A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE AGAINST FEDERAL LAW AGENTS

WASHINGTON - On the Southwestern border of the United States, federal
agents are stalked by killers looking to earn six-figure bounties from
drug cartels in an increasingly violent drug war, officials said Tuesday.

"Drug related violence, which has become commonplace in Mexico, has
spilled over in the United States. Many of these acts of violence have
been aimed at U.S. law enforcement personnel along...the Southwestern
border," said William Ledwith of the Drug Enforcement
Administration.

Federal law enforcement officers said there is a growing culture of
violence toward them in all aspects of their jobs.

Officials from the DEA, the FBI, Customs and the Secret Service
described for a Senate subcommittee on criminal justice oversight what
one called, " a general arrogance if not lack of respect toward
federal law enforcement officers."

Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., who chaired the hearing, said he was
concerned that federal prosecutors often declined to bring charges in
cases of assault or threats to federal law enforcement officials. "We
should leave no question in the minds of criminals as to the
consequences of committing an act of violence against a federal
agent," he said.

The dangers federal officers face can arise suddenly from seemingly
innocuous situations.

In a Customs videotape, a man wearing a ball cap and short-sleeved
white shirt is being escorted into an inspection station in Calexico,
Calif. Suddenly, the man pulls an automatic pistol and shoots one man
in the face, another through the chest before he is shot dead. The
officers survived.

Assaults against Customs officers have increased 33 percent in the
past five years, even as the overall crime rate has been falling, said
Customs acting deputy assistant commissioner John Varrone.

David Saleeba, chief of intelligence for the Secret Service, said 81
agents or officers of that agency have been assaulted since 1997, a
sharp increase in violent attacks. "The expectation of the criminal on
the street that he will not see the inside of a courtroom (for
assaulting a federal officer) is out there," he said.

The FBI recorded 3,610 assaults against federal employees, about a
third of them resulting in injuries, in the past four years, according
to Andreas Stephens of the bureau's violent crimes and major offenders
section. In that time, 24 officers were killed on duty, he said. "The
increased risk of assault on federal officers is real and growing," he
said.

Perhaps the most dangerous domestic duty station for a federal agent
is along the border with Mexico, according to the testimony.

Ledwith said a Mexican drug cartel earlier this year offered a
$200,000 bounty "to anyone who murdered any U.S. law enforcement agent
in Mexico or the U.S." He said a second drug smuggling organization
also has issued death threats against DEA officers.

He described an incident in April when two Mexican attorneys and a
Mexican army captain working with the DEA and FBI in San Diego were
kidnapped, tortured and killed.

In November, a DEA agent and an FBI agent in Matamoros, Mexico, were
surrounded and threatened with death by 15 bodyguards of a drug
trafficker armed with machine guns.

All of the federal agencies represented at the hearing said they felt
violence against their ranks was not taken seriously enough and in
some cases not vigorously prosecuted.

Thurmond and other senators promised to urge Attorney General Janet
Reno to issue an advisory that assaults on federal officers should be
aggressively prosecuted.