DEA'S LATIN `TAKEDOWN' BOOSTED BY DUBIOUS FIGURES

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

The DEA's scorecard on ``Operation Libertador'' reported 2,876 arrests, but
agency officials could not provide evidence to support hundreds of them.
Hundreds more were routine busts for marijuana possession, and some drug
eradication figures were double-counts of a State Department program to burn
marijuana plants. And while the DEA said $30.2 million in criminal assets
were seized during Libertador, $30 million of that was confiscated four
weeks before the operation began.

The DEA official who directed the exercise -- since promoted to head the
DEA's international enforcement division -- admits some discrepancies but
says the international cooperation that Libertador promoted is what counts.
Michael Vigil, then head of the DEA's regional office in San Juan, described
the operation as a ``tremendous success.''

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.''

AN ANALYSIS

However, the DEA's internal documents and interviews with drug agents and
officials from Libertador's participating countries show:

* The DEA could not account for 375 of the 2,876 arrests attributed to
Libertador. For most of the rest, it simply accepted whatever numbers
participating countries reported.

* The largest number of arrests -- 996 -- were in Jamaica, where authorities
said most were for misdemeanor marijuana possession. Most of the defendants
were fined and released.

* Much of the marijuana interdiction credited to Libertador consisted of
plants that had been burned in Jamaica and already counted as part of the
State Department's ``Operation Buccaneer,'' which has been under way since
1982.

* 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,'' Chapman said.

DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall declined to be interviewed about
Libertador, Chapman said.

While unable to confirm the arrest figures he offered initially, 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 three previous anti-drug initiatives
in the Caribbean, 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. ``You
can't argue with the success of these operations, and the fact that we're
developing international coalitions, I think, speaks for itself.''

Obtaining accurate arrest and seizure records is tough, said Rafael Perl, a
drug policy analyst for the Congressional Research Service.

``It's hard enough to get U.S. anti-drug agencies to share information,''
Perl said. ``When dealing with foreign countries, the problem is magnified
tenfold.''

``I'm not surprised at all that the statistics reported are unverifiable,''
said Eric Sterling, a former counsel on drug policy to the House Judiciary
Committee.

Sterling, now president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in
Washington, which advocates prevention and treatment measures to combat the
drug problem, said, ``Congress and agency managers hunger for success
stories to brag about.''

MANY PARTICIPANTS

Libertador began Oct. 27 and ended Nov. 19. Nearly every nation in the
Caribbean participated, including Haiti and the Dominican Republic, along
with major Latin American cocaine-trafficking countries such as Colombia,
Bolivia and Mexico.

The biggest catch 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.

DEA 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 ``targeting package'' -- a list of suspected drug
traffickers -- that was provided to Dominican officials in the planning
stages of Libertador.

Libertador's operations in Jamaica included a public relations initiative,
aimed mainly at a TV police show, Arrest and Trial. For the cameras, DEA
agents did a second take of their plane's arrival in Jamaica, donned caps
and jackets bearing the DEA's insignia and made commanding-like gestures.

One analyst questioned the value of the DEA operation and an emphasis on
arrests.

``Did the operation have any impact whatsoever on the price or availability
of drugs?'' asked Ethan Nadelmann, a former State Department drug policy
analyst who now heads the New York-based Lindesmith Center, which favors
drug treatment over arrests. ``Did it have any impact whatsoever on the
number of people addicted to or overdosing from heroin or cocaine? The odds
are overwhelmingly no.''