Word: passport
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After Drug Enforcement Administration agents nabbed a Chilean cocaine smuggler in Beverly Hills, Calif., they found in his bank safety deposit box only one item, a fraudulent U.S. passport. The phony passport and the forged visa have become standard equipment for drug traffickers, illegal aliens and others seeking a sure if shadowy passage abroad. A 1976 Justice Department report estimated that 80% of all hard drugs flowing into the U.S. were smuggled in with the aid of fraudulent passports. Today as many as 300,000 fugitives and terrorists use bogus identity papers, including U.S. passports and visas, to travel freely...
...million U.S. passport applications received yearly, federal officials estimate that 30,000 to 60,000 are fraudulent-and that only the most obvious ones, about 1,000, are detected. The State Department's office of security has responsibility for pursuing passport and visa fraud, but its agents complain that their own superiors have handcuffed them. Says one agent: "The integrity of the passport system has gone down the drain...
...problem, say department security agents, is that they spend less time enforcing passport laws than tending to their other duties, which include providing protection for State Department officials and visiting dignitaries and investigating colleagues for security clearances. As a result, the department's 450 security agents investigate only about 200 of the 1,000 or so fraud cases detected annually. The rest are farmed out to other investigative agencies-FBI, DEA, Customs Service-or not investigated at all. Thus a potentially effective law enforcement weapon is left halfcocked. Says one State Department agent: "In every case...
...scouring pad, and Keith Richards keeps on playing what is, in all senses, the meanest guitar around. The new record sounds like their best in years-many years-but a little attention to the lyrics shows that the Stones are still stuck in the same territory without a passport. The album is supposed to be a return to their strong, singed-around-the-edges blues base, but Jagger and Richards, as songwriters, have pioneered a new form...
...than she. But her ambition is "to be rich and live in an exotic land." The insurance money that would be hers with her husband's death represents air fare to that dream world. And Ned-lousy lawyer, good pal, nice-guy stud-may prove to be her passport...