BORDER COPS VULNERABLE TO TRAFFICKERS' CASH

DONNA, Texas -- In November 1997, when Miguel Carreon was hired as the
police chief of this small town nine miles from the Mexican border, he vowed
to restore the integrity of a force whose reputation had been sullied by the
indictment of six officers accused of helping smuggle 1,700 pounds of
marijuana into the United States.

Within months, however, a local figure approached Carreon and hinted that
the police should continue to cooperate with drug smugglers. ``He told me
that drug smuggling has always been a way of life, and as long as nobody
gets hurt, nobody will know the difference,'' the 42-year-old chief
recalled. ``I stopped the conversation before he said, `Let's work
together.' ''

U.S. officials and politicians are blasting the Clinton administration's
decision to certify Mexico as an ally in the war on drugs in the face of
Mexico's endemic drug corruption. But Carreon's encounter suggests that a
growing number of American law enforcement officials are also having trouble
staying clean amid the flood of dirty money and drugs across the 2,000-mile
border.

>From small-town police departments to the expanding ranks of federal
anti-drug agencies, American officials say they are alarmed by their own
vulnerability to the corrupting influence of the drug trade. In a report to
Congress last month, the U.S. Customs Service called drug trafficking ``the
undisputed greatest corruption hazard confronting all federal, state and
local law enforcement agencies today.''

The number of state and local law enforcement and other public officials
investigated by the FBI and convicted for drug corruption has increased from
79 in 1997 to 157 last year. Between 1994 and 1997, there were 46
drug-related indictments in the United States of border law enforcement
officials.

``It's been overwhelming on the Southwest border,'' said Wayne D. Beaman,
the special agent in charge of the McAllen, Texas, field office for the
Justice Department Inspector General's Office. ``We are woefully
understaffed.''

The congressional General Accounting Office is about to release a yearlong
study that concludes that drug-related corruption along the Southwest border
is a serious and continuing threat, according to a draft of the report
obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The GAO examined 28 convictions between 1992 and 1997 of U.S. Immigration
and Naturalization Service and Customs Service officials for drug-related
crimes on the Southwest border, which extends from Brownsville, Texas, to
Imperial Beach, Calif.

The cases included U.S. officials waving vehicles carrying drugs through
ports of entry, coordinating the movement of drugs across the Southwest
border, transporting drugs past Border Patrol checkpoints, selling drugs and
disclosing intelligence information.

The report concludes that both Customs and the INS missed opportunities to
provide in-depth anti-corruption training to employees and failed to conduct
background checks that are required every five years.

The agencies also failed to require sufficient financial information from
their employees, or else did not use what was available to sniff out
possible corruption, the GAO found.

The Customs Service, which is part of the Treasury Department, conceded in
its report to Congress last month that it may not have adequate internal
controls in place to detect and prevent corruption.

INS official Greg Gagne said he would not comment directly on the GAO report
because it was still in draft form. But he said the agency is confident that
its training practices and background checks are thorough and rival those of
any other agency.

Although Gagne said there is no indication of an increase in corruption in
its ranks, he also said the INS is concerned that its growing number of
employees along the border are being targeted more often by drug smugglers.
By year's end, Gagne said, the INS hopes to have a workforce of 29,000,
compared with 10,000 in 1992.

``It has become perfectly evident that drug smuggling and the use of money
to penetrate the border has become a more serious problem,'' he said.

Mexican officials agree.

``(Drugs) don't just magically make it there overnight,'' said Juan
Rebolledo, the Mexican Foreign Ministry's undersecretary for North American
affairs. ``Drug dealers spread their money all along the trail from source
to consumption, so it's naive to think that it is not spread north of the
border as well.''