Tweeker Parade

By Philippa Levine

This wickedly funny non-fiction book spans the 30-year career of (retired) DEA Special Agent Philippa LeVine. She spent the bulk of her early years in a clandestine lab group chasing methamphetamine cooks and tweekers. In salty sarcastic cop-speak, she provides a unique insight into investigating meth labs in San Diego, California during the 1980s biker heyday. Follow her through the investigation of a chemical supplier involving murder for hire, buried treasure, and of course, meth labs.

Later she rises to the pinnacle of mid level bureaucracy taking us deep into DEA Headquarters for a look into one of the scariest places of all. You will laugh out loud as you learn the truth about meth, the pharmaceutical companies and federal drug law enforcement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491758830

Philippa Levine

Philippa LeVine was a Special Agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for thirty years and is now retired.  She lives in Northern Virginia.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 Philippa LeVine.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5884-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5883-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015904234

iUniverse rev. date: 03/27/15

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Does Your Mother Know What You Do for a Living?

Chapter 2 Basic Information

Chapter 3 The Parade of Tweekers

Chapter 4 The Case: Quantum Labs

Chapter 5 The Takedown

Chapter 6 The End of Quantum

Chapter 7 Middle Management

Chapter 8 The Big House

Chapter 9 Rising to the Pinnacle of Midlevel Bureaucracy and Trying to Squeeze That Protruding Balloon

Chapter 10 International Connections

Epilogue

Glossary of Terms

Acknowledgments

AFTER THE BRIEF NICETIES were over, Milchen reminded me that more than two decades ago, I had asked him to call me after the statute of limitations had run on the Quantum case. Milchen said, Do you remember that? You wanted to know about all the gold.

Yeah, I said, but I never actually expected you to call. It’s nice of you to remember. Really. I mean, it’s been like twenty-five years. I wanted to know whether there had been gold bars hidden in the car that Milchen had picked up in Arizona when Marks got caught.

Milchen said, I think there was about $1,000 in cash in Marks’s crappy little car. But those bars weren’t gold; they were platinum. I think there were ten 10-ounce platinum bars.

I fucking knew we missed something, I thought.

Then Milchen said, The platinum was stuffed below the window mechanism thing in the passenger-side door.

That would be about $150,000 in today’s money, and it was certainly enough for Marks to retain Milchen to represent him in the Quantum case. Then I asked him, What about all the rest of the gold?

Milchen laughed and continued …

ACartoonTweeker1.psd

The credit belongs to those people who are actually in the arena … who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions to a worthy cause; who at best, know the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt

INTRODUCTION

REALITY IS MY RELIGION. Some would say this means that I have no faith. There would have to be some very hard evidence put forth in order for me to become a true believer regarding anything. But if I were forced to choose, I would have to pick reincarnation. I read somewhere that when you get reincarnated, you continue to meet up with the same souls throughout eternity until you get it right. If that’s the case, and I keep meeting up with the same souls in all my resurrections, I’d wonder what the hell I did to deserve to be with these weirdos for all eternity. Then again, isn’t it supposed to be the characters that one meets in life that makes it all so interesting?

This is the true account of my time as a federal agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. But this is also the story of methamphetamine and how it came to have a grip on America. I just happened to have a front-row seat for all of meth’s highlights, or lowlights, depending on your perspective. My career and meth seemed to track perfectly. So this is my story, or at least how I remember things. If others recall things a little bit differently, they can write their own fucking books.

CHAPTER 1

DOES YOUR MOTHER KNOW WHAT

YOU DO FOR A LIVING?

THE 1980S: THE EARLY DAYS

IN FEBRUARY 1984, I pulled up my Yankee roots, which had been firmly planted in streetwise New Haven, Connecticut, and moved to sunny, happy, but incredibly naïve San Diego, California. I didn’t want to move. It was actually the Drug Enforcement Administration that made me move.

I had recently graduated from the DEA Training Academy, which, at the time, was in Glynco, Georgia, after spending three glorious months learning how to become a federal agent. In fact, the real job title is Special Agent, which is a bit presumptuous and gives defense attorneys a field day when we are on the witness stand, as in "Agent LeVine, it says here that you are a Special Agent. What makes you so special?" Response: Because I’m not a lowlife fucking drug defense attorney. But I digress.

My parents instilled a healthy sense of confidence and adventure into my psyche, and I won the parent lottery when the universe decided to make me their kid. One of my father’s favorite sayings is "Don’t just say it; do it, and I guess I’ve tried to live my life by those words of wisdom. His outlook was that you don’t want to live your life saying shoulda, woulda, coulda" and then be on your deathbed regretting all those lost chances, so just go for it. If you think about it, it’s actually a very liberating way to go about things because you don’t have the luxury or the option of not making a decision. Many people I’ve come across become somewhat paralyzed by the fear of making a decision, but because of my father’s maxim, I tend to gather as much information as I can in a short time and then just take the leap. Yeah, there might be some repercussions later, but at least I can say I did something instead of just sitting there with my thumb up my ass—you can always deal with the fallout later. Beg forgiveness, not permission.

To me, being able to attend the DEA Academy was a dream come true. Upon graduating from the University of Connecticut and then from grad school at the University of New Haven, my only other experience in being away from home had been seven years of overnight summer camp, where my sister and I would spend both July and August with all of our summer friends. In the winter we would attend the inner-city New Haven public school system and watch people getting stabbed in the hallways or on the bus. But in the summer we went to overnight camp with the rich kids from the suburbs. Since we really couldn’t afford two-month overnight camp, my poor mother worked there as the camp mother and sacrificed her summers so that my sister and I could have the best summers of our lives, and they were great summers. Don’t make the mistake of denigrating the summer camp phenomenon. There were a slew of first experiences, memories, and caustic fun that will always place Camp Laurelwood high up in my fond-memory cortex. Camp also provided me with a healthy dose of sarcastic instruction as well as an affinity for questioning authority. The first at least prepared me well for being a Special Agent.

You may wonder how summer camp helped me in becoming a DEA Agent, and one example comes quickly to mind. I was about seventeen and was a lifeguard at camp that year when we all decided to go out drinking—yeah, underage, blah-blah, but back then the drinking age was eighteen, so it’s not that horrible. Anyhow, a bunch of us signed out the camp van for the evening, and we were having such a good time that we missed the curfew. When we finally decided to leave the bar, we all huddled in the parking lot and came up with a plan to say that the van engine had flooded and we’d had to wait around for it to start back up again. Not the best plan, I agree, but hey—seventeen and drunk. So we rolled up to camp, told our tale, and hit our bunks.

The next day, the camp director called us all in, but since this wasn’t his first rodeo, he separated us and took the boys in first for questioning. After they were done, he called the girls into his office, and we held our ground beautifully. I was the spokesperson and stuck to the agreed-upon story no matter what the director tried to throw at me. Unfortunately and unbeknownst to me, however, it was already too late. The boys had caved in record time, and the director knew the real facts. But for me, the moral of that story was that all people have it inside them to become snitches given the right set of circumstances, so don’t be so quick to judge anyone. Of course, in this particular set of circumstances, the boys were just a bunch of weenies.

At the DEA Training Academy, our basic agent (BA) class, #27, consisted of forty men and women (thirty-six men and four women) with varying degrees of law enforcement experience. The basic agents who had been police officers actually had to work harder than those of us straight out of college because they were a bit rusty in the classroom, but they had a leg up on us when it came to the shooting range and tactical instruction. The studying part—law, drug identification, DEA policies and procedures, and so on—was easy for me; my biggest problem was at the range. We were each issued a Smith and Wesson Model 65 revolver, and since I had never fired a weapon before, I thought it was going to be fun. We were shooting hundreds of rounds of ammunition at a time, and on some days, we shot .357-magnum ammunition that packed a pretty good kick. On those days my hands and palms were black-and-blue after practice, but it was still fun, so I didn’t care. I did have to go to remedial shooting for a while, and even though that was embarrassing, it worked.

Eventually, I was able to shoot fine, and in the practical exercises—which covered how to conduct surveillance, arrest techniques, interview techniques, informant handling, different types of investigative methods such as how to set up Title IIIs or wiretap investigations, how to go undercover, tactical training, how to write reports, a physical fitness class, and all the rest—well, it seemed like adult summer camp to me. Where else can you drive a car like a crazy person; crash through doors to learn the art of conducting a search warrant; spend hours shooting handguns, rifles, shotguns, and automatic weapons; and get in great physical shape all while getting paid?

Most people want this kind of a job because they have some sort of John Wayne complex and want to be a hero or because they want to make a difference—do something good for society and all that shit. I had no misconception about my motives. Yeah, it would be nice to be a hero, but even I knew that was mostly TV stuff, and reality would be a lot more tedious. Even so, I wanted the job for one simple reason: I knew it would be exciting. If society dictated that I had to spend most of my day working in order to put food on the table, then I wanted that work to be something fun.

Hell, even the King himself wanted to be a DEA Agent. One of the most bizarre Oval Office photographs ever taken has to be of Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon standing together in the White House, but not many people know what was really behind that meeting that took place in December 1970. It seems that Elvis just stopped by the White House and wanted to meet with the president. Elvis told Nixon’s aides that he wanted to assist the government with the national drug problem and suggested that he go undercover to infiltrate the groups of hippies and celebrities that used drugs in order to restore respect back to the US flag. Elvis asked that the president make him a federal agent at large and requested a BNDD badge. BNDD was the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, or as it was called within the agency, the Bureau of Neurotics and Dangerous Drunks. BNDD was the predecessor agency to DEA, which was renamed and created by Nixon in 1973. The president ended up giving Elvis a BNDD badge with his name on it, and today you can still see that badge if you go to Graceland.

In a room full of cops, I feel all warm and cozy. Everyone wants to belong to something, and in my estimation there is nothing like the brotherhood of law enforcement—belonging to something bigger than yourself and something so fucking cool to boot. I will forever belong to a group of people who are exciting, who tell great stories, and who most importantly will always have your back—unless, of course, they are those asshole inspectors from DEA’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). That’s DEA’s equivalent to internal affairs, or as I like to refer to them, the Office of Pricks and Rats. Those guys couldn’t investigate their way out of a paper bag, and since they can’t conduct a decent drug investigation, they are relegated to investigating other agents. This is really like shooting fish in a barrel because agents are duty-bound and compelled to answer their questions; if they don’t, they could lose their jobs.

My first undercover (UC) experience occurred back in my hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. After I graduated from DEA basic agent training on Friday, December 2, 1983, I reported to the Hartford Resident Office the following Monday for my first day of work. To make a long story short, on my very first day as an official Special Agent, I was hooked up with an untested (meaning brand-spanking-new) informant, something they tell you in BA school will never happen: your first UC will be with a well-tested, tried-and-true informant. Okay, so now I saw how this was going. School was one thing, but this was the real world. The confidential source (CS) and I bought an ounce of cocaine as a lead-in for a larger buy at a later date. But the reason I bring this up is not because the actual deal was so interesting—it wasn’t. In fact I was only to be in the Connecticut office for two months before reporting to San Diego.

I bring this up because my first UC was followed by my first time testifying in front of a grand jury. The grand jury is a bunch of citizens who get called for jury duty just like the more familiar jury that everyone knows about from TV. However, instead of serving on a single case, they sit (or serve) for about eighteen months, usually meeting one day a week and often meeting to hear testimony from several different investigations. Therefore, the members of a grand jury all get to know each other pretty well and also have a pretty good relationship with the assistant US attorney (AUSA). For the prosecution, the goal of the grand jury is to get a true bill passed; in other words, the good people of the grand jury decide whether there is merit for the case to move forward, and the true bill serves as an indictment. It also serves to tie people to their testimonies so that they can’t change stories later on. Another very significant difference between a trial jury and a grand jury is that in the latter the jurors can ask questions after the testimony is presented. Take a moment to imagine this. Once your testimony is given, any juror can ask you any question he or she likes. About anything. This is totally fucking freaky.

Now, my coke deal had gone on for several hours as the crook went into several houses, in and out, out and in. I had memorized the addresses of the houses he went into, what he was wearing, what he said, and all the times he went in and out of the houses, in order to tie up his associates who were in those houses. I was fucking prepared. So the AUSA asked me about the first buy, and I was off to the races, explaining details, times, dates, and so on. Finally, all that was over, and now it was the grand jurors’ turn to ask me questions. I was nervous but, you know, fucking prepared.

At first there were a few moments of silence. Then a man in his midfifties asked me my very first grand jury question: Does your mother know what you do for a living?

At first I wasn’t sure that I’d heard him correctly. I mean, what kind of a semi-legal question was that? So I glanced over toward the AUSA with a pleading look in my eyes.

The AUSA let out a big theatrical sigh and said, Just answer the question.

Yes, my mother knows what I do for a living.

The grand juror was on a roll. How old are you?

Twenty-four, I answered. I knew that I looked much younger, but come the fuck on—hadn’t anyone even listened to my wonderful testimony?

Isn’t she nervous that you are in such a dangerous job?

Yeah, I answered. She is a bit concerned, but she knows that I am taking the proper precautions, and she knows that I love it. She is probably secretly hoping that I will tire of it and eventually do something else, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Finally, this seemed to satisfy them, and we got the true bill for the indictment. Like I said, the whole grand jury thing is freaky.

Anyway, about a month prior to heading out to San Diego for my first post of duty, I was contacted by Bill Hansen, my soon-to-be group supervisor, who asked me where I was going to live when I got out west. I told him that two of the guys from my BA class and I were going to be roommates and get an apartment together. Bill said that he didn’t think that was such a great idea. He thought the agents in the office would get a bad impression of me. Bill said he had taken the liberty of asking one of the other new female agents who had just reported to the San Diego Field Division (SDFD) if I could live with her until I found a place. About this time, my what-the-fuck meter was hitting maximum overload, and I should have said what was in my head: Are you fucking kidding me with this shit? What kind of fucking agency did I join? I mean, this was 1984, not 1954; I could live with guys as roommates if I wanted to. But instead, in one of my very few allowances to restraint, I said okay and went along with the program. After all, I may have been a bit freaked about moving three thousand miles away to a place I’d never even seen.

But I knew I was a long way from good old New Haven, Connecticut, when I started driving around San Diego. I always tell this story when I’m comparing the East Coast to the West Coast, although in the 1980s it was even more apparent. I was the first car in line, stopped in a left-hand turn lane, and the traffic light was red. There were about five cars behind me waiting to make the turn. As usual I had no idea where I was going, so I was thumbing through the Thomas Brothers map book, searching for a particular street, when the light apparently turned. I was deep in thought and finally looked up at the light just as it was turning from yellow back to red. I had just sat through an entire green light with five cars stacked up behind me, and no one had beeped—no one. Where the fuck was I? And how had I landed here?

I was assigned to several different enforcement groups over my thirty-year career, and each group was special in its own way. But the first one was … well, the first one, the one all the rest were ultimately compared to. The members of my first group were figures who loom large in the historical landscape of my mind. They will forever be icons to me, and practically everything they said or did is fraught with such importance that it certainly must be disproportionate to the actual events. Still, my first group was pretty fucking great. We even got the highest award you can get as a DEA Agent, the Administrator’s Award, and our group got it during my second year with DEA. I guess you can only go downhill from there.

When I landed in San Diego, two huge men met me at the airport. After flying across the country with my sleeping bag in hand, I felt like a little kid getting picked up by her older scary relatives. Bill Hansen, the biggest Hispanic man I had ever seen—hell, probably the first Mexican American I had ever seen (not many in Connecticut back in the day)—was in his forties, six feet tall with black hair, and built like a brick shithouse. He had big brown eyes that bored into you, making you feel like you were the only person in the room, but once in that room, you’d better have an answer to any question that he asked. Bill had an air about him that made you want to work hard for his approval. It would be fun, and he would certainly have your back, but you best deserve the support that he gave you.

The other monster there to greet me was Steve Derr. Steve was about my age, twenty-four or so, six feet tall, and beefy (okay, chunky), with blond hair parted down the middle, and he was also from the East Coast. Steve soon became my pseudo-brother—we definitely fought like siblings, yelling at each other while sitting in the office, taking swipes, and constantly talking shit to each other. Bill and Steve took me directly from the airport to the DEA office in National City, just south of downtown San Diego. There I met the rest of my group that had been newly created and imaginatively named—Group 4.

Marv Mittleman was the oldest of the bunch, a jolly, tall, bald, loud mountain of a man and really the sweetest person in the group. He had a heart of gold, and if you had the good fortune to get arrested by him instead of by someone else, you should count yourself lucky. Marv was nearing retirement, and his favorite pastime was to go out and sit in his car on surveillance and eat his sandwich in peace. Marv spoke loudly, probably because his hearing was going. Inevitably, you get to know your surveillance partners extremely well, sometimes too well. Each enforcement group is a close cohesive unit, and that comes not only from working together all day or from the search warrants where guns are drawn and doors are kicked, so that your lives are in each other’s hands, but also and mostly from long, long conversations with the guy in your car while you are sitting on surveillance. I think that’s why Marv, after decades of gabbing with guys in cars, enjoyed the peace and quiet of his lunch with only his chewing as noise.

The next character was Ron D’Ulisse, a short, dark-haired, smart, wickedly funny ex–New Yorker