Pubdate: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN) Copyright: 2001 St. Paul Pioneer Press Contact: 345 Cedar St., St. Paul, MN 55101 Website: http://www.pioneerplanet.com/ Forum: http://www.pioneerplanet.com/watercooler/ Author: Lenny Savino, Washington Bureau 36-NATION DRUG BUST TALLIES FAIL TO ADD UP Investigation Discovers That 'operation Libertador' Counted Cash From Previous Drug Sweep, Failed To Document Arrests Fully SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The Drug Enforcement Administration used phony figures to tout the success of a 36-nation "major takedown'' of drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Latin America last fall. The DEA's scorecard on "Operation Libertador'' reported 2,876 arrests, but a Knight Ridder investigation found that agency officials have no evidence to support hundreds of them. Hundreds more were routine busts for marijuana possession, and some drug eradication figures are double-counts of a State Department program to burn marijuana plants. And while the DEA said $30.2 million in criminal assets was seized during Operation Libertador, $30 million of that was confiscated four weeks before the operation began. The DEA official who masterminded the exercise -- since promoted to head the DEA's international operations -- admits some discrepancies, but says the international cooperation that Libertador promoted is what counts. If the DEA's official tallies are generally as unreliable as Libertador's, however, the public is likely either to overestimate the drug war's progress or grow cynical about America's very difficult multibillion-dollar narcotics enforcement enterprise. Certainly, it's difficult to tell what happened during Libertador, described as a ``tremendous success'' by its leader, Michael Vigil, then head of the DEA's regional office in San Juan. Libertador, the fourth U.S.-led regional drug crackdown since 1998, intended to engage U.S., Caribbean and Latin drug authorities simultaneously in what the DEA called ``an attempt to dismantle top-echelon traffickers in the region.'' However, the DEA's internal documents and interviews with drug agents and officials from Libertador's participating countries show that: The DEA could not account for 375 of the 2,876 arrests attributed to Libertador. For most of the rest, it simply accepted whatever numbers participating countries reported. The largest number of arrests -- 996 -- were in Jamaica, where authorities said most of them were for misdemeanor marijuana possession. Much of the marijuana interdiction credited to Libertador consisted of plants that had been burned in Jamaica and already counted as part of the State Department's ``Operation Buccaneer,'' which has been under way since 1982. No one cared much about drug intelligence-gathering. The DEA did not, as a rule, ask for the names of those arrested, the outcomes of their cases or what happened to their drugs and cash. DEA spokesman Michael Chapman said his agency saw no problems with Libertador or its operations accounting system. "Everything was done properly and above board,'' he said after discussing Knight Ridder's findings with DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall. Marshall declined to be interviewed about Libertador, Chapman said. While unable to confirm the arrest figures he offered initially, Chapman said his agency would ``stick by the reported arrests, because those were the numbers that were called in'' by foreign law-enforcement officials. Vigil, the overseer of Libertador and three previous regional anti-drug initiatives in the Caribbean, said in an interview that the names and numbers were not very important. "The key here is that we have 36 countries that put aside cultural, political and economic differences to come together,'' Vigil said. "You can't argue with the success of these operations, and the fact that we're developing international coalitions, I think, speaks for itself.'' Obtaining accurate arrest and seizure records is tough, added Rafael Perl, a drug policy analyst for the Congressional Research Service. "It's hard enough to get U.S. anti-drug agencies to share information,'' said Perl. "When dealing with foreign countries the problem is magnified tenfold.'' Unimpressed, a former DEA senior official who ran similar operations in Central and South America said Libertador's tactics were seriously flawed. "It's ridiculous if the names aren't included,'' he said, on condition that he not be identified. "You've got to identify (who gets arrested). That's your job.'' "I'm not surprised at all that the statistics reported are unverifiable,'' said Eric Sterling, a former counsel on drug policy to the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. Sterling, now president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Washington, which advocates prevention and treatment measures to combat the drug problem, continued: "Distortions in the government's reporting of drug operations are commonplace.'' One reason, he said: "Congress and agency managers hunger for success stories to brag about.'' Vigil has twice testified before Congress on the accomplishments of previous multinational drug operations he has led, including figures on arrests and seizures. He recently was promoted to head the DEA's international enforcement division, active in 56 countries worldwide. Last year, after directing "Operation Columbus,'' a 15-nation predecessor of Libertador that claimed nearly 1,300 arrests in 12 days, Vigil was named Puerto Rico's "Top Cop'' by the National Association of Police Organizations. Libertador, the latest exercise, began at 6 a.m. Oct. 27 and ended at midnight Nov. 19. Nearly every nation in the Caribbean participated, including Haiti and the Dominican Republic, along with major Latin American cocaine-trafficking countries such as Colombia, Bolivia and Mexico. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens