King Rats
Criminal informants are the real winners in the DEA's drug war
May/June 1996
Michael Levine, Prison Life
'I'm looking for Mike Levine, ex-DEA,' said a man's voice.
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'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 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 the weekend to find you and bring you here.'
'Whoa! Back up,' I said. 'I'm not a legal consultant.'
'But you're a court-qualified expert. I checked you out. I read your books. I read some interview you did. Didn't you call the drug war a fraud?'
'A huge fraud. But because I talk about thieves, crooks, and dopers inside the government doesn't mean I'm gonna work for them on the outside.'
'Look, I'm defending the guy for expenses,' snapped the attorney. 'He's been working 60 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 the Drug Enforcement Administration'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 Class One.
'You can prove your guy's a parking lot attendant?' I asked.
'I'll Fed Ex you his time sheets. Better yet, I'll send you everything--undercover videotapes and the DEA's own reports. You tell me if the guy's a Class One.'
'Why me?'
'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.'
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 bonuses and promotions. And over the years the professional rats, who originate more than 95 percent of all federal drug cases, had learned that selling a Class One to the government was worth a much bigger reward payment. Many of them knew the DEA's criteria for a Class One better than a lot of the agents.
Unfortunately, in the DEA and other federal agencies there were agents who would bend the facts in their own favor. They'd write up a midlevel dope dealer or a street peddler as a Class One, based on 'evidence supplied by a previously reliable informant,' without corroborating the rat's information.
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