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The most ambitious of these relationships is that existing between U.S. AID public safety personnel and the GVN's National Police. While BNDD and Customs agents concentrate on day-to-day opera- tional and intelligence aspects, the Public Safety sector of U.S. AID programs incountry emphasizes institution building in the field of narcotics suppression.
Under the current program, 11 Public Safety Advisers (one full- time) are assigned specifically to narcotics training, intelligence gathering and suppression. Commodities and equipment and partici- pant training are supplied through the normal AID police assistance program. Public Safety funding for narcotics suppression in South Vietnam for fiscal year 1973 is around $500,000 out of a total budget of $6,179,000.
During the period 1969-71, a total of 1,023 police investigators were trained in narcotics and 486 are now performing specialized work in the Vietnamese Narcotics Bureau and in covert teams assigned to key drug abuse areas. Narcotic identification has been introduced into the curricula of all National Police Training schools and the police are engaged in a public education program. Included in the training of police personnel in narcotics, is a program for 67 to be trained in the U.S.
As of July 10, the GVN had carried 1,353 investigations in 1972, made 2.324 narcotics arrests in 1972 and seized 13 kilos of heroin.
Further, in the field of legal activity, President Thieu promul- gated, on August 12, 1972, a new tougher law on the eradication of toxic, narcotic, and dangerous substances. A comprehensive measure, Thieu's decree provides for life imprisonment of those involved in im- portation, exportation, speculation, production, or transportation of opium, morphine, heroin, and cocaine. Moreover, if the offender be- longs to a "well-organized group", he will be subject to the death penalty. (For the text of the law, see appendix E.)
UNITED STATES-GVN CUSTOMS PROGRAMS
Whereas the U.S. Army-run Joint Customs Group, established in December 1970, has been effective in preventing GI's from smuggling drugs out of Vietnam, Vietnamese customs officials have been lax in the past. At the height of the GI heroin addiction epidemic in South Vietnam, U.S. Customs advisers conducted a computer study of imports at Tan Son Nhut Airport which revealed numerous viola- tions and irregularities.
Based on those findings, the U.S. Ambassador directed U.S. Cus- toms advisers to insist on a crackdown on lax customs practices at Tan Son Nhut. Following that directive, the U.S. Commissioner of Customs visited Vietnam to discuss upgrading GVN customs with that Government's Director General of Customs. As a result of those discussions, a "Narcotics Squad" was created within the framework of Vietnamese Customs and a joint decree issued by the Ministries of Economics and Finance ordered the flow of unlicensed imports of air cargo through Tan Son Nhut stopped.
Despite those actions, by January 1971 open smuggling through the Tan Son Nhut passenger terminal increased and threats of violence were made against U.S. Customs advisers. On February 27, 1971, these irregularities in Tan Son Nhut Customs were officially reported to the Director General of Customs who, the following month, requested
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