VETERAN U.S. AGENT TO LEAD METH FIGHT IN VALLEY

The Central Valley's newest anti-drug honcho, Bill Ruzzamenti, once stalked
a very different sort of high flier. The kind that steals airplanes in midair.

A former air marshal who has been with the Drug Enforcement Administration
since the agency's birth in 1973, the 51-year-old Ruzzamenti is about to
take over as director of a nine-county, federally funded campaign to combat
methamphetamine production.

From his new Fresno base, kick-started with $800,000 in federal funds,
Ruzzamenti will help coordinate anti-meth efforts from Sacramento to
Bakersfield, a region crawling with meth labs.

Ruzzamenti's own familiarity with the dangerous drug reaches back to the
days of San Francisco's hippies.

"I remember 'speed kills' being scrawled in the alleys of Haight- Ashbury,"
Ruzzamenti said Wednesday. "Somehow, that message has been lost, and in
many areas of California, methamphetamine is now the drug of choice."

The veteran federal anti-narcotics agent joined Stanislaus County Sheriff
Les Weidman in Washington this week, representing what's called the Central
Valley High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. The valley officers were among
representatives of 31 regions nationwide who gathered to swap tips and get
marching orders from Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's drug czar.

"It's not just law enforcement," Weidman said of the anti-drug program.
"It's treatment and education -- it's not just a body count."

Weidman is vice chairman of the 16-agency board that oversees the new
valley program, designated by McCaffrey's office in August, that hired
Ruzzamenti for the new job that starts in January.

Ruzzamenti now works as assistant special agent in charge of the DEA's San
Francisco office.

Ruzzamenti helped start the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, or CAMP, a
high-profile program that uses helicopters to search out marijuana crops in
Northern California forests. The CAMP program has prompted at least one
lawsuit against the program over helicopters that allegedly flew too low,
as well as some citizen complaints.

Ruzzamenti said the valley's meth problem invites a different strategy.

"Meth is a more insidious problem," Ruzzamenti said. "It's not located just
out in the national forests. It may be in downtown Modesto or in rural
Tulare County."

An additional $800,000 in federal money is expected in 2001 and $2.1
million in 2002. The money, potentially joined with state funds, is not
supposed to create a big new bureaucracy, nor will Ruzzamenti be giving
orders to individual narcotics agencies.

Better coordination is the key.

An investigative support and intelligence center will be developed in the
Fresno DEA office, with satellite offices in Stockton and Bakersfield. When
valley agencies embark on new anti-drug operations, they will fax their
plans to a central location in Los Angeles. The idea -- called
"deconfliction" -- is to ensure that agencies that don't step on one
another's toes.

"The whole point isn't to take the money, build a 12-story building, put a
sign on it and write reports," said McCaffrey, a retired Army general.
"This allows existing law enforcement agencies to better operate with a
modest amount of federal money."

The federal funds for the valley region will be channeled through
Stanislaus County, which advanced $100,000 to help the regional program get
started.

The drug, said by law enforcement officials to be under the control of
Mexican-organized crime gangs, is commonly cooked in rural, come-and-go
labs that leave behind noxious waste chemicals.