Battlefield Conversions

Reason talks with three ex-warriors who now fight against the War on Drugs

Michael W. Lynch from the January 2002 issue

(Page 3 of 7)

Michael Levine: I believed that it was the number one national security threat. I saw heroin killing my brother. I saw people around me dying. I saw the crime rate skyrocketing. I fell into the same trap that we are in right now. I blamed everything on those evil drug dealers.

Reason: After a quarter-century as an agent, how have you seen the drug war change at the agent level?

Levine: It has become murderous. I remember back to the beginning of the Drug Enforcement Administration, which was founded in 1973 by President Richard Nixon. At that time, three agents went into the wrong premises in Collinsville, Illinois. They were prosecuted for breaking down the wrong door.

I was involved as an expert witness in the Donald Carlson case, which was on 60 Minutes. In that case, a multi-agency task force, outfitted in high-tech guerrilla gear, crashed into the home of a Fortune 500 executive and shot him down in his own living room on the basis of the word of an uncorroborated informant. Nobody was penalized for it. In fact, the people who did it were eventually promoted.

As the expert witness, I had access to all the reports and I recommended that these people be prosecuted. They paid no attention to the man's civil rights. He had no record or reputation for drugs. They did nothing but crash through his door on the basis of an informant's say-so. The drug war has succeeded in militarizing police against their own people.

Reason: At what point did you start to question the War on Drugs?

Levine: I was sent undercover to Bangkok during the Vietnam War. I was hanging with Chinese drug dealers in Bangkok. They were smuggling heroin into the U.S. in the dead bodies of GIs who were transshipped through Thailand. The Chinese drug dealers invited me to go to the factory up in the Golden Triangle area in northern Thailand, where much of the heroin sent to the United States originated.

All of a sudden I was cut off from logistical support. I was given no money to pay my hotel bills. There were these snafus going on with administrative stuff. They were so strange and inopportune that the dealers were starting to suspect me. It started to get really dangerous. A CIA agent informed me that I wasn't going undercover to the factory. I asked why. First he told me it was dangerous, that we had lost people up there. But I insisted. Finally, he said, "Levine, our country has other priorities." That was the first time I heard that phrase. That was the beginning of me doubting the intentions of our leaders in the drug war.

Reason: What year was that?

Levine: That was 1971.

Reason: And yet you continued on.

Levine: I was a good soldier. I had come out of the military. My brother was still a heroin addict. At that point, I thought my experience in Thailand was an isolated incident here in Southeast Asia. I couldn't conceive of my country lying to me.

Reason: In the chapter you contributed to After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century (Cato Institute), you argue that drug agents have come to recognize that their efforts ultimately have no impact on the drug trade. What's the mindset of agents in this war?

Levine: Before you become an agent, you're bombarded with stories of drug war victories. It's painted as heroic -- guys in guerrilla outfits and jungle gear fighting the drugs everywhere. You want to do something for your country. Then when you get in, the first thing you discover is that you can't touch some of the biggest drug dealers in the world because they're protected by the CIA or they're protected by the State Department. Everyone from Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico to Manuel Noriega to the contras in Nicaragua to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. Those of us who work overseas realize that this whole thing is a three-card monte game, that it's a lie.

Reason: You say the cartel responsible for much of the cocaine in the U.S. during the '80s not only didn't fear the drug war but that they counted on it to increase the price and to weed out smaller dealers. What is your evidence for that?