SURVEILLANCE OF CLUBS NETTED 84 AT LEJEUNE

CAMP LEJEUNE - The drug investigation that led to the arrests of 84 Camp
Lejeune Marines and sailors began two years ago when Wilmington ravers
noticed a few high-and-tight haircuts among a throng of dancing,
tablet-popping partyers.

The largest drug bust in Camp Lejeune history closed Wednesday with
reminders from Marine leaders that the service is, for good and bad, a
reflection of society.

Camp Lejeune is a city of more than 100,000 people, half of them Marines,
with its own police and firefighting forces, its own commercial strip and
its own struggles with crime.

"A Marine is still a human being. He's going to go out and socialize. And
in a few cases, he's going to make a very bad mistake," said Robin Knapp,
who supervised the investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Code-named Operation Xterminator -- the X stands for Ecstasy, the most
prevalent drug seized -- the two-year inquiry was actually a collection of
103 separate investigations triggered by an informant's call to Wilmington
police. Taken individually, many cases appear no different from other
incidents involving Marines out for a good time.

Camp Lejeune is located about 230 miles east of Charlotte in Jacksonville,
which has the collection of strip clubs and tattoo parlors often found in
military towns. The 246-square-mile coastal base keeps a running list of
local businesses that are off-limits to Marines. It often tops two dozen.

But there's a difference between blowing off steam and risking death.
Thirty years ago, trouble for a Marine in Jacksonville meant getting drunk,
slugging someone and spending a night in the brig.

Among the $1.4 million in narcotics seized during Operation Xterminator
were 4 kilograms of cocaine, 13,000 doses of LSD, 56 ounces of the
so-called "date rape" drug GHB, 405 units of steroids and 31,000 tablets of
Ecstasy -- a designer hallucinogenic that pumps up the heart rate and can,
in rare instances, lead to cardiac arrest and respiratory failure. Ecstasy
is easy to produce and, at $20 to $40 a tablet, a relatively cheap high.

"A lot of Marines -- and civilians for that matter -- view Ecstasy as a
safe drug, a recreational drug," said Maj. Steve Cox, Camp Lejeune's
spokesman. "They're very wrong."

Though military use of drugs such as heroin and cocaine has dropped since
the Vietnam War, all four military branches have seen an increase in recent
years of designer drugs such as Ecstasy and LSD.

Recent struggles to find recruits have compounded the military's drug
problem, said retired Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, a former inspector general
at the Pentagon who is now a vice president for policy at the conservative
Family Research Council.

Of the roughly 3 million drug tests issued to military personnel in fiscal
year 2001, fewer than 1 percent came back positive.

A Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday he did not know how many of the
positive tests resulted in a GI being discharged. Maginnis said it happened
in less than a third of the cases.

"The idea that there is a zero tolerance policy is ludicrous," he said.
"Commanders are given a ceiling on how many they can discharge. It's kind
of driven down from the top. We can only recruit so many people, so you can
only discharge so many people."

Investigators said the drug use they discovered wasn't a ring so much as a
loosely connected network of dealers and mostly recreational users. The
inquiry started in Wilmington nightclubs that specialized in raves, rowdy
dance parties featuring pumping techno music, elaborate, pulsing lights
and, occasionally, hallucinogenic drug use. It grew to include private
parties in Jacksonville and a few cases of drug use within the barracks at
Camp Lejeune.

Eighty-two Marines and sailors have pleaded guilty or been convicted in
military court, with defendants receiving three-to 19-year sentences. Those
with shorter sentences are serving their time at the Camp Lejeune brig,
while those with longer sentences are at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. All
received dishonorable or bad conduct discharges, which means they lose any
veteran's benefits. Two military cases are pending.

Ninety-nine civilians, including a Defense Department employee and the
spouse of a Marine, have been charged. Many of those cases are pending. All
of the Marines and sailors charged were enlisted personnel.

Investigators believe this pattern of designer drug use was unique to Camp
Lejeune, though they did discover a few connections with other N.C. bases.
They did not find any drug laboratories in the searches, nor was any one
person identified as the kingpin. (The man facing the longest list of
charges pleaded guilty and now appears in a Marine Corps educational video
about the dangers of Ecstasy. He taped his comments from a cell at Camp
Lejeune.)

Besides similar social interests, there were no obvious connections -- such
as similar service histories or assignments -- among most of those charged.
None was part of Marine Expeditionary Units, the self-contained fighting
groups that deploy overseas for six months and were an important part of
the early stages of the war in Afghanistan.

The operation relied on undercover work, with one federal agent spending
six months deep within the Wilmington rave culture under an assumed
identity and 16 other officers going "shallow" undercover -- meaning they
would dip in and out of the party scene to buy drugs and collect other
evidence. Agents had expected to spend 90 days looking into Ecstasy use
when they began in February 2000, but found enough evidence and potential
criminal acts to stretch their work over more than two years.

An hour's drive from Camp Lejeune, Wilmington, home to UNC Wilmington and
adjacent to several beaches, is popular among Marines, and soldiers and
aviators from other N.C. bases.

One popular military hangout in Wilmington was a downtown club called .com.
Police have since shut it down, said Capt. G.A. Pulley of the
Wilmington/New Hanover County vice unit. Private raves there often started
as late as 2 a.m. and lasted as long as 18 hours. Police revoked the club's
liquor permit, but people paid $2.50 for water to avoid dehydration from
dancing and the drugs.

Informants and undercover agents identified the Marines and sailors during
the course of regular vice work, Pulley said. The first clue was their
crewcuts.

"You don't want to think of your boys in the military doing it," Pulley
said, "but you've got to remember, they're just human."