Judging A Book by Its Cover

By Alain L. Sanders

When Andrew Sokolow approached a United Airlines counter in Hawaii five years ago to begin a flight to Miami, he aroused immediate suspicion. First he looked and acted nervous. Then he plunked down $2,100 from a bulging wad of $20 bills to buy round-trip tickets for himself and a companion. He and his friend did not check their luggage but chose to carry it on board. And, as investigators discovered, Sokolow used an assumed name and stayed in Miami only 48 hours. In short, his actions matched those in the behavior profiles used by the Drug Enforcement Administration to spot would-be drug traffickers. When he returned to Honolulu, DEA agents arrested Sokolow and searched his bags, which contained 1,063 grams of cocaine.

Last week, by a vote of 7 to 2, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Sokolow's detention on drug charges, in an opinion that granted federal agents broad discretion to use "drug-courier profiles" to question and search travelers at airports. Writing for the court, Chief Justice William Rehnquist conceded - that Sokolow's behavior could have been "consistent with innocent travel." But "taken together," his actions elicited "reasonable suspicion." Concluded Rehnquist: "The fact that these factors may be set forth in a 'profile' does not somehow detract from their evidentiary significance." Dissenting Justice Thurgood Marshall saw things quite differently. An agent's "reflexive reliance" on a profile, he wrote, is likely to subject "innocent individuals to unwarranted police harassment." Drug-enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Customs Service, insist that drug profiles are meant only to inform and advise agents and that actual arrests depend on the individual professional judgments of officers. Officials deny the documents are stereotypical portraits of disfavored groups. "They're more of a mental checklist," says Harry Myers, chief of DEA's criminal-law section. Others are not so sure. "After 23 years in customs law, you notice that inspectors look for certain things," says Los Angeles attorney Leonard Fertman. "If you're coming from Central America without a camera or luggage and you have a beard, you may spend more time being questioned than another person."

Beyond providing guidance to agents, drug profiles also catalog the latest nationwide arrest trends. They are constantly updated to keep up with the fertile imaginations of smugglers. Techniques have ranged from hiding drugs in objects -- like suitcases, plaques and aerosol cans -- to concealing them on the person. "I once had an innocent-looking Canadian couple in their 60s come back from a Jamaica holiday wearing body wraps containing 10 lbs. of hashish," recalls Miami Customs supervisory inspector Robert Hessler. Some couriers have been found with contraband stuffed in body orifices, others with cocaine-filled condoms in their stomachs. "Nothing is beyond what people will do," says Los Angeles Customs director John Heinrich, "even putting drugs in a baby's diaper and carrying the child through."

Faced with such tactics and a surge in air travel, drug-enforcement agencies have beefed up their cloak-and-dagger operations. They have sent out "rovers," undercover agents dressed in anything from blazing Bermuda shorts to sleazy T shirts, to hang around airports. They have also trained friendly-looking dogs, like cairn terriers and cocker spaniels, to sniff out suspects by amiably sitting down beside them. In fact, it was a narcotics- sniffing dog that helped clip Andrew Sokolow's wings after he was detained - in Honolulu. The canine cop, Donker, found the drug courier's stash hidden in his trendy Louis Vuitton travel bag.

With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and Steven Holmes/Washington