ALASKA MAN HELD FOR GRAND JURY AFTER AGENT TESTIFIES IN DRUG CASE

An Alaska man arrested Saturday with more than 1,100 pounds of marijuana in
the back of a rented truck is a suspected drug smuggler who has escaped
capture twice, a U.S. Customs Service agent testified Wednesday in federal
court.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John F. Forster ordered Tommy Joe Yeoman, 55, of
Soldotna, Alaska, held in custody while a grand jury is impaneled to hear
evidence of the Saturday marijuana bust on Interstate 40 in North Little Rock.

Robert Mensinger, the resident agent in Arkansas for the Customs Service,
said during Yeoman's Wednesday afternoon detention hearing that authorities
from the United States and Canada have been investigating Yeoman's alleged
drug smuggling over the past two years.

He outlined the results of a search of the Customs Service database that
revealed at least seven addresses Yeoman had listed in transactions and in
numerous border crossings.

"The Royal Canadian Mounted Police indicated that Mr. Yeoman has flown his
aircraft in at least 15 flights over an uncontrolled airstrip in British
Columbia," Mensinger testified.

After a crash landing in Canada last October, investigators with the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police seized the wreckage of Yeoman's plane, and tests
determined traces of cocaine inside. In another inspection by Canadian
investigators during an attempt to fly into Canada, authorities found
"possible false compartments" in the aircraft and refused Yeoman entry into
the country, Mensinger testified.

Yeoman was also under investigation for allegedly flying four trips into a
rural north Georgia airstrip and narrowly escaping agents serving a federal
search warrant on March 24, 2000, in the town of Calhoun, Ga.

On Saturday, Arkansas state Trooper Bobby Brown pulled Yeoman over in a
rented Ryder truck near the Galloway exit on Interstate 40.

Brown reported that he stopped Yeoman because he was following too closely
behind a tractor-trailer.

After gaining Yeoman's permission to search the cargo area of the truck,
state police found 57 bundles of marijuana weighing 1,162 pounds.

Yeoman and his 22-year-old son, Jason Yeoman, were arrested on charges of
possession of a controlled substance with the intent to distribute. On
Tuesday, Jason Yeoman was released on his own recognizance.

At the end of the hour-long detention hearing, assistant U.S. Attorney
Linda Lipe argued that Yeoman posed too much of a flight risk to be allowed
free on his own recognizance. "He has too many addresses for us to ever
begin to say he is stable in any one location," Lipe said. "There would be
too much opportunity for him to leave and too much incentive."