I was Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration under former President Bush -- "number 41" -- back when HIDTA was just starting up. Then, as now, partnership at all levels of law enforcement is a critical weapon in our battle against drug smuggling and trafficking. It is encouraging to see how this cooperative model -- the High Intensity Drug Trafficking concept -- has thrived over the past ten years, with great efforts like "Operation Grand Slam" out of the Washington Baltimore HIDTA, which dismantled an entire drug trafficking organization starting with only a car filled with cash outbound from the Port of Baltimore.

As Ed noted, very few individuals have had the privilege of heading two great federal law enforcement agencies. As Commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service, I am honored, once again, to lead an agency at the forefront of America's counter-drug fight. And, I might add, one that is an active participant and leader in many HIDTA initiatives.

The highest priority of the U.S. Customs Service now -- and since the monstrous attacks of September 11 against our country -- is counter-terrorism. But our counter-narcotics mission is still a priority and we will not slacken our efforts in the fight against drug trafficking and the scourge of drugs -- and the harm that illegal drugs do to our country and its people.

Contrary to what some might believe, the counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics missions are not mutually exclusive. One does not necessarily come at the expense of the other.

Everyone in this room knows that there is a nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism. Everyone in Colombia knows this. The Taliban have harbored the terrorist murderers and their leadership, and they have supported their evil regime through the heroin trade. And, there are indications that Middle Eastern terrorist organizations are engaged in drug trafficking and other crimes in the U.S. to support their terrorist activities.

Equally important, the models and lessons we have learned in our battle against the international drug trafficking organizations can, and will, help us in the fight against international terrorist organizations, just as Operation El Dorado, a Customs-led, HIDTA initiative has proven.

As is no doubt the case for many of you here, Customs is taking the initiative to meet the continuing terrorist threat. Let me describe some of the actions we have taken.

Right after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, on the morning of September 11, Customs went into its highest security alert short of actually closing the borders -- a Level 1 alert. Level 1 requires sustained, intensive anti-terrorist questioning, and includes heightened inspection of travelers and goods entering our country.

We also implemented round-the-clock coverage by at least two armed officers at every single port of entry in the United States, even those in the low volume crossings along our northern border. In fact, we had people volunteering to go to remote locations to help serve and protect their country.

To do this on a 24 by 7 basis, and to keep trade moving at our high volume ports -- in Michigan, Buffalo, and elsewhere, we have temporarily detailed about 150 Customs inspectors to our border with Canada.

Customs inspectors are also working 12 to 16 hours a day, six and seven days a week, and have been doing so for nearly three months. We are stretched so thin at our ports of entry that we've called in more assistance from the National Guard until we can augment staffing at northern border ports.

After September 11th, we assigned special agents to the Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the country and at the SIOC at FBI Headquarters.

At one point, almost a third of our investigative workforce, over 1,000 agents, were engaged in investigations related to the terrorist attacks. However, that proportion has gradually declined since October.

We have also contributed approximately 110 agents to the federal sky marshal program.

Despite the dedication of investigative resources to counter-terrorism, we have seen no substantial decline in the amount of case hours our agents are devoting to drug investigations, a Customs priority.

That tells me something -- that our people are working extremely hard. And that, also goes for all of Customs frontline personnel, our Customs inspectors, and not just our criminal investigators, our special agent force.

Many of you are also aware of Customs' Air and Marine Interdiction Division, and its prominent role in the national counterdrug effort. It, too, has been called to duty by the response to "9-11." Customs air assets -- Customs P-3 AEW aircraft -- and personnel are dedicating substantial flight hours to supporting the U.S. Air Force, doing detection and monitoring over American cities to support the Air Force's combat air patrol mission.

One of the first things I did as Commissioner, in order to ensure that we are focusing on counter-terrorism and the means of detection for weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and materials, was to establish a new Office of Anti-Terrorism at Customs. I appointed an experienced counter-terrorism expert, a former Marine Colonel, to head that office. He reports directly to me.

In addition, I have launched a number of initiatives that draw on Customs' traditional strengths to help in America's war on terrorism.

These include Operation Shield America, which is aimed at the illegal export of unlicensed weapons, equipment, and technology useful to international terrorist groups -- things like nuclear triggering devices and sophisticated technology.

And Operation Oasis, which targets the smuggling of outbound cash. Since its inception on October 10, Oasis has netted Customs more than six million dollars in unreported, outbound funds -- cash, money orders and checks -- which were seized from travelers headed for the Middle East. It has generated good leads to identify the flow of funds to support Middle Eastern terrorist organizations.

We've also launched a new Customs-Trade Partnership against Terrorism. This is an initiative we have undertaken with the trade community --the major importers and shippers of goods into the U.S. -- to tighten security throughout the supply and transportation chain, and deny the use of commercial cargo as a means for introducing terrorist weapons into our country.

And we moved quickly to enhance the quality and quantity of advanced information coming into Customs, specifically in the area of passenger processing. On November 19, the President signed into law the Aviation Security Bill, which among other things, made the submission of data on incoming passengers to our Advanced Passenger Information System, or APIS, mandatory for all airlines.

Customs had received API information voluntarily from many airlines for several years, but in light of 9-11, it was essential to make it mandatory. Although the law does not take effect until January of next year, I told those airlines that initially balked at submitting APIS data to comply with the new law immediately or face 100% questioning and inspection of all people and luggage disembarking from their flights. Not surprisingly, almost all have come around.

To those few still holding out, our message is clear: international flights for which Customs does not have APIS data pose a national security risk to the United States, and they will be treated as such. After the law takes effect, we will deny landing rights to the airlines that fail to comply.

Another noteworthy initiative we've launched is Operation Green Quest. The goal of Operation Green Quest is to deny terrorist groups and their supporters the financial wherewithal needed to fund their operations. It brings the full force of U.S. Customs' money laundering expertise to bear on terrorist networks.

In addition to Customs, which leads the operation, the Green Quest team includes the Internal Revenue Service and the Secret Service, as well as the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control, the new Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FINCEN. Green Quest is also supported by the FBI and federal prosecutors from the Department of Justice.

The command and coordination center for Operation Green Quest is located at Customs headquarters in Washington. Its heart and soul can be found in New York, in the men and women drawn from a HIDTA initiative known as Operation El Dorado, the most continuously and phenomenally successful money laundering task force ever put together by U.S. law enforcement.

As the capital of the financial world, New York is the logical place to focus much of the investigative effort to identify, freeze, and seize terrorist assets. That's why we created a separate Green Quest unit there composed of veteran El Dorado agents and officers -- to identify the movement of terrorist funding through the global banking system and financial institutions, and via non-traditional ways like the hawala system.

Unit members come with great credentials. The El Dorado task force, operating out of the U.S. Customs office in New York, is comprised of 185 individuals from 29 federal, state, and local agencies, including U.S. Customs, the IRS, the FBI, the New York Police Department, and the New York State Banking Department.

El Dorado was created in 1992 to address the drug money laundering vulnerability of the major international drug trafficking organizations, because much of that activity was focused in New York. The task force was segmented into different programs that, to this day, continue to focus on areas such as the money services business, the Black Market Peso Exchange, financial institutions, bulk cash smuggling and intelligence.

Using a variety of means, from undercover investigations, to outbound operations, to regulatory steps, and other innovative techniques, El Dorado has been responsible for the arrest of 1,500 individuals and the seizure of $425 million dollars since its inception in 1992!

Just as they have done with the drug cartels, some of these veteran task force members are working Operation Green Quest investigations that are looking at the methods used by terrorists to move funds overseas to finance terrorist activities in the U.S. and elsewhere. They are working to prevent the terrorists from carrying out mass murders like September 11 -- never again.

Most of you have heard about the use of informal "hawalas" and wire-transmitter businesses by terrorist groups to move proceeds. This is nothing new for us. El Dorado disrupted the use of money remitters working for the Colombian traffickers in the mid-1990s.

We can and we will have the same success in the battle against terrorist financing. And if there was ever any doubt about the resolve of the El Dorado team, let me share this with you: on September 11, their home -- and the home of all 800 Customs employees who worked in the U.S. Customhouse at 6 World Trade Center -- was completely destroyed in the terrorist attacks. And through it all they persevered, continuing to conduct major money laundering investigations despite the loss of records and equipment, and the daunting task of moving an entire operation into new office space within three weeks.

In Operation El Dorado, we have a storehouse of intelligence and expertise to draw upon. Those resources will be used to investigate the potential ties between drug money laundering and terrorism, and to identify and disrupt the flow of terrorist funding from any source.

Which brings me back to an earlier point. We will not slacken our efforts regarding drug interdiction and investigations with our DEA colleagues and others, and our efforts to take down drug trafficking and smuggling organizations. We will not slacken our efforts to disrupt the flow of dirty, drug money that finances international drug organizations.

Some of our efforts to increase security against the terrorist threat at the border have helped in our drug interdiction mission. As a result of the Level 1 alert, we saw a spike in drug seizures in October -- a 29% increase in the total amount of drugs seized by the Customs Service over the same period last year.

That wasn't true at first. In fact, in the days immediately after September 11, we noticed a sharp decline in the number of seizures at our land borders. The movement of drugs came to a standstill. The smugglers, waiting to see if we'd let up, trained their lookouts to detect a relaxation of security on our frontlines. No let up came. But the pressure on the traffickers to bring their goods to market became too great to bear. So our seizures started to pick up again dramatically, especially our seizures of marijuana and cocaine.

Clearly, our Level 1 alert is having the effect of increasing our drug seizures. It also will effect drug smuggling trends in other ways. We are anticipating those trends, and we will react to them quickly.

That includes deploying an active Air and Marine presence in the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean, routes the drug smugglers have begun to turn to as we choke off their access to land border crossings. We continue to use the full complement of air assets in support of counterdrug operations in the transit and arrival zones.

It is also worth noting that before September 11, our P-3 AEWs were tasked to fly a substantial portion of their missions in the Source Zone for narcotics. It was because of the tragic shoot-down over Peru of a missionary flight by host country forces last April 20, and not September 11, that those flights and all others conducted by U.S. agencies in the Source Zone were suspended.

Thus, the events of September 11 have not diverted our AEW assets as much as might otherwise be the case. In addition, we anticipate that the deployment of new P-3 AEWs since the shoot-down incident will help us to support the Source Zone mission of the U.S. government should it decide to resume the detection and monitoring missions in Colombia and Peru.

In recent weeks, using its air and marine assets, Customs effected two major seizures from "go fast boats" operating in the Caribbean, off the coast of Puerto Rico. Combined, the two seizures netted over 2500 kilograms of cocaine and 7 arrests. In fact, over the past five weeks, we have seized a total of about 3900 kilograms of cocaine in the Caribbean from vessels travelling through that area.

Results like these demonstrate that it is possible to engage the drug traffickers vigorously, without sacrificing the integrity of our national defense against terrorism. But I don't want to paint too rosy picture here -- it has to come with a price.

The real challenge for many of us in this room comes in marshalling the resources necessary to balance our traditional priorities with the continuing and overriding terrorist threat. And that is easier said than done, given this time of belt-tightening.

Nonetheless, this Administration has stepped up to the plate by providing additional support for U.S. Customs and other federal law enforcement agencies in a time of crisis. Customs received funding for several hundred additional inspectors for the northern border and fifty special agent positions in its 2002 budget, and we may gain more positions in the counter-terrorism supplemental now pending before the Congress.

We also recognize the importance of coordinating with our partner enforcement agencies, especially those that share our border mission. We are working closely on an interagency level with the INS, the Coast Guard, and others to devise strategies that ensure that terrorists and the implements of terrorism do not find their way across our borders and into the United States.

We have also been actively engaged in discussions with the governments of Canada and Mexico to increase information sharing and develop common security measures for the processing of people and goods.

Far more than an act of goodwill or diplomacy, this coordination is essential to overcoming the resource challenges that each of our organizations, individually, face. It is true on an international level. It is true on the federal level. It is true at the state and local level. And is true of the cooperative framework we have seen practiced so successfully over the years under HIDTA. It is the same cooperative and united effort we need to defend and protect our country and to defeat the forces of terrorism …which, rest assured, we will. Thank you.