CONGRESS REPORT FINDS U.S. AGENCIES DOUBLE-COUNTING SAME DRUG SEIZURES

Washington - Federal agencies that oversee drug seizures on the high seas
are double- and triple-counting the same cocaine confiscations, according
to an investigation by the auditing arm of Congress.

The U.S. Coast Guard, Customs Service and Department of Defense are each
taking credit for many of their joint seizures and presenting them to
Congress as if they acted alone, the General Accounting Office says in a
report to be released Monday. A copy of the GAO report was obtained by
Knight Ridder.

GAO investigators reviewed 26 cocaine seizures in fiscal years 1998, 1999,
and 2000 in the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the northern coast of
South America and the Eastern Pacific. They found that the Coast Guard and
Customs each took credit for 16 of them. The exact amount of drugs seized
was not disclosed.

The Defense Department also took credit for numerous seizures in the same
drug transit area, where about 645 metric tons of cocaine were smuggled
into the United States during 2000, the report said.

Federal anti-drug agencies confiscated 118,398 kilograms of cocaine in
1998, 118,398 in 1999, and 132,318 in 2000, according to Office of National
Drug Control Policy figures. A kilogram is 2.2 pounds.

In press releases the agencies mentioned when other agencies helped, but
some lawmakers have frowned on the practice of double-counting because it
skews seizure statistics and gives the impression that each agency played
the lead role in the interdictions.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a former U.S. drug prosecutor, requested the
GAO investigation. Sessions said Friday that he also wants an accounting of
how the agencies were using the billions of dollars in drug interdiction
funding.

It turns out that none of the three agencies examined in the report - the
Coast Guard, Customs or Defense Department - track how and when they use
interdiction money, the report said.

"It's time for a really clear-eyed, honest evaluation of how our
interdiction effort is working." Sessions said in a phone interview Friday.
"We need to analyze how much money is being spent, how much drugs are being
seized, and the effectiveness of these operations."

Getting around watchdog

During fiscal year 2000, the Coast Guard received $756 million for drug
interdiction. The Defense Department got $545 million and Customs received
$436 million, according to the ONDCP Web site.

As for the double-counting, Sessions said it was a problem in 1989 when
Congress funded the Federal Drug Seizure System (FDSS) to act as a watchdog
and put an end to the practice.

But the GAO says FDSS and another computer system - the Consolidated
Counter-drug Database, run by the Office of National Drug Control Policy -
don't prevent "individual agencies from each counting cocaine seizures in
their own databases and annual counts when more than one agency
participates in the seizure."

The Drug Enforcement Administration runs FDSS. Last year its operating
budget was $95,989, an agency spokesman said Friday.

Agency officials say double counting is "appropriate" because each agency
participates in the seizure, and cooperation would be hindered if only one
agency could receive "credit," the report said.

Eric Sterling, director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a drug
policy think tank in Silver Spring, Md., said inaccurate seizure data
"severely handicaps an effective defense against the drug trade."