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place three police dogs in a room with a gun and drugs? The DEA-trained
dog comes out with the drugs, the dog trained by the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) comes out with the gun, and the FBI trained
dog holds a press conference to announce, "The FBI has seized a gun and
a kilo of drugs."
    The DEA critics argued that it was narrowly focused on short-term
results, piling up impressive arrest and seizure numbers while making
little dent in the big-time criminal organiztions behind the trade. "It
was all buy and bust with the DEA," says Daniel F. Rinzel, former chief
Republican counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations. "They lacked long-term strategic planning and
intelligence.  And there was a huge amount of wasted energy and
internecine warfare.
    Jim Moody moved from combating organized crime to helping oversee
the FBI's narcotics work in the mid-1980s. He found the contrast
dramatic. "I came from a very disciplined, targeted thing and here's
everybody running all over the countryside seizing drugs," he says. "As
an investigator it's a lot of fun. You get immediate gratification. But
in the overall scheme of things you're not accomplishing very much."
    FBI leaders contended that their focus was on destroying underlying
structures of drug enterprises rather than merely arresting members and
seizing drugs. But DEA agents complained that the bureau was
deliberately tracking over the same drug intelligence, informants and
cases. Senate investigators accused both agencIes of letting their
rivalry interfere with gathering long-term, strategic drug intelligence.
Rinzel's boss, Republican Sen. William V. Rooh Jr. of Delaware, charged
that the agencies were playing a numbers game "reminiscent of the failed
body-count approach used in Vietnam."
    The shotgun marriage between the FBI and DEA never took place. The
DEA rallied support, winning over the very FBI officials sent over to
supervise the agency's dismantling.  But the pattern - two agendes
fighting over turf, denigrating yet duplicating each other's efforts and
mobilizing allies in the White House and on Capitol Hill became an
unfortunate hallmark of the drug war.
    As the call for volunteers went out, the Customs Service, Border
Patrol, ATE, Forest Service, Coast Guard, National Guard and others
invested staff and resources. Even Ross Perot got involved, offering in
the early 198Os to buy a Caribbean island for use in gathering
intelligence and running sting operations. (Senior customs officials
rejected the proposal.)
    "We ended up having to fight for the scraps," says Tom Cash, former
head of the DEA's Miami office. "AlI bureaucracies seek to expand. They
all wanted the budget, resources and equipment. We got
out-bureaucratized. We were no match for the 1,000 pound gorillas of
Treasury, State and Defense."
    The Pentagon became interestingly active after the Reagan
administration amended the Posse Comitatas Act ot 1878, which prohibits
military involvement in domestic arrests or searches and seizures. As
amended, it allows a military role in drug enforcement. The military
gradually took over responsibility for patrolling U.S. borders and for
programs to eradicate drug crops abroad, and its drug contro budget -
only $1 million annually when Reagan took office - has now reached $958
million.
    With the proliferation of federal agencies came a mushrooming of
hightech intelligence centers. The DEA had one in El Paso. The CIA
developed a Counternarcotics Center at its Langley, Va., headquarters,
while the Treasury Department developed one in Arlington, Va. The FBI
took charge of the National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown, Pa.
    In all, the General Accounting Office in 1993 identified 19
inteliligence centers scattered among 10 departments. Their efforts went
uncoordinated, and the information they garnered was often not shared.
For example, four of the centers devoted major resources to analyzing
the same air traffic movement along the Southwest border and between
Colombia and Mexico, the GAO found.
                               - * -
    WHILE ThE AGENCIES GRAPPLED WITH THE DRUG war and each other, their
budgets soared - during the past three years alone, the FBI's budget has
risen by 40 percent, the DEA's by 33 percent. The federal Bureau of
Prisons' staff has doubled in the past six years.
    Meanwhile, federal agencies have reached down to state and local
police through an endless array of task forces and initiatives. In some
cases, new task forces have arisen to help coordinate already existing
ones.
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