15 MORE ARRESTED AT MIAMI AIRPORT

Miami-Undercover agents,working to bring down a widespread drug-smuggling
operation at Miami International Airport, though the arrests last month of
more than 40 baggage handlers and food-service workers on drug charges might
force other co-workers to be more cautious.

Instead, the remaining suspects just assumed they were invincible, said
federal investigators, who arrested 15 more people Thursday and charged them
with conspiracy to import cocaine.

Just days after the headline-grabbing arrests on Aug. 25, employees of
several companies that provide food, maintenance and baggage handling at the
airport were back at work smuggling what they believed to be cocaine - it
was actually fake drugs substituted by undercover agents - aboard Air Aruba,
Bahamas Air and Ecuatoriana flights, federal officials said.

On one flight into Miami International, U.S. Attorney Tom Scott said, a
baggage handler took only 23 minutes after touchdown to retrieve what he
believed to be a package of cocaine and pass it on to a man waiting at the
airport.

Unfortunately for the baggage handler, he handed the parcel over to an
undercover drug agent, Scott said.

Even as indictments were being issued in the first round of arrests, "they
were still smuggling," said Pat Jones, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs
Bureau, another agency involved in the sting operation. It is the second
such sting in two weeks that has shown glaring lapses in the airport's
security.

The first sting, on Aug. 25, led to the arrests of 58 people, including 30
American Airlines workers, 13 employees with the food contractor, a
Department of Agriculture inspector, an employee with the Immigration and
Naturalization Service and an off-duty employee of the Broward County
Sheriff's Department.

They were charged with smuggling what they believed to be small shipments of
cocaine, a pistol and three hand grenades, federal officials said.

The workers arrested in August stashed their illegal cargo in the small
packets of coffee served by flight attendants, in wheel compartments, wall
panels, luggage bays and, on one plane, inside the wing, federal
investigators said.