NEW MACHINE WILL HELP CUSTOMS AGENTS SEARCH CONTAINERS

The U.S. Customs Service in Hampton Roads will put a new X-ray machine into
service today that lets agents search shipping containers for contraband
without opening them.

The truck-mounted X-ray machine should allow Customs to search boxes more
quickly than it can now, and in a far less invasive way.

"In the long run, it will enhance our enforcement and result in savings to
the trade by reducing down time," said Jorge Flores, Customs' port director
for Norfolk and Newport News. "It's a more efficient way to do business --
it's faster and less expensive."

The old method was to have longshoremen on hand to open and unload
suspicious containers to search them. That time-consuming method not only
slowed commerce, but also cost money to pay those laborers.

Even with the new machine, Customs still can only look in about one in 20
containers -- 95 percent of imports are approved for entry based on what the
manifests say are inside them.

And it's unlikely that "cocaine" ever appears on a manifest.

Hampton Roads handled 12 million tons of general cargo last year, most of
that packed in 765,000 shipping containers.

Of that 12 million tons, Customs seizures here were not measured in tons,
kilograms or even pounds -- try grams and ounces.

The port's principal trading partners are not big embarkation points for
narcotics.

"We're primarily a Far East, European port," said Al Tagliaferro, a 25-year
Customs Service veteran and supervising inspector in charge of the
anti-smuggling unit in Hampton Roads. "You don't get those direct arrivals
from Colombia."

A ship's port of embarkation can increase the odds that inspectors will
search its cargo for contraband.

With only 22 inspectors and four supervisors in Hampton Roads, Customs has
to deploy its assets intelligently and choose the cargoes it inspects
carefully.

"If two ships come in at once, one from Panama and one from Antwerp,
Belgium, chances are you're going to go with the ship from Panama,"
Tagliaferro said. "That's because Panama is closer to Colombia, Ecuador,
Peru -- your known cocaine source countries."

But country of origin is only one tip-off.

These days, ships are required to electronically transmit their manifests to
Customs no later than 48 hours before they arrive in port.

That gives Customs inspectors two days to pore over the manifests looking
for odd items, such as containers packed with "miscellaneous cargo," or
cargo being moved by shipping companies with reputations for smuggling, or
consignees -- the people who will ultimately pick up the cargo -- with
criminal histories or infamous reputations.

By the time the ship comes in, Customs will have the serial numbers of the
boxes they want to check out.

The new X-ray machine is expected to reduce by 90 percent the containers
that will actually have to be opened. That's good news for the port's
terminal operators, their customers, and, ultimately, for consumers.

For instance, if Customs is suspicious about a container that is supposed to
hold mangoes, the old way to inspect it was to unload the container to make
sure that it held what it was supposed to hold.

Meanwhile, the import grocery distributor had to wait longer for the
delivery. And, if the wait took long enough, local grocery stores had to go
a day or two without mangoes, even if they ordered them in what they thought
would be ample time to ensure seamless restocking.

The new way to check out the container takes very little time. The X-ray
truck can scan the container in six seconds. After the scan, Customs
inspectors run a variety of checks on the data retrieved. One view they see
on their Windows NT-based software is a simple X-ray view of the truck.

They can change the view to look for subtle changes in the container's
density. If the container does hold only mangoes, the computer screen image
of the container will be uniform.

If the image is uniform, and the pattern matches the textbook example of
mango density, then Customs can conclude that the container indeed holds
mangoes, and off the container goes to the grocery distributor.

However, if the image is not uniform, or the image on the computer does not
look like the textbook example for mangoes, then the inspectors -- three to
a truck -- ask longshoremen to unload the container.

Chances are, that change in density represents non-manifest cargo -- like
cocaine or marijuana.

"If you're supposed to have only boxes of mangoes inside a container, they
should all look the same," Tagliaferro said. "If something inside there
looks different based on its density, it may not be anything -- but it's
probably something you want to take a closer look at."

In October, an X-ray machine deployed at Port Everglades in South Florida
was used to confirm inspectors' suspicions in a different way.

As a crane unloaded an import container from a ship that arrived from
Jamaica, inspectors noticed that the bottom of the container looked like it
had been tampered with.

Customs X-rayed the container using a machine similar to the one deployed in
Norfolk and the X-ray showed the container floor was false.

Inspectors had the container unloaded and then ripped out the false floor.
Underneath was 1,400 pounds of pot.

The machines in Norfolk and Port Everglades were built by Science
Applications International Corp. of San Diego for about $950,000 apiece.

Customs is deploying 29 of the machines, called Vehicle and Cargo Inspection
Systems, or VACIS.

Most of those deployed are at border crossings. Others are at ports,
including Los Angeles, Charleston, S.C., Jacksonville, Fla., Miami, Port
Everglades, Tampa, Fla., New Orleans and Newark, N.J.

The machines helped Customs detect about 138,500 pounds of narcotics shipped
in commercial cargo between October 1997 and March 31, 2000.

The truck-mounted machine Norfolk received is the latest evolution of VACIS.
It's particularly useful to Customs inspectors here, who need to inspect
cargo in three different cities: Newport News, Norfolk and Portsmouth.

The truck requires three people: a driver, a computer operator and a
spotter, who stands outside the truck to make sure bystanders aren't smacked
by the truck's telescoping, X-ray boom.

Theoretically, the new truck could allow Customs to scan every container,
but that is highly impractical, if not impossible -- there is simply not
enough room at the port to check them all.

"We could line them up forever and scan them all, but we need 200 feet of
space to do five boxes -- there's just not enough room to do it,"
Tagliaferro said.

Customs also inspects export containers, seeking stolen cars, weapons of
mass destruction and large piles of cash -- the smugglers' payoff.

(SIDEBAR)

The Port of Hampton Roads is not exactly Smugglers Cove.

While drug seizures are generally measured in pounds, kilograms and tons,
Hampton Roads narcotics seizures in fiscal 2000 were weighed in ounces -- in
some cases hundredths of an ounce.

Nationally, the Customs Service seized 1.3 million pounds of marijuana,
150,000 pounds of cocaine, 2,872 pounds of methamphetamine and 2,552 pounds
of heroin.

Of that, 50,266 pounds of pot, 25,236 pounds of cocaine and 739 pounds of
heroin were seized in South Florida alone.

By comparison, Customs agents in Hampton Roads seized 0.01 grams of crack,
2.5 ounces of heroin and 0.05 ounces of methamphetamine, said spokesman
Kevin Bell.