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J. Edgar Hoover, the crusty patriarch of the FBI, would
not allow his agents to touch drug cases, convinced that
drugs would corrupt the FBI's integrity just as easily as
they destroyed the addicts who abused them. But Hoover is
long since dead, and the modern FBI is rapidly becoming the
dominant player in the war on drugs, spending nearly a
third of its $ 3 billion budget on narcotics enforcement.

FBI agents eavesdrop on phone calls of drug traffickers,
work with the Drug Enforcement Administration to break up
drug syndicates exporting narcotics to the United States
from Mexico and, more recently, have targeted street gangs
that sell drugs.

Over the past five budget years, federal funds
appropriated to the FBI for drug enforcement have jumped 82
percent, more than any other agency with federal drug
oversight, including the DEA.

In Georgia, the FBI works many of the drug cases outside
metro Atlanta and is starting to take part in cases inside
the city as well, particularly in the arrest of
drugdealing street gangs.

"Two or three years ago, you were not looking at federal
prosecutions of street 'gangbangers,' " said Buddy Parker,
head of the Justice Department's Organized Crime Drug
Enforcement Task Force in Atlanta. "FBI . . . resources
have been diverted to areas that used to be local drug
enforcement." This year, the FBI is asking for $ 42 million
in new antidrug money, most of it to expand the bureau's
enforcement program along the southwest border with Mexico,
a joint FBI/DEA initiative; $ 10 million is earmarked for
new wiretapping technology.

Some critics charge Congress' generosity with the FBI
has come at the expense of the DEA, which they say is
better suited to cracking drug crimes.

"The French Connection was broken up not by the FBI but
by the DEA," said Peter Bensinger, DEA's administrator from
1976 to 1981, referring to the heroin pipeline from France
to the United States in the 1970s. The FBI's "method of
investigation does not strike me as earthshattering."

But the FBI's supporters say that Congress' decision to
pour millions into the FBI reflects the success of the
bureau's "enterprise" approach to solving drug cases,
cloned from tactics used against organized crime.

"The purpose is to collect intelligence and evidence on
the entire organization and take it out, including its
operatives, its holdings, its properties, its bank
accounts," said Buck Revell, an Atlanta native who served
as the FBI's thirdranking administrator from 1979 to 1991.
Revell contrasted the FBI's tactics to the "body count"
methods at the DEA, whose agents target dealers and drug
kingpins with sting operations.

"The DEA is still largely a transactional agency,"
Revell said. "It takes credit for anything that touches it,
therefore its statistics look spectacular but their impact
sometimes is not very significant." But measuring the
FBI's performance is also difficult.

Federal drug prosecutions have risen less than 3 percent
since 1992 despite the huge infusion of funds.

The quantity of illegal drugs entering the country has
declined, but dangerous drugs such as heroin and cocaine
have become cheaper and more potent.

Some in Congress believe the United States is losing the
war on drugs, particularly in Mexico. The four major
drug cartels in Mexico, which serves as the transshipment
point for 70 percent of the cocaine and 50 percent of the
heroine entering the U.S., operate freely.

The FBI and the DEA scored a substantial hit against the
cartels with the conviction last year of drug lord Juan
GarciaAbrego, formerly one of the FBI's 10 most wanted
suspects. FBI, DEA and other law enforcement agents seized
5,600 kilos of cocaine, $ 17 million in cash and assets and
arrested more than 150 people in the investigation.

"We're pouring money down DEA and FBI like nobody's
business," said Rep. Hal Rogers (RKy.), chairman of the
House appropriations subcommittee with oversight of the FBI
and DEA. "They are beefing up and building up and doing all
they can, yet we are confronting insurmountable odds."

Congress gave the FBI jurisdiction over drug cases in
1982, a move that Hoover had adamantly resisted before he
died in 1972.

"It had to do with his believing that drugs were a local
problem, that drugs were a vice," said Revell.

Hoover biographer Athan Theoharis said Hoover believed
drugs would also corrupt the bureau's image.

"There was this whole campaign to establish the
professionalism of the bureau" under Hoover, Theoharis
said. "Certain kinds of activities would compromise agents
and detract from that image." After Hoover's death, FBI
officials began lobbying Congress for drug jurisdiction,
recognizing that drugs were the primary income of organized
crime.

The breakup of the socalled pizza connection in the
mid1980s, in which New York Mafia families were laundering
heroin money to Italy, was the FBI's first major victory in
the drug war.

More recently, as law enforcement officials understand
the link between the Latin American drug cartels that
produce drugs and the street gangs they employ to sell
them, the FBI has targeted more and more of its money at
gangs.

For the first time, the FBI estimates that a majority of
its violent crime budget will be tied up in drug
investigations.