Pubdate: Mon, 05 Apr 1999 Source: Washington Post (DC) Page: A15 Copyright: 1999 The Washington Post Company Address: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071 Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Author: Stephen Barr, Washington Post Staff Writer CRACKDOWN ON CORRUPTION The U.S. Customs Service, faced with concerns that its inspectors are increasingly vulnerable to bribes by drug smugglers, plans to make the fight against corruption a priority for agency officials. Customs Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has started to shake up his top management ranks, strengthen disciplinary procedures and improve training for employees. He also has asked for authority to use polygraphs when hiring new agents. "We will not hesitate to fire people," Kelly told a House subcommittee last month. A recent Treasury Department review found no evidence of systematic corruption in the Customs Service but said "individual acts of corruption have occurred and continue to occur." The Treasury report said the Office of Internal Affairs at Customs, which investigates allegations of misconduct by agency employees, had failed to take aggressive steps to combat corruption and had been wracked by infighting with the agency's criminal investigators, who collect intelligence on drug and contraband smugglers and manage the agency's air and sea drug interdiction programs. The concerns about corruption among Customs employees comes at a particularly sensitive time. The Senate Finance Committee, which held blockbuster hearings on taxpayer abuses by the Internal Revenue Service in 1997 and 1998, has started an investigation of Customs, leading to fears among Clinton administration officials that the agency may be in for a similar battering. At the House hearing, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) praised Kelly, who took charge of Customs in August, for taking steps to shake up Customs. In contrast, Hoyer said, the IRS "was not perceived as acting internally. . . . If they had, the public would have had more confidence in their leadership." Treasury's Office of Professional Responsibility conducted its review at the request of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Customs, chaired by Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), who called for "zero tolerance" of corruption at the agency. The review, which provided a rare glimpse into the workings of a federal law enforcement agency, portrayed Customs as a contentious workplace. For example, the Treasury report said, agents assigned to criminal investigations believe that agents working for Internal Affairs "are incompetent, overzealous and spend too much time investigating matters that are unrelated to corruption." Internal Affairs agents, for their part, said criminal investigators "interfered, impeded and compromised ongoing Internal Affairs investigations." The infighting, Treasury said, "has reached critical proportions." To address issues raised by Treasury, Kelly said he has replaced the head of Internal Affairs with a career prosecutor who will report directly to him. Kelly also has started his own review of Internal Affairs "and will be directing reassignments when and where appropriate," he said. In addition, Kelly said, he has begun new procedures for the reporting and tracking of employee violations and will establish agency-wide "discipline review boards," strengthen the agency's whistleblower office and publish a plain-English "code of conduct" for employees. Kelly also plans to revamp hiring practices at the agency. Rather than recruit inspectors and canine officers through field offices, Customs will hire through a centralized, nationwide office. Job applicants will take tests to assess reasoning and writing skills, undergo rigorous interviews to determine their maturity and undergo a background investigation and drug screening, Kelly said. The new recruitment program will provide a "systematic approach that includes ways to gauge integrity in potential new employees," Kelly said. What remains unclear, however, is the extent of potential corruption problems facing Kelly. The 98-page Treasury report provides only one case study, describing how two agents were caught and prosecuted for their part in a $1 million bribery scheme arranged to smuggle cocaine from Mexico into the United States. Asked to provide a tally of how many Customs employees have been convicted of drug-related crimes in recent years, the agency said its antiquated computer systems provided "inconclusive data." Meanwhile, Robert M. Tobias, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents Customs employees, opposes a proposal that Customs rotate border inspectors on a regular basis to reduce the chances that family friends or acquaintances can influence them to look the other way when contraband or narcotics move through ports of entry. Tobias cited the case of Virginia Rodriguez, a Customs inspector and single parent in Brownsville, Tex., who arrested one of the FBI's top 10 suspects at a border crossing. "She told me recently that she probably pays more for child care than anyone else in Brownsville in order to have quality care available for the ever-changing day and night shifts she works in order to keep the port staffed around the clock," Tobias said. He said Customs would have trouble retaining such employees "if they would have to face the daunting tasks of uprooting their families, searching for affordable housing and quality child care every couple of years." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake