DRUG TRAFFICKING RING BROKEN UP AT MIA

MIAMI -- A baggage handler for American Airlines might earn less than $8 an
hour, but he gets unlimited access throughout Miami International Airport,
a privilege that enabled 30 of the company's employees to get in on what
they thought was an international cocaine ring.

Instead, they got caught in a federal sting, set up largely with "sham"
cocaine, a gun and three hand grenades planted by undercover agents.

On Wednesday 58 federal indictments were unsealed, the largest airport drug
bust in the country's history, according to U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Scott.
Forty-eight of the defendants, including two federal officers and a Broward
Sheriff's Deputy, were arrested in a dawn sweep.

"This is not a case of one or two rogues involved in one transaction over a
month's period of time," Scott said. "This is a situation where we have
charged about 30 employees over a two-year period involving 38 separate
transactions. I think that speaks mouthfuls."

The apparent lack of sophistication and small-time quality of the operation
underscored what prosecutors called the key finding of their entire
investigation: That a bunch of amateurs were able to traffic in cocaine and
outwit one of the country's largest airlines and airports because no one
was watching.

"It became obvious early on that there were issues involving narcotics, but
also regarding security," Scott said. "The agents and I believed we could
basically put anything we wanted on those planes."

American Airlines fired the accused employees on Wednesday. One phase of
the investigation here began by dumb luck.

It started with an unsatisfactory swig of watery coffee in April 1998,
Scott said. A pilot on an American Airlines flight from Colombia complained
that his coffee tasted strange and, worse, it was weak.

"When they went back and investigated it they found there was heroin in the
packages," Scott said. There was actually 15 pounds of heroin in 130 sealed
coffee packets from Lufthansa Service Sky Chef.

Airline and food service employees had been smuggling heroin for months,
always through the coffee packets. In every case, a maintenance worker
unhooked the water supply to the coffee machine, making flight attendants
think the machine was broken.

But one time the water was not disconnected and the tainted bags were used
to make coffee for the pilot, said a senior federal prosecutor close to the
investigation.

"It was very fortuitous," the prosecutor said.

Thirteen Lufthansa employees were snared in the sting, accused of lining
panels of service food carts with cocaine. The employees started by
stashing the drugs underneath the wheeled carts, but later discovered they
could hide more by padding the sidewalls with flattened packages.

Court papers show that over two years, more than 660 pounds of cocaine were
flown in on flights from Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia. The drugs were
transferred onto passenger flights bound for Washington, D.C., Baltimore,
Philadelphia and Cleveland.

In a May 19 deal, Jose A. Rodriguez and Orlando Rodriguez, two uniformed
American Airlines employees, met an undercover agent at the airport's
Dolphin Garage. Authorities say the agent unloaded five kilograms each to
the men, who put them in their American Airlines backpack.

The men entered a secure area of the airport and changed into plainclothes.
Then they took advantage of the company's "Employees Fly Free" policy for a
trip to Baltimore, carrying the drugs. Court papers show the men sold the
cocaine to a small group of men there.

"The security procedures were breached, and the security measures at that
airport are obviously insufficient to do the job," Scott said.

American Airlines goes back five years into the criminal history of
prospective employees, and 10 years into the employment history, said
company spokeswoman Marta Pantin.

Kathleen Berger, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration in
Atlanta, said employees who have access to secure areas, like ramps and
cargo areas, must submit to fingerprint clearance by the FBI. But once the
individuals get that clearance, they can come and go freely through secure
areas.

"It would be unpractical given the number of employees who work at the
ramps," Berger said, pointing out that 40,000 individuals work at the airport.

The screening process is not always effective, said Michael Boyd, an
aviation consultant. Prospective employees can easily doctor their
employment history, because companies do not release much information on
past employees.

"The money involved in drug peddling is so big, it's such an incentive, how
are you going to tell a $20-an-hour baggage handler not to do it?" Boyd
said. American Airlines handlers make from $7.02 to $19.96 an hour.

"Someone can take a bag of cocaine, plop it in the side of a baggage
compartment or under the sink in the bathroom and make easy money," Boyd
said. "There's a million places you can hide things on an airplane."

But most of the contraband on American Airline's passenger flights was not
real. It was "sham" powder, heroin and marijuana, said Assistant U.S.
Attorney Ann Taylor.

That provoked questions of legal entrapment. Would the baggage handlers
have shipped drugs had the undercover agents not approached them?

Scott said yes.

"What we tried to do is take what people have suspected for a long time and
to document it through these various scenarios so there would be proof
positive," he said. "We literally took an undercover source out to that
airport at American and Sky Chef, and we said, 'We're open for business,'
and they came. And they kept coming."

The best example of someone who volunteered to ship not only drugs but
weapons was Victor Montalvo of Miami, prosecutors said. He repeatedly
approached a fellow employee, who was also a federal informant, offering to
help them smuggle cocaine through security for $500 a trip.

Finally, agents let him join the conspiracy, with one caveat: Montalvo
would also have to help smuggle an automatic handgun and three M-67 hand
grenades on to an American Airlines plane full of 250 passengers.

Montalvo did not hesitate, according to an arrest affidavit, but he
demanded a $7,000 fee. He didn't know agents had already disengaged the
grenandes.

Montalvo and the other defendants -- most wearing tee shirts and sneakers,
all chained at the wrist -- arrived at the federal courthouse around 3 p.m.
Wednesday.

Children in strollers and their teary-eyed mothers peered around agents
from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Customs. The
relatives waved as the defendants, overwhelmingly male, were brought in a
half-dozen at a time. A woman in her 50s was negotiating with a lawyer when
her son was led past to the courtroom.

"I love you John," she blurted out and began crying.

Nearly all of the defendants were held without bond pending pretrial
detention, scheduled for today and Friday."Can you imagine loading up your
family and kids and heading to Disney World on an American Airlines plane,"
said Patricia Galupo, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms. "And when you go to put your bag in the overhead your
competing for space with a bag loaded with a handgun and three hand
grenades? That's what this case is about."