William J. Lynn III addresses
task force staff
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U.S. Department of Defense/Cherie Cullen
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New Key West center to coordinate
effort against criminal trafficking
By the American Forces Press Service
A new, high-tech command center in Key West, Florida, will move the
fight against illicit traffickers to a new level, Deputy Defense
Secretary William J. Lynn III said Monday.
Just before cutting a ribbon to the Joint Operations Command Center at
the U.S. Naval Air Station, Lynn said the threat that plagues the
region has evolved beyond drugs alone.
"Transnational criminal organizations are posing a
not-very-well-understood, but growing, threat to the United States," he
told the task force staff. "It's something I know you are on the front
lines of addressing and, ultimately, preventing."
The new command center serves Joint Interagency Task Force South, a
subordinate command to the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command that
integrates military, interagency and international capabilities to
combat illicit trafficking.
Lynn traveled to Miami a day earlier to meet with Air Force Gen.
Douglas Fraser, South Command chief, and his leadership team. In
testimony last month before the House Armed Services Committee, Fraser
called the task force "the center of U.S. maritime interdiction efforts
in the Caribbean basin and eastern Pacific."
Using information from law enforcement agencies, the general added, the
task force detects and monitors suspect aircraft and maritime vessels
and then provides this information to international and interagency
partners who have the authority to interdict illicit shipments and
arrest members of transnational criminal organizations.
Task force members represent each U.S. military service and most
federal law enforcement agencies, including the Drug Enforcement
Agency, the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Other members from the U.S. intelligence community represent the CIA,
the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence
Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Security
Agency.
The task force staff includes liaison officers from 13 nations:
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El
Salvador, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Spain and the United
Kingdom.
"We made the decision in April 2008 to apply our collective wisdom and
knowledge across the interagency, our international partners and the
joint team here," said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Daniel Lloyd, commander of
Joint Interagency Task Force South, during the ceremony opening the new
operations center.
The aim, he said, was "to come up with a better way to be even more effective in countering the illicit traffickers."
"I think it's important at this moment to recognize how far we've
come," said William Wechsler, deputy assistant secretary of defense for
counternarcotics and global threats.
In the 1980s, the mission was considered to be an unsolvable problem,
he said, adding: "There was a never-ending stream of air and maritime
vessels headed right for our coast. It was a direct threat to U.S.
sovereignty." Today, he added, the problem has evolved, and so has the
task force.
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