Pubdate: Sun, 26 Aug 2001
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2001 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washtimes.com/
Author: Oliver North
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492

MEDIA GRASS FIRES FACE DEA CHIEF

Former federal prosecutor, three-term Arkansas congressman, and Clinton 
nemesis, Asa Hutchinson, took over the beleaguered Drug Enforcement 
Administration (DEA) last week. The so-called mainstream media was there. 
But you wouldn't know it from their coverage.

Instead of focusing on the new administrator's recognition of the 
challenges his 4,561 special agents face in stemming the tide of illegal 
drugs flowing through American cities, the potentates of the press decided 
the "big story" was Mr. Hutchinson's intent to enforce federal laws against 
the use of "medical marijuana."

"DEA head backs medical marijuana ban." screamed the Associated Press 
headline. The Washington Post trumpeted, "DEA chief tough on medical 
marijuana," as though the man who had presented the case against Bill 
Clinton was a heartless dog kicker.

Mr. Hutchinson acknowledged that, despite ordinances permitting marijuana 
to be grown and dispensed as medicine in Alaska, Arizona, California, 
Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington, it's still "a violation of 
federal law" that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld and made a federal 
enforcement responsibility. Responding to reporters' questions, he 
emphasized his support of local drug courts, treatment and rehabilitation 
rather than incarceration for first-time offenders. But that was lost in 
the clucking of the press who were more concerned with whether or not 
grandma could still get a toke to treat her Alzheimer's. Instead of taking 
"pot shots" at the new DEA chief over "healthful hash," the paragons of the 
press should have probed him on how he intends to staunch the flow of 
cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into the United States from south of 
our border.

Strangely, the same editors, producers and news directors who couldn't get 
enough Latin American footage in the 1980s, have now forgotten the region's 
existence. Back then, in the salad days of Marxist revolutionaries running 
rampant through the capitals of our southern neighbors, the press was 
fascinated by the Reagan administration's efforts to prevent communism from 
establishing a toehold on the mainland of this hemisphere. With great glee, 
newspapers and TV networks dispatched hoards of reporters to cover our 
efforts to stem what CIA Director Bill Casey called "the red tide." But now 
- -- when the threat to U.S. citizens comes from well-financed, highly armed 
narco-terrorists who threaten the stability of whole countries -- no one is 
asking questions of the man who has to lead the fight.

He faces a formidable challenge. With a $1.5 billion budget, and only 9,132 
employees, the DEA administrator is responsible for building alliances in 
what the media describes as "a war we are losing." Hobbled by the Clinton 
administration's refusal to negotiate with Panama for surveillance and 
intelligence collection sites in 1999, Mr. Hutchinson must now contend with 
highly sophisticated Colombian drug traffickers and what outnumbered, 
outgunned DEA agents call "a labyrinth of smuggling routes throughout the 
Caribbean, the Bahaman Islands chain and South Florida."

At his swearing-in ceremony, the press asked Mr. Hutchinson to respond to 
past DEA gaffes -- like the failure to adequately supervise paid 
informants. But in the great scheme of things, that's the least in a long 
legacy of past policy catastrophes that he inherits.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana was whipsawed for years by Clinton 
officials who urged him, on the one hand, to fight back against the 
narco-guerrillas who ravaged his country and to appease them with a 
Mideast-like "land for peace" deal, on the other hand. As a result, the 
second oldest democracy in this hemisphere is in pieces -- with tens of 
thousands of square miles ceded to the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces 
of Colombia (FARC), the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) and 
right-wing paramilitaries who are a law unto themselves.

With more than 40,000 Colombians dead in drug-related violence, Venezuelan 
President Hugo Chavez -- a big fan of Fidel Castro and Nicaragua's 
drug-dealing Daniel Ortega -- complains that counter-narcotics operations 
by U.S.-trained Colombian army and national police units -- supported by 
$1.3 billion in U.S. aid -- are "driving traffickers across the border." 
Apparently Mr. Chavez and his champions in the U.S. media have forgotten 
that for more than two years he has been offering sanctuary to FARC and ELN 
terrorists he describes as lawful "belligerents."

Meanwhile, on the eve of Mr. Hutchinson's swearing in, the Colombian army 
announced that it had apprehended three Irish Republican Army terrorists en 
route to Paris after spending five weeks in Colombia training FARC 
guerrillas to build car bombs "and other unconventional weapons." According 
to Cuba's Foreign Ministry, one of the men, Niall Connolly, had lived in 
Fidel's island paradise as the Latin American representative for Sinn Fein, 
the political arm of the IRA. Apparently, none of the reporters questioning 
Mr. Hutchinson thought to query the new DEA head about the IRA-FARC-Cuba 
connection.

Maybe the members of our Fourth Estate just don't get it. But one who does 
is Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, the now-retired Colombian cop who destroyed the 
Medillin and Cali drug cartels. Just before he returned to Colombia last 
week, I asked Gen. Serrano what he thought of Mr. Hutchinson's appointment 
as the head of DEA. "I know him and I trust him. With his help, we can win. 
He's a strong man," the general said. But unfortunately, that strong man 
isn't a part of the State Department's delegation to Colombia this week to 
hold three days of talks on combating the FARC, ELN and the drug 
traffickers. He should be. And the press should ask why he isn't.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager