DRUG AGENCIES URGED TO TEAM UP

WASHINGTON -- Barry McCaffrey, the nation's director of drug policy,
recalled his astonishment during his first tour of U.S.-Mexico border
crossings two years ago.

"You've got 800 people working at these border crossings," he said, pausing
for a moment as he leaned forward in his chair and whispered with wide eyes,
"And nobody's in charge."

At the checkpoints, McCaffrey saw Immigration and Naturalization Service
agents patrolling some lanes, while U.S. Customs officials patrolled others.
But the INS employees didn't share their findings with their customs
counterparts, he said.

McCaffrey also discovered that each agency had to follow separate union
rules controlling how its inspectors would search vehicles. Officials at one
agency actually were forbidden to open the trunks of cars -- a policy well
known among drug dealers.

Looking at the cars down the line, McCaffrey could "see drug dealers with
binoculars watching the various lanes . . . to see where to drive their
vehicles to avoid getting caught," he said in his office Friday.

McCaffrey said drugs will continue to flow unimpeded across the border until
America's federal and state agencies charged with fighting narcotics start
working together. He'll stress that point in a two- day visit to San Antonio
starting today.

"Nothing in life works without coordination," said the former four-star
general, who directed policy and strategic planning for the Joint Chiefs of
Staff before becoming the nation's drug czar in 1996.

McCaffrey will be in San Antonio tonight to address the 99th Veterans of
Foreign Wars national convention.

Before speaking at the VFW's dinner banquet, he's to discuss new plans for
border drug control after a 4:30 p.m. forum at Montgomery Elementary School,
7047 Montgomery Drive, with Bexar County Sheriff Ralph Lopez.

The forum will showcase a community policing program in the Camelot/Glen
Oaks area and include a neighborhood walk-through starting at 5 p.m.
McCaffrey is expected to reveal more anti-drug efforts after visiting the
northeast Bexar County neighborhood.

Coordination is a crucial component of a plan McCaffrey announced Wednesday
that would shore up federal anti-drug efforts along the 2,000-mile U.S.-
Mexico border.

Under the plan, huge portable X- rays machines capable of quickly scanning
entire truck cargoes would be installed at each of the 39 crossings along
the Southwest border by 2003. Only six of the $3.5 million X-ray machines
are in place.

The plan also calls for added fences, sensors, video cameras and lighting
along the border, and for raising the number of border agents from 12,000 to
22,000.

But the part of the plan that could prove most difficult to implement may be
its call for more efficient use of drug-fighting personnel.

More than 50 federal and state agencies are involved in fighting narcotics,
but their efforts are hampered by poor communication and turf wars.

McCaffrey's plan would create a regional drug czar, most likely based in El
Paso, to coordinate law enforcement efforts of the 22 agencies most active
in the area's anti-narcotics war. The plan also calls for coordinators at
each of the 39 points of entry along the border, which stretches from Texas
to California.

McCaffrey said he expects the main fight over his Southwest initiative to
come from agency heads reluctant to give up control of their employees.

The problem, he said, "will be in Washington among the departments and in
Congress because there are separate congressional committees that support
customs, DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), etc."

DEA and INS officials declined comment on McCaffrey's proposal, referring
questions to their parent agency, the Department of Justice.

Justice Department spokesman Gregory King said officials there were
"studying" the initiative.

Although his plan has received a cool reception in Washington, McCaffrey
said drug-fighting authorities and community leaders in the Southwest have
supported it.

"I've been up and down that border . . . and these people are prepared to
move forward."

The need for a tighter border is clear. More than 60 percent of the
estimated 300 tons of cocaine and more than half of the methamphetamines and
marijuana that enter the country each year are believed to pass through the
U.S.-Mexico border.

The U.S. Customs Service estimates interdiction efforts now stop 10 percent
to 20 percent of that drug flow. Local authorities put the number even
lower.

Last year, U.S. officials inspected 900,000 of the 3.7 million trucks
crossing the border. Cocaine was found in only 16 trucks -- a figure
McCaffrey called "incredible."

"The people working on the border are doing a good job, so it's not their
fault," he said. "We have no choice but to give them the equipment they
need."

McCaffrey said the X-ray machines in place have performed well.

"Essentially it is impossible that I'm not going to see your two kilograms
of heroin if your truck drives into that machine."

McCaffrey said he didn't know how much money his plan would add to the $2
billion a year spent on fighting drugs along the U.S.-Mexico border, but he
insisted that whatever the price, it would be only a fraction of the cost
society pays for drug use.

"The lowest estimate of the cost to society of drug use is around $110
billion annually," he said. "If we can put even a dent in that use, we will
be saving the country billions of dollars, not to mention saving a lot of
people a lot of pain and suffering."

Express-News Staff Writer Sig Christenson contributed to this report.

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst