Troubling lapses continue today, officials say. The lapses could be as simple as overseas analysts failing to let border agents know what they are hearing about traffickers using shipments of fruit from Mexico or trees from Peru to ply their trade, officials at the U.S. Customs Service said. In an effort to address the problem, administration officials hope to submit their plan for increased cooperation to the White House by the end of the year. One part of the plan would let the Customs Service put its own intelligence officers in drug-producing countries. Customs officials sent two agents to Mexico about a month ago to test the strategy and hope to put others in Colombia.
Some observers question adding a new layer of bureaucracy to an already top-heavy system.
And they ask why McCaffrey cannot get all the agencies on the same page. The answer, say experts who track the drug war, is money. But the only way to get effective authority over this would be to give this new body budget authority. That has been the fundamental problem with Barry McCaffrey's office. . . . He does not control the purse strings.