DEA INFLATED FIGURES IN 36-NATION DRUG SWEEP

Number Of Arrests Not Supported; Other Inconsistencies Found

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The Drug Enforcement Administration used phony
figures to tout the alleged success of a 36-nation ``major takedown'' of
drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Latin America last fall.

The DEA's scorecard on ``Operation Libertador'' reported 2,876 arrests, but
a Mercury News Washington Bureau investigation found that agency officials
have no evidence to support hundreds of them. Hundreds more were routine
busts for marijuana possession, and some drug eradication figures were also
counted in a State Department program to burn marijuana plants.

And although the DEA said $30.2 million in criminal assets were seized
during Libertador, $30 million of that was confiscated four weeks before
the operation.

The DEA official who masterminded the exercise -- since promoted to head
DEA's international operations -- admits some discrepancies but says the
international cooperation that Libertador promoted is what counts.

Libertador was described as a ``tremendous success'' by its leader, Michael
Vigil, then head of the DEA's regional office in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Libertador, the fourth U.S.-led regional drug crackdown since 1998,
intended to engage U.S., Caribbean and Latin American drug authorities
simultaneously in what the DEA called ``an attempt to dismantle top-echelon
traffickers in the region.''

However, the DEA's internal documents and interviews with drug agents and
foreign officials who participated in Libertador show that:

The DEA could not account for 375 of the 2,876 arrests attributed to
Libertador. For most of the rest, it relied on numbers reported by
participating countries.

The largest number of arrests -- 996 -- were in Jamaica, where authorities
said most of them were for misdemeanor marijuana possession.

Much of the marijuana interdiction credited to Libertador consisted of
plants that had been burned in Jamaica and already counted as part of a
State Department's eradication effort under way since 1982.

No one cared much about drug intelligence-gathering. The DEA did not, as a
rule, ask for the names of those arrested, the outcomes of their cases or
what happened to their drugs and cash.

DEA spokesman Michael Chapman said his agency saw no problems with
Libertador or its operations accounting system.

``Everything was done properly and aboveboard,'' he said after discussing
the Washington Bureau's investigation with DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall.

Chapman said his agency would ``stick by the reported arrests, because
those were the numbers that were called in'' by foreign law-enforcement
officials.

Vigil, the overseer of Libertador and the three previous Caribbean
anti-drug initiatives, said the names and numbers were not very important.

``The key here is that we have 36 countries that put aside cultural,
political and economic differences to come together,'' Vigil said.

A former DEA senior official who ran similar operations in Central and
South America said Libertador's records were seriously flawed.

``It's ridiculous if the names aren't included,'' he said on condition that
he not be identified.

``I'm not surprised at all that the statistics reported are unverifiable,''
said Eric Sterling, a former counsel on drug policy to the House of
Representatives Judiciary Committee. Sterling, now president of the
Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Washington, which advocates
prevention and treatment measures to combat the drug problem, continued:
``Distortions in the government's reporting of drug operations are
commonplace. . . . Congress and agency managers hunger for success stories
to brag about.''

Libertador began at 6 a.m. Oct. 27 and ended at midnight Nov. 19. Nearly
every nation in the Caribbean participated, along with major Latin American
cocaine-trafficking countries such as Colombia, Bolivia and Mexico.

The biggest success credited by Vigil and DEA documents to Libertador was
alleged trafficker Martires Paulino Castro, who was arrested by Dominican
police. Seized in the process were $30 million in Paulino's assets and 360
kilograms of cocaine.

The DEA's own records contradict that claim, however. Vigil's DEA office in
San Juan first reported Paulino's arrest Sept. 29, nearly a month before
Libertador began. Vigil said Paulino's inclusion was justified because
Paulino had been identified in a list of suspected drug traffickers that
was provided to Dominican officials in the planning stages of Libertador.

DEA's Libertador reports also take credit for cutting down and burning
900,183 marijuana plants, many in Jamaica.

But Carl Williams, head of that nation's narcotics squad, said the
eradication campaign, which has been under way since 1982, is sponsored by
the State Department. The DEA bought into the effort, he said, by
contributing $5,000.

Williams said most of Jamaica's 996 arrests during Libertador were for
misdemeanor marijuana possession or smoking it in public.

``The criteria for success or failure of our drug policy depends on being
able to say you arrested somebody,'' said Ethan Nadelman, who heads the
Lindesmith Center, which advocated treatment over arrests. It ``has
essentially nothing to do with the drug problem in the U.S. or with the
flow of drugs into the U.S. Did the operation have any impact whatsoever on
the price or availability of drugs? Did it have any impact whatsoever on
the number of people addicted to or overdosing from heroin or cocaine? The
odds are overwhelmingly no.''