Corruption: NORTH OF THE BORDER.

THINK THE MEXICAN POLICE AND other government officials are the only ones corrupted by Mexico's drug lords? Think again. The U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service have not done enough to prevent the infiltration of Mexico's drug cartel's into their ranks along the 1,962-mile U.S-Mexico border, says a recent U.S. General Accounting Office report.

The GAO reviewed 28 cases involving INS and Customs employees convicted of drug-related crimes between 1992 and 1997. Among the more notable: Waving drug loads through ports of entry, coordinating the movement of drugs across the border (using cell phones and beepers to tell drug traffickers which lanes to use and when), transporting drugs past border patrol checkpoints (sometimes in government vehicles), selling drugs and disclosing drug intelligence information. "Given the enormous sums of money being generated by drug trafficking, the corruption of some INS and Customs employees along the southwest border is a serious and a continuing threat," concluded the report.

Coming to the defense of the agencies were Assistant Attorney General Stephen Colgate and William Riley, Customs' director of planning. "Twenty-eight instances of corruption out of 9,600 agents over about a six-year period is a commendable demonstration of the integrity of ours and [Customs] personnel," said Colgate in his letter to the GAO.

Still, the GAO is recommending that the two agencies institute advanced integrity training, much like the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Secret Service. The GAO also is suggesting the agencies conduct "reinvestigations" of existing employees every five years (most were overdue by three years and the agencies had a combined backlog of 934 as of March 1998). Such reinvestigations can raise red flags about personnel who might be tempted to accept bribes from drug smugglers to pay down debts or appear to be living well beyond their means.

Indeed, the GAO cited one border patrol agent who owned a $200,000 house with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, five cars, one van, two boats, 100 weapons, $45,000 in U.S. Treasury bills and 40 acres of land--and carried no debt. Nice work if you can get away with it.