Word: swordfishing
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...TITLE: SWORDFISH...
...chronicle of the federal drug bust known as Operation Swordfish, briefly summarized, reads like an episode of Miami Vice scripted by John le Carre. It began in December 1980 in Miami, where Robert Darias, then 46, faced a winter of discontent. A Cuban exile, he had spent 20 months in Fidel Castro's prison camps after being captured during the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. He had also served time in an American pokey for tax fraud, and still owed the Internal Revenue Service $200,000. Darias, though, did have a couple of highly marketable assets. His gentlemanly, businesslike...
Darias thereupon entered -- to cite the pulsing prose of Swordfish's subtitle -- a world "of ambition, savagery and betrayal," not to mention careerism and bureaucratic incompetence. To lure high-level drug smugglers, the DEA set up a dummy money-laundering corporation in suburban Miami Lakes that was initially called Dean International Investments, Inc. Although he was only a hired hand, Darias more or less ran the operation while his handlers feuded with one another and scuffled for promotions. The bumbling agents, among other foul-ups, managed to lose a key recording of Darias' conversation with a suspect, left piles...
...food chain. In a process called biomagnification, tiny fish pick up contaminants from the plankton they feed on in polluted waters, concentrating heavy metals like methylmercury in their organs. The little fish in turn are eaten by larger fish, further concentrating the toxins. In big, finned predators like swordfish and tuna, the contaminants can reach levels that may be harmful to the next link in the food chain: humans. Though its samples were limited to two cities -- a point seized upon by critics, who also questioned testing procedures -- the Consumers Union study found that 40% of its swordfish samples...
...another kind of contaminant: chlorinated compounds such as PCBs, dioxins and DDT, which once consumed linger in the body for years. The Consumers Union found detectable levels of PCBs, which have been linked to cancer and developmental disorders, in 43% of its salmon samples and 25% of examined swordfish. The PCBs were generally within the federal tolerance limit, but consumer groups have questioned whether that standard is adequate. Chlorinated compounds are lipophilic, or fat-loving; absorbed through the skin and gills, they concentrate in a fish's fatty tissue. "Very minute quantities in the water will produce very high concentrations...