It's time to go after Valley's 'terrorists'

Last Dec. 14, President George W. Bush made the following statement against the backdrop of this nation's war on terrorism:
"It's important for Americans to know that trafficking of drugs finances the world of terror, sustaining terrorists; if you quit drugs, you join the fight against terrorism."
A couple of months ago, The Vindicator ran a wire story that detailed the connection between the international drug cartels and terrorist organizations, including Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida network.
And last week, Congress passed and sent to the president a bill establishing the Department of Homeland Security. The department's main responsibility will be to keep America safe from the type of Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on our mainland that claimed the lives of 3,000 innocents.
What does all that have to do with Youngstown, Ohio?
Amid this chatter about international terrorism and the role of the illegal drug industry in financing terrorist organizations, a federal document came across this writer's desk that made the argument for bringing President Bush's war to the Mahoning Valley.
Confession
The document, prepared in 1998 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, deals with former Youngstown Atty. Stuart Banks' confession about his participation in a justice-selling enterprise headed by former Mahoning County Prosecutor James Philomena, who is now serving time in a federal correctional institution in Alabama.
On May 20, 1998, Banks told FBI agents that his first case fixing with Philomena occurred in 1991 or 1992 involving a client by the name of Lazaro Navarro. Navarro, a resident of Miami, Fla., had been arrested in Mahoning County on drug charges.
Banks was paid $30,000 to have the case fixed. He told the feds he gave Philomena about $10,000.
But the corruption of the criminal justice system in Mahoning County, while revealing and disturbing, isn't the main reason the war on terrorism should be brought home to Youngstown.
The following sentence in the 1998 document makes the case:
"Navarro was from Miami, Florida, and was a main drug supplier to the Youngstown area." (Emphasis added.)
The Miami-Youngstown link should be the basis for local officials going to Washington and asking the head of the new Department of Homeland Security, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, who once served as a congressman from western Pennsylvania and is familiar with the Mahoning Valley, to send in the troops.
With the federal government's contention that drug money ultimately ends up in the hands of terrorists who would do harm to America, the argument can be made that an aggressive law enforcement campaign is needed in cities like Youngstown that are important markets for drugs.
What form would the campaign take? Gov. Ridge could declare a state of emergency in the city -- the high homicide rate as a result of the drug wars is proof that the city is being held hostage by narco-terrorists -- which would federalize law enforcement.
Thus, punks who drive around in souped-up luxury cars or SUVs, cell phones stuck to their ears, beepers on their belts and no obvious means of employment could be stopped and searched on the basis of suspicion.
The presumption of drug-related activity on the part of such individuals would force them to prove that the wads of cash in their pockets, the semi-automatic weapons under their car seats, and all their other adornments, such as gold chains and Rolex wrist watches, were acquired through legal means.
Crack houses
Likewise, the crack houses in the city where these enemies of state gather and ply their trade, could be raided without a court order.
While the druggies and perhaps suburban do-gooders might have a problem with such heavy-handed law enforcement, the residents, who are prisoners in their own homes because of the drug kingpins taking over their neighborhoods and owning the streets, would welcome such an aggressive campaign.
Local law enforcement agencies have failed to quell the rising tide of crime in the city of Youngstown, in particular, and the Mahoning Valley in general.
It's time for extreme measures and the Bush administration's formulation of a drug-terrorism connection provides the avenue for ridding the Valley of drug-related terror.
Narco-terrorists must be eliminated.