U.S. SENATORS SEEK CUSTOMS STRIP SEARCH PROBE

WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - Two Illinois senators said Tuesday they
wanted a probe into Customs data showing three times more women than men
were strip searched when entering the United States though Chicago's O'Hare
airport.

Sens. Carol Moseley-Braun and Dick Durbin, both Democrats, said they asked
Congress' General Accounting Office (GAO) to expand an investigation of
search and seizure procedures.

``Our country should be conducting a war on drugs, not a war on women,''
Moseley-Braun said in a statement.

The Treasury Department, which oversees the Customs Service, said it was
undertaking its own internal review and would also support the GAO
investigation.

``We hope to have the results of that (Treasury) review in the next few
months,'' Treasury's enforcement undersecretary Raymond Kelly said in a
statement.

Customs Service data issued after requests from the senators and a Chicago
television station showed 104 strip searches were carried out in 1997, 77
of them targeting women.

``These searches are far more successful at stripping women of their
dignity than stripping our nation of its drug supply,'' Durbin said.

The data also showed almost twice as many black women were asked to undress
as white women, 47 compared with 25.

The two senators said the records raised questions about the effectiveness
of strip searches in finding contraband on travelers. Just 27 of the 1997
searches turned up contraband.

Moseley-Braun and Durbin had earlier asked GAO to investigate reports they
received from Americans who believed they had been arbitrarily detained and
searched at O'Hare because they fit certain ``profiles.''

But in light of complaints arising from other airports, they asked the GAO
to examine whether Customs' national standards and training procedures for
targeting passengers were reasonable or whether they need to be refined.

Kelly said the Treasury Department was committed to ensuring that all of
its employees and officers treated the public fairly and in a
nondiscriminatory manner.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski