one-way trips. After they reach their destination, and unload the cargo, the sub takes a dive: even though they cost $1 million to build, they'd rather sink the vessels than risk a return trip to Colombia.

A special valve system, designed by Portocarrero, allows crew members to scuttle the ship in just 10 minutes, and the system can also be put into action if the smugglers get caught.

“The loss of a percentage of their cocaine is built into their business model,” says Nimmich. “They'd much rather lose the cocaine than have us get access to those crew members, and use the very stiff sentencing in order to gain additional knowledge of how the cartels work.”

It was once impossible to prosecute smuggling suspects if the evidence had gone down with the ship.

Now, authorities have a new law in their arsenal.

“It says that, even being on one of these vessels in international waters, without any indications of
national origin, is illegal,” says Nimmich.

The crews of four subs have been brought back to the United States, and will be tried under the new law.

But this fight is far from over. While nearly a dozen subs were captured in 2008, authorities suspect four times that many slipped by them. They wonder what traffickers could carry to U.S. shores in the future.

“Right now, most lucrative product to move is cocaine,” Nimmich says.  “But should they find someone who's willing to pay them more money to move something else, they'll move it. They’ll either load them with explosives, and try to do damage to a ship, or bring something illicit into this country directly.”

»AMW.com Exclusive: The Anatomy Of A Drug Sub