WITHOUT SUPPORT, DEA CHIEF STEPS AWAY

THOMAS Constantine gave his one-month notice on May 24. The head of the
Drug Enforcement Administration said that, after five years on the job, he
wants out of the Clinton administration.

His explanation was rather cryptic. "What was . . . important to me," he
told a reporter, "was a strong reputation for integrity. I wanted to be
able to leave here with it."

The DEA chief would not elaborate, but it is not terribly difficult to read
between the lines.

He and his 9,000 agents and employees at DEA have been fighting and, in
some cases, dying over the past five years to staunch the flood of drugs
into United States and to crack down on international drug syndicates.

But their efforts have been undermined by an administration that refuses to
heed the warnings of Constantine and others at the DEA that Mexican drug
traffickers pose the biggest criminal threat to U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Just this past February, Constantine provided the Senate Drug Caucus with
information that suggests that Mexico has supplanted Colombia as the
world's leading exporter of illegal narcotics.

"Since the mid-1990s," Constantine testified, "we have watched with concern
as powerful organized crime syndicates based in Mexico began to dominate
the distribution of drugs within virtually every community in the United
States."

While lawmakers found Constantine's testimony quite persuasive, his own
administration apparently was less convinced. For a mere two days after the
DEA chief's appearance on Capitol Hill, President Clinton certified Mexico
as a full and reliable partner in the war on drugs.

Aside from Constantine, there was nary a dissenting word from any other
administration official. In fact, Attorney General Janet Reno, White House
drug czar Barry McCaffrey and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went so
far as to talk about how wonderful a job the Mexican government has done to
root out the drug criminals in its midst.

But clearly, the president, his attorney general, his drug czar and his
secretary of state are in denial about Mexico (much as administration
officials were, until very recently, in denial about China).

To its credit, the Mexican government has passed new anti-drug laws, has
indicted major drug traffickers and has actually arrested a few drug
criminals. But hardly any of these indictments or arrests have actually
resulted in high-level figures in Mexican drug syndicates being convicted
of crimes and sent away for serious prison terms. That's because Mexico's
criminal justice system remains rife with corruption.

A typical example, cited by Constantine, involved a member of the
Arellano-Felix drug syndicate who was actually held in U.S. custody but was
later released for "lack of evidence."

This is what the Clinton administration considers a full and reliable
partnership in the war on drugs. Well, Thomas Constantine refused to go
along with that fiction. That's why he's bowing out on July 1, his
reputation for integrity intact.