NCJ Number
128482
Date Published
1990
Length
313 pages
Annotation
Written by a veteran of 25 years of drug undercover work and a group supervisor at the time of his retirement from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1989, this book documents how bureaucratic incompetence and conflicting political agendas undermined the full impact of a major international drug-enforcement undercover operation.
Abstract
Mounted in the late 1980's, Operation Trifecta was designed to infiltrate and dismantle La Corporacion, a heretofore untouchable group of Bolivian drug lords who supply the likes of the Medellin cartel. The book recounts how a well-conceived operation that could have implicated top government officials of three South American countries in the drug trade failed to achieve its intended goals due to the failure of the DEA and customs bureaucrats to commit the resources required to make the operation work. Political agendas that superceded the War on Drugs also impacted the operation. Higher priority was given to the protection of anticommunist foreign government officials than to the defeat of the South American cocaine trafficking structure. This fraudulent commitment to the War on Drugs makes a mockery of the lives of those who have died in the "war," and it undermines the morals and security of those who risk their lives in undercover efforts believing that our government leaders seriously care about what drugs are doing to our citizens.