Pubdate: Sat, 03 Feb 2001
Source: Hawk Eye, The (IA)
Copyright: 2001 The Hawk Eye
Contact:  attn: Letters, P.O. Box 10, Burlington IA  52601-0010
Fax: 319-754-6824
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A REAL BUST

DEA Stretches The Truth In A Hemispheric Drug Ring.

The need to appear successful in the war on drugs has caught the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration in a lie that should have taxpayers hopping mad.

Last fall the DEA organized a cooperative anti-drug sting involving 36
countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. The aim of "Operation
Libertador" was to show taxpayers and politicians that police agencies could
cooperate on a grand scale.

It was also designed to generate positive publicity that makes careers.

Agent Michael Vigil was promoted to head the DEA's international enforcement
division after the operation concluded, even though he is now accused of
inflating his achievements.

Vigil's team reported that the operation netted 2,876 arrests and
confiscated $30.2 million in drug dealers' illicit assets. The biggest fish
the operation claimed was the arrest in the Dominican Republic of alleged
drug trafficker Martires Paulino Castro.

It turns out that Paulino was actually arrested a month before Operation
Libertador began. And $30 million of the $30.2 million in assets seized in
Operation Libertador belonged to him.

Meaning the remaining $200,000 in assets were shared by the other 2,875
people arrested -- an average of $69 per defendant.

The most troubling revelation was that 996 of the arrests -- fully 34
percent -- were for misdemeanor marijuana possession in Jamaica, where
marijuana use is culturally if not politically accepted. They were fined and
sent home.

Clearly Agent Vigil and his team exaggerated the effectiveness of their
24-day drug roundup.

His rationale that the drug dealer was identified as a target during the
planning rings hollow.

Because without the fortuitous inclusion of his earlier arrest, the
operation was by any criteria an embarrassing bust.
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