I don't have to go on in great detail about the work of the U.S. Customs Service to this audience. Many of you likely already know a great deal about the nation's oldest law enforcement agency -- how we collect over twenty billion dollars a year in revenue for the federal government; how we process over 1 trillion dollars in trade each year...

We oversee one of the broadest and most complex collections of criminal investigations in all of law enforcement; everything from narcotics smuggling, to trade fraud, to money laundering, to illegal exports of strategic technology, to the import of weapons of mass destruction and internet child pornography.

The men and women of the Customs Service helped insure a peaceful close to 1999 by stopping Ahmed Ressam from entering the United States from Canada with a trunk-load of powerful

Bomb-making materials. That trunk contained enough ingredients for another Oklahoma city, or World Trade Center bombing.

Events like this testify to the diversity of threats we must contend with every day. Drug smuggling, however, remains the most pervasive.

As America's Frontline, U.S. Customs is uniquely positioned to interdict illegal narcotics at their arrival points - the borders and ports of entry of our country. More, through controlled deliveries of those seizures we can identify, disrupt, and dismantle smuggling networks and their inland cells.

What some of you may not know is that customs seizes more drugs than any other federal agency -- about a ton of heroin last year; over 80 tons of cocaine; and about a million and a half pounds of marijuana.

What some of you may not know is that customs seizes more drugs than any other federal agency -- about a ton of heroin last year; over 80 tons of cocaine; and about a million and a half pounds of marijuana.

First developed as an appetite suppressant, the mood-altering pill is known for inducing a sense of euphoria and extreme sensitivity to touch. It's most popular among teens and college students. The immediate downside includes dehydration, anxiety, exhaustion, and depression. Overdoses can cause extreme hypertension and kidney failure. Repeated, long-term use has been linked to brain damage and it kills. It should be called "agony" for all of its destructive potential.

These charts on my right tell part of the story. Once negligible, seizures of ecstasy by the Customs Service have skyrocketed in the last three years, from about 350,000 tablets in 1997, to about 750,000 in 1998, to over three million tablets last year. We've already taken in four million of the pills in the first few months of 2000 alone. If the trend continues, we estimate that customs will seize at least eight million tablets by the end of the year.

New York is no stranger to ecstasy. In fact, a recent associated press story refers to it as the "epicenter" of the drug. As the next chart over shows, in the current fiscal year, we've seized over a million and a half tablets of ecstasy at JFK airport alone. Another half million was seized at Newark.

Ecstasy first became popular at so-called raves, the all-night dance parties sponsored by big-city clubs. Columnist Jack Newfield has written in heart wrenching detail about an 18-year-old who died after taking ecstasy in a club where the drug sold for $25 a tablet and water for $5 a bottle. Newfield described how the extremely dehydrated boy tried to suck water from the club's bathroom tap that had been turned off, so that those with drug induced thirst would be forced to buy the bottled water.

That's a common practice in the clubs to squeeze money from young ecstasy users. You can see the marketing to the young in these ecstasy logos, here on this chart to my left with Nike, Batman, Tweety Bird and the like.

Though once confined to urban centers, the drug has now spread to suburban and rural areas as well. We've had major seizures in places like Alabama and Utah, not exactly hotbeds of smuggling otherwise. It's taking on epidemic proportions, and we're very concerned about it.

Aside from the physical harm it can wreak, ecstasy is attracting the worst the criminal world has to offer. That's due to the massive profits to be made. Profits Sammy the Bull Gravano, for one, couldn't resist.

Gravano's life after the Bergen Fish and Wildlife Club now includes an arrest in connection with ecstasy trafficking in Phoenix. He showed up on Customs' radar after our inspectors made an ecstasy seizure at our mail facility in Oakland, California. The package was destined for Scottsdale, Arizona, where Gravano had reinvented himself, supposedly in the swimming pool business. The ring he was involved with sold ecstasy pills at 30 dollars each, after buying them from suppliers in the Netherlands and Belgium for about 6 dollars a piece.

The margin of profit is attracting old and new organized crime figures. Which is not surprising, when for a $100,000 investment of 200,000 tablets, you can easily make $5 million. It's truly a global business, and it has completely erased all the old routes law enforcement had mapped out for the smuggling of traditional drugs like heroin, cocaine, and marijuana.

Most ecstasy is manufactured in Europe - The Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain. Pill presses used to manufacture the drug are not controlled in these countries as they are in the u.s.

The precursors for the drug come from China, India, Poland and Germany. Again, these are scheduled chemicals in the U.S. and require licensing to obtain.

The drug comes to us from various smuggling bases, mainly Europe, the Dominican Republic, and Canada. Israeli organized crime groups dominate the trade, but they're getting increased competition from the Russian mafia, other Eastern European gangs, Dominican crime groups, and Nigerian smugglers too. We expect that drug lords in Colombia and Mexico will soon try to carve out part of the market for themselves.

These groups are hardened, violent, and willing to go to any means to get their product through. Last October, authorities in Europe found 11 pounds of semtex high explosives during a raid on ecstasy labs in The Netherlands. And during the execution of ecstasy search warrants around this country, we've repeatedly seized weapons and handguns.

To compound the problem, we've found that the large smuggling groups are highly compartmentalized from production to distribution. Each part tends to operate independently, making the organization difficult to penetrate. The precursor chemical people may be independent from the tablet makers. The smugglers may be independent from the money launderers. Identifying the leaders of these global organizations is tough work.

Not only have we gone back to the drawing board on who's behind the smuggling and from where, we've got a whole new courier profile to consider and concealment methods too. We took down one Israeli organized crime cell that recruited couriers from the Hasidic community right here in New York, including rabbinical students from all over the metropolitan area, who brought the drug in from The Netherlands and ferried the cash back out.

We've seen ecstasy show up on all types and in all places. People are willing to take chances because of the drug's profitability, and the fact that it's that much easier to hide.

Well-to-do tourists have been caught with ecstasy strapped tightly to their bodies. We've seen it in the smallest mail packs, in all forms of luggage, stuffed in shipments of toy magnets and teddy bears, too.

Another alarming aspect of the trade is the appearance of counterfeit ecstasy tablets -- pills that have been adulterated by potentially lethal ingredients, including strick-nine - most commonly used as rat poison. In 1994, police in Scotland uncovered half a million tablets that were ready to be sold as ecstasy. They were in fact heartworm tablets for dogs that could cause serious harm to humans.

Stories like this add an even darker shadow to the ecstasy phenomenon, and the challenge law enforcement faces in protecting America's youth.

Customs has responded by forming an ecstasy task force. It consists of representatives from all across the service, mainly our office of field operations, our office of investigations, and within that division, our intelligence personnel. The task force acts as a command and control team, reviewing recent trends and exploiting ongoing cases for all possible leads.

Our methods include cataloging smuggling methods; conducting search blitzes at carrier hubs; seizing ecstasy proceeds before they leave the country; exchanging intelligence and post-seizure analyses with foreign partners; coordinating controlled deliveries; and initiating outreach programs with federal, state, and local counterparts. We also just finished training 13 drug-detecting dogs to alert to ecstasy.

As much as we're doing, it will likely never be enough. The fact remains that as long as the demand for illegal drugs is high, the traffickers will find a way to bring it to market. That's why we've put out alerts to parents on our web-site, emphasizing the need to talk to our young people about the dangers of the drug. We're hoping that with the help of an information campaign ecstasy will soon go the way of crack. It virtually disappeared from our streets after information about its unpredictable impurities and side effects were made known to a wide audience.

Of course, we can't do it alone. We're counting on our community partners to help us spread the message and raise the profile of this battle. This foundation has done so much to advance law enforcement issues in the past. And as so many times before, we'll be looking to you to help us win this one too.

Tony, before I surrender the podium, I want you to stay here to be recognized. Everybody in this room knows of Tony's commitment to law enforcement through this organization. You may not know that last month he personally assisted the Customs Service and the New York City police department in defeating a sophisticated scheme to smuggle ecstasy into the united states.

In recognition of his role in this successful law enforcement action, the United States Customs Service is giving him the following citation:

To Anthony Bergamo, Managing Director, Milford Plaza Hotel. In recognition of the important assistance you personally provided special agents of the United States Customs Service and detectives of the New York City police department who were effecting the arrest of an international narcotics smuggler at the Milford Plaza Hotel on Sunday, March 19, 2000.

The smuggler had avoided apprehension at two other midtown hotels when the agents located him at the Milford Plaza. Despite the fact that it was late on a Sunday evening, you responded to the hotel from your home without delay to ensure that the arrest team had everything they needed.

Due in no small part to you assistance, the arrest was made quickly, quietly and safely. There were no injuries and none of the hotel guests were endangered or disturbed

Your assistance in the successful outcome of this investigation is a concrete example of the partnership which must exist between law enforcement and the business community to successfully wage the war on drugs.

Thanks, Tony, for a job well done.