Pubdate: Sat, 02 Feb 2002 Source: Inquirer (PA) Copyright: 2002 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc Contact: http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/home/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/340 Author: Lenny Savino, Inquirer Washington Bureau Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n199/a01.html, http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1920/a07.html DRUG SEIZURES ARE COUNTED TWICE, GAO SAYS Reports by the Coast Guard, Customs Service and Pentagon do not add up, the office found. WASHINGTON - Federal agencies that oversee drug seizures on the high seas are double-counting the same cocaine confiscations, according to an investigation by the auditing arm of Congress. The 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 the Inquirer Washington Bureau. 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 antidrug 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 news 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 yesterday he also wanted an accounting of how the agencies were using the billions of dollars in drug interdiction funding. The GAO report said that none of the three agencies examined in the report - - the Coast Guard, Customs or Defense Department - tracked how and when it used interdiction money. "It's time for a really clear-eyed, honest evaluation of how our interdiction effort is working," Sessions said in a phone interview yesterday. "We need to analyze how much money is being spent, how much drugs are being seized, and the effectiveness of these operations." 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 Web site of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The GAO report said that 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." Eric Sterling, director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a drug-policy think tank in Silver Spring, Md., said inaccurate seizure information "severely handicaps an effective defense against the drug trade." Sessions has also asked the GAO to investigate "Operation Libertador," a 36-nation "major takedown" of drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Latin America during the fall of 2000. DEA agents had said they made 2,876 arrests, but Sessions ordered the inquiry as a result of an Inquirer Washington Bureau investigation that found that agency officials had no evidence to support hundreds of the arrests. Hundreds more were routine busts for marijuana possession. While the DEA said $30.2 million in criminal assets was seized during Libertador, $30 million of that was confiscated four weeks before the operation began. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D