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.
Part of the laboratories’ job is to watch for improper classification
of imports by shippers who hope to slip them into the country under
a lower rate of duty than the Tariff Act provides for. As aids in
this work the chemists have spectrographs (used for the most part
in analyzing metals), X-ray diffractometers, electrolytic machines
and other instruments enabling them to break down and identify the
component parts of materials brought into the country.
By use of the diffractometer and X-ray, the laboratories have been able
to determine in innumerable cases that shipments have been improperly
classified by the shippers either intentionally or unintentionally.
At any rate, the shipments have been uniformly reclassified at higher
rates of duty, saving the U.S. Treasury many thousands of dollars.
There is one case on record in which a diffractometer was credited with
reversing a court decision. Before the diffractometer was installed
in the New York laboratory, an importer brought into the country a
shipment of material which he listed as duty-free zirconium oxide. A
chemical analysis, while not very convincing, showed that the material
was not zirconium oxide. But the method of testing was such that the
importer successfully challenged the Customs finding and the Customs
court ruled that the material should be admitted as zirconium oxide,
free of duty.
However, the laboratory was not finished with this case. Soon after
this decision a diffractometer was installed in the laboratory. Another
analysis of the material was made. And the diffractometer revealed
beyond the shadow of doubt that the material was not what the importer
claimed. The crystals in the material showed that it was stabilized
zirconium oxide, dutiable at 15 per cent of its value, rather than
ordinary zirconium oxide, free of any duty. The result was that the
diffractometer’s findings were accepted by the court and the original
ruling in favor of the importer was reversed.
Sometimes the secretiveness of shippers poses an unusual problem. Such
was the case when a Swedish manufacturer of homogenized ham-and-cheese
spread decided to send his product into the American market. He would
not disclose to Customs the recipe for this spread--obviously feeling
that his trade secret might fall into the hands of a competitor.
Customs chemists were given the job of determining which of the
materials in the spread was the major dutiable material. It was a
tricky problem because both ham and cheese are of animal origin and
consist of protein and fats. After two weeks the laboratory was able to
report that the Swedish manufacturer’s product was primarily ham. Then
there was no problem in fixing the tariff rate.
New York is the largest of the laboratories and tests about one-fourth
of more than 120,000 samples which are examined each year. Boston is
the next largest, and then comes New Orleans. Over the years each
laboratory has become a specialist in certain examinations. Most of the
wool entering the United States is examined in Boston. Chicago leads
in the examinations of samples of ore, grain, and metals. New York
does the great majority of testing of dyestuffs; and New Orleans has
become a major center in the examination of narcotics, because of its
geographic location near the Mexican border.
The laboratories are constantly seeking new and better ways of
testing materials. A notable achievement in this field was made by
Melvin Lerner, now the chief chemist in the Baltimore laboratory,
when he developed an entirely new method for determining, easily
and accurately, the opium content of any materials, in addition to
identifying prohibited synthetic narcotics.
The process involves dissolving a small amount of the suspected powder
in a mixture of trichloroethane, chloroform, nitric acid and phosphoric
acid. If no heroin is present, the liquid will be colorless or have an
apple-green hue. But if heroin is present, the liquid will range in
color from light yellow to yellowish brown--the darker color indicating
the powder is almost 100 per cent pure heroin. Distinctive coloring is
produced also by the synthetics.
The Lerner test for identifying prohibited synthetic narcotics has
created world-wide interest. Virtually every country in the world has
written to the Customs Bureau requesting information on this process
and asking for one of the small field kits with which the tests can be
made.
Frequently the laboratories are able to give invaluable help to
importers in protecting them from fraud and sometimes saving them
from embarrassment. There was one case in which a curator of a museum
vouched for the antiquity of a tapestry which he had imported for the
museum from Europe. As an antiquity--that is, an article made before
1830--it would not have been subject to any tariff duty. The curator
was quite insistent about the age of the tapestry. But laboratory
experts discovered that the tapestry’s threads had been stained with
coal tar dyes. Since coal tar dyes were not used before 1857, the
tapestry obviously was not an antiquity. The curator was embarrassed
over being proved wrong, but nevertheless he was grateful that the
discovery had been made before the tapestry was hung in the museum.
In another case the laboratory experts were able to set at ease the
mind of an importer of an extremely valuable gold, diamond, and ruby
tiara which had been purchased as a museum piece. Even though the tiara
was known to be very old, it was suspected that the piece had undergone
major repairs. If this were true, it meant that duty would have to be
paid on any substantial repairs to the import.
The tiara was taken to the New York laboratory. A chemist rubbed the
tiara lightly with a very fine sandpaper to remove a few flecks of
gold. These flecks were then analyzed by a spectrograph, which revealed
that the gold contained the impurities commonly found in gold refined
by antique methods. There was no need for the payment of any duty on
the tiara.
The laboratory experts work in close cooperation with the Bureau’s
enforcement division, and they never know when they may be called
upon to don their detective hats. There was one case in which it was
suspected that cattle were being smuggled from Canada into upper New
York State. The laboratory supplied agents with a certain chemical
which they took into Canada and, with the cooperation of Canadian law
enforcement officers, secretly smeared on herds of cattle in the area
where the smuggling had been taking place. When the chemical dried on
the cattle, it left no visible trace.
Later the agents smeared a second chemical on cattle which were
suspected of having been smuggled into New York State. No sooner was
this done than large red blotches appeared on the cattle--irrefutable
evidence that these animals had been smuggled in from Canada. This
may have been the first time that science got into the business of
combatting cattle rustling.
The Customs laboratories trace their beginning to 1848, when Congress
wrote into law a requirement that Customs should examine all drugs,
medicines, medicinal preparations, and chemical preparations used as
medicine to determine their quality and purity. Standards of strength
and purity were established. The analyzing was farmed out to chemists
in commercial firms or to pharmacists and physicians.
Although this law was passed in 1848, it was not until 1880 that the
Customs Bureau was authorized to employ its own chemist. By this time
there was imperative need for more laboratory work to aid the Customs
appraisers.
In the early 1880s the Bureau first began using instruments such as the
polariscope to determine the actual strength of sugar being imported.
Old records show that chemists were added to the Customs staff at New
York and San Francisco between 1880 and 1890. A Customs laboratory
was established in Philadelphia in 1892 and in San Francisco in 1899.
Despite the obvious value of their work, the chemists were not regarded
very highly in the government service, and until 1910 their salaries
were $1,200 a year--the same as that received by an ordinary clerk.
As the tariff laws became more complex, the work in the laboratories
increased correspondingly. For example, the Tariff Act of 1922 fixed
duties on the components of certain imports, such as the amount of
calcium fluoride in fluorspar and the amount of silica in glass sand
and ferro alloys. Congress also defined in the Tariff Act items such
as vinegar, cellulose compounds, hardened and vegetable oils, molasses
and sirups. Other laws called for duties on copper, fatty acids, soaps
and petroleum. The passage of the laws required scientific analyses of
shipments to obtain a precise determination of their dutiable contents.
Until 1936 the laboratories throughout the country operated more
or less independently of each other with only a loose system of
cooperation between them. But in 1936 a Division of Laboratories was
established within the Bureau to direct operations and to fix uniform
procedures throughout the service.
In 1953, the then Commissioner of Customs, Ralph Kelly, expanded the
duties of the Division of Laboratories and changed its name to the
Division of Technical Services. The Division, now located at the
Customs Bureau headquarters in Washington, directs the operations of
Customs laboratories; furnishes to the Commissioner information on
engineering, chemical, statistical, and other scientific and technical
developments; plans and standardizes sampling, weighing, and testing
standards and procedures; inspects the laboratories; and furnishes any
needed engineering services.
This division, under the direction of Dr. George Vlasses, is the
smallest of the seven administrative divisions in the Customs Bureau,
with only seven employees. In all, the laboratories have a total of 136
employees, of which 76 are chemists. The balance are physical science
aides, laboratory helpers, and administrative and clerical employees.
Even though these men and women cannot take people’s motives apart and
test them, the relative purity of their motives often is revealed quite
clearly to these test-tube detectives.
9
THE INFORMERS
The giant luxury liner, the SS _Ile de France_, slid by the Statue of
Liberty in New York harbor on October 7, 1938, with her passengers
crowding the rail for a view of the skyline of New York. It was a gay
crowd, most of them returning from European vacations. But among them
were those to whom the arrival meant more than gaiety--it meant life
itself. These were the refugees from Hitler’s Germany.
As the tugs shouldered the liner into its berth on Manhattan Island,
there was confusion ashore. Scores of people had gathered to greet
returning friends and relatives. Customs officers were busy preparing
for the rush of passengers to the pier, the inspection of baggage and
all the little details that are required when a ship brings its cargo
from across the sea.
Among those who came ashore on this day was a dark-haired man of medium
build, about 5 feet 7 inches tall and hardly looking his forty-five
years of age. He was accompanied by a handsome, beautifully groomed
woman wearing a smartly tailored suit. These two obviously were
experienced travellers. They waited patiently under the huge sign
marked with the letter “C” until their baggage arrived from the ship,
and then they sought a Customs inspector to present their baggage
declaration.
The Customs inspector took the declaration and glanced at it. He said,
“Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Chaperau?”
“That is correct,” replied the dark-haired man. “I believe all of our
baggage is in this group.”
The inspector read the declaration and noted that Mr. Chaperau had
signed it as a commercial attaché for the Nicaraguan government--which
meant that he and his wife were entitled to pass through customs
without the formality of a baggage inspection. Mr. Chaperau handed
the inspector Nicaraguan passports and a letter signed by the Consul
General of Nicaragua in New York authenticating the endorsement on the
customs declaration.
“Everything seems to be in order, Mr. Chaperau,” the Customs inspector
said, handing back the letter. He quickly placed stamps on the luggage,
indicating that the baggage had been cleared to be taken from the pier.
The formalities at the pier required only a few minutes. Then the
Chaperaus had their luggage loaded into a taxi and they were driven to
the Hotel Pierre at the corner of 63rd Street and Fifth Avenue, where
they made their home.
The following day Chaperau left the hotel carrying a black suitcase
and a hat box. He took a cab to 570 Park Avenue, entered the building,
and rang the bell of the apartment occupied by New York State Supreme
Court Justice and Mrs. Edward J. Lauer. A maid admitted Chaperau to the
apartment and he said, “Please tell Mrs. Lauer that Mr. Chaperau is
here. She is expecting me.”
Mrs. Lauer greeted her visitor warmly and exclaimed, “Nat, it is
wonderful to see you! Please do come in.” And then Mrs. Lauer turned
to the maid and said, “Rosa, take this suitcase and hat box to my
room, please. There are some of my things from Paris I told you I was
expecting.”