DRUG SMUGGLERS AND COPS MATCH WITS

(INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Dean Wildauer knows it's out there.
Dangling a cigarette out the window of his Indiana State Police
cruiser, the trooper squints at the traffic roaring eastbound on
Interstate 70 through a light rain.

Oh yeah, he says. It's out there.

It could be stashed in duffel bags in the back of that rented Lexus.
Or maybe tucked inside the side panels of that minivan. It could be
taped inside the tires of a new car on that car carrier or hidden in a
washing machine in that moving van.

Indiana is carved by Interstates 65, 70 and 80, earning it the title
"Crossroads of America." While it's a charming label if you are
touring the Midwest, it's a harsh reality if you're trying to stop
drug traffic.

In 1919, when a young soldier named Dwight D. Eisenhower first thought
up the idea of an interstate highway system, he envisioned broad
"ribbons across the land," allowing for faster travel and military
deployment. Today, Wildauer and cops like him all over the country see
the interstates as 24-hour pipelines that supply illegal drugs to
rural high schools and big-city streets.

State troopers and southwest border agents assigned to stop the flow
coordinate their efforts through Operation Pipeline, a federal Drug
Enforcement Administration program active in every state.

Its hub is the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), a one-story brick
building on the north end of Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso, Texas,
where more than 250 state and federal law enforcement officials track
smugglers, scan criminal databases to link cases and provide 24-hour
intelligence to officers in the field.

Those officers are equipped with fiberscopes that allow them to peer
into gas tanks, density meters that show when something's stuffed in a
door or tire, giant border X-rays that can see into tractor trailers.

Sometimes, authorities even load busted drug couriers and their
vehicles onto military cargo jets and fly them to their delivery
points so authorities can make drug deliveries and arrest those on the
receiving end.

Since 1990, authorities have pulled more than 1.5 million pounds of
marijuana and more than 207,000 pounds of cocaine off U.S. highways
and interstates, according to the DEA. That includes more than 170,000
pounds of marijuana and more than 19,000 pounds of cocaine in the
first eight months of 1998.

Still, state and federal officials estimate, nine out of 10 drug
shipments on the interstate highways get through.

The only way to dry them up, Wildauer says, would be to stop and
search every car.

In the early 1980s, state troopers in New Mexico and New Jersey
noticed a trend. More routine traffic stops along interstates were
turning into sizable drug busts. The two states independently set up
highway interdiction programs and before long saw a jump in drug seizures.

They began sharing information with other states on how to turn moving
violations into major drug arrests. In 1984, this cooperation grew
into Operation Pipeline.

The program trains officers on traffic details to look for things that
don't make sense.

Do the lug nuts look shiny? Maybe they've been removed recently to
stash drugs in the tires.

See any shiny screw heads that should be painted over? Any
out-of-place weld marks? Those could also point to hiding places.

Nearly 50 courses were taught last year, training about 4,000 officers
across the country.

But the heart of the program is the daily intelligence supplied to the
field by EPIC. This recent case from Oklahoma typifies how it works:

An Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer pulls a car over because it was
weaving. The two people in it act nervous and give conflicting

stories. One says they are coming from Dallas, the other says Houston.

Suspicious, the officer calls EPIC and asks for a check on the car and
its occupants.

EPIC has access to databases on drug cases from the FBI, DEA and U.S.
Customs. It also keeps track of all highway stops called in to the
center.

The EPIC search finds that the vehicle crossed the border at Laredo,
Texas, about eight hours earlier. A drug-sniffing dog is called in and
alerts officers to the trunk. A search reveals 20 kilos of cocaine.

Calls like this pour into the center's main operations room, keeping
the phones ringing around the clock. The center receives about 30,000
calls per year.

Despite Operation Pipeline, the drug business worth $52 billion a
year in the U.S. according to the Office of National Drug Control
Policy remains one step ahead.

Drug organizations run communications networks that tell couriers
which roads police are patrolling most. They use drivers, such as
senior citizens, who don't fit the stereotype of drug runners.

"Hauling dope, it has no race, it has no religion," Wildauer says.
"Age doesn't matter. I've locked up a grandmother and her grandkids
for hauling marijuana."

The illegal drug business pays its drivers so well, authorities say,
that most will go to jail rather than inform on higher-ups. The going
rate for transporting marijuana is around $100 per pound, with loads
ranging anywhere from a couple pounds to several hundred.

Drugs are often stashed in hidden compartments of cars or trucks, but
authorities have seen cocaine molded into pottery or even heated to a
liquid state and soaked into bulk packages of clothing.

When authorities figure out where drugs are being hidden, concealment
methods change, creating a daily cat-and-mouse game on interstates and
along the Mexican border.

Noel Ordonez, a U.S. Customs inspector with glaring eyes and a sixth
sense that goes off when something's not right, has worked three ports
of entry along the Mexican border, questioning thousands of drivers
crossing each year. He loves outsmarting drug couriers, but he knows
the multibillion dollar drug business is beating him and everyone else
along the 2,000-mile border senseless.

This doesn't make Ordonez want to give up.

"Every 100 pounds of pot I catch is another 100 pounds that won't wind
up in some high school somewhere," he says as another big truck pulls
up to his booth. "And I know how to find the dope."

Ordonez looks for drivers who won't make eye contact, the ones tapping
the steering wheel nervously. He questions drivers if he sees a key
chain with only one key on it. Why no house key? He is suspicious of
those who seem unfamiliar with their vehicles.

Along with cars, about 1,000 commercial trucks pass through El Paso's
Ysleta Port of Entry each day. More and more, drug dealers are using
big trucks to conceal their goods.

When Ordonez is suspicious of a truck, he sends it to the docks to be
unloaded and searched. Some trucks are driven through a massive X-ray
that scans the tractor and trailer. On average, about 100 trucks a day
will be scrutinized; the rest pass through unsearched.

At the Paso del Norte Port of Entry, which links downtown El Paso with
the bustling Mexican city of Juarez, 10 lanes of automobiles stretch
in lines several blocks long. Inspectors in dark-blue uniforms move
through the lines, tapping their hands on the sides of vehicles,
pounding small hammers against tires and hunching over to point
flashlights into wheel wells.

Employees of the drug smugglers watch, noticing which inspectors are
being the most thorough. The men use cell phones to tell couriers
which lanes to avoid.

A banged-up GMC van with tan and burgundy stripes pulls up to a
customs booth. The driver nervously rolls down the window, releasing a
strong scent of air freshener. Is he trying to hide something?

An inspector directs the van to a parking area. A drug-sniffing dog
circles the vehicle, stops midway down the driver's side and barks.

Inspectors rip out the van's inside panels, exposing 20 bricks of
marijuana about 140 pounds worth nearly $500,000 on the street.

Andrew Turner congratulates his dog, Willie, on the find and gives
high-fives to the other inspectors gathered to check out the score.

"This," Turner says, "makes it all worthwhile."

But the inspectors are aware that while they were tied up with this
bust, several other loads probably went through. Smugglers, an agent
explains, will sometimes allow themselves to get caught with a load of
pot so a colleague can sneak a stash of cocaine through while the
inspectors are busy.

"We know that they're doing it," the agent says, "but how can we stop
all of them?"

Due east of El Paso, Sgt. Lynn Calamia of the Louisiana State Police
is wondering the same thing. His state is carved by two drug
pipelines, Interstate 20 in the north and I-10 in the south.

Calamia heads state police interdiction efforts. In the first seven
months of 1998, his 25-person team confiscated more than $15.8 million
in drugs on Louisiana interstates.

"It's always coming through," Calamia says. "All hours of the day and
night."

Just that morning, in fact, one of his patrols in Covington, La.,
pulled over a weaving car. The two women in it gave conflicting
stories, prompting the officer to ask for consent to search.

In the trunk he found a huge tin of coffee creamer, an odd thing to
take on a trip. A closer look revealed the tin had a hidden
compartment holding a little over a pound of crack cocaine.

Calamia has seen gas cylinders on the back of a truck that had been
cut open, stuffed with drugs, resealed and pressurized. He's seen cars
rigged with intricate trick compartments: turn on the defroster, click
the turn signal and wiggle the gear shift all at once and the
passenger side air bag compartment lifts open.

The key to highway interdiction, said Lt. Col. Ronnie Jones, deputy
superintendent of operations for the Louisiana State Police, is
pulling over as many vehicles as possible. One Louisiana interdiction
officer, for example, will pull over 40 to 50 a day.

"Unfortunately," Jones said, "an awful lot of people probably get
through with dope and are laughing at us from somewhere."

Back in Indiana, Wildauer sits in the shadow of an overpass, waiting
for the next traffic violation, the next potential drug bust.

"We're a Band-Aid over a bullet wound," he says. "We may slow the
bleeding, but we'll never stop it."