Pubdate: Wed, 10 Oct 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Section: National
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Robert Pear and Philip Shenon
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

THE BORDERS: CUSTOMS SWITCHES PRIORITY FROM DRUGS TO TERRORISM

WASHINGTON -- The new head of the United States Customs Service said today 
that terrorism has replaced drug smuggling as the agency's top priority, 
and that he has redeployed hundreds of agents to provide round-the-clock 
inspections at the Canadian border to prevent terrorists from entering the 
country.

Robert C. Bonner, who was sworn in as customs commissioner just two weeks 
ago, said he had begun receiving daily intelligence briefings on terrorist 
threats as part of his agency's shifting mission.

As a result of the redeployments along the Canadian border, a preferred 
entryway for terrorists in the past, Mr. Bonner said the agency has had to 
cut the number of inspectors dedicated to special units that search for 
illegal drugs and for exports of high-technology products. The alert has 
been raised along the border with Mexico too, but the Customs Service had 
already increased its presence there in recent years.

"Terrorism is our highest priority, bar none," said Mr. Bonner, a former 
federal judge who has also served as the head of the Drug Enforcement 
Administration. "Ninety-eight percent of my attention as commissioner of 
customs has been devoted to that one issue."

The terrorist attacks have brought about sharp changes at several other 
federal agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 
the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Public Health Service and the 
Internal Revenue Service.

But apart from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, few agencies have so 
prominent a front-line role to play as the Customs Service, which is 
responsible for guarding the borders and blocking the entry of terrorists 
and their tools.

The service is given credit for thwarting a major terrorist attack on the 
eve of the millennium celebration in December 1999, when a customs 
inspector in Washington State found a trunkload of explosives in the car of 
an Algerian who later acknowledged having trained at terrorist camps in 
Afghanistan run by Osama bin Laden.

The attacks on Sept. 11 also physically hammered the Customs Service, since 
the north tower of the World Trade Center fell onto the eight-story 
building, 6 World Trade Center, that housed its New York office. That 
building was destroyed, and 760 workers were displaced.

In an interview today, Mr. Bonner acknowledged that the agency's 
traditional role in preventing the smuggling of drugs and other contraband 
would be affected by the new focus on terrorism.

"We are robbing Peter to pay Paul," he said, noting that inspectors had 
been working 12 to 16 hours a day since Sept. 11. "We are stretched thin."

Since the attacks, the service has spent $5.5 million a week on overtime 
for inspectors, almost three times its usual outlay.

Mr. Bonner said that small customs posts along the northern border, which 
have gone unstaffed at night and on some holidays, are now being manned 
every day around the clock by at least two inspectors.

Customs agents, he said, are being told to be especially vigilant for any 
"implements of terrorism," like chemical, biological or nuclear materials 
that could be used as weapons. Many agents are being ordered to wear 
pocket-sized radiation detectors -- miniature Geiger counters -- as they 
carry out their inspections at airports and borders.

The shift in focus has startled many longtime customs officers like Harold 
H. Zagar, the chief customs inspector at Dulles International Airport, in 
the Virginia suburbs of Washington.

"For 31 years," he said, "I've been fighting the war on drugs."

Now, suddenly, drug trafficking is a distant, secondary priority. To say 
the change is disorienting understates the case. "Whoa!" Mr. Zagar said. 
"We've gone full circle."

The Customs Service is the nation's oldest law enforcement agency, founded 
in 1789, and the change in its mission is a jolt to almost every one of its 
10,600 inspectors and criminal investigators.

Before Sept. 11, customs officials at Dulles and other airports had 
developed sophisticated profiles of likely drug smugglers and searched 
luggage for hidden narcotics. Now, Mr. Zagar said, inspectors are much more 
interested in documents -- blueprints, drawings, photographs, flight 
manuals, chemical data -- that might be carried by terrorists.

The need to set new profiles for terrorists could be controversial for the 
service. In recent years, blacks sued the agency, saying they had been 
singled out for interrogation and searches because of their race. The 
agency promised not to engage in racial profiling.

Now, though, inspectors are scrambling to develop profiles of travelers 
from the Middle East who might have links to terrorist groups like Al 
Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's far-flung network. The agency said the new 
"targeting criteria" would focus on passengers arriving on certain flights 
from certain countries, especially from the Middle East, North Africa and 
Central Asia.

Other agencies are also telling their employees to put aside regular duties 
and focus on terrorist threats. The Agriculture Department is directing its 
inspectors to prevent attacks on crops and livestock and other types of 
"agroterrorism."

The new administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Asa 
Hutchinson, said he saw a "deadly, symbiotic relationship between the 
illicit drug trade and international terrorism." He estimated that 
Afghanistan produces at least 70 percent of the world's supply of illicit 
opium, and he said that the Taliban leadership derive large amounts of 
revenue from the traffic.

"The sanctuary enjoyed by bin Laden is based on the existence of the 
Taliban's support for the drug trade," Mr. Hutchinson said in Congressional 
testimony last week.

Bradley A. Buckles, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and 
Firearms, said that 500 of his 2,300 agents are working with the F.B.I. to 
investigate the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Similarly, the I.R.S. has ordered some of its criminal investigators to 
work with other agencies to determine how terrorist groups are financed. 
The I.R.S. is focusing on money laundering and possible currency violations.
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