Goreville native commands cutter, intercepts drug smugglers
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Under the command of a Goreville native, the crew of the Coast Guard cutter Seneca interdicted a drug smuggling vessel in the Western Caribbean Sea last month.
The Seneca is a medium-endurance cutter, home ported in Boston, with Charles Fosse as its commanding officer. The maneuver was accomplished July 13.
Fosse, whose parents are Jim and Judith Fosse of Goreville, is a 1988 graduate of Goreville High.
"I am very proud of the brave efforts of the crew to stop the SPSS, apprehend the smugglers and obtain evidence prior to the vessel sinking," Fosse said in a statement last week.
"The teamwork of the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection and Joint Interagency Taskforce south personnel during this case was excellent and it is gratifying to see this crew's exceptional skills, persistence and work yield such tangible results with direct impact on our communities back home."
The typical self-propelled semi-submersible vessel, known as an SPSS, is usually built in the jungles of Columbia. Less than 100 feet long, these ships can cost $750,000 to $1 million to build. Each one can carry up to 10 tons of drugs, along with a crew of four or five sailors.
These ships have an engine, are self-propelled, and have a cruising range of 5,000 miles. They lie mostly under water, with only a few feet visible above the water, and are painted blue to blend with the sea. With their low profile, the sub is hard to detect by eye, radar, or heat-seeking cameras.
On July 13, a Coast Guard C-130 fixed-wing aircrew spotted the suspicious 30-foot vessel and notified U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) maritime patrol airplane to investigate. Their crew sighted the drug-loaded SPSS and alerted the Seneca of its location.
According to Coast Guard spokesman Patrick Montgomery of Miami, the sub was sighted by a U.S. CBP plane on routine patrol off the coast of Honduras near Nicarauga, prior to the Seneca's convergence on the vessel.
With the assistance of the CBP plane, a Seneca-based Coast Guard helicopter crew and the Seneca in pursuit, they interdicted the SPSS and detained its crew. The SPSS, designed to sink rapidly when apprehended, did sink.
"It was immediately obvious to our boarding team that the SPSS was taking on water after being scuttled by its crew", said Commander Fosse, in an auto feed provided by the Coast Guard. "The vessel sank seconds after that," he said, but not before the boarding team seized two packages of cocaine, an indication of possibly more.
The Seneca's crewmembers, along with assistance from several other Coast Guard cutters, the Honduran Navy and FBI dive teams conducted the search for the sunken ship. The FBI laboratory's Technical Dive Team of Quantico, Va., was able to recover nearly 15,000 pounds of drugs worth an estimated street value of $180 million from the sunken SPSS.
The U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, CBP, Joint Interagency Task Force South, partnered equipment to work together to conduct counter drug patrols in the Caribbean.
The origin of the SPSS is unknown, as is its destination. While many of these ships have been stopped in the Eastern Pacific, the July 13 interdiction was the very first in the Caribbean.
As many as a dozen semi-submersibles have been intercepted in the Pacific since 2006.
Rear Admiral William Baumgartner, commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District headquartered in Miami, said medium-endurance cutters like the Seneca are built for sustained offshore patrols including those that require enhanced communications and helicopter and pursuit boat operations such as this.
"They provide key capability for the nation's homeland security operations at sea and allow us to fight the threats to our homeland security before they arrive at our doorstep," Adm. Baumgartner said. "Our goal is to interdict cocaine at sea when it is still concentrated in large loads before those drugs can be broken into small loads and smuggled across our bonier with Mexico."
Commander Fosse resides in Cape Cod with his wife, Karen, and their daughters, Ella, 8, and Lauren, 5. In an e-mail to family members, Fosse said, "We've had to keep this under wraps, but here's what we've been up to. On national news, today and tomorrow. I'll send pictures soon."
Fosse's father, a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, said the family is very proud of Charles and his crew.
"His is an awesome responsibility," Col. Fosse said. "We marvel at the seeming incongruity of a young man raised in the middle of the country becoming the commander of an ocean going vessel."
David Keith Fosse, on hearing of his brother's successful venture, said he'd look forward to seeing it on the news.
"A much better story to watch than another story on the debt crisis," David said. "I did read an article on these things (subs) a few months ago. It's great that a strategy was put into place to stop it. And I'm tickled that the Seneca was involved."
Judith Fosse is equally proud of her Coast Guard son.
"All I can add is, 'That's my boy,' and hooray for the crew of the Seneca," she said. "They had a job to do, they trained well, and they got the job done."
The case remains under investigation. The contraband will be turned over later to other U.S. law enforcement agencies for disposition.