U.S. Launches a New Drive Against Illicit Cocaine Labs in Bolivia : War on drugs: Air, land and river strikes are part of the campaign. Traffickers threaten retaliation.

WASHINGTON — In an escalation of the drug war in South America, U.S. agents have launched a new coordinated attack against a network of cocaine laboratories in the Bolivian jungle, provoking threats of retaliation against the American-led teams, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The offensive, including nighttime raids with inflatable boats in alligator-infested rivers, targets new processing plants believed responsible for an estimated one-fourth of Bolivia’s burgeoning cocaine production.

The long-planned assault, which began last week, marks the most advanced U.S. use of military-style tactics against the trafficking operations, including simultaneous strikes from air, land and river.

“We’re doing a lot of first-time things,” said David L. Westrate, director of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Ten DEA agents using U.S.-supplied UH-1 (Huey) helicopters and Zodiac boats are leading 40 members of a special Bolivian anti-narcotics unit in the after-dark raids.

The teams so far have met with no resistance in their raids on seven airstrips and three laboratories, Administration officials said. But the threats of retaliation are taken seriously because they come from Colombian traffickers who have shifted their operations to Bolivia, and they add to the apprehension about the dangers to U.S. personnel.

“Who in their right minds would take an inflatable boat into rivers where there are alligators?” asked Rep. Larry Smith (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs narcotics task force and a longtime critic of DEA operations.

The raids in the rugged jungle come as authorities try to stave off an expansion of cocaine-making in Bolivia. The country, long a major producer of raw coca leaves, is increasingly favored by traffickers as an alternative site for key laboratories displaced by a government crackdown in Colombia.

U.S. anti-drug officials fear that the shift may have more than made up for a shortfall in cocaine production within Colombia, where traffickers are believed to be operating at no more than 80% of the levels of a year ago.

Because American personnel assigned to Bolivia play a far more direct role in anti-drug operations than those in Colombia, the shift also increasingly has thrust U.S. forces into the task of confronting drug operations at their most vital--and well-guarded--point.

“People used to always say that the Bolivians would run away when you came after them,” said Westrate, the DEA assistant administrator. Now, he said, “there are a lot of Colombians in the country, and they’re tending to be a little tougher.”

The new, prolonged DEA assault in Bolivia’s rugged Beni province is aimed at what intelligence reports said were as many as 10 crude laboratories that convert coca leaves into paste, and two to three sophisticated facilities.

In an unusual move, the American drug agents switched to the more dangerous after-dark operations after learning that the laboratories were being operated at night to avoid the U.S.-coordinated daylight patrols.

Westrate, who first disclosed the operation in a briefing before a congressional committee Wednesday, described the rough jungle terrain as presenting “tremendous logistical difficulties.”

“It took six hours for two Zodiacs to move eight miles in a river infested with large alligators,” he said, adding in response to Rep. Smith’s concerns that the boats have “hardened bottoms.”

Some Administration officials expressed disappointment that the weeklong operation had resulted in destruction of only three cocaine laboratories, only one of them a highly sophisticated facility.

One official blamed the meager results on a lack of airlift capability. The problem has been compounded by a three-week-old dispute between Congress and the Administration that has delayed the shipment of half a dozen helicopters to Bolivia.