NORTHERN BORDER LONG AND TOUGH TO SECURE

KALISPELL - They come across in small airplanes and on foot, astride
horses and atop snowmobiles. They hike and float and ski and dog sled
their way out of Canada and across Montana's northern border, often
smuggling drugs or people.

Sometimes they are caught. Sometimes not.

"What we do is one of the toughest jobs in the world," said Lonnie
Moore, information officer for the Spokane Sector of the U.S. Border
Patrol. "I believe we catch most of them, but we're not naive enough
to think it's 100 percent. There's always room to improve."

This Sept. 11, five years after the terrorist attacks on New York City
and the Pentagon, America's northern border is by most measures much
more secure than at any time before. It is not, however, secure in any
definitive way, and the real question in this post-9/11 world is, "How
safe is safe enough?"

That's what Mike Meehan's wondering, anyway, from behind his desk at
the Flathead County Sheriff's Office.

After the attacks, most all agreed that soaring, iconic buildings
needed to be more robust, just in case they one day became targets.
But what about that two-story office complex, or that McDonald's down
the street?

Those, likely, do not demand such attention to structural detail,
because no one's likely to fly an airplane into them.

Likewise, Meehan said, some parts of border security enjoy higher
priority than others and demand more resources.

Sure, you could spend enough money to make every building crash-proof,
but is it worth it? You could secure more border - with fences and
walls and perimeter guards - but again, is it worth it? And is a
walled world a place Americans wish to live in, given the realistic
level of risk?

For places such as northwest Montana, remote places such as Yaak and
Polebridge, Meehan's question remains an important one: "How safe is
safe enough?"

"Personally," he said, "I feel secure with the system that's now in
place. I'm certainly not going to go home tonight and worry about a
bunch of terrorists coming across the border."

What Meehan does worry about is high-grade marijuana coming south from
British Columbia. He calls it "B.C. bud," and it packs quite a wallop.

Members of the Northwest Drug Task Force say potent B.C. bud tops out
at about 30 percent THC (the chemical causing the high marijuana users
experience.) That compares with about 5 percent THC in locally grown
pot.

A couple years ago, local law enforcement went so far as to partner
with federal agencies, bringing a Black Hawk helicopter to fly the
border for weeks, monitoring drug traffic.

Smuggling is a lucrative business, Meehan said, with B.C. bud
commanding prices in excess of $5,000 per pound in the northern
states, and as much as $8,000 a pound by the time it makes its way
south to California.

And Montana's northern border is an attractive route, what with all
that wild and rugged expanse rambling across uninhabited mountain
valleys. Then there's the big transboundary lakes, such as Koocanusa,
which Meehan notes are notoriously difficult to control.

"In a lot of those areas," Moore said, "there just isn't much
population."

His Border Patrol sector covers a whole lot of big empty, from
Washington's snow-capped Cascades all the way to the Continental
Divide. In 2002, the year after the terrorist attacks, just 40 people
patrolled all those miles of border.

In fact, a mere 300 worked the entire northern border, coast to coast.
That compared to 9,000 on the nation's southern border with Mexico.

But Sept. 11, 2001, changed all that.

"We've tripled in manpower up here since September 11," Moore said,
adding that "we now have seven-day-a-week, 24-hour coverage, which
wasn't always the case before."

That 24/7 coverage, however, is not simply possible with a regional
force that, while heavily augmented, still numbers fewer than 150. The
real key, Moore said, is technology.

There are motion detectors in the woods these days, infrared cameras,
heat sensors, magnetic detectors - and a whole lot more high-tech
infrastructure no one is authorized to talk about.

"The magnetic detectors seemed to work the best," said Meehan. Bears
trigger motion sensors, and lots of critters trip the heat sensors -
but not many elk are wearing belt buckles.

"Things have improved," Meehan said of border security. "There are a
lot more agents up there, and a lot more monitoring devices."

Still, current and former members of the Northern Border Task Force -
a cooperative group including federal, state and local agents - know
exactly how much B.C. bud they're seizing along the border. They also
know how much they're finding later, flowing through their
communities. So they have a pretty good handle on how much they're not
catching.

All told, they figure, they're stopping only about 10 percent of the
illegal border crossings made by pot smugglers.

"No, no, we've improved upon that," Moore countered. "I would say 10
percent would be too low."

But short of saying it's surely not 100 percent, no one really knows
how secure the border really is.

"You can't measure a negative," said James Bunner. "How do you measure
what didn't happen?"

Bunner is supervisor at the Whitefish office of the U.S. Border
Patrol, and he figures the deterrence value of a bolstered force is
considerable, if hard to measure.

Fewer apprehensions may, in fact, be associated with more patrols, as
presence deters activity. (Actually, Moore said, there is no way to
measure the success of northern border initiatives, because no one
keeps track of the number of illegals contacted by various agencies in
a given year.)

And so Bunner's measuring stick?

"No terrorists that we know of have ever crossed the border in
Montana," he said.

And does that suggest success?

"I don't know," he admitted. "But I know in my heart of hearts that it
is a little more secure than it was. I can't prove it to you. I can't
give you a percentage. But I know it's better than it was."

Measuring what "better" means - and how wisely tax dollars are spent
on border security - is a very slippery business. Last year, Moore
said, agents in his sector apprehended about 120 people crossing the
border illegally. That's a lot, but not that many more than in
previous years.

The three-fold increase in agents and budgets seems not to have
translated into a three-fold increase in apprehensions, and all admit
some illegals continue to slip through.

So, back to Meehan's question: How safe is safe enough?

"Oh golly," Bunner said. "When I'm in uniform, I don't have an opinion
on that."

The Canadian border, according to Meehan, will always be somewhat
porous.

"There are areas up there where it's very dense, thick
backwoods."

But the reason he doesn't lose any sleep is because intelligence
gathering has been stepped up considerably. Agents often know what to
look for - and where and when - thanks to information sharing between
agencies and countries.

"It's kind of a free-flow association of information," Bunner said,
"and it actually works very well in practice."

You don't need to monitor every inch of backwoods, Moore agreed, if
you have a solid intelligence network. Sure, a few lone pot smokers
might make it through, but there's security adequate now to weave a
web tight enough for the bigger flies.

"If there have been any terrorists caught up on this border," Meehan
said, "then I sure haven't heard about it."

Instead, those running the border - aside from the "mules"
carryingB.C. bud - tend to be South Koreans.

"We see a lot of young females," Moore said, "between 18 and
25."
Whether they know it or not, he said, they're often headed to work the
sex industry in major metropolitan areas.

The reason, Moore said, is Canada does not require an entry visa for
South Korean visitors. And once in Canada, it's a short trip across
the northern border to the States.

"We pick up a group of Koreans about every couple months," Moore
said.

Most are found in Washington state, south of the Vancouver's airport,
or out near Havre, south of Edmonton's airport.

To slow the flow, Moore said, the Border Patrol has ramped up
"citizens' academies," special classes that teach everyday folk how to
become helpmates to federal agents.

"All these people in these little towns, they know what's going on,"
he said. "The smallness of the towns along the border here is a huge
help to us."

As is the cooperative relationship between the Border Patrol, local
sheriff's offices, Forest Service law enforcement and agents
investigating illegal immigration.

"We do blitzes from time to time," said Jeff Copp, explaining the
occasional multiagency border sweeps. Copp is special agent in charge
of the region for ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A
blitz, he said, often lasts a week, and - like people, technology and
citizens - is an important tool for keeping tabs on illegal activity.

It also helps that the Border Patrol's Spokane Sector now has several
trained dogs - including four in Montana - that not only sniff out
drugs or hidden people, but also can track a scent through the wilderness.

Those tools may soon be augmented by a new Air and Marine Branch,
complete with planes and boats supplied by Customs and Border
Protection. Two years ago, a similar branch opened in the Seattle area
with 69 officers, pilots, aircrew and mission support personnel -
along with helicopters, airplanes and boats.

A branch has now been proposed for Montana - Great Falls, most likely
- - but Moore could not say when it might open for business.

When it does, however, it's likely to put a dent in the latest
smuggling scheme - float planes full of B.C. bud, traveling south to
land on remote waterways.

"It's like a game," Moore said. "They adjust, we re-adjust."

One long-awaited adjustment likely to arrive in the next year or two
is a shot of fresh blood. Some 8,000 new Border Patrol agents are
expected to enter the ranks over the next two years, Moore said. And
while all will start work on the southern border, some surely will
make their way north.

But even with the new recruits, Meehan said, "there just aren't enough
people to completely secure the border. It just can't happen,
realistically. I mean, you can only do so much."

So is "so much" enough? Is safe safe enough?

Meehan, finally, answers his own question.

"Yes, I think it is. Things are much tighter than they ever were
before. I think what we're doing works as well as it can. It's enough."