Part 10

Roe gives them a rough time. He complains of a serious heart condition and asks to be given medicine from a bottle on a table. He accuses the agents of stealing money and a diamond ring from a desk drawer. He continually demands to see his lawyer. A postman delivers a registered letter and Roe challenges the right of the agents to open the letter after he has signed for it. He tries everything short of violence to impede the search.

Sometimes the young agents refuse to give Roe his medicine. They ignore his accusations of theft. Or they accept his argument that they have no right to seize the registered letter.

If the searching party fails to find at least 80 per cent of the items concealed in the room, they do not obtain a “conviction.” Then experienced agents carefully explain where they made mistakes in the handling of the suspect.

When Roe claimed he was ill, the agents should have called his doctor to determine the truth. Upon their entering the room, Roe should have been advised to collect any valuables so that an inventory could have been made on the spot to be signed by him. When Roe signed for the registered letter, then it legally could be seized with no invasion of his privacy. Roe’s rights were not violated when his requests for an attorney were ignored during the search, prior to his arrest.

In a mock courtroom scene, an agent who formerly was a U.S. attorney acts as the defense counsel. He grills the rookies on every move made in Roe’s apartment, seeking to confuse them while driving home the point that months of careful police work may be wasted by an inept or careless presentation of facts in court.

The school has proved to be such a success that it is now supported enthusiastically by all the Treasury agencies, which prorate the cost and make their best men available as instructors. But for many years a few men struggled to keep the school going in the face of apathy and even active opposition.

The man who perhaps contributed most to keeping alive the idea of a professionally directed school for Treasury agents was Harry M. Dengler, a retired Internal Revenue agent who now lives in Washington, D. C. A short, plump man of enormous energy, Dengler joined the Internal Revenue Service in 1918 after a dozen years of teaching in high schools in southeast Virginia and Montana. He was thirty-six at the time he was assigned to the IRS’s Intelligence Division, working on internal police problems and on tax conspiracy cases.

The Treasury school stemmed from the fact that in 1927 the Bureau of Prohibition’s enforcement of the Volstead Act was a mess. Part of the mess was due to the lack of trained enforcement officers. Illegal searches and seizures by Bureau agents aroused public indignation. Also, they created a serious problem in obtaining convictions of rumrunners and bootleggers.

L. C. Andrews, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, became so concerned over the situation that he persuaded Dengler to join the Bureau of Prohibition and to start an enforcement school for the Bureau’s agents. Dengler had argued for years that Federal law enforcement officers should be schooled in their work to be effective and to deserve public confidence.

Dengler selected a few aides and they put together a course of instruction to be given to some 2,500 prohibition agents. Two men were chosen from each of the Treasury’s eighteen districts throughout the country to come to Washington for four weeks of intensive schooling in proper law enforcement procedures.

The theory was that these thirty-six men would qualify themselves as instructors and then return to their home districts to teach what they had learned to other prohibition agents. But the system soon broke down because the district supervisors sabotaged the school.

“I know how to enforce the law without any help from Washington,” one supervisor announced. He had the support of other supervisors.

The truth was that the supervisors were jealous of the men who had been brought to Washington for special training. They also were fearful that they would lose their jobs to the men with superior backgrounds in law enforcement. The result was that the schools were doomed even before they started. By the end of the year, the schools had been discontinued.

Dengler clung stubbornly to his belief that every Federal law enforcement officer should be trained for his job. He persuaded his superiors to let him organize a correspondence course, with the study to be voluntary. Hundreds of agents applied, convincing Dengler that the agents themselves were eager to know more about professional law enforcement.

The idea of a school was resurrected in 1930 by Amos W. W. Woodcock, when he became head of the Prohibition agency. Dengler again went to work to set up a course of study. But when Woodcock left office a few months later, his successor broke up the schools with the remark: “If a man is smart enough to get a job with us, he doesn’t need any training.”

Dengler confided to a friend later, “That was one of the low points of my life. These schools were badly needed by the government to improve the quality of Federal law enforcement. Hardly anyone seemed interested.”

Indeed, for several years it seemed that no one was interested except Dengler and a few of his friends. But in 1937 Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau recognized that a major weakness in his department was the lack of organized training for new agents. He issued an order for all agencies within the Treasury to participate in a school program.

The first Dengler heard of the order was when Harold N. Graves, assistant to the Secretary, called him to his office. Graves said, “Harry, how long will it take you to get a course of instruction underway for our agents?”

“I can do it within sixty days,” Dengler said.

Graves was dubious. “I don’t think you can do it within that time,” he said.

“I can do it,” Dengler replied. “I’ve kept a group of instructors together. We’ve been giving some training to new men in our spare time. We’ve got a course of instruction already outlined. It won’t take much work to bring it up to date.”

Graves said, “Then get going. Bring your men in here this afternoon and we’ll decide on the next move.”

The decision was to open a pilot school in Boston. The first class met on March 15, 1937, and the course of instruction ran for four weeks. When it was ended, Graves was satisfied. He ordered a schedule of instruction for each of the Treasury districts. Attendance was not voluntary this time. Each man was required to attend classes, and to pass a written examination. Instructors were drawn from all the Treasury agencies.

In those early years, the instructors travelled from district to district to hold their classes. The classrooms were jury rooms, schoolrooms, banks, courthouses and Customs buildings.

Dengler argued that the school should be located permanently in Washington. Instead of having instructors moving from place to place, he insisted it would be far better to have the students come to Washington to get their training at a school housed in its own building and having the proper equipment.

Dengler’s persistence won. In 1950, Treasury officials decided to see how his plan would work. It worked so well that when Dengler retired in December, 1952, the Treasury Law Enforcement School was an established institution receiving all-out support from all the Treasury agencies.

The Treasury school, however, is only a phase of instruction in law enforcement for the young Customs agents (as it is for all Treasury agents). The intensive training comes when the men are assigned to work regularly with older agents.

The turnover among Customs agents is surprisingly small and is among the lowest within the government. Few of them leave the Service voluntarily once they have launched into their careers. The reason for this stability was summed up by one veteran agent in this manner: “Every man likes to feel he is doing something worthwhile--and you get that kind of satisfaction from this work. That’s why I’ll never leave it.”

8

TEST TUBE DETECTIVES

Shortly before World War II, a rusted old freighter slid into its berth at a Baltimore pier, completing its long voyage from the Orient. Customs officers boarded the vessel to check the manifest, verify the cargo, and search for contraband. The search was the routine sort of thing that occurred every day at every major port in the United States.

An inspector hurried to the quarters of the crew members and began his rounds. He encountered nothing unusual until he reached one crewman’s cabin and found the door locked. He knocked on the door and a muffled voice said, “Who is it?”

“This is the Customs inspector,” the officer said. “Open up.”

The door opened and a seaman said gruffly, “There’s nothing in here. You’ll find everything on my declaration.” He was a slender, middle-aged man with thinning hair and tattoos on his forearms.

“It’s a routine check,” the inspector said. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

The seaman made no move to stand aside. “I told you there’s nothing in here,” he insisted.

“Look, Mac,” the inspector snapped, “you’ve been through this sort of thing before and you know it’s got to be done. So let me get at it.” He pushed his way into the cabin.

On a table he saw a hypodermic needle. He picked it up and turned to the seaman. “Are you a junkie?” he asked. “Have you got any narcotics?”

The seaman’s face reddened with anger. “Hell, no! I wouldn’t touch the stuff.”

The inspector wasn’t impressed with the denial. That’s what they all said until you found their supply of narcotics.

When he started to open a locker, the crewman said, “It’s empty. I’ve already taken everything out.”

The inspector looked at the man’s hands shake as he lit a cigarette. “Why don’t you sit down and take it easy, mister?” he said. “I’ve just decided to take a good look around.”

Slowly he went over the cabin. At last he pulled the locker away from the bulkhead and saw a small cotton bag taped to the back of the locker. He yanked it loose and held it out toward the seaman. “What is this?”

The seaman made a grab for the bag. “Give that to me!” he said. “It’s nothing that interests you.”

The inspector opened the bag and saw that it contained a white powder which looked suspiciously like heroin. He said, “Mister, if this is heroin, you are in trouble.”

“It’s not heroin,” the seaman said sullenly.

“If it isn’t heroin,” the inspector said, “then what is it? Why did you hide it behind the locker? What are you trying to hide?” But the seaman remained silent.

The inspector said, “You are not to leave this ship until I have an analysis made of this powder. Do you understand?”

The seaman nodded. The inspector left the cabin and went to the captain to explain the situation. He requested the seaman be detained on the freighter pending a chemical test of the powder.

“It looks like heroin,” the inspector said. “If it is, we’ll have to take him into custody.”

“How long will it take to make the test?” the skipper asked. “We’re sailing tomorrow afternoon. If this man is in trouble, I’ll have to take on another seaman.”

“We should know the results before you sail,” the inspector said. “I’ll be in touch with you.”

The sack of powder was sent to the Baltimore Customs laboratory with an urgent request for a quick test. It was turned over to tall, lanky Edward Kenney, who had received his training as a chemist at the University of Maine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University. Kenney was among the small group of men and women who had found the Customs laboratories to be a daily adventure in solving riddles posed by the legal necessity of identifying and classifying a bewildering variety of imports which poured into the United States daily from all parts of the world.

The analysis of the powder taken from the seaman was one of the routine chores which posed no problem for Kenney. The test for heroin was negative--and he sent his findings to the chief chemist to be relayed to the inspector on the case.

A few minutes later, Kenney received a telephone call from the inspector. “Mr. Kenney,” he said, “I just can’t believe that report you made on the powder I seized from the seaman. If ever I saw a guilty man, this one is guilty. Would you mind running another test?”

“I’m sure the report was correct,” Kenney said, “but if it will make you feel better, I’ll make another test. Would you like to come over and watch?”

“I certainly would,” the inspector said.

When the inspector arrived at the laboratory, Kenney took a sampling from the powder and placed it in a glass container. Then he picked up a bottle of liquid from a cabinet.

“This liquid is a mixture of sulphuric acid and formaldehyde,” he explained. “I’m going to make a Marquis test. It’s named after the man who invented it long before either you or I were born. Nobody seems to know much about Marquis, but he knew what he was doing. He found that when you add this liquid to an opium narcotic powder, the powder will show purple discoloration. Now watch.”

Kenney poured a few drops of the liquid onto the powder to dissolve it. But there was no indication of a purple color.

“Is that test conclusive?” the inspector asked.

“No, not necessarily,” Kenney said. “There are some impurities which could produce a purple discoloration. Let’s see if we can isolate any opium with another test.” But when an effort was made to extract opium from the powder with an infallible procedure, the result was negative. The powder beyond doubt did not contain narcotics.

“Well,” Kenney said, “that’s it. Your seamen wasn’t smuggling narcotics.”

The inspector said, “I know you’re right but I was certain I had grabbed a sack of heroin. What is the stuff in the sack?”

Kenney said, “I don’t know, but I’ve got a pretty good hunch. I’ll run another test and let you know the results.”

When Kenney completed his testing the following morning, he called the inspector. “Your man was carrying saccharine,” he said.

The inspector returned to the ship to have the seaman freed from detention and to question him further. “The powder wasn’t heroin,” he said. “It was saccharine. I’d like to know one thing. Why did you make such a big mystery of it?”

The seaman at last disclosed that he was a diabetic--and that for months he had kept this fact from his shipmates and from the ship’s officers. He gave himself insulin shots secretly and used saccharine instead of sugar in his coffee. He had been fearful that if anyone aboard the ship learned he was a diabetic, he would be barred from going to sea--a fear which he was to learn was entirely groundless.

When the inspector met Kenney later, he said, “I’m sorry I put you to so much trouble for nothing. The whole thing was a waste of time.”

Kenney shook his head in disagreement. “I don’t think it was a waste of time at all,” he said. “We proved the seaman was innocent of smuggling narcotics and we helped him get rid of an unreasonable fear. As I see it, the results were pretty good.”

The case of the diabetic seaman is only one of many strange cases which find their way to the Customs Bureau’s laboratories located in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Savannah, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Thousands of items, from yak hair to heroin, come to the chemists to be sampled, tested and identified.

In the course of a day, a laboratory may be called on to identify and determine the amount of grease and dirt that is in a shipment of Australian wool; report the percentage of tungsten in a shipment of ore; determine the antiquity of a diamond-studded tiara; test the alcoholic content of Scotch whiskey; examine a rosary case made in Japan, in order to establish its chief component; and analyze a sample of powdered milk from Holland to measure its butter fat.

Or the laboratory may be called on to analyze a shipment of mica to determine whether the mica splittings measure more or less than .0012 inches in thickness. The measurement of the mica has a dollars-and-cents importance to the shipper, the importer and the government because the duty is based on the thickness of the mica splittings, which in turn affects the market value of the import.

No laboratories in all the world have a more varied job to do than those of Customs. Every article that is known to commerce reaches these laboratories at one time or another. The examinations are necessary because only by a precise determination of the contents of many shipments are the appraiser and the collector able to establish value and thus determine the rate of duty which is to be paid into the Treasury of the United States.

The scientists never know when one of their analyses will touch off a court battle which will involve an entire industry and which may mean a difference of millions of dollars to businessmen.

Such a case occurred several years ago when one of the Bureau’s laboratories received for analysis a sample of a product imported from Canada under the trade name “Lioxin.” This product had a great many industrial uses and was competitive with vanillin, which is derived from the vanilla bean and also from coal tar. The imported product was being offered on the market at a price considerably below that of the competing vanillin product--at a price so low, in fact, that it threatened to upset the entire vanillin trade.

The discovery of Lioxin had been one of those accidents of science in which a waste product is found to be extremely valuable. A wood pulp company was dumping waste matter into a nearby stream, and sportsmen complained that it was killing all the fish. The complaints became so numerous that the company called in a scientist to see what could be done about correcting the situation. The scientist found while experimenting with certain chemical compounds that he could convert the waste matter into a substance that was 96 to 97 per cent vanillin. And it could be done much more cheaply than extracting vanillin from the vanilla bean or from coal tar.

When Customs chemists analyzed the product, they found that it contained impurities--but the impurities could be removed quite easily and cheaply. The end product was almost pure vanillin, meeting all the rigid standards set up by the U.S. Pharmacopoeia Act.

The result of the laboratory findings was a decision to classify Lioxin as vanillin, dutiable at $2.25 per pound based on the American selling price. The duty brought the price of the import into line with the competing American product.

The Bureau’s decision was protested by the importer. The claim was made that the compound was not vanillin under the terms of the Tariff Act. It was argued that when Congress passed the law setting the duty on vanillin, the lawmakers had in mind the vanillin which came from the vanilla bean and from coal tar.

However, the courts held that the import was only “one step short of the finished product” and that when the impurities were removed in a very simple process, then the end product was a vanillin conforming to the standards of the U.S.P. As such, it was held to be subject to the same tariff payment as other vanillin imports.

The case of the synthetic vanillin explains in a large measure why the turnover among scientists and technicians in the Customs laboratories is among the lowest in the entire Federal government. A day rarely passes in which they are not presented with a new and challenging problem--not unlike the solving of a mystery. There simply is no time to become bored.

Frequently these men must devise their own methods of examination and establish their own standards for a product simply because there is nothing in the book which they can use as a guide. Many new products have come into the markets in the past few years--particularly in the field of chemicals--which are not provided for in the law except in a vague, catch-all phrase “and not specially provided for.”

The laboratories never know what to expect next. This was the case when the New York laboratory received a sample of a shipment of artificial Christmas trees resembling small pine trees. The examiners at the pier who first inspected the trees were baffled as to how they should be classified and what the rate of duty on them should be. The trees were made from materials which the examiners could not identify. And identification had to be made before a rate of duty could be fixed.

One of the trees was sent to the Customs laboratory on Varick Street, where it was taken apart piece by piece. It was found that the base was made from pasteboard. The trunk was fashioned of wire and the bark from paper. But the artificial pine needles were discovered to be dyed goose feathers. Since the law holds that the duty must be paid on the “component material of chief value”--then the Christmas tree’s actual chief value was in the dyed goose feathers. Dyed goose feathers called for a duty of 20 per cent of their value on the market.

Frequently the laboratory workers find themselves in the role of a Sherlock Holmes--using their test tubes and their spectrometers and their diffractometers as tools to help track down criminals.

One day an employee on the New York piers noticed that an automobile which was to be loaded aboard a ship for Europe seemed to be heavier in the rear than in the front. The car was setting too low on its rear springs, although there was nothing in the trunk of the car to put any undue weight on the springs.

This fact was called to the attention of Customs officers, and they decided to examine the car. They went over it carefully and finally discovered a section behind the rear seat which appeared to have been tampered with. There were scratches on the metal which seemed to have been made only recently. A further examination disclosed a secret compartment built into the car, and when this was pried open, it was found to contain about $30,000 worth of gold bars. They were being smuggled out of the country.

The bars were taken to the New York laboratory for examination. There seemed to be no way to identify them because the serial numbers--which are stamped into each bar of gold and recorded by the government--had been hacked and gouged from the soft metal. But the laboratory discovered a method--still secret--by which they were able to read the numbers on each of the bars. This information was turned over to the Secret Service, and Secret Service agents were able to track down the man who had made the original purchase of the bars.