 I'm Lloyd Dobbins. This evening we have reports for you that are at least a little unusual. One is about a young boy whose face is being rebuilt after a disease is literally ate away the middle of it. It's a tribute to a doctor's skill and the little boy's courage. But our first story tonight is about cocaine. It is not about the people who use it or the anguish it causes or the careers it ruins. It's about the people who get rich making it. In this case, people in Bolivia. There aren't that many cocaine kings in Bolivia, but as Steve Delaney learned while he was there, one of them is so rich and so powerful. There are fears that he might, if challenged, overthrow the government. On a jungle air strip in northeast Bolivia, a military transport makes a surprise landing at what appears to be an innocent cattle ranch. In fact, it is a secret cocaine factory. The special troopers rush the ranch house and bag two big names in the Bolivian drug mafia. After more than a decade of corruption and indifference, are the Bolivians finally cracking down on their drug traffic? Maybe, but there is less here than meets the eye. Bolivians have always grown the coca leaf, but it wasn't until the mid-seventies when cocaine became the drug of choice for five million Americans that the traffic exploded. It is now a business three times more valuable than tin, the country's leading legal export. Bolivia now supplies more than half the world's cocaine. With so much money around, it was inevitable that by 1980, drug corruption would reach the highest levels of the Bolivian government. General Luis Garcia Mesa became president in 1980, was reportedly paid a million dollars by the drug mafia to leave them alone. He's now in exile in Argentina where it is said he is still making money on drugs. Luis Arcegómez used to be minister of the interior. When he was, they called that office the Ministry of Cocaine. He's wanted by the U.S. for drug trafficking. He is also in Argentina, reportedly still in business. The civilian government, which took over a little more than a year ago, has been plagued by strikes by an awful economy and by persistent rumors of a coup. President Siles and his colleagues are supposed to be honest and are publicly committed to fighting the drug traffic, even though far they've been unable to do. The cocaine problem begins high in the Andes Mountains where Bolivian peasants cultivate the coca bush, much as they've done for thousands of years. Belief is a mild stimulant and has legitimate medical uses. In fact, it is the only known remedy for altitude sickness. Out here, the coca leaf means survival, but not luxury. In Bolivia's cities and towns, coca is sold on the open market. 5,000 years ago, the dead here were buried with a bag of coca leaves to speed them on to the next world. Today, the living chew coca to spare them some of the rigors of this world. It quiets the empty stomach in a land where hunger is endemic. It eases pain where there's no money for a doctor. Coca is warmth to people with too few clothes and is relief to people with too little hope. In the past, the green leaves were used as money and with a worthless peso, the prudent still took away a few bags for bartering. On the streets, it brings about a dollar a pound. But as the cocaine dealers discovered years ago, the big money is not in cultivation but in the processing of leaves into a paste and later into a fine crystalline powder. To do that, kerosene is poured over the leaves and the mix is then stomped into a pulp in a process similar to primitive wine pressing. 150 pounds of leaves worth $100 makes a pound of paste, which then sells for several thousand dollars. The leaf stoppers are recruited by labor bosses who pass out cocaine cigarettes to keep them going tirelessly for hours on end, wired on the drug. For that reason, the boss has called these workers sepis or ants. It sells wholesale in Miami for between $25 and $45,000 for about two pounds. Street value more than a million. This is the finest crystalline cocaine in the world. The end product has been sniffed or smoked by 22 million Americans. La Paz is cool and dry and poor and very high. At 12,000 feet, the air here is so thin that people born at sea level tend to huff and puff a lot just from walking up a flight of stairs. And yet one-fifth of Bolivia's five million people live in the capital. La Paz is also the funnel through which all this country's cocaine money flows. It is the biggest source of foreign exchange Bolivia has, and yet the cocaine dollars are largely invisible. They do very little to help most of the people, quite a lot to help the very few of them. It is said that money doesn't care who owns it, and apparently the bankers don't care either. They're often seen buying US dollars from drug dealers. $500 million a year enters the Bolivian economy this way. Most of the cook profits remain in Swiss banks. Who are these guys, the leaders of what's called the Coca Nostra in Bolivia? Not much is known of the lesser families, the Razooks, the Malkis, the Cevizrocos, but here are two of the biggest dealers. Once a pilot for other mafia kingpins, Jorge Flores later went into business for himself. He was swept up during that raid on the cattle ranch, the first time any of the ten dealers have been arrested. And this is Roberto Suarez, the biggest drug dealer in the world. He is the boss. Suarez supplies at least a third of all the cocaine entering the United States and seems untouchable at home. He's got a private army called the Fiancés of Death to scare police and rivals alike. The Suarez enforcers were trained by ex-Guestapo boss Klaus Barbie. He recruited the Fiancés of Death from among right-wing thugs in Europe. The Cele's government let France extradite Barbie last year to stand trial for war crimes. One of Barbie's recruits was Pier Luigi Pugliai, wanted by the Italians for a bombing in Bologna in 1980 that killed 84 people. He was a captain in the Fiancés of Death until he was extradited last year. This rare film shows Suarez' daughter Hady and ex-Miss Bolivia enjoying some of her father's profits. Roberto Jr. in the background was tried for drug smuggling last year in Miami and was acquitted. This is the headquarters of Colonel Julio Zapata's narcotics police responsible for stopping Bolivia's drug traffic. It's also a jail, but you won't find Roberto Suarez or any of the other big-timers behind bars here. One blanket for three guys. I got the same clothes on if they arrest me. 15 days ago. Two unlucky Americans reportedly caught with a pound or two of cocaine are hardly big-time traffickers. Why those two and not Roberto Suarez? We asked Colonel Zapata, he knows where Suarez is, why doesn't he go get him? That's a beautiful question. Since Suarez is as strong as the narcotics police, maybe you should ask the armed forces why they haven't arrested him. So we did ask the Army. General Lucio Añez, Chief of Staff of the Bolivian Armed Forces. I also don't know why Suarez is still free. Institutionally, the armed forces are not in charge of narcotics. Buck passing aside, the government was anxious to show that it is beginning to move against some dealers. The target of this operation was a spot in Bolivia's eastern Vene province, the home of most of the leading drug traffickers. Dozens of secret airstrips dot this wild and unpoliced region where every week cocaine is flown out to the U.S. by the plane load. This raid was planned for the day before when intelligence indicated 3,000 pounds of cocaine would be shipped, but for reasons never fully explained the operation was delayed for a critical 24 hours. The pickings were pretty slim by the time the police finally got there. The big stash was gone, but there was an odd assortment of guns, a few pounds of cocaine, one airplane, and $13,000 worth of crisp new Bolivian bills crushed from the bank. Still, two suspects were arrested, including Jorge Flores, the pilot entrepreneur. He declined to answer questions. Under the Constitution, I have a right to a lawyer, said Flores in the best jailhouse tradition. Suspect Jorge Cuellar was more forthcoming, conceding that he once flew for Roberto Flores. He defended his ex-boss, calling him a great sport. Though this raid hardly put a dent in Bolivia's drug traffic, a police official who was there said it is a beginning. We are going to fight the narcotics, we are going to help the people, because we consider that these people who are smuggling cocaine through Bolivia into the United States are people that don't care nothing about the lives and the health of the people. Is there any chance that after this raid that you might be moving soon against Roberto Flores? Well, that's what we think. Are we going to find him through this soon? I guess. Whether the new government in fact will strike hard at Flores and his cohorts, we don't yet know. There have been more raids lately with a strong urging and support of American drug enforcement people. But they've been raged against small timers mostly while ignoring the cocanostra. Indeed, the wealth and political power of the drug lords amount to a compelling argument to police and governments alike to mine their own business and keep their hands off the mob. And if the government should strike hard, what's to prevent Suarez and friends from sparking another coup as they did in 1980? In fact, Suarez has threatened to take action, whatever that means, if the authorities lean on him. For the cocanostra, the stakes are enormous. Worldwide, Coke is a $45 billion business. Very serious business indeed for Suarez and company. And so Suarez remains free, reveling in his reputation as a good family man who does good works for his neighbors. But he's also the man who symbolizes the addiction of Bolivia's body politic to cocaine, with all the economic and moral decay that accompanies that dependency. We spoke with John Thomas of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics Matters. What is U.S. policy toward the production and transmission of drugs from Bolivia specifically? How are we trying to deal with that? Our long-term goal is to work with the Bolivian government and the Bolivian people to reduce the amount of coca leaf being produced in Bolivia to that amount which would meet their illicit or legal needs in that country, which include the traditional use by certain Bolivians, the chewing population as we call it. Even with American encouragement, Bolivian needs the will to move on its own against the cocanostra. We spoke with Interior Minister Federico Alvarez. In my country, at once, a man named Jesse James was the chief outlaw, and then there was Al Capone and there was Lucky Luciano and some others, and they all sort of thumbed their noses at the authority, and yet they were all caught and put away. Do you suspect that's what's going to happen to River Tosvarez? It's very possible. Some people we've talked to who are studying the problem of the narcotics traffic say that 100 or 200 commandoes specially trained could go into these areas and in a week wipe these people out. Why don't they do it? But the same reason that the United States, with all its military strength, cannot wipe out your drug problem. This is Juara, the most popular musical group in Bolivia. There are words to this song. They are sung in the ancient Aymara language. It's appropriate that that song be done in that language in this place, the ruins of the Inca civilization, because the song celebrates the physical and mystical qualities of the coca leaf. It's a tradition that goes back beyond the Spanish and beyond the Incas in this country. And no matter how hard the government tries to stamp out the narcotics traffic, the cocoa bush will never disappear from this culture. For cocaine to disappear, not from their culture, but from ours, the crackdown on the big producers in Bolivia will have to be effective. For that to happen, the government in Bolivia will have to be strong. That now seems unlikely. The cabinet has resigned. The Bolivian Congress is threatening a vote of no confidence, and the president and vice president are arguing about some report of a planned coup. In the midst of all that, it is unreasonable to assume that the Bolivian government, or what is left of it, is going to worry a great deal about the cocaine problem in the United States.