DRUG-TAINTED CASH DEBATE UNSETTLED

Times' Sampling Finds Money Clean, But Result Challenged By Expert

To test the widely circulated theory that 80 percent or more of all cash
bears trace amounts of cocaine, The Huntsville Times did its own survey.
With a twist.

We asked upstanding citizens to take part. What better way to show how the
drug culture is tied to cash.

Some people - mostly elected officials - refused. They didn't want their
names tied to drug money, no matter the premise of the experiment.

So we kept asking. Finally, an accountant, an attorney, a rabbi, an
assistant principal, a businessman, a doctor, a newspaper publisher, a
college dean and a Presbyterian minister agreed to swap $20 bills with us
to be tested for cocaine residue.

The bills were placed in individual envelopes with the participant's name
and the bills' serial number written on the outside.

After all, wouldn't it show just how deeply drugs have penetrated society
if such well-respected folks were walking around with drug-tainted cash in
their pockets?

But a funny thing happened. When John Kilbourn of Analytical & Forensic
Associates Inc. of Huntsville completed his tests, he mailed a written
report we weren't expecting.

"Analysis for cocaine was negative on each of the twenty-dollar bills."

So the next step in the experiment involved one question with a gamut of
possible answers: "Why?"

Short-Term Residue

Sgt. Jim Winn, commander of the Huntsville-Madison County Strategic
Counterdrug Team, said he knew what the outcome of such a test would be
even before he knew we were running the experiment.

"You should've called me first," Winn said. "I could've saved you the trouble."

Winn believes 80 percent of cash might be tainted with cocaine at some
point of its life, but the measurable residue doesn't hang around long.

"That would be our argument in court," Winn said. "The scent that a drug
dog hits on dissipates quickly. So your test is not indicative of whether
or not the money you examined has ever been touched by a dealer or a user.

"Some people argue that if a drug-detecting canine hits on money, it
doesn't really mean that the cash was recently handled by dealers, that all
money has residue on it. I don't buy that."

Dr. Jim Woodford does buy it. He's dedicated much of his career to
spreading the results of studies done in the late 1980s that yielded the 80
percent statistic. He's testified in courts across the country that drug
residue on cash does not a dealer make.

He's published papers on the subject, and he's conducted drug experiments
across the globe, including at Britain's Scotland Yard.

"Also, please take note that I was qualified as an expert chemist by (the
late) Judge Frank M. Johnson before he went to the FBI," Woodford said,
invoking the name of one of Alabama's most esteemed federal judges.

With credentials firmly established, Woodford shared his thoughts on why
The Times' experiment went so dramatically different than expected:

Maybe the samples weren't properly gathered.

Maybe the bills were new - especially if they'd recently come from an ATM -
and hadn't been circulated enough. (The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and
Printing says a $20 bill has a life expectancy of two years.)

Maybe the experiments weren't rigorous enough.

Maybe if tests were run for marijuana, methamphetamine (better known as
crystal meth or crank), PCP and heroin, a positive identification would've
been made since those drugs are just as popular - or more so - than cocaine.

Maybe the story idea was planted by people - say, the government - who want
to retain the right to seize cash that drug dogs hit on, even if there's no
other evidence to suggest the suspect has any drug connection.

"I've seen it happen before," said Woodford, who lives on Lookout Mountain
but handles much of his forensic chemist work out of an office in Atlanta.

"A newspaper will write a story saying their study showed no drug residue.
Then when I go in to testify that almost all cash has residue, the
government pulls out the story saying that I'm wrong, to try and prove that
I'm an idiot. One little newspaper study can neutralize a lot of research
and reset the counter to zero.

"It's a very hot issue in the government right now. A lot of people in
Alabama want to disprove that there's drugs on money. I have different
theories than the state does.

"Mine are based on science."

Source of Story

So, why do the experiment? Did the government, indeed, plant the story
idea, and we took the bait?

The idea came from a Web site run by the nonprofit Poynter Institute, a
journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla.

"But who told the Poynter Institute to run that as a story idea?" Woodford
asked, not relinquishing the conspiracy theory.

Al Tompkins, the online leader at Poynter, posted the story idea. He said
it wasn't suggested by the federal government; many television stations and
newspapers have done the story over the years, and he reintroduced the idea
when a new design for the $20 bill was being discussed.

"That's laughable," Tompkins said Friday of Woodford's conspiracy theory.
"As to why your results came out different, I don't know. Maybe the testing
was bad. Maybe your money was too new.

"Your results are abberational."

Woodford said, most likely, the testing done on the bills wasn't
sufficient, hence the unexpected results. Because Kilbourn was using a gas
chromatograph - in which the bills are bathed in methanol, which is
evaporated to a small volume and analyzed - Woodford said the test ran only
to parts per million.

He called that test "low science." Kilbourn said the test detects "very,
very, very minute quantities."

"If he'd used a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometry, he could've taken it
to parts per billion," Woodford said. "That's really a minute amount.
That's the amount that dogs work on."

The chemist has been working in the field for a while. In 1979, he secured
U.S. Patent No. 4,260,517, which formulated the guidelines used to train
U.S. Customs dogs. He feels comfortable saying he knows what he's talking
about when he says the government is seizing and keeping money that doesn't
belong to it.

"Maybe you just sold your houseboat, and you've got $16,000 in your
pocket," he said. "A police officer stops you because you went across the
yellow line. The dog alerts on the money, the cops take your money, and
you'll spend a lot more than $16,000 trying to get it back.

"This kind of thing happens all the time."

Woodford had one more theory as to why there was no cocaine detected on the
$20 bills.

"Maybe in Huntsville, the war on drugs has been won," he said. "Hurray. You
won. But as for me, I'm still a little suspicious."