State Department and Coast Guard officials last week flew to Havana seeking ``to improve U.S.-Cuban cooperation on drug interdiction.''

If the Clinton administration would look to history, it would have known that it was a vain mission and would set about probing instead the relationship between Colombia's drug trade and the guerrilla movements over which Fidel Castro exercises inordinate influence.

Havana complains that it lacks resources to combat drug trafficking. But, even if one accepts this at face value, it is unclear how the United States should respond. Should we provide resources to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior -- Havana's KGB-Gestapo? Do it while holding in federal custody Cuban spies charged with gathering information about military bases in Florida and linked to the shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue pilots?

Havana has managed to purchase state-of-the-art radio-jamming equipment and foot the bill for thousands of foreigners to visit the island and condemn the U.S. embargo. Could it be that inadequate funding for drug interdiction is simply the result of Castro's misguided priorities?

In 1982 a federal grand jury indicted four high-ranking Cuban government officials, including a vice admiral of the Cuban navy and a former Cuban ambassador to Colombia. They were charged with facilitating the smuggling of drugs into the United States.

In 1983 then-President Ronald Reagan said that there was ``strong evidence'' of drug smuggling by high-level Cuban government officials. And in 1989 Castro executed several Ministry of the Interior officials and Cuba's most decorated army officer, Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, allegedly involved in the drug trade. Castro did so after years of suggesting that U.S. accusations of drug smuggling were lies ``concocted by the CIA.'' He has never explained how widespread Cuba's involvement with narcotrafficking was then or how a military and national hero such as Ochoa, with no oversight over Cuba's harbors or airspace, could have been involved.

Then there is the mystery of how several hundred million dollars appeared in the coffers of Cuba's National Bank. Castro's American supporters assert that $800 million is sent by the Cuban-American community every year to relatives. However, given the relatively small number of Cuban-American households who still have relatives in Cuba, it is mathematically impossible for that community to generate such funds. The amount is approximately equivalent to the income Cuba derived in 1997-98 from its main export: sugar. Money laundering and drug smuggling are the logical sources of this mysterious income.

It should be noted that, despite major narcotics charges brought against Ochoa and the other Interior Ministry officers, no accounting was ever presented of what should have been multimillion-dollar payoffs.

Claims of Castro's cooperation with U.S. anti-narcotics efforts are a rerun of the Noriega saga. Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega currently is serving a long, federal sentence for his role in the drug trade. He had extensive ties to the Cuban dictator. Evidence was presented at his trial that Castro once mediated a dispute between Noriega and the Medellin drug cartel.

Nevertheless, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's drug czar, recently said that there is ``no conclusive evidence to indicate that the Cuban leadership is currently involved in this criminal activity.'' The general seems to be unaware of a report released by his own office in March, titled ``1998 Annual Assessment of Cocaine Movement.'' It states: ``Noncommercial air movements from Colombia to the Bahamas were most prolific in 1998. Most flights fly either east or west of Jamaica, and subsequently fly over Cuban land mass.'' It adds that the cocaine flown over Cuban territory is dropped ``in or near Cuban territorial waters.''

Given Castro's sensitivity concerning unidentified aircraft flying over Cuba, as evidenced by the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, it is inexplicable that not one drug-smuggling airplane has ever been shot down over the island.

There are those who believe that the Cuban leopard has changed his spots. Maybe. But the consequences of taking Castro at his word can be tragic. The impact of the drug epidemic on America's youth is far too important to allow the facts linking Castro to the drug trade to be swept under the rug.