Liberia, Aug. 27 -- Part One of this newspaper's series on Liberia's cocaine reckoning was not really a story about a vessel, a stash house, or even a former Vice President. It was a story about how many different ways this country's institutions found to look away, and how little it has cost anyone, so far, to have looked away.

READ PART ONE OF OUR SERIES, Inside Liberia's Cocaine Reckoning", in full and one image outlasts all the others: a Liberian patrol boat, sent to intercept a vessel loitering off the country's own coast, that simply was not big enough or fast enough to catch it.

THE IB ATLANTIC IV SAT IN LIBERIAN WATERS for the better part of a week before anyone acted decisively, and when the Armed Forces of Liberia finally did,...