The American Justice System - Where the Rat is King.

"Gentlemen, in this business, you're only as good as your rats."
Lecture on the Handling of Criminal Informants (CIs) from U.S. Treasury Law Enforcement Academy, August, 1965

"I'm looking for Mike Levine, ex-DEA," said the man's voice.
"How'd you get this number?" I said. It was close to midnight and my wife and I were in a San Francisco hotel on business.
"Man, you don't know what I went through to find you."
The voice belonged to a well known California defense attorney who said that he'd tracked me through my publisher.
"I'm in the middle of trying a case," he said. "I need you to testify as an expert witness. The judge gave me over the weekend to find you and bring you here-"
"Whoa! Whoa!" I said. "Back up. I'm not a legal consultant-"
"-But you're a court qualified expert. I checked you out. I read your books."
"You read them?"
"Well, I just got them. . . "
"When you get around to reading them, you'll know I don't work for dopers. Nothing personal counselor."
"Don't give me that," he said. "I read some interview you did. Didn't you call the drug war a fraud?"
"A huge fraud," I said. "But because I talk about thieves, crooks and dopers inside the government doesn't mean I'm gonna work for them on the outside."
Days before this phone call I had turned down a six figure offer to work as a consultant for a Bolivian drug king pin whom I'd spent half my life trying to put in jail. I was a firm believer in if you can't do jail, don't do the sale.
"Look, I'm defending the guy for expenses," snapped the attorney, annoyed. "The guy's been working sixty hours a week for the last three years parking cars-does that sound like a Class One, fucking cocaine dealer to you?"
Class One was DEA's top rating for drug dealers. You had to be the head of a criminal organization and dealing with tens of millions of dollars in drugs each month to qualify as a Class One-Pablo Escobar and the fabled Roberto Suarez were Ones.
He had my curiosity.
"You can prove your guy's a parking lot attendant?"
"I'll Fedex you his time sheets. Better yet, I'll send you everything- undercover video-tapes and DEA's own reports. You tell me if the guy's a Class one."
"Why me?" I asked.
"DEA couldn't get any dope from Miguel (not his true name)-not even a sample. So they charge the poor bastard with a no-dope Conspiracy-did you ever hear of anything like that? A parking lot attendant on a no-dope Conspiracy? Then they bring in a DEA expert from Washington to testify that a true Class One doper doesn't give samples. You and I both know that's bullshit, don't we?"
His words flashed me back to an incident I described in The Big White Lie . It was July 4, 1980, and I was in a suite at the Buenos Aires Sheraton, sitting across a table from one of the biggest dopers alive, Hugo Hurtado Candia, as he handed me a one ounce sample of his merchandise-ninety-nine percent pure cocaine-as a prelude to a huge cocaine deal.2 The man was part of a cartel that was two weeks away from taking over his whole country.
The lawyer was right: it was pure bullshit, but it was the kind of bullshit I had always been aware of. There's enormous career pressure on street agents to make as many Class One cases as they can, for a simple reason: Federal agencies justify their budgets with statistical reports to Congress and Congress loves to see Class Ones. The agents with the highest percentage of Class Ones are the guys who get money awards and promotions. And over the years the professional rats, who originate more than 95 percent of all drug cases, had learned that selling a Class One to the government was worth a much bigger "reward" payment. A lot of them knew the DEA Agents Manual criteria for a One better than a lot of the agents.
Unfortunately in DEA and other Federal agencies-where agents are trained to be duplicitous to begin with and then exposed to deceitful, lying, scumbag politicians and bureaucrats who want results that make them look good and don't give a damn how you get them as long as you don't embarrass them by getting caught -there were agents who would bend the facts in their own favor. They'd write up a mid-level doper, or sometimes a street dealer as a Class One based on "evidence supplied by a previously reliable informant," without corroborating the rat's information. If it got by the reviewing process the worst that happened was that some mid or low level doper was called a Class One.

To me that kind of bullshit was no different than all the Federal prosecutors with an eye on public office who exaggerated the importance of their cases to a media that will swallow just about anything, as long as it sold papers and got ratings, and downright harmless compared to some drug czar facing 20 million Americans on Larry King Live and saying "We've turned the corner on the drug war," to further his political career. If you put all the dopers whom the press had reported as "linked to the Medellin or Cali Cartels" hand-in-hand, they'd circle the fucking earth.
But DEA flying an expert witness across country to make a parking lot attendant look like a Class One coke dealer in a Federal trial, was something I'd never heard of-unless things had changed drastically-and I had good reason to suspect they had. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
"You didn't answer me. What do you think I can do for you?"
"When I cross-examined the DEA expert he named your book-Deep Cover-as one of the books he read to qualify as am expert. Now I want you to testify that he's full of shit."
"There's gotta be something your not telling me."
"If I'm telling you the truth, will you be here on Monday?"
Just the thought of me going head-to-head against a small elite agency that I'd been a part of for almost a quarter of a century put knots in my stomach. Outsiders only hear about the blue of wall silence, but no description I've ever heard ever really did it justice. To most guys in narcotic enforcement the scummy bottom of life's barrel is the CI, the criminal informant-the rat. There's only one thing lower: a cop who turns rat on his own. And to me, going to work for a doper was exactly that.
"How did the thing get started?" I asked.
"A CI approaches DEA with a deal. He's wanted in Argentina and Bolivia. He says, 'If I get you a Class One arrest here, will you get the charges dropped against me over there?'"
"How much did they pay him?"
"Over thirty thousand, fucking dollars. And they admitted that he's gonna get more when the trial is over."
Thirty thousand was not all that much for a Class One, but I wasn't going to say anything to him.
"And Mr. Car-parker, what kind of rap sheet does he have?"
"Nothing!" shouted the attorney. I held the phone away from my ear. "This is his first, fucking arrest."
"What kind of rap sheet does the rat have?"
He laughed. "This guy's been busted all over South America for every kind of con job in the book. He even tried to sell his wife's vital organs while she was in a coma dying."
"Come on, counselor," I said.
"If I'm telling the truth, will you be here Monday?"
"I listened this far," I said. "If you want to send me your stuff, I'll look at it."
The telephone woke me early the next morning. It was a retired DEA agent with whom I'd worked the street for two different Federal agencies.
"People called me, Mike" he said. "And I said, 'No way, not Mike Levine.' You ain't gonna testify for some fucking dirtbag."
"I'm not doing anything yet" I said, marvelling at the speed of the Federal grapevine. "I just agreed to look at the case file."
"The guy's a scumbag, piece-of-shit, dope lawyer. He's like all these guys-every time his mouth moves he's lying. The case was righteous, Mike. Don't fall for it-not you. "
When I hung up my sweet wife and partner, Laura, was studying me. "You're as pale as a ghost."
"He's someone I really respected. Did I sound as mealy-mouthed as I think?"
"No, just really shaken."
The Fedex package was delivered to my room on Saturday morning. I opened it to find a stack of reports, including "Miguel's" work records, the transcripts of audio-tapes, the rat's file (much of it blacked out, as I expected) and a video-casette-DEA's whole case.
The work records were straight forward. Miguel worked for a large parking lot chain punching a time clock for an average of sixty-plus hours a week for the past three years, at minimum wage. He also had a little side business of delivering lunches to workers in the area. And, as the attorney had claimed, he had no prior criminal record.
The CI, whom I'll call "Cariculo-Snakeface" on the other hand was wanted in both Bolivia and Argentina for bad checks, petty theft and every kind of con job in the book. He had a total of seventeen charges outstanding against him. His favorite scam was selling cars he didn't own. His other part-time source of income during the last four years, was selling drug cases to DEA.
Snakeface first comes to Washington,D.C. from Bolivia, bringing with him a wife and a couple of kids whom he promptly abandons and returns to South America. Things don't go too well and in a short time he's back in the U.S. on the lam from police and scam victims in two countries. Miguel, a family friend and fellow Bolivian, tries to help out by giving Snakeface part of his lunch delivery business.
In the meantime, Snakeface's wife suffers a cerebral hemorrhage and falls into a coma. While she lays dying her "grieving" husband-just as the attorney said- tries to sell her vital organs. When the sale of his dying wife's heart, lungs and kidneys doesn't work out, Snakeface decides to sell Miguel, organs and all, to DEA, as a Class One cocaine dealer.
Snakeface's first move showed me that he was no novice in playing the Federal rat system. Instead of calling the local Washington, D.C. office of DEA or the FBI-where he and Miguel lived- he called DEA in California. He described Miguel to the California DEA agents as someone called "Chama," the "east coast distributor for a huge South American cartel dealing in shipments of thousands of kilos of cocaine into the U.S." and "the head of his own criminal organization"-a description that just happened to fit the criteria for a DEA Class One violator.
The reason Snakeface approached a DEA office in Southern California, as far away from Washington, D.C. as he could get, is a thing of sheer conman beauty. His experience as professional Federal rat had taught him about the insane competition for headlines, budget and glory between the myriad of American Federal enforcement, spy and military agencies-53 at last count- involved in some form of narcotic enforcement or another. He knew that the California agents, afraid that the East Coast agents or some other agency would steal their case, would keep Chama King of Cocaine a secret.
California DEA reacted exactly as Snakeface had predicted. Instead of calling the Washington, D.C. office and asking them to check out the information, they sent Snakeface airline tickets and money to fly to California from where they could get their first "evidence" -a recorded telephone conversation-locking the case in as a "California case."
Next Snakeface tells Miguel, "Look, I've got this American Mafiosi in California who is dumber than a guava. The guy's so dumb he's even sent me airplane tickets to fly out there and set up a cocaine deal. I'll tell him you're the capo de tutti frutti of all Bolivian drug dealers. You tell this boludo that you can deliver all the cocaine he wants. He'll give you a couple of hundred thousand dollars out front. Then you and me take off back to Bolivia rich men and open up a chain of drive-in theaters."
So Miguel-the-Car-Parker went along with the deal. He had failed the U.S. government financed test of his honesty, a test that, according to my training, was called Entrapment.
Now we cut to Snakeface in Southern California making his first phone call to "Chama King of Cocaine" with DEA agents listening in and tape-recording the call. He makes the call to the parking lot where Miguel works and is supposed to be waiting, prepared to play the role of Chama King of Cocaine for some capo di tutti dummo who he knows will be listening in, only Miguel isn't there.
"He's home sick," says the woman who answers the parking lot phone.
Do the DEA agents stop here and say, What the hell is the east coast distributor of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine, and the head of his own criminal organization doing parking cars all day long? No. They call his house and tape-record the call.
Miguel answers. He's in a bad way. He apologizes to Snakeface explaining that he's home with a terrible hangover. Then he tells this long, confused story about some friend of his getting drunk in his room, stealing his pants and then wrecking his car.
"Shit," says Chama King of Cocaine, "in the morning I come out and I didn't see my car. Man!. 'That son-of-a-bitch' I said. 'Shit! Where's my car?' Shit! I was sad. . . .Shit! It's like the only one I have to go to work."

Weeks later, after I had submitted the Carlson shooting report, recommending that the agents and prosecutors involved in the case be fired and prosecuted. I was full of hope. A rat cannot be king unless the people who are supposed to control him become as immoral and corrupt as he is and I was going for their throats. The Carlson case would be the example that all Americans should see of what was going wrong all across this country.
I looked forward to the civil trial and testifying publicly to my reports. It wouldn't be a congressional hearing, where facts the facts testified to are usually the ones the politicians want to hear, so that they could comfortably reach the "conclusion" they'd already agreed upon long before the hearings began. I was even going to call Court T.V.
I was at war.
Miguel's attorney called me again. "The judge reversed himself. He's granted a new trial on the basis that Miguel should have had an entrapment defense. Will you be available to testify?"
"Sure," I said."I'd love to."
It would be months before I learned that the attorney and the Federal prosecutor had worked out a plea bargaining deal. I'm not sure what Miguel pled guilty to, but he ended up with a ten year prison sentence. I suppose it could have been a lot worse.
It would be more than a year before I would learn that the U.S. government in the person of San Diego U.S. Attorney Allan Bersin, had decided to settle with Mr. Carlson, avoiding a trial and the public revelations of my reports. Mr. Carlson's attorney made a public statement that by settling without a trial the misdeeds of the government were being covered up. The government paid Mr. Carlson 2.75 million. Part of the final agreement was that the government's reports of its own actions, be classified.
The U.S. Attorney of San Diego, made a public statement exonerating the agents and prosecutors of all wrongdoing. He said that "the system" failed Mr. Carlson, but that the agents and prosecutors were to be commended for having done their jobs.
Within weeks the government would also settle with Randy Weaver, paying him $3.1 million. Once again the legality and morality of the government's actions in entraping Weaver in the first place were never even questioned.
This was also the year that Quibillah Shabazz, Malcolm X's daughter would be charged with conspiracy to murder Louis Farrakhan, the man who was alleged to be behind the murder of her father. The young woman, according to the press, had been set up by her fiance, who also happened to be a long time professional rat for the FBI and who was reportedly paid $25,000 for his "services."
It seems though that once the prosecutor and the FBI got their headlines they lost all stomach for their case against Ms Shabazz and agreed to a plea bargaining deal that freed her. My long experience told me that allowing a woman whom they had publicly charged, with great media fanfare, with conspiracy to murder and spent an enormous amount of taxpayer dollars to bring to "justice," to simply go free without a trial was not out of any pity for her-they were protecting their own butts and covering up perhaps one of the ugliest cases of rat entrapment on record.
I flashed on another professional rat I knew in DEA who had turned every friend and relative he'd ever had into government cash as if they were deposit bottles. One day he came crying to me, actually bawling big wet tears, that he'd met a woman and for the first time in his life was in love. She lived in California and he was broke. He needed enough money to get him there. "I'm a piece of shit he said. Please don't deny me a chance to turn my life around, Levine." I bought him a one-way ticket. He was there a week when I got a call from a Los Angeles DEA agent checking on the guy's record. The rat was trying to broker a deal on his fiance.
I watched the Senate hearings into the Federal government's actions in both Waco and Ruby Ridge and heard, for the first time in my life, liberal Democrats and the liberal press, who for decades were criticizing the tactics of Federal law enforcement suddenly referring to them, as "our Federal agents," and defending their actions. It was clear that their real interest was to protect the President and Attorney General for their actions in two of the worst screw-ups in law enforcement history. At the same time the conservatives and Republicans, who for decades had defended Federal law enforcement, no matter what they did, were now attacking the Feds as racists and "jackbooted stormtroopers."
And somewhere in the middle of this political shit-storm the truth was lost and, as usual, all the rats-those with badges, those in appointed and political office-came out smelling like roses, while the walking around, taxpaying, hard-working American and his Constitution took it up the ass.
The other day I read an interview of Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, who, in payment for turning rat against his lifelong partners in crime, was "forgiven" for the murders of nineteen human beings (that we know about) and an uncountable number of felonies. He was allowed to keep the millions he had earned as a murdering thug plus a pile of taxpayer dollars for "expenses," and received a taxpayer-paid ride in the Federal Witness Protection program for life. Gravano, speaking from what he described as a "nice little apartment complex" said he was enjoying his new life as a bachelor millionaire.
"There's a pool, racquetball courts, gym, tennis courts and a lot of single women who don't have the slightest idea who I am," he said. "It's nice. I sit down and relax under some trees."
God bless America, I thought. The land where the rat is king.

medicineman said:

I figure most DEA agents are corrupt, as bad as the rats they so despise. With all that drug money floating around, it would be real hard not to grab a little for yourself. The whole drug war is a farce. The drug war has not slowed the infusion of illegal drugs into the country at all. In fact, it has done nothing but raise the price of drugs to a level that forces addicts to rob and steal to afford the drugs. I'm aware that Cops and Drug agents don't want any legalization, as that would end their illustrious careers. But lets be real. If drugs were legal, wouldn't that free up our courts and prisons? Wouldn't that allow our law enforcement agents to work on real crime. With legalization could come taxation and the elimination of the National debt, there are many positive aspects to legalization. The money spent on law enforcement could be spent on treatment programs for addicts. The "DRUG WAR" has been a disaster. It has failed just like the war on terror will fail unless we change our foriegn policies. Common sense has taken a long vacation in America.

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Yes, Yes & Amen!