Federal law enforcement agencies have recently arrested a handful of people trying to smuggle MANPADS in and out of the United States in high-profile cases. Two of the most recent events occurred near Miami. In 1997, a group of smugglers from the former Soviet Union was arrested for attempting to ship a load of MANPADS into the U.S. from Bulgaria. When federal agents arrested the men in Florida, fortunately, the missiles were still in Bulgaria.

More recently, on June 12, federal officials arrested two men in an arms deal sting operation -- an Egyptian and a Pakistani, both from New Jersey -- in a warehouse in West Palm Beach, Fla., on charges that they intended to export a wide variety of sophisticated weaponry, including American-made Stingers. The day of their arrest, the two suspects inspected a MANPADS missile at the warehouse and allegedly expressed interest in selling missiles to a foreign country. Later, an attorney for the Egyptian man at the center of the case, Diaa Mohsen, quoted in the Palm Beach Post, said the weapons would most likely have gone to the Republic of Congo or Pakistan.

Although law enforcement officials have had success in stopping the import of MANPADS into the U.S., it may only be a matter of time before terrorists outsmart officials. A recent Rand Institute study suggested that if terrorists took their cue from drug smugglers along the porous U.S. border, the future could be grim.

"Hundreds of thousands of people cross the U.S. border illegally every year, and individual drug shipments into the country are often as large as tens of tons," said the Rand study. "There is no reason to believe that a sufficiently motivated adversary could not duplicate the accomplishments of immigrants and drug smugglers. Indeed, a nation or terrorist group might hire smugglers for their expertise." In theory, they could smuggle weapons as easily as the tons of cocaine they bring in every year.

When asked about the potential threat of smuggling identified in the Rand report, U.S. Customs Service spokesman Kevin Bell conceded: "More (drugs) get in than we can guess, and I would think that would be the same situation [with respect to MANPADS]."

The White House, meanwhile, recently ushered a major package of security measures through Congress. But President Bush's own spokespeople admit that those measures will not eliminate the risk posed by MANPADS to air travelers. When asked by Salon what steps the White House is taking to reduce the threat of missile attacks, spokesman Ken Lisaius referred to comments made previously by press secretary Ari Fleischer. "Ari stated that the threat (to travelers) had been diminished, not that the situation is threat-free," Lisaius said.

Dr. Robert Pfaltzgraff Jr., a professor of international security studies at Tufts University's Fletcher School, warns that the threat is the logical outcome of the global proliferation of MANPADS. "We should not discount the possibility that they are in the United States and may be used," he cautions.

"We're in deep trouble."

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