AS NEWARK AIRPORT GROWS, SO DOES THE WAR ON DRUGS

Seizures By Customs Rank Third In The U.S.

Weighing 272,500 pounds and featuring a huge cargo hold and roomy cabin, a
Boeing 757 comes with plenty of nooks and crannies to hide drugs.

And, when you consider not just one but 69 other planes - some much, much
larger - fly from overseas into Newark International Airport every day,
that's a lot of places to search.

But in the war on drugs, 80-pound dogs like Mickey and a unit of 100-plus
U.S. Customs Service inspectors are making an impact. In the last year, the
unit has confiscated 845 pounds of heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy, ranking
Newark third after Miami and Kennedy as the airports with the nation's most
narcotics seizures.

This was out of 1.5 million pounds of illicit drugs seized by Customs last
year at airports, seaports and border crossings. Even so, the agency
estimates it manages to stop only about one of every five drug shipments
passing through the nation's airports.

"Under the windows, in bathrooms, in the avionics, in the ceilings of cargo
holds, in the walls - I can't think of any place where they haven't hidden
stuff," said Senior Inspector Frank Gembicki, who said the 757 poses a
particular challenge over later models with fewer easily removed plastic
facings.

Gembicki has seen a lot of change during his 11 years at Newark.

Back when he started, Newark had just three international flights daily.
Since then, as the number of overseas flights has soared, the airport has
gone from a statistical blip to its third-place ranking. By comparison,
Miami's seizures in the last year totaled 2,704 pounds while JFK's were
2,112 pounds.

"On average, there's one every other day," said Bill Brush, chief
inspector. That is likely to grow as the summer vacation season brings up
to 85 daily flights to Newark.

And while cocaine continues to be found on flights from Latin America,
heroin and Ecstasy have no favored countries of origin.

"As the airport continues to grow, we now see a mix of drugs from
everywhere," Brush said.

That has required Customs to work smarter. Yet, with 5 million passengers
due to arrive on overseas flights at Newark this year, only 4 percent can
expect to be interviewed as inspectors carefully choose their targets.

Customs generates lists of potential suspects from passport data collected
when travelers check in for U.S.-bound flights. While the planes are en
route, Customs computers "electronically massage" the information, a
process that has been yielding about 35 percent of the seizures.

Brush said the system does not profile by race.

"It's automatically color blind," he said. Instead of race, the system
instead focuses on the personal characteristics and itineraries that match
those of suspects arrested in the last five days or so.

In addition to electronic patrol, more traditional surveillance begins with
the arrivals of the first overseas flights.

One Thursday morning, Mickey started out by pawing through baggage that had
arrived on a flight from Lisbon. Then he headed for the tarmac to check a
757 in from Stansted, England.

After 8-year-old Mickey loped and sniffed through the cabin and found
nothing, the black Labrador and his handler, Inspector Bob Johnson, headed
down the steps of the jetway to look inside the baggage hold.

Gembicki and Inspector Cesar Espejo remained behind to check for drugs
stashed by ground crews or others who have access to empty planes for
awaiting collaborators overseas to retrieve.

Heading for the rear galley, Gembicki took a long screwdriver out of his
back pocket and unfastened a coffee maker to examine the dead space behind.
After putting it back, he got down on his knees to check the lavatory trash
where stashes have been found beneath the litter bag. He also groped inside
the small airspace under the compartment.

Opening a ceiling panel, he pointed to the aircraft's black boxes. Once a
tug on some fishing line brought up packages of heroin that had ridden into
Newark in the space behind them.

As Gembicki worked, Espejo detached seat cushions to check the life vests
beneath.

"We've found bricks in there," he said holding up one of the vests in its
plastic bag. "You can feel the guts and if it's hard and weighs more than
the average life vest."

Then, motioning toward the ceiling panel, the three-year Customs veteran
said, "I found 2 keys (kilos) here. We've found dope everywhere."

Inside the international arrivals building that adjoins Terminal B,
passengers who have passed through U.S. Immigration screening points are
proceeding down the ramps of the skylit gateway to another level where they
pick up luggage before clearing Customs checkpoints.

"Twenty years ago, everybody was stopped and had to talk to an inspector,"
said Brush, who began his career at JFK in 1978. "Now it's about 4 percent."

Of that number, less than half have their luggage examined and "one of
4,000 may get a pat down." he said.

For most travelers, the entire process takes just five minutes, and the
longest part these days is the time it takes the inspector to ask whether
the passenger visited a farm or brought back any foods or meats. The
question is aimed at stopping the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.

"We enforce 400 laws for 40 agencies," Brush said. "But our No.1 priority
is the interdiction of contraband narcotics."

The inspections are hardly cursory. The owners of any bags flagged by
Mickey, or the five other Customs dogs, are sought, as are travelers who
show up on the list of what Customs calls electronic targets.

"Carriers want people to go out the door with minimal delays, and so do
we," Brush said. "Getting a little bit more information gives us the
confidence to allow us to do that."

There are also interviews triggered by observations that inspectors make as
travelers pass through the Customs hall. Brush said these are "probably the
most difficult thing to do in law enforcement" because they rely on
inspectors' training and intuition to tip them that something about an
individual doesn't seem quite right.

Brush said one of his favorite success stories was of the female inspector
whose suspicions were aroused by a fashion don't: a woman passenger wearing
alligator boots with an elegant business suit. Three kilos of heroin were
found in her luggage.

"Like most, she was a mule," Brush said, using the term for a person hired
as a courier. "She was told to dress upper class and she got it all down,
except for the shoes."

Of more concern, due to the There are also interviews trig-health risks
they take, are couriers who swallow drugs in condoms. With at least one
case turning up in Newark every week, the airport was equipped last
November with one of Customs' newest X-ray vans. Instead of time-consuming
trips to a hospital, results can now be beamed to radiologists on duty 20
hours a day in Miami and a response is received in minutes.

In Newark, 79 percent of the suspected swallowing cases are confirmed by
this method, and the suspects are placed under medical supervision at an
area hospital until the narcotics pass through their systems. So far there
have been no fatalities.

"For some, the hospital is the first place they have ever been in with
running water," Brush said. "Most of these people are so poor the $2,000
they get is more money than they could expect to earn in a lifetime."