WHITE HOUSE SAYS COUNTERTERRORISM TACTICS AIDING DRUG WAR

Traffickers May Seek N.E. Routes, Analysts Caution

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials have concluded that the same
walls erected to keep terrorists out of the country and off commercial
airplanes could also stem the steady flow of illegal drugs into the United
States.

In the weeks after Sept. 11, concern was expressed in the capital that the
nation's fitful war on drugs would be overlooked or forgotten as the
government focused on preventing terrorism. The head of the Drug
Enforcement Administration, Asa Hutchinson, said in November that the FBI
had shifted agents from drug investigations to counterterrorism.

More recently, some administration officials have come to believe that
beefed-up border patrols and airport security measures can have the side
benefits of catching more drug shipments or deterring traffickers.

"As tragic as Sept. 11 was, at the end of the day, we will forge
partnerships and reexamine the way in which we do things to benefit both
venues: terrorism and drug control," said Kurt Schmid, a senior drug policy
analyst at the White House.

"We try to put up a net at the border," said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the
US Customs Service. "Whatever type of criminal falls into that net - a
terrorist, a drug trafficker, someone trying to smuggle in illegal wildlife
- - we're happy to take them. When you enhance your inspections, it's pretty
much a given that you're going to catch more of all."

So far, the evidence on whether more drugs have been falling into the
tightened counterterrorism net is mixed.

Both the Customs Service and the US Border Patrol reported that they seized
more marijuana between September 2001 and the end of December compared with
the same four months a year before. Customs agents seized nearly 20 percent
more, and border guards, 15 percent more.

Customs agents also confiscated more than twice as much heroin and almost
60 percent more cocaine, but the Border Patrol seized about two-thirds less
heroin and a quarter less cocaine.

Updated information about street prices, which could be affected by
diminished supplies of drugs, is not available. But anecdotal evidence from
casual users of marijuana suggests at least that the drug has become
scarcer and more expensive in New York and Boston.

Along the border with Mexico, federal, state, and local officials reported
a sharp drop in the amount of cocaine seized and smaller declines in the
heroin and marijuana intercepted during the same period.

Federal drug policy specialists say those decreases may be because
traffickers were wary of attempting to have drugs smuggled into the United
States immediately after Sept. 11. Traffickers knew they had enough drugs
in the US market to allow them to wait out the expected increase in border
security, the specialists say.

But as traffickers have run out of patience - and as the amount of their
product in the United States has dwindled - seizures have begun to rise,
federal officials say.

"Our seizure numbers... exceed previous rates," Boyd said last month.
Traffickers "have people they need to pay; at some point, they've got to
start moving their product again."

With the attention being paid to the southwest border, New England could
see an increase in drug trafficking, federal officials say.

"As narcotics traffickers view obstructions to their patterns, they will
take other avenues, and a part of that includes perhaps shipping it across
the borders to less restrictive areas. And that's one potential danger to
New England," Schmid said.

The North Atlantic Customs Management Center, which covers New England,
reported that customs officials made three cocaine seizures during the
first quarter of this fiscal year. That's one more than was made in the
first quarter last year. There were three more hashish seizures and nine
more marijuana seizures.

Not all administration officials agree that trying to stop drugs at the
border is the best strategy. John Walters, director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, dissents.

"The most important thing in this area is intelligence and
information-sharing with other governments and within US agencies," Walters
said. "If you stand on the border and try to stop drugs, ... it's like
trying to hit a baseball with a bat when you're blindfolded. You may hit it
once in a while, but it's going to be lucky. The key is to see the
structures that are bringing the resources toward you and to be able to
exploit their vulnerabilities over that course."