Jeremy Renner Ready To ‘Kill The Messenger’ In Film About CIA-Smeared Journo Gary Webb

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352. 7/12/15 A DEA Agent at War with the War on Drugs Mike levine

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/12/the-stacks-a-dea-agent-at-war-with-the-war-on-drugs.html

http://michaellevinebooks.com/


Out in the Cold 07.12.1512:01 AM ET
The Stacks: A DEA Agent at War with the War on Drugs
For most of the ’80s Michael Levine was a high-voltage player in America’s drug wars, until he became convinced that the government’s efforts were misguided and useless.


“There is no drug war. It’s a fraud. No other nation in the world has a drug war. The rest have addiction problems. We have war. Why? Because it’s a toy, a grab bag with a lot of big hands in it.”

To Levine, the real news—not the fingertip kind the media like—resides in the actions and motivations of secrecy fetishists, backroom rulers who despise limits, government employees who have begun to control their employers.

“The DEA,” he says, “they want more power, more people, more funding, more headlines and glory. The politicians, they want a platform easily sold to voters, something that the public can identify and think something’s being done, an illusion that they can throw millions of dollars at and show that they’re challenging the drug barons; the war is great theater for politicians.” The Pentagon and CIA: with the fade of communism, they are building a pretext for maintaining their budgets. Everybody wants a toy. All held together by a phrase: war on drugs. The black humor, the madness, is heartbreaking.

“God knows how many secret elements,” he says, “are out there working under the guise of the drug war. Oliver North was the latest example. His operation was hip deep in contra drug smuggling. He was banned from Costa Rica for his involvement with drug runners. The DEA documented 50 tons of contra coke that was being routed into the U.S. by a Honduran connection. An agent bought two kilos in Lubbock, Texas, and made the arrest. The CIA comes quickly to the rescue. A closed hearing is held. Case dismissed. In the meantime, an agent like my friend Ev Hatcher is murdered in New York over a couple of ounces, and there is the DEA wail of dying for ‘a just cause.’ A ghastly value is at work here.”

Congressional hearings and the media skirted North’s drug involvement; they burrowed for linkage to Bush and constitutional violations. North and his CIA cover skated free. “It was unbelievable,” says Levine. “But if the conduct of the drug war is ever investigated, Watergate and Irangate will look like midgets. One day it’ll happen. Like Peter Kelly, a federal judge in Kansas, said, eventually, in the public good some high people in the administration should be indicted for conspiracy.”

These later revelations only underscore the truths that Levine recognized as far back as 1980. In the U.S., Bario’s warning of “horror” was taking shape rapidly. Despite a previous decade in which drugs had become a visible issue, the stateside atmosphere was still one of complacency, from the White House down to the population, which had begun to view cocaine as a trendy indicator of personal success. Like other agencies, the DEA was arrogant and smug on the exterior, but had little or no grasp of its adversaries, their organizational capability, or their aim to mobilize giant, tentacled structures.

Posted to the embassy in Buenos Aires, Levine worked the boulevard cafés with informers, drug syndicators, and rip-off artists. The Argentine secret police were among the latter. They were fond of drug-world jewelry—not the drugs. The secret police (elements of which worked closely with the CIA) killed and tortured with an almost dull promiscuity; the bones of young ideologues filled the soil. “One of the cops,” says Levine, “pulled me aside and showed me his new invention, a little electric box. Grinning from ear to ear, he said he’d throw a dealer in the car and hook his balls to it.”

Marcelo Ibañez was different. The ex–minister of agriculture in Bolivia, he dressed like a banker going out of business. In undercover, it helps if you can adhere to a target, genuinely like him. Ibañez was a man of intellect and manners. As chief aide to Roberto Suarez, the padrone of Bolivia, he did not relish drug activity, but embraced it as a necessary act of patriotism. Posing as a Mafia prince, Levine said he wanted to expand his U.S. operations. The crucial topic in a drug sting is not the money. It is logistics, delivery, when each side is vulnerable. Ibañez said Suarez could guarantee a thousand kilos a month. Levine negotiated an initial deal for five hundred kilos, to establish trust.

Levine was amazed at the size of Suarez’s operation. What was going on here? He called the DEA and reported the prospect of a thousand kilos. “Come on, Levine,” an official said. “What kind of scam are you trying to run?” Mike says now, “The largest bust by the DEA had been two hundred kilos. And get this, the name of Roberto Suarez wasn’t even in the computer, despite our having five agents in Bolivia. “You don’t understand,” said Ibañez. “Don Roberto is a god there. He feeds our people. Politicians don’t. He does what he wants in my country.” Levine sighed. “That is precisely why I cannot go. I won’t be safe.” Ibañez smiled. “You are a smart man, my friend.”

A dramatically expanded American market tantalized, and Ibañez agreed to see Levine in Miami to explore further options. Levine was ready to play out the hit of his career, and one that stands as the most crucial turn in drug war history. He figured on having a big Hollywood setup for Ibañez’s arrival. He would be looking to see criminal royalty. “What I got,” says Levine, “was a twenty-five-hundred-dollar budget, a tract home, not a villa, a pool that looked like a duck pond, a dented green Lincoln instead of a fleet of cars. No Spanish-speaking agent or pilots to collect testimony once our beat-up plane landed in the Bolivian jungle.” With 40 hours left before Ibañez’s arrival, Levine and his agents rushed around town buying linen and family goods and renting a new Cadillac. Ibañez was all business when he turned up; no booze, no women. He poked through the house, looking in cabinets and closets. “Miguel,” he finally said, “this house is not lived in.”

Levine and his men agreed they would make the case in spite of the DEA; it was as if the agency had a motive for it to fail. He convinced Ibañez this house was temporary. To show good faith, he would send his wife (agent Frances Johnson) on the plane. Ibañez was happy again. But that night the head of the DEA in Miami contacted Levine. “You can’t send Frances,” the voice said. “She’s a woman.” Levine shouted, “She’s not a woman, she’s an agent!” He was in retreat again. He had to tell Ibañez that his wife had to stay, only she had the signature to get the money from the vault.

Ibañez was crushed, and Levine still doesn’t know what made him continue. Did he feel excessive pressure to please Suarez? “Suddenly,” says Levine, “he looked over to our agent Richie Fiano. He liked Richie. And he said, ‘I’ll take Richie. I will tell Roberto that he is your brother.’” Going to bed that night, Levine was wary. He looked at Johnson and said, “We’re husband and wife, you have to sleep with me.” Frances bundled up in pajamas, and sure enough, at 2 a.m., Ibañez burst through the door and switched on the lights. “Oh, please forgive! But I want to make sure we start early in the morning.”

Once the Bolivian pickup was made, two Suarez emissaries—Jose Roberto Gasser and Alfredo Gutierrez—met Levine at a Miami bank to collect their $9 million. They were arrested leaving the bank. Levine was astonished at the progress of events in the next few months. Gasser was released by the U.S. attorney. Gutierrez’s bail was lowered, and he jumped back to Bolivia. Angry, Levine kept asking himself, Why did the judge not only lower the bail but refuse to grant a hearing as to the source of the bail money? Why was Gutierrez not tailed while on bail? Why didn’t Gasser even reach the grand jury, a standard procedure? The execution of the case, once suspects were in custody, made a mockery of his operation.

Back in Argentina, he pieced together the why. With the expertise of Argentine factions, the CIA was whipping up a Suarez-backed revolution in Bolivia to deter what they perceived as encroaching communism; that was the priority. Suarez won, and the first thing he and his people did was destroy Bolivian drug-trafficking records. “It’s embarrassing,” an Argentine secret agent told Levine; even to these anti-drug fanatics, communism was more evil. Levine says now, “From that point, our drug war became a South American joke. The moment we turned Bolivia over to drug interests, it was the surrender of our drug effort. The mechanism for mass cocaine production was being protected by our own government. It was a ridiculous, self-inflicted wound. After 1980, drugs soared to a hundred-billion-dollar business. We could have dealt a hard blow to the future of drugs with our Suarez operation. But powerful alliances were born with the CIA and DEA help. They turned Suarez into the head of the drug world’s General Motors and the major supplier of coca base to the Medellín Cartel.”

While simmering in Argentina, Levine thought back to the death of his friend Sandy Bario. In 1978 Bario was arrested by DEA internal security in Texas and accused of dealing drugs. He was soon dead. He took a bite out of a peanut butter sandwich and keeled into convulsions. Early tests showed he’d been poisoned. Later tests revealed no trace of strychnine. And a final autopsy concluded he had “choked to death” on the sandwich. “That didn’t wash among agents,” says Levine. “Many believed he was killed by internal security or the CIA because he knew too much about the U.S. government’s involvement in drug trafficking. Sandy was on my mind when I wrote to a pair of Newsweek reporters, outlining what took place in the Suarez gambit. They either leaked my name to the DEA to curry favor or did it by accident. Afterward, my life was hell. A year and a half of investigations into the tiniest corners. They found only that I kept incomplete records and played my radio too loud in the embassy.” Settle down, a high official advised, ride it out. “The guy paused,” Levine recalls, “and then said, ‘Remember the peanut butter sandwich.’ ”

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