Closed incompressible surfaces in knot complements

In this paper we show that given a knot or link K in a 2n-plat projection w ith n greater than or equal to 3 and m greater than or equal to 5, where m is the length of the plat, if the twist coefficients a(i,j) all satisfy \a( i,j)\ > 1 then S-3 - N(K) has at least 2n - 4 nonisotopic essential meridio nal planar surfaces. In particular if K is a knot then S-3 - N(K) contains closed incompressible surfaces. In this case the closed surfaces remain inc ompressible after all surgeries except perhaps along a ray of surgery coeff icients in Z + Z.