‘Underground Empire’ : Credibility of Drug Book Challenged

In “The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Governments Embrace,” author James Mills claims to tell the inside story of a secretive band of federal drug agents who were destroying the world’s biggest drug conspiracies until the FBI shut them down.

Mills claims that the world’s biggest drug traffickers talked to him because they are so powerful they have no fear of spilling their guts to an enterprising journalist.

“Everything in this book is true,” Mills promises his readers. “No names have been changed, there are no composite characters, no invented scenes or dialogue.”

Quickly a Best Seller

Published June 6 amid a rising tide of national concern about drug abuse, the book quickly made the nonfiction best-seller lists. Prestigious news organizations embraced it. NBC’s “Today Show” covered it for five days. Time and Newsweek wrote favorable articles. New York Times reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt questioned the book’s believability, but then wrote that he did “ultimately trust what Mr. Mills reveals.”

But now, 100,000 copies later and with rights sold to ABC for an “Underground Empire” mini-series, 43 people involved with events described in the book have told The Times that what Mills wrote about those events is untrue.

Four people named or identified in the book say that Mills twisted their innocent and normal actions to make it appear that they are criminals or knowingly do business with major drug traffickers. All four said they would have explained their side if Mills had given them a chance.

Two other people interviewed by The Times said the parts of the book they know about are accurate. Dennis Dayle, the book’s main hero, said, “I have not only read it. I’ve lived it.” Ed Stephenson, a General Accounting Office staff member, said a report he wrote is quoted accurately.

Mills quotes a self-proclaimed “assassin” named Michael J. Decker for nearly 10% of the book. Many of the people interviewed by The Times and extensive court records dispute or contradict much of the story told by Decker, a federally protected witness whom The Times was unable to locate.

Work Called Truthful

Mills and his publisher, Doubleday & Co., both say that the book is entirely truthful and accurate and that each fact was carefully checked and has abundant substantiation.

Mills’ comments, and a statement by Doubleday, are the subject of an adjoining article.

The author acknowledged to The Times, however, that he made no attempt to interview many people he writes about negatively. He said that because governments agents were the sources of most of the allegations of criminal activity he was under no journalistic obligation to let the suspects and others tell their side of the story.

But government records, court papers, newspaper clippings and other documents directly contradict numerous other facts covering scores of pages throughout the book that are crucial to Mills’ stated premise.

“The Underground Empire” claims to tell, for the first time, the story of a publicity-shy drug investigation group called Centac, short for Central Tactical Units, within the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. From start to finish, the mood of the book is that of expose, of “now it can be told.”

Mills writes, for example, that various sub groups within Centac, called Centacs (each designated by a number) were so discreet that “many foreign agents and American police officers didn’t even know they were working for Centac, that they were controlled, moved from city to city and state to state at the behest and expense of Centac and when the arrests were made--often hundreds in a single sweep--Centac quietly withdrew leaving headlines to the local officers and their politically dependent bosses.”

Cost-Efficient Operation

Centac chief Dayle and his men did all of this, and more, Mills writes, on a budget of just $1.1 million a year, obtaining the indictment of “executive level” drug traffickers by the hundreds at costs as low as $793 per criminal charged.

Mills posits that Centacs developed techniques enabling them to break up international drug conspiracies. The key, he contends, was not to waste time arresting individual dealers or seizing their drugs but to disable the traffickers’ business operations, a job that only Centac could do.

But Francis Mullen, former director of the Drug Enforcement Agency, and Doug Chandler, a former head of Centac, both said that Mills’ characterization of Centac greatly exaggerates its importance, capabilities and successes.

“There was nothing unique or unusual about Centacs in terms of investigative techniques,” Mullen said. “These guys had the authority to cross over regional lines; that was all that was different . . . nothing unique about it other than the administrative setup.”

Mullen and Chandler both emphasized that Centacs were merely a short-term bureaucratic solution to administrative control problems arising from melding staffs from four federal agencies to create the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Importance Discounted

Mullen, who came to the Drug Enforcement Administration from the FBI, said that Dayle, the book’s main hero, “was not a high-ranking DEA official.”

Chandler, who created many Centacs including one of the three Mills focuses on, said that “although I set up a lot of Centacs and am very proud of what I did there, the Centac cases were not all the big cases the DEA ever made.

“I saw Mills on the ‘Today Show’ . . . and that’s the reason I bought the book . . . He sounded very sensible, the book sounded very interesting, but when I read it I found that he draws the conclusion that DEA at one time had a solution to all the dope peddling problems and then abandoned it,” Chandler said, adding that, in his opinion, “that’s ridiculous.”

Chandler said he believes Mills “is a very good writer and he stumbled onto a world he didn’t know existed and became thoroughly fascinated with the characters and he’s slightly overdone his hero worship of Dennis Dayle . . . (laughter) slightly.”

Mullen, Chandler and other drug enforcement experts interviewed by The Times emphasized that they believe that the involvement of corrupt foreign officials is a major problem in fighting drug trafficking and that breaking up major traffickers’ business operations is an extremely effective way to fight the drug dealing. Both of these views are major themes in Mills’ book.

Not Publicity-Shy

There was nothing secretive or publicity-shy about Centac, according to Chandler.

A computer search of newspapers and magazines turned up many printed references to Centacs, including articles in The Times, a story on the front page of a Sunday New York Times and a feature in Reader’s Digest, the nation’s largest circulation magazine. In the 1970s, KNBC-TV, Channel 4 in Los Angeles, broadcast two documentaries by Whit Collins on Centac investigations.

On the “Today Show,” Mills recounted how he interviewed a Thai general who, he said, has a 4,000-man opium army and who has had links to the CIA “for probably more than three decades.” NBC correspondent John Palmer asked Mills how he got access to the general and why a trafficker would talk to a reporter.

“People like him, and others, are very happy to talk to you, because they don’t fear anything. They feel they have absolutely nothing to fear. They control the police, they control the government, they control the equivalent, in their country, of our FBI, the equivalent in their country of our Central Intelligence Agency. . . . They are literally over the law, above the law and have nothing to fear.”

Of the three world-class drug dealers Mills focuses on, he writes that two spoke to him. Both were in prison at the time, a fact not mentioned on the Today Show and, with regard to one of the men, a fact not made entirely clear in the book.

Talking Behind Bars

The fact seems to be that rather than having nothing to fear, these supposedly omnipotent dealers have, as it were, nothing more to fear because two of the three drug traffickers who talked to Mills have been behind bars for years.

One of the dope traffickers, Donald Steinberg of suburban Chicago and South Florida, when he talked to Mills, had already become a government informant who testified against confederates in return for a reduced sentence. The other, Alberto Sicilia-Falcon, has written a book about his experiences and he said he has made himself accessible to a parade of journalists while behind bars the past 11 years, telling a story which differs sharply from Mills’ account.

Mills never spoke to the third alleged drug trafficker, “a rumpled, retiring--and murderously ruthless Chinese” named Lu Hsu-shui. Mills describes Centac agents following a man they believed to be Lu around San Francisco, writing: “So Lu Hsu-shui was real . . . San Francisco had made Lu real . . . .”

But the Centac case against Lu came to naught. In the Steinberg case many of his associates got away. In the Sicilia-Falcon case, the U.S. government’s case collapsed when prosecutors realized that their star witness, Decker, the self-proclaimed “assassin,” was unreliable. The Mexican government, which Mills characterizes as corrupt right to the highest levels, convicted Sicilia-Falcon, however, and he remains behind bars.

Despite the failure in one case and limited success in two others, Mills quotes Dayle, the former Centac chief, as saying that once his men identify an organization “that target is doomed. Centac has never lost.”

Government Role Alleged

Mills contends that at least 33 governments, which he names, work in league with drug traffickers. In the book he also ponders whether “the largest narcotics conspirator in the world is the government of the United States.”

On Page 1,143, Mills writes of Centac:

“The most successful weapon ever fielded against the international narcotics industry, a weapon that had survived attacks by some of the federal law enforcement community’s most influential constituents, a weapon whose support and enlargement had been championed by Congress’ General Accounting Office, was destroyed by the FBI.”

On Aug. 15, the FBI wrote to Doubleday, detailing errors in the book and noting that Mills cites no facts to substantiate key claims. Doubleday has not responded, an FBI spokesman said.

The FBI spokesman noted that fighting drug trafficking is one of the FBI’s four national priorities and cited statistics showing that in scores of cases the FBI has succeeded in breaking up traffickers’ business operations.

When The Times interviewed people who are identified in the book or who represent institutions identified in the book, each was asked if Mills ever sought their side of the story.

Many Not Contacted

Of the 43 people who challenge the book’s accuracy, 38 said Mills never contacted them. One other person, Miami attorney Bill Moran, said Mills may have tried to reach him. Moran said he was not sure, but he thinks Mills may have once called his office when he was out and left a message.

In the book, Mills recounts in detail an interview with Sicilia-Falcon, the convicted drug trafficker.

On Page 393, he writes of meeting Sicilia-Falcon “on a terrace overlooking freshly watered lawns sparkling in the bright Mexican sun.” On Page 520 he describes the same encounter, finding Sicilia-Falcon “in his office, not far from broad landscaped lawns glistening in the sun.”

Mills’ interview with Sicilia-Falcon would have had to take place on the grounds of a Mexican prison, a fact not stated on those pages, although many pages later Mills does make passing reference to Sicilia-Falcon being behind bars.

Sicilia-Falcon, interviewed by The Times on the lawn adjoining the rose garden of a Mexico City prison, went through the book line by line. He freely acknowledged that he was a major drug trafficker, that he bribed Mexican officials and numerous other unsavory aspects of his life.

But Sicilia-Falcon said he was furious that instead of sticking to what he regards as the truth about his life, Mills “made up lies. Why did he do that when there is so much that is so bad he could write and tell the truth?”

On Pages 323, 324 and 326-340, Sicilia-Falcon said, only three items about him were true: that he owned a Beechcraft plane, that he once saw a fin and feared a shark would eat his adopted son and that he loves guns. He chuckled when reviewing a section quoting Decker about a gun fight with automatic weapons that left 21 people dead including Mexican officials, saying, “This never happened and if it did do you think it would never have made the news? A massacre of 21 people? Come on.”

In a similar vein, Booth Shaw, a retired Los Angeles police lieutenant, Hiram J. Woo, a San Francisco accountant, and criminal defense lawyers Barry Tarlow of Los Angeles and Jim Reilly of suburban Chicago all said that Mills distorted their normal, lawful actions to make it appear they were criminals or knowingly did business with criminals. All four men said they are angry over what Mills wrote.

Tarlow has supplied The Times with extensive documents and other evidence suggesting that two of the major sources Mills quotes at length, Decker and Alberto Barruetta, are not credible. Tarlow has retained a libel lawyer, who has demanded that Doubleday publicly apologize and remove the offending paragraphs. In addition, Woo said he has retained counsel in contemplation of litigation.

Two former prosecutors and a prison warden laughed when a reporter read them segments of the book.

Page 819 quotes Decker as saying that because federal marshals failed to make adequate security checks he stayed in the same hotel as Tarlow and the wife of Roger Fry, Sicilia-Falcon’s partner, when he was in Detroit to testify against Fry. The next day, Decker is quoted as saying, “four guys (with) six shotguns and four automatic weapons” were captured just seconds before they were going kill to him.

Implications Noted

“Nothing like that happened,” attorney Peter M. Rosen of Temecula, Calif., who prosecuted the case, said.

Tarlow said because the book names him in the passage about the incident, he believes it implicates him “in a murder-for-hire plot. That is an outrageous lie.” He said Mills could have established the truth with a few telephone calls.

A prison warden erupted in laughter when a reporter read a passage from Page 845 about an inmate slashing a fellow convict’s throat, throwing the body to the floor of a crowded prison cafeteria and then calmly eating the man’s powdered milk and cake doughnuts while guards stood by idly.

“You mean there’s actually someone dumb enough to believe that?” Luther Turner said.

Turner was also read a passage on the following page, where an inmate, who is white, says that to get on a prison football team composed of blacks he “found some charcoal and put it on my face and put on a hooded sweat shirt . . . and nobody else knew they had a white guy on the team . . . .”

“This is a joke, right?” Turner said, laughing. “Nobody could be stupid enough to print that.”

These three disputed anecdotes come from Decker, whose verbatim remarks fill 9.8% of “The Underground Empire.”

Mills describes Decker as both an “assassin” and a “would-be assassin” in comments covering dozens of pages in addition to the 114 pages of direct quotes from Decker.

Quotes Are Contradicted

Decker--in sworn statements and in tape-recorded interviews with Centac agents that have been obtained by The Times--contradicts several things that Mills quotes him as saying or that Mills writes.

In addition, court records, government documents and interviews with prosecutors, police officers and more than a dozen other individuals contradict or dispute dozens of pages of statements Decker makes.

Mills does not refer to the extensive court records casting doubt on Decker’s veracity. He does, however, raise doubts in a few places about Decker’s credibility. Doubleday publicist Ellen Mastromonaco drew attention to Page 284-5, where Mills writes that Decker’s “story includes elements ranging from verifiable truth to almost certain falsehood.”

But on Page 284 Mills also writes, without qualification or attribution, that “Decker was an assassin. And he was not just some pot-bellied CIA reject with contacts to peddle. His skills, courage and cold-blooded efficiency had been tested in the marketplace.”

Elsewhere Mills devotes several pages to building up Decker’s credibility, quoting drug agent Rich Gorman and a supervisor, Ray McKinnon, as saying that virtually everything Decker said could be independently substantiated.

In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard legal scholar, concludes that Decker is not believable. Dershowitz recounts quotations in the book which demonstrate that Mills “even suggests that we believe claims Decker is unwilling to make for himself,” such as that Decker worked for the CIA.

Mills writes that Decker was a Navy SEAL (combat scuba diver) and was assigned the code number “0010” by an unnamed U.S. government agency. Mills even writes a section, titled “James Bond’s Wife,” that involves Decker.

On Page 387, Mills writes that the Navy “did not confirm or deny that Decker had been a SEAL. Period.” He then suggests the Navy may have been reticent to acknowledge Decker’s SEAL training because Decker may be a CIA agent.

Decker’s service records, retrieved for The Times by Lt. Scott Wilson, a Navy spokesman in Washington, show that he was not a SEAL and was not stationed at bases stated in the book. Wilson said he can fathom no reason the Navy would have declined a request by Mills as to whether Decker was a SEAL.

Decker is quoted in the book as saying SEAL stands for “Search Evasion Air Land Sea.” Lt. Wilson noted that SEAL stands for “Sea Air Land” and that Decker incorrectly named a SEAL training school, errors he said a real SEAL would never make.

The only case in which Decker is known to have killed someone involved a drunken brawl in the New Mexico desert. Mills quotes Decker as saying he was rescuing a girl who was about to be raped, that he killed one of the attackers and that he was railroaded into prison by a crooked district attorney. However, the account Mills gives in his book does not comport with Bernalillo County court records, which show that he was convicted of manslaughter, news accounts or the recollections of attorney Howard L. Anderson, who prosecuted the case and is now a Santa Monica screen writer.

Mills also quotes Decker at length about a trip with another drug dealer, Brian Dennard, through the “Bluefields” region of Colombia, describing fields of coca plants from which cocaine is processed. There is no Bluefields region in Colombia. However, the second-largest port in Nicaragua, about 700 miles to the north, is named Bluefields. Dennard said he visited that area with Decker.

Great Wealth Denied

Decker also describes at length his marriage to an Albuquerque, N. M., woman who is the stepdaughter of “William Rockefeller of the Rockefeller family. He had a big interest in the Dow Chemical Company and many other things. A very wealthy family. Lots and lots of family money.”

William Rockafellow ( not Rockefeller) of Albuquerque, said his stepdaughter was married to Decker and that he recalls some of the events described in the book, though dramatically differently than Mills presents them. “I’m a retired traveling salesman,” Rockafellow said. “I’ve never owned stock in Dow Chemical. I’m not rich, just a working man.”

Rockafellow said he was amazed that Mills quoted Decker because “any reasonably intelligent person could tell in two minutes” that Decker “makes up fantastic stories.”

Mills also quotes Decker as saying “I got a walk-on football scholarship at the University of New Mexico.” Mills quotes Decker as saying he got kicked out of the school, though, when he tried to protect a girl from a fight and a brawl erupted that “put 17 people in the hospital.” Decker, Mills writes, was kicked out of the school because, while leaving the fight, he broke the nose of the son of the university board of regents’ president.

A spokeswoman for the University of New Mexico, after reviewing official records and interviewing school officials, said Decker never had a football scholarship. Court records and interviews with Decker’s buddies show that no one involved in the fight required hospitalization. Further, affidavits, court findings and interviews with the combatants show that Decker precipitated the fight.

In addition, the university spokeswoman said, the then-president of the board of regents has no sons and nothing in the record indicates that any of the others in the fight were sons of university officials.

Investment in Restaurants

Mills also quotes Decker as saying that he and 10 other men in their 20s started the Montana Mining Co. restaurant chain in Texas and New Mexico, an investment that he said netted him $720,000 when General Foods bought the chain.

According to Bill Crombie of El Paso, who owned 75% of the chain, Decker was a night cashier who never owned any stock. Crombie and General Foods both said that General Foods never bought the now-defunct restaurant chain.

Crombie said, “Michael Decker has a very fertile imagination, but if you aren’t a little bit skeptical you could easily be easily taken in.” At one point in the book, Mills emphasizes that he is not naive and was not taken in by what he characterizes as the self-serving and false remarks of Sicilia- Falcon, the convicted drug dealer.

Several people interviewed by The Times claim that Mills invaded their privacy.

Mills, quoting Decker, names an 11-year-old California boy and says that Sicilia-Falcon “had sex with him.” The purported molestation victim, who is now 24 years old, grew furious when read the passage by a reporter.

“That’s not true,” the man said, asking that The Times not publish his name.

“But even if it was true, how can this guy Mills and Doubleday print that? Lots of people who will read that will know it’s me. But even if it was true, I was a just a kid. Even if it was true, I was only a victim. Don’t this guy Mills and Doubleday have any ethics? How can they print something like that?”

Doubleday, advised of the man’s remarks, said it had no comment. Doubleday also declined to discuss what standards, if any, it applies in identifying purported victims of child sexual abuse by name.

Some Call It Fiction

Some of the people whose reputations are attacked in “The Underground Empire” say it does not belong on the nonfiction lists.

“If the book belongs on any best-seller list it’s the one for works of fiction,” fumed Tarlow, the Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer who represented Sicilia-Falcon.

The book quotes Alberto Barruetta and a federal drug agent about numerous criminal acts supposedly committed by Tarlow. Rich Gorman, the federal drug agent, is quoted as saying that Tarlow was never indicted because “unfortunately, Barry Tarlow’s got a good reputation in the legal profession.”

Tarlow supplied The Times with the transcript of a telephone conversation, entered into court records, in which Barruetta’s girlfriend attempted to extort money from one of Tarlow’s clients. Tarlow said his efforts to discredit Barruetta in court would give Barruetta plenty of reason to make false statements against him.

Barruetta, who the book indicates is a federally protected witness with a new identity, could not be located by The Times.

Tarlow, who has a national reputation as a criminal defense lawyer and who said he has never committed a felony, said his lawyer sent Doubleday a letter and supporting documents showing that many statements about him in the book are false.

“Instead of trying to get to the truth of the matter,” Tarlow said, “Doubleday’s libel lawyers, Satterlee & Stephens, wrote back saying, in effect, that I was lucky they didn’t say even worse things about me. Can you believe that!

“I can’t believe someone like Doubleday, with their First Amendment protections, would behave so completely irresponsibly and let congenital liars and convicted drug dealers wrongly assault my reputation,” Tarlow said. He said he would prefer not to sue but feels compelled to do so unless Doubleday publicly retracts, apologizes and removes numerous false references from any future copies of the book.

Hiram J. Woo, the San Francisco accountant, said Mills “twisted” his normal, lawful actions to make it appear that Woo was knowingly engaged in business with a drug trafficker.

On Page 239, for example, Mills tells how Drug Enforcement Administration agents tailed three men suspected of drug dealing, watching as they followed Woo, who was then chairman of Golden Coin Savings & Loan in San Francisco, to his suburban Hillsborough home.

One of the suspected drug dealers being tailed, Mills writes, was Lu Hsu-shui, the ethnic Chinese from Thailand who was investigated, but never prosecuted. Mills writes that Lu controlled an army and spies.

Mills writes:

“The relationship between Woo and Lu Hsu-shui, and the reason for Lu’s trip to the United States, became radiantly clear a few weeks later when a San Francisco newspaper printed an article describing a new city to be built 40 miles from Sacramento . . . An entire town--city hall, schools, police department . . . How many of the staunch middle-class, law-abiding citizens of Manzanita would suspect that their homes were built with money earned from the sale of heroin?”

No Connection Seen

Woo told The Times he had no idea that Lu may have been involved in drug trafficking. Further, Woo said, Lu was never an investor in the proposed town of Manzanita, which he said was never built. “There is no connection there,” Woo said.

Woo, like Tarlow and many others interviewed by The Times, said Mills made no attempt to interview him. Had Mills asked for an interview, Woo said he would have gladly explained the facts to Mills.

Fact-checking Mill’s book is complicated by its lack of an index. Indexes are de rigeur in serious nonfiction books, according to Jack Miles, The Times book editor, whose skepticism prompted this newspaper’s inquiry into “The Underground Empire.” The book does not have an index, which would aid readers in looking up different entries on the same individual or issue. In June, Mills said Doubleday did not want to delay publication while an index was prepared--a job, he said, that would take six months.

A cross-checking of entries by a reporter shows that “The Underground Empire” contradicts itself on some key points.

For example, Mills makes repeated references to a James Bond-like car equipped with machine-gun shotguns, concealed beneath the headlights, that can fire 120 rounds in 40 seconds. On Page 314 the car is described as a blue Dodge Monaco, while on Page 381 it is described as a white Ford LTD.

The former owner of the Dodge, Merci Sicilia-Falcon, said the shotgun story is ludicrous and that when she owned the car she drove it to high school in La Jolla. She is the younger sister of Alberto Sicilia-Falcon, the imprisoned drug dealer.

Description Discounted

A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, whose Centac units are the core of Mills’ book, said the agency has never seized a car equipped with machine-gun shotguns or shotguns concealed under headlights. Ed Owen, the chief weapons expert for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said such an exotic weapon would almost certainly have come to his attention and that federal agents surely would have shown it off to television cameras if they seized such an exotic vehicle.

The book also makes several references to a 265-grain bullet, which Owen said is not commercially manufactured and which he doubts would be privately made because it would “take up all the room for the charge.”

That a book so heavily promoted and favorably reviewed could be so seriously flawed raises basic questions about how publishing houses establish the veracity of books they say are truthful. It also raises questions about the reliability and standards of major newspapers in reviewing nonfiction books, especially those marketed as investigative.

“Book review editors do expect reviewers to evaluate the factual accuracy of nonfiction books, but a $200 honorarium does not buy much time,” said Miles, The Times’ book editor.

“Just reading a 1,165-page book and writing 800 words on it will bring a reviewer’s compensation down to $10 an hour, or less, allowing no time for phone calls or other investigative work,” Miles said. “What editors often try to do is pick reviewers who can check the factual accuracy of a book against their habitual, accumulated knowledge of the subject, and there are few such reviewers around.”

Martin Garbus, a prominent New York libel lawyer, said publishing houses rarely have experienced investigative editors.

“We are, by and large, not investigative journalists,” Garbus said of publishing firms. “We bring different things to the table . . . also, under the (typical) author’s contract he warrants and guarantees the facts so the legal responsibilities of a book publisher are different than at a newspaper, where its writers are employees.”

In his New York Review of Books article, titled “Tall Tales from the Drug Wars,” Harvard legal scholar Alan Dershowitz writes that “the credibility of much of ‘The Underground Empire’ can be summed up by the tongue-in-cheek remark” on Page 1,036:

“Ohhhh, mercy. If you were Pinocchio, your nose would be from here to Delray Beach.”

Times librarians Doug Connor and Dan Crump assisted in researching this story.