Volume 40, Number 13 · July 15, 1993
Delusions of the Drug Cops
By Michael Massing
Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition, Savagery, and Betrayal
by David McClintick
Pantheon, 606 pp., $25.00
The 'war on drugs' of the 1980s was good for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In 1981, the agency's annual budget was not quite $200 million; by 1992, it had grown to more than $800 million. Having outgrown its longtime headquarters in a weatherbeaten office building in downtown Washington, the DEA in 1989 moved into a sleek tower in Arlington, Virginia, across from the Pentagon. By 1992 it had working for it 2,832 drug agents, 428 intelligence specialists, 421 investigators, 214 chemists, and 2,313 clerical workers. Across the country, DEA agents are staking out airports, patrolling highways, tapping phones, and prying into bank accounts. Abroad, the agency is active in fifty countries on five continents. It conducts paramilitary raids, spies on government officials, destroys crops, and gathers intelligence—missions every bit as secretive and sensitive as those of the CIA.
Review, 3705 words
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