FEDS TRY TO KEEP TABS ON ECSTASY

EACH morning at 8:30, a group of lawmen gathers in a sixth-floor command
post at Customs Service headquarters here to plot the next offensive in the
war against America's fastest-growing illegal drug.

They are members of the Ecstasy Task Force, created by Customs Commissioner
Ray Kelly three months ago to combat Ecstasy smuggling, which has reached
epidemic proportions in the U.S.

The popular synthetic drug "is now the single most profitable drug for
criminals to distribute," said Kelly, the city's police commissioner from
1992 to 1993.

"It costs five cents to manufacture each tablet in a lab, usually in
Amsterdam, and they can sell that tablet for between $20 and $30 in clubs
and on college campuses here," he said.

"An investor can put up $100,000 and make $5 million."

Because of the enormous windfall involved, "Ecstasy is attracting the worst
the criminal world has to offer," with smuggling cells "hardened, violent,
and willing to use any means to get their product through."

Most Ecstasy that reaches the U.S. is distributed by the "Israeli Mafia,"
Kelly said.

"They have a very strong and efficient distribution system ... some of the
leaders of the Israeli syndicate are Russian gangsters who emigrated to
Israel."

But they're not without competition - more traditional organized-crime
groups are now trying to get a piece of the action, Kelly said.

In a two-hour interview with The Post, Kelly provided a rare glimpse into
the government's fast-paced, all-out offensive against the potentially fatal
drug that smugglers and users call "E."

He described the U.S. war against E as a cat-and-mouse game in which Customs
inspectors have to keep adjusting to the increasingly sophisticated tactics
of smugglers, who regularly change their couriers and routes.

"Nine months ago we were arresting a lot of Hasidic teenagers. Now we are
arresting Israeli and Dutch nationals, invalids in wheelchairs and lawyers.

"Smugglers are starting to use mid-American airports like Denver and
Cincinnati because we made so many arrests at Newark, Boston and Los
Angeles. We also recently made seizures in Alabama, Utah and Oklahoma."

Since Kelly's arrival on the Customs scene in August 1998, there has been at
least one Ecstasy seizure daily somewhere along the international pipeline.

The number of tabs seized has skyrocketed - from 350,000 confiscated during
all of 1997 to 4.7 million confiscated during the first 15 weeks of this
year.

One of this year's most publicized seizures was the mail shipment of Ecstasy
Customs discovered in Oakland, Calif., that led to the arrest of mob canary
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano in Arizona.

The increase in seizures is, in part, the result of the daily sessions the
task force holds to review overnight developments - arrests, controlled
deliveries, interrogations and surveillances all over the world.

The team also digests reports from Interpol, police agencies in Israel and
the Netherlands and Customs field offices in the hot Ecstasy markets -
Miami, Los Angeles and New York.

Based on the reports, the task force plots strategy and takes action.

At 2:20 a.m. on the day he spoke to The Post, Kelly - an ex-Marine who saw
combat in Vietnam and walked tough police beats in Brooklyn - was at Memphis
International Airport inspecting the FedEx hub facility, which handles
60,000 packages daily.

"We do profiling of packages by zip code," Kelly explained. "Packages from
Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris get a priority.

"We just graduated 13 drug-sniffing dogs that we trained to detect the odor
of Ecstasy. We assigned one of them to the FedEx facility in Memphis.

"Our inspectors study the manifests and compare the value and weight of the
packages. If there's a discrepancy, we X-ray the package.

"If it's drugs, we make a controlled delivery to whoever is supposed to
receive the package. Then we make an arrest and try to get the recipient to
cooperate [with us] against the higher-ups."

The traffickers have become so sophisticated, Kelly said, "they track the
packages hour by hour with phone calls - "so we have to do our inspections
in 10 minutes, so they don't get suspicious."

The rings have become increasingly violent.

"Last October, we found 11 pounds of Semtex high explosives during a raid on
Ecstasy labs in the Netherlands," he said.

"During the execution of search warrants around this country, we have
repeatedly seized weapons and handguns."

E can be as dangerous as those trafficking in it - so dangerous Kelly thinks
it should be called agony, not ecstasy.

Although users - most of them young people between 14 and 20 - talk about
the euphoria they feel after popping a tab, law-enforcement officials see a
more startling side to the drug: the "k-hole" some kids go into when they
take it in combination with the cat tranquilizer ketamine or another drug.

They turn into "dehydrated zombies" for four to five hours.

They also can suffer brain and kidney damage - or death.

Kelly recalled the horrible dehydration and high fever experienced by
18-year-old Jimmy Lyons before he died from a lethal mix of Ecstasy and
ketamine at the Tunnel disco in January 1999.

Most Ecstasy labs are in Amsterdam, Kelly said, because the chemicals needed
to make the drug are legally obtainable in Europe.

"Also, there is a very permissive culture toward drugs in Amsterdam," he
said.

"These people who run the labs are not amateurs. They have sophisticated
backgrounds in chemistry. They don't make this stuff in bathtubs. The Dutch
police tell us that for every lab they shut down, 10 new ones open up."

Kelly said he doesn't believe there's a single drug kingpin based in Israel
or the Netherlands controlling the Ecstasy supply.

"The traffic is very compartmentalized and the leaders are very insulated
and sophisticated," he said.

"We are breaking one smuggling cell at a time, convicting the couriers, and
flipping them against the suppliers and the higher-ups in Europe and
Israel."

But disrupting the supply is only part of his job, Kelly said.

"We also have to reduce the demand. We need an information campaign to
educate young people about the side effects and the health risks of mixing E
with ketamine."

Kelly said the drug, illegal in the U.S. since 1985, still has "a benign and
feel-good image.

"Kids know that sex can be dangerous and that cocaine is addictive, but they
are still innocent about Ecstasy. They don't realize that if it is used with
other drugs it can be fatal.

"Another reason for the growth is the alliance between the dealers and the
club owners who provide a ready-made market."

Paul Brown, Kelly's senior policy adviser and former NYPD associate, said
club owners play a sinister role in facilitating E trafficking.

"There is a marriage of convenience between the dealers and the people who
own the clubs," he said. "This alliance spurs both supply and demand and is
feeding the epidemic growth."