NEW DRUG STRATEGY SOUGHT

Director wants single official to coordinate border operations

New York Times WASHINGTON -- U.S. border inspectors searched slightly
more than a million commercial trucks and railway cars entering the
United States from Mexico last year. They found cocaine stashed in
cargo compartments on only six occasions, said Gen. Barry McCaffrey,
the White House director of drug-control policy.

He cites the dispiriting statistic in pressing for an overhaul of the
strategy for stanching the flow of illegal drugs into the United
States. Slightly more than half of the cocaine smuggled into the
United States, and much of the heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines,
comes through Mexico.

McCaffrey is proposing that interdiction operations along the
2,000-mile-long southwestern border be coordinated by a single federal
official, who would assume responsibility for all counter-drug efforts
by a half-dozen government departments and no fewer than 22 federal
agencies.

But McCaffrey, who holds Cabinet-level rank as the administration's
top drug-control official, is getting a cool response from other
government institutions such as the Justice and Treasury departments,
where spokesmen said last week only that his proposal was under review.

Some departments and agencies fear that the proposal could infringe on
their authority and their budgets.

McCaffrey presides over a federal drug-control budget exceeding $16
billion this year, but actual allocations are proposed and controlled
by the departments and agencies involved.

McCaffrey said in an interview that his proposal harbors no hidden
agenda.

He said that more efficient cooperation and superior technology were
needed to interdict illegal drugs at the southwestern border and its
24 ports of entry and 39 other sanctioned crossing points.

Buying more sophisticated radar, scanning and night-vision equipment,
he said, would cost a fraction of the $2 billion that the government
already spends annually to combat border smuggling.

"I'm not talking about the Marshall Plan," McCaffrey said. "I'm
talking about better organization."

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady