Cocaine plane trail is open challenge for Obama administration

The story was not reported in the United States, but rather appeared as a short item in news publications in Panama and the Dominican Republic. The Cessna, according to those news reports, had flown out of an airport in Panama to pick up the payload of white powder in Colombia.

This incident would likely have gone down as simply one more aborted drug run in the trail of thousands that bring the lucrative product to the U.S. each year if it were not for one small fact: the Cessna sported a U.S. tail number and FAA registration history that connect it to a number of other “cocaine planes” that have apparent links to covert U.S. intelligence operations focused, at least in part, on Venezuela and the government of Hugo Chávez.

To trace the trail of this Cessna, it’s necessary to keep a couple numbers in mind, since they are the keys that open up this Pandora’s box. The first is the tail number, N811PW and the second is the aircraft’s unique serial number, 402C0078 — which is referenced specifically in the story published in the Dominican Republic newspaper Diario Horizonte.

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