CUSTOMS ADMITS WEAK ANTI-CORRUPTION EFFORTS

WASHINGTON -- The front-line role of the Customs Service in the government's
war against illegal drugs has left the agency highly vulnerable to
narcotics-related corruption, Customs officials acknowledged Tuesday in a
report to Congress.

The report, which was sent to a House panel with jurisdiction over the
agency, admitted that the service had failed to aggressively combat
corruption. In an atmosphere of neglect, internal affairs inquiries
languished and were sometimes impeded because of infighting, the report
said.

The report is the service's most extensive and critical examination of how
it deals with narcotics-related corruption and other internal affairs issues
after years in which sporadic corruption cases have tarnished the image of
an agency with 12,000 field inspection employees.

The report was ordered by lawmakers, but Customs officials said that the
agency had taken the initiative to review its approach to corruption issues.
But the report was sent to Congress at a time when lawmakers in the House
and Senate are expected to critically examine the agency's internal affairs
performance.

The report did not uncover evidence of systematic corruption in its ranks,
but did conclude that ``individual acts of corruption have occurred and
continue to occur'' that placed the agency in danger of being undermined by
its own employees.

In the last decade, eight Customs officers have been convicted of taking
payments from drug traffickers. In one case, in El Paso, Texas, two customs
inspectors tried to shake down an informer posing as a drug smuggler, one of
them demanding more than $1 million to look the other way when cocaine-laden
vehicles crossed Juarez, the Mexican border city, into the United Sates.