Bringing you the stories of smokers and smugglers.

Growin' Our Own (page 5)

Working for the DEA

By: Anonymous

The DEA stands for Drug Enforcement Administration, and is a federal enforcement agency, under the President. I worked for the DEA and participated in many investigations and drug busts. DEA employment applications favor military and law enforcement background types. The DEA is like a big spy agency, shrouded in secrecy, and uses many hi-tech toys like GPS, distant sound receivers, hidden cameras [even in trees and bushes], informants, and other supposedly legal tools like search warrants. We worked closely with the Assistant US Attorneys or AUSA, as we called them. Our cases had to be prosecuted by these attorneys so we had to make a case that would pass their criteria for getting search warrants and busts that would lead to convictions and asset forfeitures.

I was formerly with Army Intelligence and had experience in South American Intelligence. I speak Spanish which was rare for most DEA Agents. In South America we intercepted radio and phone transmissions, followed planes and suspected drug lords and terrorists. My military intelligence background was perfect to move me into a DEA job. I was quickly accepted into the DEA after a thorough background check. I worked out of Atlanta, Georgia and worked undercover in blue jeans with my long hair and beard. I looked like a typical biker. It was still hard to infiltrate drug groups and consort with purported drug dealers. However there were small time dealers who would readily sell me crack, cocaine, and grass. These desperate street dealers were a start for me and my training. In a scrape they would squeal. Let me tell you that DEA agents don't go around passing out business cards while they work a case or group of druggies. A good cover can mean life or death for a DEA agent. Regardless of what you might believe, a DEA agent can't take any drugs, and can be tested at any time on a minute's notice. So no drugs are taken and this can tip off a seller when you don't partake in testing the stuff. I always figured that if my life was on the line I would violate policy and take a taste of cocaine or something else. My life is worth more than the DEA job.

Information gathering about drug shipments, names of dealers and their backgrounds is the basic work for an agent. Moving up to the bigger connection is the goal, but we didn't leave many small time dealers behind. On the street or with credible informant information is where we started an investigation. Informants helped and sometimes they helped too much. We followed more bad leads than good ones. Informants had to sign up on DEA forms every 90 days and they were re-checked to see about their recent activities. We liked clean informants, not the street druggies who were trying to squeal their way out of trouble. Often times respectable citizens ran across verifiable information and would contact us. These were the informants we wanted. We would get phone calls to the office and walk-ins. We would take these "cold" potential informants into a sealed, bugged interrogation room and debrief them about what information they had. If the information was verified, and their background checked out, we would formally sign them up. Other times we would request further information before we got involved with an informant. We had some people who had a grudge and we had to be alert for these types as the DEA doesn't want to be used for dead end vendettas. We didn't want to get information on respectable law abiding citizens. From my experience in the agency, the DEA operates on a professional level, checking out the information it receives. Use of prior and proven informants is different, as once you have proved yourself you are part of the team. Upon receiving information an agent contacts the AUSA and goes over the matter and gets direction for investigating the case. The AUSA would tell us how to verify a case and what additional information they needed to get a search warrant. If there are not any grounds to obtain a search warrant the informant and the agent will try to get the information the AUSA needs. I want to tell you that we never tried to compel an informant to get information, this was all voluntary. Mostly the informants would work for the DEA form 103, called "drop the dime." This form was to protect the informant and to provide for the payment of the 10% reward for value of drugs and money confiscated. Although signed, this form was never released to an informant. It was basically all done on trust, and we always paid the reward. I never saw anybody manufacture the facts meeting the AUSA requirements. Sometimes the AUSA would want to meet and debrief the informant in our offices. We never asked an informant to risk their lives, but we could tell them that if they wanted to do something they had that right. This was with the caveat that if we were not kept in the loop and some drug buy happened the informant could go down as a co-conspirator. Everything had to be approved in advance by us. For example, one time we had an informant who we got a call about. The call was from U.S. Customs at the California border. Our informant on a few cases got busted for smuggling 20 kilos of cocaine. We checked and found no prior authorization and no investigation that would allow this informant to be smuggling the coke. Result was that he was convicted.

We never gave our business cards and cell phone numbers out to informants. They had to call into the main office. The exception was if we were on a stake out and ready to move in. For these we gave pager numbers and would call back the informant for minute by minute information. Nothing, and especially phone numbers, would ever be written down. Memory only was the rule. A DEA business card could get somebody killed. I never gave out a single business card in my 12 years with the DEA. My life and home were all secret. One time I discovered that I was on an internet information service that listed my home address. Through an investigation we discovered that junk mail had released this information. We corrected this and got my info off the internet. This could have resulted in the elimination of me and my family.

Investigations in Mexico were very difficult. We didn't want to go into Mexico and didn't want to risk our informants" lives. We advised informants to get the Mexicans to come over into the states for dug deals. Ask the Mexicans to deliver and we could cover the deal from here. Buying in Mexico and having the informant deliver in the states is a waste of time. Only if the Mexicans came into our jurisdiction did we take an interest.

Anyway there was one time when we executed a search warrant on an informant's (CI -for confidential informant) information we did end up in the wringer. We involved the local sheriff and were on a bust for 40 kilos of cocaine. Instead of getting cocaine we moved too soon and got the buy money. The money had been counted by the informant and a few others. The informant said there was $540,000 which had been counted by machine and by hand three times. However the sheriff found the money and brought it out. When the count was done there was only $300,000. This resulted in an internal affairs investigation with accusations that never reached the court. It was hell as we could only explain that the Sheriff found and produced the cash. We were all suspected of dividing the cash and I didn't like the accusations. The sheriff was defiant that there was only $300,000 and no witnesses were there when he hit the loot. I swear that we didn't divide any cash with the sheriff, and the CI was determined to be a liar on the exact amount of cash. Anyway, about a year after the investigation I decided to try another line of work and dropped out of the DEA.

For you that will never know the internal workings of the DEA, I want to tell you that it is a secret and efficient spy agency.