BORDER OFFICIALS SEE RISE IN AERIAL DRUG SMUGGLING

OKANOGAN, Wash. -- With few residents or roads, numerous lakes and a
sprawling, loosely patrolled border with Canada, Okanogan County has
become prime territory for pot smuggling via float plane,
law-enforcement officials say. Reports of low-flying float planes and
helicopters have become increasingly frequent in the county, the third
largest in the contiguous 48 states at 5,281 square miles, and there's
more to be concerned about than marijuana, say Sheriff Frank T. Rogers
and James A. McDevitt, the U.S. attorney in Spokane. "A person that
will smuggle drugs, guns, meth[amphetamine], Ecstasy and cash will
also be the kind of person who would smuggle a special-interest alien
or a terrorist," McDevitt told The Wenatchee World.

"You're not going to put 20 people in a float plane, but if you were a
terrorist and really wanted to get something into this country, it's
easy. They're proving it with the drugs."

Some pot has been recovered, arrests have been made and a float plane
was seized after Colville tribal police officers prevented it from
taking off by hurling rocks at the propeller, but it's usually just
about impossible to catch aircraft used in suspected smuggling runs
before they take off again and fly north, authorities said.

Drug running also has been accomplished or attempted by canoe across
Lake Osoyoos, rubber rafts on the Kettle River, boats on Lake
Roosevelt, the Columbia River reservoir impounded by Grand Coulee Dam,
as well as by snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, backpacking and in
campers, tractor-trailers and snowmobiles.

"It seems now that the latest fad is airborne smuggling," McDevitt
said, adding that he briefed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last
week in Yakima "about the increased incidence of this kind of
smuggling and our response to it." He said technology should provide a
solution, aided by local citizens who learn what to look for and
report suspicious activity quickly. Along the Mexican border,
authorities have tethered blimps that use radar to detect low-flying
aircraft, but that is ill-suited to the northern border because steep
canyons and soaring mountains block radar signals. Lonnie Moore, a
Border Patrol spokesman, would not say how many aircraft and pilots
are available to monitor the agency's Spokane sector, which covers a
350-mile stretch of border between the crest of the Cascade Range and
the Continental Divide in Montana. Okanogan County, population about
36,000, accounts for about 90 miles of that.

Since December, authorities have managed to intercept four airborne
smuggling operations that used aircraft, including three in which
people were caught with marijuana at or near remote lakes.