Drugs: A $1.5 Billion Inside Job

The operation was a consummate inside job. Some baggage handlers at New York City's John F. Kennedy Airport plucked suitcases loaded with cocaine off incoming planes from Rio de Janeiro and switched them onto conveyor belts headed for domestic flights before the luggage ever got to Customs inspectors. Others simply picked up the bags and carried them out through emergency exits. Accomplices erased from airline computer systems all records of the flights made by the couriers who carried the drugs from Brazil. Since 1981, the ring may have smuggled $1.5 billion worth of cocaine through J.F.K. Last Tuesday narcotics agents arrested 40 people, including 23 present or former Pan Am employees, eight from Eastern and two from Delta. But, says New York City Special Prosecutor Sterling Johnson, "I have no doubt that this is going on in other airports and other airlines. Drug smugglers are limited only by their imaginations."