SHIFT - The End of the War on Drugs, The Beginning of the War on Terrorism: A Drug Cop’s Four Year Romp through The White House National Security Council

By Richard L. Cañas

A discerning Washington bureaucrat (there are a few) once professed that an accurate appraisal of government policies, laws, and procedures requires a thorough examination of the intent and context surrounding their enactment in the first place. A sage and logical deduction, right? Yet this guidance is so often ignored by the impatient.

The inimitable national security events described herein occurred over twenty years ago, a lifetime to some, just yesterday to others. The #1 national security concern of the United States government during the early ‘90s was the domestic threat posed by the illicit international drug trade. By comparison, the threat of foreign terrorism was considered a distant third or fourth on the priority scale.

It was during this period of time that a mid-level Drug Enforcement Administration field Special Agent was detailed to the National Security Council staff and given the lofty title of Director for Counternarcotics. The assignment was designed to enhance DEA’s influence at the policy level while providing policy-makers with valuable “real world” background information. The one year duty lasted four years and took the author, now the sole Director of Counternarcotics and Counterterrorism on the NSC staff, through a maze of inter-agency squabbles and national security policy inefficiencies. The author’s last two years were the first two years of the William J. Clinton presidency and involved an unprecedented shift between the previous national security priority and a new emerging threat to the US.

The account is a compelling narrative of the events that led to this shift and the often unmeasured consequences of inexperienced executives leading the development of national security policy. The lessons not-learned, admittedly with the invaluable assistance of hindsight, continue to effect the world we live in today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496937018

Richard L. Cañas

Richard “Dick” Cañas is the former Director of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (2006-2010), and member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Homeland Security Advisory Council (2008-2013). He is currently the President/Chairman of Betts Global Consulting, LLC, a homeland and international security consulting firm. Cañas has had an impressive and diverse national security career, from managing programs for a private consulting firm with the National Security Agency and the National Guard Bureau, to a 26 year career with the U. S. Department of Justice where he served as Director of the National Drug Intelligence Center and a Special Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, (DEA). With DEA he served in various domestic and foreign posts including 12 years in Latin America, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Phoenix Divisional Office, Special Advisor to the Central Intelligence Agency, and Director for Counterterrorism and Counternarcotics at the White House's National Security Council. The latter assignment covered a four-year period under both President George H.W. Bush and President William J. Clinton. Prior to DEA, Cañas was a police officer and detective for eight years with the Salinas, California Police Department. A graduate of California State University at San Jose, Cañas has a teaching credential in Police Science and is a sought-after lecturer and instructor on Criminal Justice and Homeland Security both in the U.S. and most recently in Mexico and the United Arab Emirates. He has self-published three books including a text on State Homeland Security and numerous articles on related subjects.

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SHIFT

The End of the War on Drugs,

The Beginning of the War on Terrorism

By

RICHARD L. CAÑAS

Second Edition 2023

A Drug Cop’s Four Year Romp through The

White House National Security Council

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2014 Richard L. Cañas. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  11/06/2023

ISBN: 978-1-4969-3702-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-3701-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014915592

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

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.

Dedication

To Ira Johnny Johnson and Vic Mickey Collins

For inspiring the best of life

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Worse than the no-see-’ems

Chapter 2 A Country Americans Love to Hate

Chapter 3 The Bourne Legacy

Chapter 4 Tinsel-Town

Chapter 5 Miller Time

Chapter 6 So When Do I Meet Barbara?

Chapter 7 Tránching and Vetting

Chapter 8 Drugs ‘n Thugs

Chapter 9 It has to be Presidential.

Chapter 10 DEA Goes Macro

Chapter 11 Passages

Chapter 12 Blind Justice

Chapter 13 Dancing Sherpas

Chapter 14 A Funny Thing Happened on Their Way to the Meeting

Chapter 15 Other Presidential Crashes

Chapter 16 Tell Them How You Really Feel

Chapter 17 FOBs and Other Disorganizations

Chapter 18 Egyptian Intelligence

Chapter 19 The Families of the Victims of the Pan Am 103 Disaster

Chapter 20 Defense on Defence

Chapter 21 The End of the War on Drugs

Chapter 22 Shift

Chapter 23 Interagency Power

Chapter 24 Introspection

Epilogue

About the Author

Introduction

A discerning Washington bureaucrat (there are a few) once professed that an accurate appraisal of government policies, laws, and procedures first requires a thorough examination of the intent and context surrounding their enactment in the first place. Sage and logical deduction, right? Yet this guidance is so often ignored by the impatient.

The inimitable national security events described herein occurred over twenty years ago, a life’s time to some, just yesterday to others. The United States government’s #1 national security concern during the early ‘90s was the domestic threat posed by the illicit international drug trade. By comparison, the threat of foreign terrorism was considered a distant third or fourth on the priority scale.

In 1990, the American public’s concern about drug abuse at home and the accompanying international drug trade feeding it was at an all-time high, but it was starting to wane. Children of the counterculture were now in their teens. National and international events such as an economic recession, military and Intelligence agencies’ adjustments following the Cold War, Desert Storm, and the emerging threat of global terrorism were also stealing attention away from the scourge of drugs. The US military and the Intelligence Community, meanwhile, continued their unchecked support of drug law enforcement efforts abroad with robust detection and monitoring programs, pervasive intelligence-gathering systems, and training and equipment for the security forces of foreign countries that were waging their internal drug wars.

I was a voyeur, if you will, a staff director at the National Security Council (NSC) for roughly the last two years of the Bush Administration (1990-1993) and the first two years of the Clinton Administration (1993-1994), and I enjoyed a seat at the table with policymakers and implementation planners. I wish I could say I played a more significant role in developing some of that day’s effective national security policies and plans, but I cannot, at least not a weighty one. Conversely, I wish I could distance myself from some of the decisions that I helped direct because, in retrospect, they were ineffective and, at times, counterproductive.

The policy shift that ensued when Clinton caught Bush politically napping and won the presidency discombobulated national security planners and strategists, especially those focused on countering the threat of the international drug trade, and twelve years of Republican rule had comfortably settled counternarcotics policymakers into bureaucratic routines. The new national security policy reviews gridlocked the established conventions and procedures. One of the consequences was that our enemies began perceiving the government’s stodginess as presidential weakness, and they began testing US resolve. Within a very short period, international terrorism escalated while the drug trade continued to prosper.

Historically, anxiety about drug abuse in the US had been building since the 60s, and drug abuse levels among Americans peaked in 1979. Naturally, a peak is only recognizable in retrospect. At the time, concerned Americans, especially parents of the counterculture, ignorant about how to deal with the pervasiveness of drug abuse, were increasingly frightened that this trend would continue to rise. When Ronald Reagan took office, a poll of the American people showed that the number one domestic security concern was the spread of drugs. The hue and cry was loud and clear: The federal government must do something about it.

I first heard the term war on drugs from President Richard Nixon back in 1972 when I joined the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, a predecessor to the super single-mission agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). I have never heard a cop use the term war on drugs, then or now, but at the time, those of us in the business interpreted Nixon’s use of the phrase as a descriptive sound bite emphasizing a high priority. Fair enough.

Unfortunately, the steps that Nixon took in developing more aggressive drug enforcement and education programs at home and abroad took two steps back during the Carter years, primarily due to the deliberations of his drug policy advisor, Dr. Peter Bourne. The election of Ronald Reagan halted Bourne’s mistimed liberal intentions to de-emphasize the enforcement of laws against what Carter called soft drugs.

It was not until the middle of Reagan’s second term in 1986 that the President signed a drug enforcement bill that budgeted 1.7 billion dollars to fund (again the term) the war on drugs. This quick reversal of the priority pendulum carried over into the early Bush years when the policy was further bolstered by having the US military legislatively infused into the effort. The President added sections to Title 10 of the United States Code and the Posse Comitatus Act, listing specifically what the Department of Defense’s (DOD) support effort would be. The list did not include DOD participating directly in law enforcement operations or their targeting of drug traffickers specifically, but the priority emphasis was unmistakable.

As the only federal single-mission drug enforcement agency, the DEA said little about this DOD support, at least officially. DEA was okay with the military not being operational; after all, warfighters were not trained or accountable for enforcing the laws and rules of criminal procedures. The fact that in many drug source and transit countries, para-military agencies conducted law enforcement, and in some cases, the militaries themselves, did not significantly alter the DEA’s position on the subject or their operational planning, but it did retard bilateral pursuit of better coordination and more effective partnerships with DOD and the host nations.

By staying in its lane, the DEA signaled that it did not intend to infringe, usurp, or dictate macro-counternarcotics policy decisions overseas. The argument about whether the DEA should have gotten more involved in directing or guiding Washington’s international counternarcotics policies has merit. DEA was the only federal drug enforcement agency with operational tentacles overseas and could have helped define the DOD’s support role better. But organizationally, the DEA fell under the domestically-oriented Department of Justice and were culturally weaned as US law enforcement officials. As such, neither the DEA nor the DOJ proactively participated in this high-level policy-making arena despite supporters trying to get their attention to do just that. Meanwhile, DOD, the 800-pound gorilla in the room, continued to get involved as ordered.

Military purists were not thrilled with the counternarcotics support directive despite the obligatory salute to their Commander-in-Chief. But the military adapts. Within a short time, former Cold War fighters discovered they could tweak counternarcotics program accounts with a bit of imagination to supplement war-fighting readiness and response training until either the Bear awoke or a new threat better suited to their intended purpose came along.

At this point, my active participation in macro-counternarcotics policy deliberations began. As a director for counternarcotics (and later counternarcotics and counterterrorism) at the NSC, I directly participated in policy-making during those years. Remarkable backroom discussions led to the development of a counternarcotics policy swing away from the robust DOD interdiction mission to a source-country kingpin strategy at the beginning of the Clinton Administration.

Policymakers failed to recognize the early signs of an unrelated and ominous threat during the shuffle of this counternarcotics policy and strategy debate. Foreign-based terrorism aimed at the US and US interests was escalating. At the time, analysts felt the series of new terrorist incidents was a test of the metal of the new President; others said it was a diabolical plan to pull the US into a war in the Middle East. Both might be right, but policymakers misjudged these early warnings in either case. That miscalculation congealed the attitudes of security agencies during counterterrorism-versus-counterinsurgency debates that ensued and, frustratingly, how they continue the argument today.

Included among the lessons learned and ignored were:

✓Warfighters are not police officers;

✓Preemption is not prevention;

✓Unilateralism is ineffective and counter-productive;

And last but certainly not least,

✓Ignoring the plight of innocent casualties of violence, including unintended victims, for political purposes is classic terrorism.

Because I carried the dual title of Director of Counternarcotics and Counterterrorism under Clinton, I staffed some of these early counterterrorism policy missteps. They consumed most of my time for the first two years of his Administration. Meanwhile, my participation in developing counternarcotics policies was limited to one Presidential Decision Directive on Counternarcotics, PDD-14, the only counternarcotics PDD Clinton issued during two full presidential terms. The contrast with the prior Reagan/Bush handling of the drug threat was glaring.

As a DEA Agent, that period of inattention to foreign counternarcotics affairs was frustrating, although not unfamiliar. I was privy to the growing pains of DEA’s foreign operations since the 1970s. In the early 1980s, when the FBI’s influence over the DEA was at its height, the DEA’s foreign program was the subject of a significant internal debate about whether the DEA even belonged overseas. Luckily for the country, that opinion was only shared by parochial linear thinkers.

I have read that DEA’s water has finally reached its level. DEA today has a career Administrator, stability, and a clear priority mission both domestically and abroad. Its people are the best at what they do, and its mission should not be confused or distracted with polemics about legalization, decriminalization, or other public policy arguments about drug enforcement being a waste of time. The prime mission of national security agencies is to keep America safe. As I point out in the book, if they legalized drugs tomorrow, the DEA, in some form, would continue policing the sociopaths who innately ignore laws and prey on the innocent and the mindless. Professional criminals seem to like what they do and relentlessly seek out this underworld. Fortunately for the country, law enforcement officials are also unwaveringly committed. Policing these predators will continue to be law enforcement agencies’ end-game long past my bedtime.

A few clarification points:

First:

Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, I have tried to describe incidents where respect and decorum permit in a personal and hopefully entertaining style with side-bar dialogues, personal jargon, and gratuitous comments—recognizing that intended humor is not my strong suit.

Second:

I have tried to recreate events, locales, and conversations from my recollections, notes, or public information about circumstances surrounding my time at the White House. Some names and identifying details were omitted or altered to protect the privacy of individuals.

Third:

The terms counterdrugs and counternarcotics are used interchangeably by media and casual observers. Sticklers know, however, that drugs and narcotics have different origins and are chemically and legally different substances. For literary convenience, I have used primarily the term counternarcotics when referring to the macro deliberations of the international illicit drug trade, which at the time concerned chiefly the production and transshipment of cocaine and heroin from Latin America. I beg the indulgence of those more technically-minded.

And finally:

A few years back, after my 26-year career with the DEA had ended, an analyst from the Intelligence Division of the DEA contacted me and asked how the DEA might procure a director position at the NSC. Others had informed him I was the last DEA Special Agent to hold such a position, and his bosses were intent on pursuing the possibility.

I told him that NSC director positions were limited and that a candidate needed to be sponsored by a high-ranking member of the Administration´s national security team. DEA was fortunate to have the support of a visionary back in 1989, and I was sure it would take similar help today. I suggested a non-director staff position might be more accessible; after all, no one in the Big Plum was dumb enough to turn down free help. He thanked me, but I felt he carried away a bag full of questions.

Later, as I reflected on the meeting, I recalled that, like other DEA assignments, I was not debriefed by anyone at DEA or elsewhere when I left the NSC in 1994. To my knowledge, no one had officially documented anything about that assignment, certainly not me. Yet, it was an unusually long and substantive duty. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that perhaps my experience and observations during that time were compelling enough to record.

So, with DEA’s indulgence, I submit the account herein as a comprehensive answer to their questions about the position known officially as the Special Assistant to the President, Director Counternarcotics and Counterterrorism, National Security Council, the White House 1990-1994.

A belated exit report, if you will.

rlc

Chapter One

Worse than the no-see-’ems

It was July 1990 in Washington DC, perennial moving-time for US government mid-level humps punching career tickets with their respective headquarters. Whether a federal criminal investigator, a diplomat, a soldier, or a spy (or all of the above), each had signed that mandatory mobility clause in their hiring contract, which contained a caveat in bold and underlined caps: AND THAT INCLUDES WASHINGTON DC AND NEW YORK CITY.

The NYC emphasis concerned the quality of life and cost-of-living challenges. But in the case of Washington DC, the reasons for the warning took into account that most federal field people considered HQ staff work boring and stogy. Volunteers were an unwilling lot. But the rule was that career vertical alignment required this breadth of experience, and HQ made the rules. So there. And, as if to put a final whiplash on the process, transfers were scheduled during the bleak urban sultry season, which tended to melt the cheeriest disposition. So unless you were born and raised, conscripts came kicking and screaming.

I had just finished a contentious three-year tour as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Mexico City office. I was now waiting for a new assignment in the Big Plum, as some people called the District of Colombia because of its sweet and sour style (like its pro football team). My family and I were temporarily lodged in a Rosslyn, Virginia apartment, which boasted a generous loft view of Georgetown University, the Kennedy Center, and a part of the national park called the Mall, which contains, among other attractions, memorials to three of the most noteworthy US presidents. The apartment was comfortable and convenient, but more importantly, it afforded Frank and Sara a front-row seat to their first 4th of July fireworks display high above the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial—no small thing after wallowing in the lead-laden smog of Mexico City for three years.

At the time, Northern Virginia was popular for housing government and quasi-government come here’s, as they called new arrivals in parts of southern Virginia’s coastal regions. But the area’s popularity had more to do with convenience than likeableness. The summer transition was difficult for newbies, what with the stress of a significant move and having to put up with the three Hs (hot, humid, and hazy), a meteorological condition that permeated the region most of the year mainly because they built the megalopolis over—a swamp. The international diplomatic community officially considered the nation’s capital a hardship post for their envoys (not that any compensation or consideration applied to US government workers). Oh, and did I mention the tourist alerts in July? Worse than the dreaded no-see-‘ems (Ceratopogonidae, for you scientific types).

It was not the first time the Career Board had assigned me to DEA headquarters. I had spent three compulsory years before returning to what I knew best. As previously mentioned, no field cop relished a tour in HQ. The emergencies were mainly bureaucratic, and political machinations often determined your worth—the antithesis of substantive duty in the real world. Being here now was not by choice either, but it was necessary, and I was determined to make the most of it. It was a paradoxical quirk of the job: HQ was a promising place to lay low when the situation warranted. It is always easier to smother punches from in close.

Meanwhile, Rosslyn, for those who have not had the pleasure, is a very convenient place to pitch a tent while waiting for your belongings to catch up. Most notably, it is home to the US Marine Corps Iwo Jima Memorial and a sneaky back entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. But most of Rosslyn back then was high-rise office buildings, apartments, and hotels off Wilson Street, the main drag.

But the principal reason for Rosslyn’s popularity among the almost-pretty government transients was the convenient Metro train station where the Orange and Blue rail lines converged to cross the Potomac. The Orange Line serviced the Virginia suburbs out to Vienna, and the Blue Line serviced other areas of Virginia, such as the National Airport (as Reagan National was called then), the Pentagon, and Alexandria’s historic, affluent, and charming village. From Rosslyn, both lines crossed the river in an orderly fashion through fast underwater tunnels into the Big Plum, where the federal bureaucratic frenzy and lethargy shared the same moments. Picture a cheap watch built by the lowest bidder, where the inner gears, wheels, and pulleys frantically dance while the outer hands proceed in the same uninspired glacial pace.

From Rosslyn station, the riding business class (and the not-so-classy tourists) crossed the Potomac River into the Plum in sleek graffiti-free InterCitys, which made periodic stops preceded by a real-live announcement:

Next stop: Foggy Bottom, access to George Washington University, State Department, and the Lincoln Memorial...Please stand clear of the doors when opening and closing. Ding-dong.

…Next stop, Farragut West, access point to the White House, Department of Treasury, and Washington monument...Please stand clear of the doors when opening and closing. Ding-dong.

"…Next stop, Metro Center, transfer point to the Red line and access to the Capital building and Maryland...Please stand clear of the doors when opening and closing." Ding-dong.

"…Next stop, Federal Triangle, access point to the Old Post Office pavilion, the Department of Justice (or ‘Main Justice’ as the lawyerly occupants liked to brag), and the J. Edgar Hoover building (FBI headquarters, which was part of the Justice Department although Hoover and his decedents ignored the claim)." Ding-ding-dong.

Every workday, commuter congestion, like a bad cold, emerged at 6:17 a.m. and abated at 11:02 a.m. – incoming – then again at 3:05 p.m. until 7:22 p.m. – outgoing. The culture shock of the long and monotonous shuttling routine also jolted commuters’ wallets. No matter what suburb a worker called home, the Metro fare to and fro averaged about fifteen dollars a day, or about $ 3,500 a year. If your spouse also labored outside the home, the cost increased exponentially: Outlay for gasoline, parking or double bus fare to the Metro station, double Metro fare, two pairs of walking shoes, joint income taxes, and babysitters/nursery fees for the little darlings (for those who wanted all life had to offer). The salary of one partner was pretty much irrelevant.

Did I mention that northern Virginia was a great place to raise kids?

Only the President was immune from these transportation hardships inside the federal district—still, some tried to emulate it. Haughtier types (usually private lawyers and lobbyists—often the same person) commuted individually by personal vehicles and parked in one of the few public lots. The charge was about a million dollars a day, which somehow got worked into billing times. A more obnoxious version of this type of shuttle was car-pooling. Besides the advantage of car-pool lanes, most agencies reimbursed this type of nose-picking behavior by offering a limited number of parking spaces at select agency lots. Thus, parking costs were reduced substantially (if you did not tally the cost of therapists and meds). No matter how you slice it, your commute is usually the most humbling and expensive part of your day (unless you use a chauffeur, which amounts to a kajillion dollars plus benefits).

Wealthy, single people rented or owned apartments or homes in the Plum near their employment. How sensible was that? But few considered this option because, as we all know, rich, single people are smart or would not be rich and single. Rents and realty prices were prohibitive for most government humps in the Plum. Therefore, unless you were a native, few considered purchasing in this wacky town since the location, location, location was not on their list of quaint or best places to live. No, even the rich and single queued up at the Metro with the rest of the coffee-hyped, bubble-encased sheep and tuned out the surroundings on their walk-mans, beepers, pocket calculators, or the like.

One up-side to the daily routine was knowing that you were queuing next to the likes of US ambassadors (honorable only when serving abroad at the pleasure of the President) and four-star generals (Kings of their domain only while serving as Commander in Chiefs in the field). The experience lasted two or three uncompensated, unproductive, and uncomfortable hours each day, adding to about four to five hundred hours a year or twenty-two to thirty days of awake time, thus annulling the fifteen to twenty days of paid annual leave. But the throbbing ache only lasted for two to four years. Afterward, they pitched you into some briar patch, such as Scottsdale, Arizona, or Ashville, North Carolina. It was best to take it a day at a time and not think about it.

And I did mention the humidity, right? One did not bother putting on a starched dress shirt in July.

Chapter Two

A Country Americans Love to Hate

Despite the looming hardships of moving to this discomfiting oasis, my family and I did need a change of scenery after the posting down under. We had hoped for Scottsdale or Ashville because the three years in México had been ball-busters. My mind was still reeling from the experience.

I had volunteered for the Mexico City job and moved there with family and possessions in July of 1987 with all the best intentions of doing an effective job. I anticipated being part of a DEA team to ensure justice was served in the February 1985 kidnap, torture, and murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique Kiki Camarena. A full-blown task force, Operation Leyenda, was ongoing—the most extensive DEA criminal investigation of its kind. The outrage over Kiki’s murder was more than justified, and reacting to it was contagious. His death and the circumstances surrounding it consumed the agency’s attention like no other event in memory. I viewed the aggressive response of Jack Lawn, DEA’s Administrator, who took over from Bud Mullen in July of 1985, as archetypical of all DEA employees. We all felt that DEA, and the DEA Agents in México in particular, had taken a cheap shot from drug dealing scum and corrupt Mexican officials. And while DEA Agents were trying not to overreact, the details and implications of that crime were excruciating. We had buried Kiki with honors and were now responding in unison against a common enemy—in the words of US Southern Command General George Joulwan: "One team – one fight."

But that camaraderie was not shared by all.

Frustrated by the inability to strike back quickly and aggressively against the perpetrators of this heinous crime and the corrupt Mexican officials protecting them, some within the DEA cut loose with both barrels on the country of México. The scattershot took in everyone associated with the country and its government, which, as intelligent people know, are not the same. DEA’s presence in México was part of a bilateral agreement between the two Attorneys General and required mandatory interaction between DEA Mexican-based Agents and the Mexican federal police. But, as I say, anyone associated with that government tended to be suspect to some of the Leyenda investigators. They had made little progress against the perpetrators but not against the corrupt government officials involved.¹

Historically, regarding internal security, México was a study of paradoxes. It was the thirteenth most industrialized country in the world and the US’s number one trading and tourism partner. But their archaic criminal justice system and the little investment in its reform was inexplicable. Over the years, Mexican citizenry had learned to tolerate the disparate situation, which gave tacit permission to corrupt police practices. One Mexican official told me that true police corruption involved soliciting and accepting bribes when no crime had been committed. For police to confiscate assets or receive mordidas from actual offenders was rationalized by most Mexican cops as practical and necessary, given their low wages and lack of operational expenses. They argued: Why should unscrupulous jurists reap the payoffs? Police corruption was endemic.

Meanwhile, the over two thousand miles of common land border with the US, replete with the concomitant sleazy ambiance of most land border crossings, projected an impoverished third world landscape with failing infrastructure and asocial development to North Americans. Years of incestuous relations marked both sides of the border and, coupled with rampant extrajudicial accommodations, gave the disparaging perception that the border region represented the country as a whole.

The political atmosphere in 1990 was unhealthy, and both sides’ disrespectful references were pervasive. A poignant Mexican editorial cartoon depicted a Mexican pointing north across the border and yelling, "Marijuano, while a North American yelled back, Corrupto."

Regarding México, most Americans fell into a mindset best described by Alan Riding, New York Times reporter, and prize-winning author, in his 1985 best-seller Distant Neighbors². He concludes that finding and understanding the true México requires a journey through the history, the minds of its people and through the diverse sectors of society. It is a journey that few Americans were willing to take, and thus, México remained the country Americans loved to hate and worked overtime to ignore.

This sentiment was undoubtedly true within DEA during the pre- and post-Kiki Camarena years. Ed Heath, the Special Agent in Charge in México, had endured much criticism for not responding aggressively after Kiki’s initial abduction. Some reproach was warranted; after all, he was in charge of all DEA México operations and, like any executive, was ultimately responsible for the performance and actions of subordinates. But, he was being over-demonized by the good and bad guys alike. The sentiment was even detailed in reporter Elaine Shannon’s best-selling book, Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, US Lawmen, and War the US Can’t Win³, and later in an acclaimed TV docudrama, Drug Wars, based on her book.

Ed was a friend and former boss from previous foreign assignments. He had held many executive positions within the DEA and was the most experienced and knowledgeable DEA Agent about Mexican law enforcement. He was all cop, having been shot during a gun battle with traffickers, and had even lost a brother, also a federal drug Agent, who died from a gunshot wound suffered on the job in Argentina. I heard the nasty chatter about Ed before Shannon’s book came out. But despite all the misplaced anger aimed at him from inside the agency, DEA Administrator Jack Lawn, who knew Ed and the complex and thankless mission he was waging, kept him on as head of the Mexico DEA offices long after Kiki’s death and the initiation of Operation Leyenda.

The burning question among DEA executives then was: How much cooperation could the DEA expect from counterparts with Operation Leyenda investigating high Mexican government officials? Obviously, not much, but higher-ups decided to keep the offices open despite the animosity. I do not recall sharing a laugh or any informality with the Mexican Attorney General’s office throughout my three years as head of field operations.

Ed’s job and that of all the DEA Agents posted in México, was limited and dangerous. Also, there were signals from US Ambassador Charles Pilliod and other agency heads working in México that the DEA should get over the Camarena incident and return to work. After all, they callously reasoned, the PGR lost dozens of counternarcotics Agents yearly, and you did not hear them complaining. Well, all of us at DEA knew that would not happen. Ed and the DEA Agents in México were between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Some at the DEA viewed the leadership of the DEA Mexico City office as part of the problem, not part of the solution. No one from the Operation Leyenda team or HQ briefed me on their progress before or during my assignment in México. I did not think anything of it initially because, as with most DEA postings, you tended to learn on the job. But, as soon as I landed in Mexico City, the Christmas cards stopped arriving.

So, I muddled through the three years. I even endured a stacked inspection of our offices, which required Lawn to personally intercede and overrule a recommendation to sanction our insensitive asses. I could stomach these bumps, albeit unpleasant, because I felt that it came with the turf. Ed also weathered the storm philosophically, commenting: When you’re right, you’re right. But I knew the criticism had genuinely hurt him as well.

But no, the crushing personal blow came during my third year in Mexico when a trusted friend from my days with the Inspections Division and currently one of the Assistant Special Agents in Charge of the Los Angeles Leyenda investigation candidly informed me that they could not trust those of us assigned to Mexico City not to reveal classified information to our counterparts.

What?!

I had been asking about a controversial Operation Leyenda investigators had launched inside Mexico without our knowledge. It’s best you don’t know, Dick, the ASAC said. Because of your bilateral charter.

Do you think the Mexican government will believe we were not in the loop? I countered. Just give me the facts, and we’ll script a sanitized statement.

No Dick, and I will not discuss this matter further.

And there it was. Our agency did not trust us enough to provide investigative details. It was time to come home.

After a challenging foreign tour, it was customary for the DEA Career Board to be generous with reassignments, but the early reports of options were not encouraging. The resentment, it seems, persisted. However, like Lawn before him, Terry Burke understood our plight in México and offered to lend a hand.