GROUND ZERO FIND LEADS TO DRUG BUST

New York customs officials said they had broken a vast international
cocaine-smuggling and money-laundering ring this week after evidence
recovered from the ruins of the World Trade Centre led to the arrest of 37
suspects in Colombia and the US.

A 2-year undercover operation had been all but abandoned when Customs
House, part of the World Trade Centre complex, suffered heavy damage on
September 11 when one of the twin towers collapsed on top of it.

But in October, the city's most senior customs officer, Joe Webber, was
lowered into the debris by crane into the still-standing fifth-floor
portion and managed to recover a safe containing crucial evidence.

Eight people were arrested in Bogota on Wednesday, and arrests in New York,
Florida, Illinois and Puerto Rico were accompanied by the seizure of 400kg
(880lb) of cocaine, 100kg of marijuana and $8m (UKP5.5m) in cash. Some
$400,000 of the haul was thrown from a win dow of a New York apartment
block when the suspect saw customs officers approaching, the customs
department said.

Spokesman Dean Boyd told the New York Post the operation - in which agents
had posed as money-launderers to trace the source of the cash - had
"immediately ceased" on September 11, but that Mr Webber "found our vaults
were intact and the evidence was still there".

Tapes of tapped telephone calls and surveillance photographs were among the
material which survived the twin towers' collapse. "It's an amazing story,
and a real tribute to the agents," Mr Boyd said.

US authorities said extradition requests would be made to Colombian
authorities for those arrested in Bogota.

The last person pulled alive from the rubble of the World Trade Centre
left hospital yesterday after four months of reconstructive surgery and
agonising physical therapy. John McLoughlin, 48, a port authority police
officer, was one of only five survivors found at Ground Zero.