DRUG ARRESTS

Phony Numbers Claims Require Thorough Investigation

Several former and current agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration
allege that the DEA office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, inflated arrest and
seizure numbers to make itself look better. The allegations are alarming
and must not be disregarded.

Government operations, whether they are a war on drugs or a war in Vietnam,
live or die by numbers , and the temptation to spin them to one's advantage
is always great.

The Pentagon's practice of counting enemy bodies in Vietnam was designed to
prove the effectiveness of the U.S. killing machine. The reported high
numbers were used by some in government to convince many Americans that the
United States was winning that war. The practice subsequently proved to be
totally bogus.

The DEA should not be allowed to get away with falsifying numbers of
arrests and drug seizures in its war on drugs, as the U.S. Army was allowed
to do for years with its body count in Vietnam.

The agents' allegations sound incredible. They say 70 percent of arrests
the DEA claimed for its Caribbean office in San Juan from 1998 through 2000
were phony . Local police officers actually made most of them, the agents
contend.

Nevertheless, the numbers apparently were enough to impress Washington,
D.C., and resulted in the doubling of personnel assigned to the San Juan
office.

Law enforcement officials must be held to the highest standards of honesty
for the sake of justice and because they are responsible for using
taxpayers' dollars efficiently.

Congress should thoroughly investigate these allegations against the DEA in
order to clear the agency's reputation, if warranted, or to punish those
officials who knowingly lied.