TRANSPORT WORKERS FIND U.S. A DRUG SIEVE
By Mireya Navarro
New York Times Service

MIAMIThe three wooden cargo crates dropped off by a
courier at the international airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a Delta
Air Lines flight to New York City looked harmless.

But the nervous behavior of the courier raised suspicions. Law
enforcement officials looked inside the crates and found 1,000 pounds
(about 450 kilograms) of cocaine.

The shipment was part of an illicit operation over three to four
years in which, federal officials said, thousands of pounds of Colombian
cocaine were hidden in suitcases and cargo crates aboard Delta flights
from Puerto Rico and unloaded for nationwide U.S. distribution.

What made the operation successful for so long, the
government said, was that it was run with the help of Delta employees
who used fake airline tags and bypassed checkin and security
procedures by hauling the illegal loads through the airport restaurant
and bar.

This episode illustrates what federal lawenforcement officials
said has become an alarming trend across the country: increasing
involvement of airport and harbor workers in drug smuggling.

In the fiscal year starting last October, figures from the U.S.
Customs Service show that 148 commercial cargo employees at
airports and seaports have been arrested nationwide, accused of helping
smuggle drugs in aircraft compartments and ship cargo containers.

Although arrest figures for other years were not available for
comparison, officials said such statistics told only part of the story.
Lnsiders are often able to avoid arrest because they know when
customs inspections of aircraft and containerized cargo will occur, and
they can simply not pick up the drugs.

Although only small numbers of airport and harbor employees
are involved in drug smuggling, their impact is great, federal offficials
said, because the workers had another insider's advantage access to
obscure hiding places in toilets, cockpits and passenger cabins in aircraft
and in cargo containers aboard ships. Officials said the employees
come from virtually every segment of the work forcebaggage
handlers, caterers, cleaners, ticketcounter agents, mechanics and flight
crews at airports, and longshoremen, freight checkers, and ship crews at
ports.

Helping pass a few pounds of the contraband can earn a
worker an additional $3,000 to $5,000.

Felix Jimenez, the Drug Enforcement Administration's special
agent in charge for the Caribbean in San Juan said: "A guy who's
making $5 an hour suddenly is making $400,000 a year by doing
this."

"It attacks the integrity of the system," Raphael Lopez,.the
Customs Service special agent in charge in Miami, said of what law
enforcement officials call "internal conspiracies." An employee is
"someone who is trusted, and that trust is violated."

The problem has been growing at major ports as aggressive law
enforcement pushes traffickers to find ingenious methods of
concealment, Customs Service officials said.

But, they added, it is particularly acute in San Juan and Miarni,
major gateways for illegal drugs because of their proximity to South
America. Airport and harbor workers are suspected in most cases in
which drugs are seized at the Port of Miami and Miami International
Airport, officials said.

At the Port of Miami, where customs inspectors seize more
drugs in cargo containers than at any other port in the country,
customs officials say part of the problem is lax security and the lack of
criminal background checks of employees that are standard in some
other ports around the country, such as the Port of New YorkNew
Jersey.

In a report prepared for congressional hearings last month on
efforts to stop the flow of drugs into the United States Representative
John Mica, Republican from central Florida, called security at the port
"weak, ineffective, and overburdened."

Dock and warehouse workers have such free rein around the
portf Mr. Mica and Customs~Service inspectors said, that employees
have been known to tamper with surveillance cameras, drive around to
pick up drugs and leave. There are no checkpoints.

But Arthur Coffey, president of the International
Longshoremen's Association Local 1922 here, blamed "a shortage of
manpower, budget cuts, and ineffective leadership" at the Customs
Service.