Talk:Operation Stopgap

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Page scope

Operation Stopgap covers the American campaign to intercept Colombian marijuana carried by mother ships in the winter of 1977–1978: how the agencies found and stopped the ships, what they reported seizing, what happened to the crews, when the campaign began and ended, and how it was judged afterwards. The trade it was aimed at is the subject of Bonanza marimbera; American support for destroying cannabis crops in other countries is the subject of United States and cannabis eradication abroad.

Sourcing

The record of the Senate subcommittee hearing of 22 August 1978 on "mother ships", with the statements of the DEA and of Senator John Chafee and a Newsweek article of October 1978 reprinted in it; a CIA intelligence assessment of September 1982; a General Accounting Office report on the Coast Guard of February 1979; a wire report of July 1978 printed in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times; a comment in the St. John's Law Review (1984); José Cervantes Angulo's La noche de las luciérnagas (1980); Daniel Laliberte's article on the Night Train in Naval History (2018); and the DEA's history of its work from 1975 to 1980.

Discussion

When the operation ran

• The DEA's statement of August 1978 calls Stopgap a 45-day programme. The CIA (1982) gives December 1977 to February 1978, and Cervantes Angulo (1980) 45 days between December 1977 and February 1978. Newsweek (October 1978) has it launched late in 1977.
• The DEA's history of 1975–1980 says Stopgap was created in December 1975. Laliberte (2018) gives the same date and cites that history.
• The July 1978 wire report has the DEA naming the Night Train, "boarded last December", as the first ship seized under Stopgap. Laliberte dates that seizure to 1 February 1977, from a recording made aboard the cutter Dauntless and a newspaper report of 7 February 1977. A U.S. News & World Report article of 27 March 1978, reprinted in the hearing record, also puts it in early 1977 ("that January day in 1977"). The weight of the load is given as 104,000 pounds (Laliberte, from the Customs count), 108,000 pounds (U.S. News) and 54 tons (the July report).
• The sources do not settle whether Stopgap was the name of a longer programme whose most intensive phase ran in the winter of 1977–1978, or whether the July 1978 report placed an earlier seizure under it in error.

The figures

• Vessels. 33, four of them sunk or scuttled (DEA, August 1978); 33 ships with 450 short tons (CIA, 1982); 40, with four more scuttled before boarding (the July 1978 report); 24 ships and many aircraft (Cervantes Angulo).
• Marijuana. 900,000 pounds (DEA, August 1978); "nearly a million pounds" (Chafee's spoken statement); 450 short tons, the same quantity (CIA); over a million pounds (the DEA's later history); cargoes worth 220 million dollars (Cervantes Angulo).
• People. About 220 arrested and/or detained and deported (DEA, August 1978); 220 arrests, almost all of Colombians, with only the Night Train crew charged (the July 1978 report); 220 apprehended and four prosecuted, all Americans (Chafee); more than 220 arrested, almost all Colombian nationals (the DEA's later history).
• The Coast Guard's monthly seizure table printed in the hearing record covers December 1977 to February 1978 but does not divide its figures by operation.

Cervantes Angulo's account

• In La noche de las luciérnagas the pages on the operation (from p. 163) follow an italicised Spanish reprint of an article by the American journalist Robert Coram (1978) and are set in roman type. The book does not make clear whether they continue Coram's report or are Cervantes Angulo's own.
• The same pages tell of a raid at Dibulla that took 165 tons of marijuana and of an American pilot wounded during the arrests. The State Department reported a raid in February 1978, made possible by helicopters the United States had given Colombia, that seized 165 tons of marijuana; its report does not connect the raid with Stopgap.

Images reserved in the article

One image has a place in the article but is not yet uploaded:

• File:CIA-1982-mother-ship-loading-Portete-Bay.jpg (lead): the photograph titled "Mother Ship Loading, Portete Bay" in the CIA's intelligence assessment Smuggling Colombian Marijuana: A High-Profit Venture (September 1982; reading-room document CIA-RDP83B00851R000200170003-4), a United States government work in the public domain. The alt text and caption are to be checked against the photograph itself before it is placed.