DRUG WAR LINCHPIN RETIRES

Keith Helped Shape Major Investigation

TAMPA - Dick Keith was among the jubilant federal agents watching as
Colombian multimillionaire Joaquin Mario Valencia-Trujillo, accused of
smuggling tons of cocaine into the United States, made his first federal
court appearance last month.

Valencia's extradition to Tampa was the high point of a decadelong
investigation called Operation Panama Express, which aims to shut down the
Colombian drug trade. Drug agents have seized or sunk 262 tons of cocaine
and made 550 arrests.

The court appearance "was a great day of personal satisfaction," said
Keith, the FBI supervisory agent who led the investigation from his
Sarasota office. Valencia faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted.

The focus of the probe for five years, Valencia had fought extradition for
more than a year, arriving mere days before Keith retired, ending a 24-year
career. He is moving on to a new career as a consultant to a government
task force on drug trafficking cases in Hawaii.

Keith played a key role in shaping Panama Express, which officially began
in 1998 but was rooted in the seizure of a freighter carrying cocaine in
1992 and a money laundering investigation that Keith began in Naples in 1995.

Keith says the drug operation has put Colombian cocaine smugglers on the
defensive.

"I think, for the very first time, the drug traffickers are not out plying
their trade with reckless abandon," he said.

"We're hitting into their midlevel leadership and going up to the highest
levels of leadership. I think it is having a very, very serious impact upon
their ability to continue in this business."

Origins Of Panama Express

The strategy of Panama Express has been to continually develop new information.

"Intelligence leads to interdictions," Keith said. "Interdictions lead to
prosecutions. Prosecutions lead to more intelligence, which leads to more
interdictions."

Keith, described by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph K. Ruddy in Tampa as an
architect of Panama Express, said the operation owes its success to the
determination of investigators to put turf concerns aside.

Ruddy said Keith saw the potential of the investigation early. In June
1995, when Keith was working in Naples, he heard from a friend, a retired
FBI supervisor then working in the Coral Gables Police Department, that
there was suspicious activity in some bank accounts.

The friend gave Keith copies of some checks, and Keith started digging.

The accounts were held by Panamanian front companies incorporated in the
British Virgin Islands. More than $1 million came through one of the
accounts in a single year, all in the form of money orders deposited and
checks written to other accounts.

Keith teamed up with Drug Enforcement Administration analyst Tami Albanese.
They identified whom the accounts belonged to and started to subpoena
records for the accounts where the checks were deposited. They wound up
investigating about 40 bank accounts in nearly nine months.

The evidence led to Jose Castrillon-Henao, who authorities later would
identify as the head of maritime smuggling for Valencia, reputedly a leader
in the notorious Cali cartel.

"Castrillon, we found out, was the subject of a huge international
investigation" involving the DEA, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and
officials in many other countries, Keith said. He and Albanese were able to
give the investigators some of the proof they needed that Castrillon was
involved in money laundering.

Relying partly on that evidence, Panamanian authorities arrested Castrillon
in April 1996, and U.S. investigators, including Keith, cooperated in a
planned prosecution there.

In 1998, the Panamanians asked the United States to take over the case.

According to Ruddy, the Panamanians were concerned Castrillon might escape.

Reports in The Washington Post at the time quoted unidentified U.S.
officials as saying the Panamanians may also have feared that Castrillon
would make good on his threats to go public with the names of Panamanian
officials who had protected him and his operation. Castrillon had
contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the election campaign of
President Ernesto Perez Balladares.

To accommodate the Panamanians and build a case in the United States, Keith
said, "We formed a task force to take what [evidence] we had and add to it."

Keith suggested the investigation be called "Operation Panama Express,"
because the goal was to get Castrillon "out of Panama as quickly as possible."

Ruddy said Keith "had a vision of what Panama Express could be potentially,
and he also had the will and leadership capabilities of making that a reality."

Castrillon eventually pleaded guilty and cooperated with investigators,
disclosing his shipping routes through which the Cali cartel smuggled 100
tons of cocaine a year into the United States.

"We learned a great deal about maritime trafficking while we were working
Jose's case," Keith said. "For a number of years now, Panama Express has
been all about obtaining information from a number of resources."

A Marine, A Poseur

Keith's FBI career has been colorful.

A conservative, Louisiana-born, decorated former Marine, he once tooled
around Dallas in a Corvette pretending to be a rich playboy with rich
friends, interested in investing in stolen masterpieces.

Keith once helped solve a murder by arranging for an undercover agent to
pose as a Mafia capo. The faux capo elicited information from a hit man in
Florida by putting the killer through an interview for a "job" in New York.

As a Marine, Keith helped command the last military battle between United
States and Cambodian forces in an assault of Koh Tang Island after Khmer
Rouge forces seized the SS Mayaguez in 1975.

The helicopter-borne assault was undertaken with the mistaken belief that
the crew of the Mayaguez was being held on the island. Eighteen Marines
were killed.

Despite that, Keith said, the battle was "positively a worthwhile
experience. ... The United States had taken some pretty severe blows,
having lost Vietnam, Cambodia. ... We had to take some very decisive
action. President Ford did that" by ordering the assault on the island.

Ruddy said Keith's Marine background helped make him a good investigator
and has helped make Panama Express a success. "He's just a get-it-done kind
of individual," Ruddy said.

FBI Special Agent Rod Huff, Keith's acting replacement, credited Keith with
minimizing friction between agencies.

"The most important thing Dick Keith ever did was forge a great
relationship, overcoming a history of difficulties with DEA and Customs and
the military," Huff said. "He's a great diplomat."