SEN. QUESTIONS DRUG SEIZURE COUNTINGS

WASHINGTON - The Coast Guard and the Customs Service may be counting the
same cocaine seizures in their separate congressional reports, making it
difficult to tell how the war on drugs is going, a senator says.

The agencies don't see any problem with this, since they both participated
in the seizures, according to a General Accounting Office report released
Monday.

"Agency officials we spoke with told us that they believe it is appropriate
for each agency to get credit for its involvement in seizing cocaine, since
without the participation of any one agency, the seizure might not
occurred," the report said.

However, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who requested the GAO investigation,
said he has long questioned whether multiple agencies are counting the same
drug busts and inflating their numbers.

"We need to re-examine the ways we collect drug interdiction data, and then
use that information to accurately evaluate federal efforts to stop drug
smuggling into the United States," Sessions said.

Customs and the Coast Guard are the main U.S. agencies intercepting or
deterring shipments of illegal drugs from foreign countries, primarily at
the borders.

Sessions said he sent a copy of the report to the heads of the Justice
Department, Customs Service and Coast Guard, in addition to Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and White
House drug policy director John Walters.

The GAO report found that of cocaine seizures described in federal press
releases during fiscal years 1998, 1999 and 2000, 16 were reported by both
the Coast Guard and Customs in the numbers used to track their
effectiveness. Both agencies did participate in some way in those busts,
the GAO said.

The agencies concurred with the results of the GAO report, congressional
investigators said.

The Customs Service said in a statement that it reports drug seizures in
which it was involved to a national database called the Federal-wide Drug
Seizure System. "This national database has controls, such as unique
identification numbers for each seizure, to prevent the multiple counting
of seizures when determining the total amount of drugs seized by all
federal agencies," the agency said in a statement.

The GAO said although the FDSS "has controls to prevent the same seizures
from being counting more than once, FDSS was not designed to prevent
individual agencies from reporting the same seizures in their own databases."