NEW JOB FOR A LOCAL DEA DRUG FIGHTER

Special agent going to track drug activity in Bangkok,
Budapest

Dominick Braccio, special agent, was working undercover in Italy in
the early 1990s when he was struck by the realization that his U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration badge might carry less weight than he
once thought.

Assigned to the DEA's Rome office and fluent in Italian, he was
investigating the Mafia with local authorities when one of them asked
why he chose such a dangerous line of work.

To stop the flow of drugs into the United States, he
answered.

Besides, he said, would the Italian mob really risk killing a U.S.
federal agent?

"If they found out who you are," the officer said, "they'd grind you
up and feed you to the pigs."

So much for a sense of security.

"This was traditional Mafia," Braccio said recently. "They play for
keeps over there."

Braccio eventually moved on to the Pittsburgh DEA office, where for
the past four years he has headed up the Violent Traffickers Program
Task Force, a 12-man unit that lives by the motto, "We'll rest when
we're dead."

Now, after helping to clean up the streets of Duquesne, Wilkinsburg,
McKees Rocks and other towns, Braccio is headed back overseas again,
this time to train police in such foreign outposts as Bangkok and
Budapest in the battle against increasingly sophisticated -- and
violent -- drug organizations.

Working out of the DEA's international training academy in Quantico,
Va., he'll travel the world as one of the point men in the war on
illicit narcotics. And make no mistake, the DEA considers it a war, to
the point where agents on an unofficial DEA Web site refer to
themselves as "soldiers."

"It's a global threat," Braccio said, "and now I'll be addressing that
threat directly, to combat where the drugs are coming from."

Braccio, 41, doesn't match the kick-down-the-door image of the DEA
narc. A family man with a wife and four children at home, he speaks
softly and carefully and has a physique no one would confuse with Hulk
Hogan's. In a suit, he looks like the guy taking your loan application
at the bank.

But you have to figure he's tough enough.

In 14 years as a DEA agent, he's tussled with all manner of well-armed
bad guys, from Colombian dealers flying cocaine into Michigan to the
New York-supplied drug ring operating out of a garage in Rankin.

Now it's time to teach. Braccio left Pittsburgh two weeks ago for
Quantico. From there, he'll travel 10 to 12 times a year with a small
team of agents and conduct two-week training courses on interdiction,
infiltration and surveillance.

He left Thursday for his first assignment in Turkmenistan, where the
DEA's Turkey office is battling the heroin trade.

With the exception of methamphetamine, which is often made in U.S.
labs, the majority of illegal drugs are produced in other countries
and shipped to the United States for distribution. It's been
estimated, for example, that 80 percent of the cocaine on U.S. streets
comes from Colombia, where the DEA has 50 agents.

It's the agency's job to stop the narcotics industry at home and
abroad with three methods of attack: slow the demand through
education, lock up the regional traffickers and take out the foreign
suppliers.

Cities such as Pittsburgh are considered "consumer areas," supplied by
cocaine and marijuana distributors in New York, Philadelphia, Texas
and Florida. Those distributors get their drugs from cartels in
Mexico, Colombia, Asia and Eastern Europe.

To fight them, the DEA has 60 field offices around the
globe.

"We're the largest anti-drug agency in the world," Braccio
said.

And because the DEA has been at war with drug dealers for decades in
the United States, Braccio said, it falls to former undercover agents
such as him to show authorities in foreign countries how best to cut
off the head of the serpent.

Those who have worked with Braccio say he's a good choice for the job,
with just the right mix of smarts, guts and professionalism.

"He's extremely hard-working and knowledgeable, and most importantly,
he commands respect from his peers and the people in his group from
other agencies," said Bruce Teitelbaum, an assistant U.S. attorney in
Pittsburgh who deals mostly with drug cases.

Braccio, who started his career as a 21-year-old beat cop in the
Philadelphia area and rose to detective there, isn't given to bragging
about his exploits, but he's been involved in white-knuckle undercover
operations from Texas to New York.

While assigned to the DEA office in Detroit between 1987 and 1992, he
once posed as a member of an organized crime family to do business
with a Mexican marijuana cartel. He set up delivery of 2 tons of pot
and, after a series of meetings, lured the Mexicans to San Antonio.
The cartel's plan was to send a courier carrying 100 pounds of the
drug across the border as a decoy for the U.S. Border Patrol, while
the truck carrying the larger haul entered unnoticed. Braccio accepted
delivery of the larger marijuana load in Texas, and after a car chase,
he and other agents arrested eight members of the group and seized
their heavily fortified Texas ranch.

Also during his time in Detroit, Braccio and other agents posed as
narcotics traffickers, off-loading 1,300 pounds of cocaine from a
plane that flew from Colombia to an island air strip between Michigan
and Canada. The DEA busted that ring, too, which included a second
Colombian cell in New York.

"These are typical cases in the life of a DEA agent," Braccio said.
"It's an exciting job. It's challenging. But the goal is always the
same: You put the bad guys in jail and go home."

Pittsburgh had been home since 1996, when Braccio took over the
violent traffickers task force.

"He's the consummate performer," said his former boss, James Harper.
"He's performed in a manner better than some people who have been on
the job twice as long."

The task force, made up of federal agents and top officers from
Allegheny County Police, the sheriff's office and the police
departments in Pittsburgh, Duquesne and McKees Rocks, has a simple
mission.

"We go after the baddest of the bad," Braccio said. "I had the
opportunity to coach the dream team [of officers]. It was like being
in the Olympics. We've done some serious damage to drug trafficking in
Western Pennsylvania. We have the respect of the community and the
fear of the traffickers."

He won't get an argument from the mayor of Duquesne, Phil Krivacek.
Braccio's team, which includes a Duquesne officer, has been credited
with helping clean up the long-suffering Mon Valley town, which had
been plagued by drug dealers.

"There's a drug problem everywhere, and we didn't want it to get any
worse," Krivacek said. "I think DEA has been very effective. They're
discreet. You don't even know who they are. We still do our own
investigations. But if they get you, you're gone."

In addition to making arrests in the streets, the DEA gives 80 percent
of the proceeds from assets seized in drug cases back to the city and
five other communities where it is active. Krivacek said the money was
channeled into his town's police department to pay for equipment, such
as computers.

Krivacek met Braccio only once, but came away impressed.

"He was a very intelligent man who knew exactly what he was talking
about," he said. "We just hope the new guy is just as good."

That will be Brian Averi, who comes to Pittsburgh from the Quantico
headquarters.

Like any drug agent, Braccio bristles at the notion that the
government is wasting its money fighting the seemingly inexhaustible
drug trade, and he points to Duquesne, McKees Rocks and other towns
where drug dealers no longer rule neighborhoods by fear.

"When you see kids on the street again because the traffickers are
gone, you know you're making an impact," he said. "It's not a
victimless crime. Drug dealing leads to other crimes and affects
quality of life."

During his tenure in Pittsburgh, Braccio's team had a 100 percent
conviction rate. Before his arrival, the DEA unit and an FBI task
force helped put the Larimer Avenue -Wilkinsburg gang out of action,
and since then, the group has helped eliminate several other large
drug rings.

One of the most notorious was the Ed Monroe gang in Fayette
County.

Monroe, a Uniontown drug dealer who was known as "New York Ed" because
he was originally from New York, was convicted in 1997 along with two
other men of killing a state police informant who was scheduled to
testify against him in 1995. Monroe was the ring leader of a gang that
brought cocaine from New York to Western Pennsylvania for
distribution, then laundered the proceeds, according to the U.S.
attorney's office. The DEA worked the case along with state police,
Uniontown police and the Internal Revenue Service.

Braccio's group also broke up the Simon Hodge ring, which was
operating out of Wright's Auto Truck Service in Rankin last year.
Hodge, a Dominican from the Bronx, traveled to New York to buy cocaine
and returned with 66 to 88 pounds of coke stashed in specially
designed hidden compartments in his vehicle. He and his
co-conspirators stored and distributed the drugs from the garage on
Hamilton Avenue.

When agents raided the building, Braccio remembers, one of the ring's
members drove his car through the garage door and smashed into a DEA
surveillance van. Trapped, he threw the car into reverse and tried to
back over agents inside.

He ended up in prison, along with Hodge and their colleagues.

"We've been in some dicey situations," Braccio said. "But it's
rewarding when the mayor of a town tells us how much he appreciates
getting the dealers off the street."