AFTER 9 YEARS, MAN IS CAUGHT IN DRUG CASE

After running from the law for more than nine years, a Westchester County
man was arrested last week and charged with being one of the biggest
wholesale marijuana suppliers in the New York area over the last two decades.

Irwin S. Kletter, originally from Bedford, was picked up Aug. 16 at his
home in Pompano Beach, Fla., federal officials announced yesterday. He was
arraigned yesterday on charges of running a drug operation that had moved
in excess of 1,000 kilograms of marijuana since 1990, a crime that carries
a maximum penalty of life in prison, the officials said. He is being held
without bail.

Mr. Kletter, 64, was known in the underworld as Sonny. He was one of a
handful of prominent New York drug dealers whose sophisticated operation
used sea and air freight containers to ship marijuana into the metropolitan
area, said Burton Ryan, an assistant United States attorney. Smugglers
working for Mr. Kletter's ring would sometimes transport drugs across the
desert from Mexico on the backs of donkeys, and at other times drugs were
hidden in shipments of vegetables and furniture, Mr. Ryan said.

The Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Marshals Service
tracked Mr. Kletter to Florida in recent weeks by analyzing the phone
records of several of his known associates, Mr. Ryan said. He had been
living in Florida for only about three months, Mr. Ryan added, when he was
placed under surveillance and eventually arrested.

In 1992, Mr. Kletter was indicted in Seattle on charges of buying several
tons of marijuana from a supplier in Thailand, but he went into hiding
before he was arrested. He was indicted again in 1995 in Denver, where he
was charged with drug peddling and money laundering.

According to a warrant issued by federal officials in Seattle, Mr. Kletter
had contacts who "may have criminal associates in France, Canada,
Switzerland, Thailand, Ireland, Denmark and Germany." A D.E.A. Web site
that named Mr. Kletter as a wanted fugitive said one of his previous
addresses was on West 79th Street in Manhattan.