AGENT TARGETED FOR ALLEGING BIAS IN AIRLINE SEARCHES

WASHINGTON -- The Customs Service is taking steps to fire a veteran
inspector who helped bring to light problems with the agency's
treatment of airline passengers, especially strip searches of black
and Latino women.

Customs officials have given Cathy Harris a 30-day notice of plans to
fire her because she allowed a television station access to internal
records showing black passengers in Atlanta were singled out for
searches at a higher rate than whites. Customs regulations ban release
of the records, which include personal information about travelers.

Customs officials say they don't use racial profiling. But under
pressure from Congress, dozens of travelers' lawsuits and news
reports, Commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered several changes this year
to make searches less traumatic for passengers and guard against
racial targeting.

Pat-downs, strip searches and body-cavity exams are performed on a
tiny fraction of international travelers to catch smugglers who
swallow packets of drugs or hide them on their bodies.

Changes include sensitivity training for inspectors, allowing people
detained for more than two hours to call a lawyer, and requiring legal
advice from a U.S. attorney if a passenger is detained more than eight
hours. In some airports, micro-dose X-ray machines can be used in lieu
of pat-downs in some cases.

``What the public scrutiny caused, and what the specter of Senate
Finance Committee hearings caused, was a top-to-bottom review of not
just racial bias, but what are our policies and procedures and why,
and should we change them,'' Customs official Dennis Murphy said.

Harris, who can respond to the termination notice before the review
board makes a decision, plans to seek government help under the
Whistleblower Protection Act, which protects the jobs of federal
workers who disclose waste, fraud and abuse.

Harris, who is black, admits printing out six months' worth of records
of searches at Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport for an
attorney representing her in a sexual- and racial-harassment complaint
against Customs. She said her former attorney shared them with WAGA-TV
in Atlanta without her knowledge.

But Harris says she has no regrets about the disclosure.

``They wouldn't have gotten the full story without me doing that, and
people need to know,'' she said.

Harris said black travelers were singled out for strip searches
routinely while white passengers -- even those who aroused the
interest of drug dogs -- were not stopped.

``I stood there all day long and I watched this. I knew what was going
on, and it was wrong,'' said Harris, 43, who has worked 13 years for
Customs.