MUSEUM'S 'TARGET AMERICA' SHOWS TIES BETWEEN TERRORISM, DRUG TRADE

"The bearer of this letter, who possesses four kilograms of 'white good,'
has paid duty at the Shinwar Customs. It is hoped the bearer will not be
bothered," reads the tax receipt for an Afghan drug courier carrying 8.8
pounds of heroin for delivery abroad.

Bearing a stamp of a customs office in eastern Afghanistan, the document
was issued by the Taliban in the spring of 2001, despite its official ban
on poppy crops, the raw material for heroin. The tax receipt is one of 80
items that constitute Target America, a 1,500- square-foot exhibit at the
Drug Enforcement Administration Museum in Arlington, Va., not far from the
Pentagon. The exhibit opens Tuesday.

Other items on display include a captured handmade Taliban flag; a leather
briefcase confiscated in New York that once held $1 million in $20 bills;
and a tablecloth dipped in liquid heroin, a smuggling technique.

Opening the exhibit, which aims to show the link between terrorism and drug
trafficking, is a chilling 14-foot-high structure of rubble from the World
Trade Center. But it's not another Sept. 11 memorial, says Sean Fearns,
museum director. "It uses Sept. 11 as a starting point. We are trying to
tell a story that most Americans don't know exists."

The exhibit gives an overview of drug production and the trade that
sponsors terrorism, from the Colombian FARC, the biggest guerrilla group in
South America, to al-Qaeda, which reports have said is financed by the drug
trade. The exhibit is the first to show the historic connection between
terrorism and the drug trade, DEA director Asa Hutchinson says.

During the course of a recent federal drug investigation, investigators
found that some proceeds of drug sales in the USA were going to terrorist
organizations in the Middle East, including the militant Islamic group
Hezbollah, Hutchinson said in an interview with CNN.

However, not everyone accepts the link between drugs and terrorism. Groups
critical of the nation's drug policy questioned $3.2 million Super Bowl ads
from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy that suggested
the money spent on drugs in America is financing terror groups all over the
world.

"This connection is blown out of proportion," says Kevin Zeese of Common
Sense for Drug Policy, a Washington-based non-profit group.

"They are trying to tie the unpopular drug war to the more popular
terrorism issue."

Target America will run in Arlington through April 1, 2003. The exhibit
will continue in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit and Los Angeles.