PROBE LINKS DRUG PROFITS, TERRORISM

WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities have amassed evidence for the first time
that an illegal drug operation in the United States was funneling proceeds
to Middle East terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.

Evidence gathered by the Drug Enforcement Administration since a series of
raids in January indicates that a methamphetamine drug operation in the
Midwest involving men of Middle Eastern descent has been shipping money
back to terrorist groups, officials said.

"There is increasing intelligence information from the investigation that
for the first time alleged drug sales in the United States are going in
part to support terrorist organizations in the Middle East," DEA
administrator Asa Hutchinson said.

DEA officials said the men, most of whom were indicted on drug charges
after their January arrests, were smuggling large quantities of the
chemical pseudoephedrine from Canada into the Midwest.

Officials said the smuggling went through two primary Midwest locations,
Chicago and Detroit, and involved several men with ties to Jordan, Yemen,
Lebanon and other Middle East countries. There is no evidence that any of
the money was connected to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said.

Pseudoephedrine is used in some popular cold and allergy medications. It is
an essential ingredient in methamphetamine, a powerful and increasingly
popular drug known on the streets as "ice," "poor man's cocaine" or
"crystal meth."

Users generally inject or smoke meth. The powdery substance is produced by
heating about a dozen chemicals.

The U.S. drug ring was reselling pseudoephedrine to Mexican-based drug
operations in the Western United States that used the pseudoephedrine to
produce methamphetamine, authorities said.

The Middle Eastern men then were diverting some of the proceeds from the
pseudoephedrine sales back to the Middle East to accounts authorities have
begun to connect to terrorist groups, DEA officials said. Some of the
connections involved the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah, and some of
the money has been traced to accounts in Lebanon and Yemen, officials said.

DEA officials said U.S. authorities don't know yet how much money was
funneled from the drug sales to the terrorist groups, but said the
pseudoephedrine sales alone amounted to millions of dollars.

"A significant portion of some of the sales are sent to the Middle East to
benefit terrorist organizations," Hutchinson said.

The drug ring was broken up Jan. 10 as part of a massive DEA investigation
called Operation Mountain Express, which has smashed several major
methamphetamine operations in the past two years.