SMUGGLERS HEADING THROUGH CANADIAN DOOR

The remote East Bank Trail, which snakes south from a campground at
the U.S.-Canada border, would seem about the last place on Earth you'd
expect to run into a 23-year-old aspiring Palestinian terrorist.

The apprehension of Abu Mezer nearly eight years ago marked an end of
innocence for the North Cascades National Park complex.

With enforcement stepped up in populated areas to the west, the
smuggling of people and "B.C. Bud" marijuana has spilled over into the
wild environs of the "American Alps."

"When you squeeze the balloon, it will bulge somewhere else," said
Joseph Giuliano, assistant chief patrol agent with the U.S. Border
Patrol in Blaine.

John Madden, the enthusiastic National Park Service ranger who patrols
Ross Lake, said "drugs, guns and people are moving, that we know,"
down the fjordlike reservoir that extends from Seattle City Light's
505-foot-tall Ross Dam to a point just north of the border.

Madden was, last week, performing the never predictable work that
constitutes the regular routine for a ranger in the wilderness.

He spotted a white canoe and nudged his patrol boat over at the remote
Little Beaver Creek campground and trailhead. Madden had the tough
task of informing a Vancouver, B.C., man and his two sons of a death
in the family. He arranged for another boat to carry them up the lake
to Hozomeen, where a 45-mile gravel road leads to the Trans-Canada
Highway.

Not long ago, however, Madden came across a kayaker struggling in the
waves that blow up on Ross Lake. With newly rented gear, he appeared
to be an unlikely outdoorsman. At that point the kayaker revealed his
cargo, 22 kilos of B.C. Bud.

"Am I in trouble?" he asked Madden.

"You are now," the ranger replied.

The Park Service will joke that it apprehends the inept smugglers.
Nobody is laughing, however. B.C. Bud is a billion-dollar business,
run by people who carefully study law enforcement's response.

"This is about organized crime. The last several years have driven
that message home," said Pete Cowan, chief ranger for the North
Cascades National Park.

An example: The lookout at remote Copper Mountain -- one of North
America's great mountain viewing points -- spotted what Cowan calls
"unusual aircraft activity" far below in the Chilliwack River valley.

A road extends down Chilliwack Lake in Canada to within about a mile
of the U.S. border. It was built so British Columbia loggers could
clearcut the Depot Creek valley to the border of the U.S. national
park.

Smugglers were hauling B.C. Bud across the 49th Parallel and up the
Chilliwack River to a rendezvous location.

Bags were dumped for pickup by a helicopter on the American side. "You
don't fly a helicopter for $40 an hour," Cowan dryly noted.

Canada-based smugglers have shown skill at adapting their country's
sporting culture to the demands of business. B.C. Bud is often put
into hockey bags in order to keep the plants intact. Avalanche
transceivers are used to mark the location of bags for pickup.

None of this used to be necessary.

During the 1990s, the U.S.-Canada border was stripped of agents, even
as Interstate 5 became a two-way drug corridor and rings charged as
much as $20,000 to smuggle Asian illegals into the United States.

Smugglers even had time on their side. The Border Patrol only had
personnel to be on duty 16 hours a day.

"We have triple the number of people now, and it's a lot better," said
Giuliano. "But that presupposes we had adequate staff. In fact, we
were grossly understaffed. In years gone by, we did not have resources
on the ground to know what we were facing. We're just getting a handle
on that now."

The post-9/11 interdiction effort has at least impacted smugglers'
traditional way of doing business.

It has driven them onto the water. Marine interdictions of B.C. Bud
are up substantially. And it has driven smugglers to the east.

"What we've seen principally is drug smuggling, not human smuggling,"
said Cowan.

Still, the Park Service recently spotted a fast-moving boat on Ross
Lake. The boat apparently struck something that disabled its
propeller. It was beached and abandoned. Rangers believe it was used
for people smuggling. Madden has also found Korean-language food
wrappers along the East Bank trail.

Smugglers have come by foot, used boats and kayaks on Ross Lake,
deployed airplanes and canoes, and -- in winter -- used snowmobiles to
access the East Bank and Ross Lake trailheads on the North Cascades
Highway.

East of the North Cascades Park complex lies the half-million-acre
Pasayten Wilderness Area, less rugged perhaps but even more remote and
unpeopled. "If I think we have a tough job with staffing," said Cowan,
"all I have to do is look at my counterparts with the U.S. Forest
Service. I have eight or nine people to work with. They have two or
three."

A recent article in Government Executive magazine on patrolling the
northern border carried its conclusion in the headline: "Difficult
Terrain."

As to the shivering illegal apprehended on the East Bank trail eight
years ago, therein lies a lesson in the potential cost of
complacency.

Abu Mezer was sent back to Canada. The Palestinian was apprehended a
second time at Peace Arch Park in Blaine. He was again bounced back
into the Great White North.

The Border Patrol's suspicions grew when it nabbed him a third time at
the bus depot in Bellingham. It incarcerated Mezer, and sent the case
file to the FBI. Mezer was, however, bailed out at a cost of $5,000 --
by another person in the United States illegally.

In the summer of 1997, the New York City Joint Terrorism Task Force
apprehended Abu Mezer in a Brooklyn apartment.

On the premises were five cylindrical pipe bombs being readied for use
on the New York subway system.