HIGH-TECH DETECTION BOOSTS WAR ON DRUGS

Customs inspectors peering into the tractor-trailer at the
Colombia-Solidarity Bridge along the U.S. border saw nothing more
threatening than a cargo of cookies.

But after passing the truck through an X-ray machine the size of a car
wash, agents caught a look at the real treat stashed in the truck:
more than 5,600 pounds of marijuana.

The bust in February offers just one glimpse of how officials along
the border near Laredo, Texas, and in communities elsewhere are taking
advantage of technology to outsmart drug traffickers and criminals.

"We're not out to push the state-of-the-art for its own sake," says
Ray Mintz, director of the applied technology division of the U.S.
Customs Service.

But with such tools as a thermal imaging camera - no bigger than the
average camcorder - police officers can find out whether someone is
growing marijuana at home or is handing someone a plastic bag
containing narcotics.

The thermal camera equipment relies on slight differences in
temperature to create an image with light and dark contrasts. The tool
is so sensitive, it can detect a change of a quarter of a degree. So
if a suspect carrying drugs decided to rid himself of the evidence,
the drugs - still warm from being close to his body - would show up a
different shade than the screen background. Greenhouse-like lights
needed to produce marijuana inside a home give off excess heat that
the camera picks up.

More than 110 of the $13,000 cameras have been given to law
enforcement officials nationwide. The device has made work less
precarious for police officers in Brownsville, Texas, where
authorities have faced gunfire from smugglers bringing in marijuana at
night.

"Usually, they can see us before we see them," said Ben Reyna, chief
of the Brownsville police. "Now, we're starting to turn that around."

The thermal camera is the most requested item in the Office of
National Drug Control Policy's technology transfer program, first
funded in 1998.

"We know these systems work, and we know the cops needs these tools,"
said Barry McCaffrey, the administration's drug control policy
director. He is seeking more money for the program.

Other innovations have focused on the same goal of giving law
enforcement a better and faster glimpse of a situation. Wearing a
tactical video device mounted on a black-armored vest, officers on a
drug interdiction team can run through a home and give teammates
sitting in a van outside an exact peek at the inside layout and any
possible suspects.

Developed for the Coast Guard, the 6-pound equipment set features a
camera the size of a grapefruit atop the vest's shoulder.

The U.S. Customs Service still relies on its mainstay - X-rays - to
inspect for drugs or other smuggled goods. But these systems use four
or more times as much energy as the machines that scan luggage at the
airport.

The cargo X-ray machine along the Southwest border can scan a 40-foot
truck in minutes. A driver brings his truck onto a moving platform,
where the vehicle is dragged between two X-ray systems looking for
hidden goods.

The machines - which cost about $3.5 million each - can catch fake
walls or other compartments stashed with illegal drugs. One tractor
passing through the X-ray at the Bridge of the Americas in El Paso,
Texas, was found to have several hundred pounds of cocaine concealed
in its front tires.

With seven such systems in place, Customs officials conducted 57,000
examinations in fiscal year 1998, seizing 23,000 pounds of drugs,
Mintz said. By August, railroad cars crossing the border at Laredo
will pass through a similar system.

A minibuster density meter - about the size of a chalkboard eraser -
also helps to detect whether drugs might be hidden in surfaces.

Not everyone is impressed. Some immigrant rights groups say money and
attention devoted to improving technology could be used to boost basic
conditions under which migrants are found and deported.

"The border control strategy has been very long on high-tech but very
short on human decency," said Claudia Smith, border project director
of the California Rural Legal Aid Assistance Foundation.

Federal agencies say they hope their advances will make searches and
enforcement activity less intrusive. At Miami International and New
York's Kennedy airport, travelers selected for a pat-down can opt
instead for a body-imaging machine. The low-radiation imaging looks
through clothing, and can reveal drugs fixed to a person's body.

In some cases, the innovations amount to nothing more than creative
uses for existing technology. A scope used by doctors to probe
patients' organs takes on new life in drug enforcement: Authorities
slip it into vehicles' gas tanks to look for drugs.