DEA TO SHIFT HEADQUARTERS PERSONNEL TO FIELD

Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson has ordered a
top-to-bottom review of the DEA as part of a post-September 11
reorganization aimed at giving field offices additional manpower and
resources to battle domestic and international drug smuggling.

Mr. Hutchinson, during an hourlong meeting with reporters at DEA
headquarters, said the agency's renewed anti-drug effort was aimed at
attacking narcotics smugglers in the country and overseas whose illicit
profits are used to fund terrorism.

"We are struggling with how to register with the American psyche as a
reality that drugs do support terrorism," Mr. Hutchinson said, adding that
he hopes to create "mobile groups of agents" to combat border smuggling and
to reassign 10 percent of the agents at headquarters in Washington to field
offices nationwide.

"They can be more effective in the field, and that's where they want to
be," he said.

The proposed DEA review and reassignments are in response to a
reorganization plan announced earlier this month by the FBI, which is
transferring 400 bureau agents with drug-investigation assignments to
counterterrorism cases.

Mr. Hutchinson, a former federal prosecutor and Arkansas congressman, told
reporters that the reassignment of DEA headquarters personnel was a
"starting point" in an overall plan to streamline the agency, which is
committed to reducing illicit drug use in the country by 10 percent this year.

"Our first responsibility is not to just throw more money at the problem
but to look at our allocation of resources -- something that hasn't been
done in 20 years," he said. "Things have changed over the past 20 years and
we may not have adequately adjusted our resources."

During the press briefing, Mr. Hutchinson also said:

- -- The DEA has assigned 17 agents to Afghanistan to address an ongoing drug
threat there. Afghanistan, in recent years, has been a major source country
for the cultivation, processing and trafficking of opiate and cannabis
products.

He said Afghanistan produced more than 70 percent of the world's supply of
illicit opium in 2000, but the newly elected Afghan government, under Hamid
Karzai, had been "extraordinarily helpful" in efforts to reduce drug
production. He noted, however, that there was "a difference in making
decrees and having the law enforcement structure to enforce them."

- -- Seizures of drugs coming into the United States from Mexico had gone up
since the September 11 attacks, a result he attributed to increased border
enforcement efforts. He said transportation costs for the smugglers are
mounting, and risk had increased. Also, the price of the products had risen.

Mr. Hutchinson noted, however, that while the DEA had not documented any
increase in production, it could not say the production had decreased.

The DEA review will seek to strengthen efforts along the U.S.-Mexican
border, where many of the agents at DEA headquarters are expected to be
reassigned as members of a border enforcement team. The DEA boss said he
expects the team to be "mobile" to address Southwest border threats.

Mr. Hutchinson, noting that the DEA is the only single-mission agency in
the country dedicated to fighting drugs, said the nation "needs the full
attention, expertise and focus of the FBI on preventing terrorism against
United States citizens," describing it as "the right priority" for the bureau.