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.