Chaotic DEA Office Ripe for Problems in the Early 1980s

The 1980s had arrived and hundreds of Colombian drug dealers, fleeing a law enforcement crackdown in Florida, had just begun an exodus from Miami to Los Angeles.

Federal drug agents in California were suddenly seizing hundreds of pounds of cocaine and millions of dollars in cash.

In the Los Angeles office of the Drug Enforcement Administration, agents increasingly saw themselves as a beleaguered force, outnumbered and outgunned.

And not all their troubles were with drug dealers. One problem was access to the boss. The head of the DEA’s Los Angeles office at that time, Ted W. Hunter, was viewed by some agents as remote and distant.

“He subscribed to the ostrich school of management,” one DEA agent said. “He wasn’t the kind of guy you took your problems to.”

Another problem involved racial issues. The DEA’s black agents, unhappy with assignments and promotion opportunities, had filed a discrimination lawsuit, which they later won.

On top of that, Los Angeles was one of the most expensive cities in the country. Some agents wanted transfers to a more affordable area.

The pace of federal drug enforcement was getting faster. There was so much bedlam at times in the DEA’s Los Angeles office that some agents called it “Disneyland West.”

That is one view of the DEA’s Los Angeles office during the years when, according to a federal indictment, three former DEA agents--John Anthony Jackson, Darnell Garcia and Wayne Countryman--went bad.

The story some agents tell is of a chaotic office where there was too much work and not enough time for anyone to pay adequate attention to the warning signs of trouble that might have headed off a major drug corruption scandal that is unfolding now.

“I think personally it’s remarkable this is the first time it’s happened on this magnitude,” one veteran agent said. “Most of the senior agents have been amazed for a long time that something like this didn’t break earlier.”

But that is only a partial portrait of the DEA’s Los Angeles office now emerging in the wake of money-laundering charges against Jackson, Garcia and Countryman and disclosure of the suspected theft of heroin from the DEA’s own evidence vault in 1984.

The rest of the picture, according to top officials of the DEA, is that Los Angeles was still an office where the job got done. And it was the DEA itself that led the investigation against its own agents.

“This type of situation makes anybody sick,” said John Zienter, who took over the DEA’s Los Angeles office in 1987. “It makes me sick.”

Vast Majority Honest

But there are 145 DEA agents in the drug agency’s Los Angeles division, Zienter added. The vast majority are dedicated and honest, he said, and as a result of the current federal probe, their job is harder.

“What about the agents who don’t go wrong?” Zienter asked. “I got two dead agents this year. They don’t give their lives lightly. These are people who are exposed to millions of dollars in drugs and cash all the time. The public should be proud of them. These guys give so much.”

Hunter, citing the continuing investigation, declined to comment on conditions prevailing while he ran the DEA’s office here. Zienter defended the past management of the office, saying that DEA officials were alert for years to problems involving all three ex-agents.

“We have put together mechanisms to react as effectively as possible to this sort of threat,” Zienter said. “The office was being properly run or this wouldn’t have been pursued.

“We have tremendous checks and balances,” he added. “That’s what triggered this investigation. When this is over, I don’t think you’re going to find the DEA at fault in any way in the handling of this matter.”

Public Should Be Proud

“One thing it does show is that we don’t shove stuff under the carpet,” Zienter said. “If, in fact, it’s three agents who went bad, the public should be very proud of what we’ve done. This agency, if it feels there is a violation, goes to the wall to get it solved.”

Agreeing with Zienter, Assistant U.S. Atty. Joyce Karlin, in charge of the prosecution of Jackson, Garcia and Countryman, praised the DEA for its handling of the joint investigation with the Internal Revenue Service that led to the Dec. 7 indictment of the three ex-agents.

“We let the DEA investigate their own, which ought to tell how much faith we have in their integrity,” Karlin said. “Three agents out of 145 in Los Angeles is not a significant level of corruption. If the DEA had been at all suspect, we never would have let them lead this investigation.”

While the DEA maintains that it moved as quickly as possible against the three suspected agents when it became aware of possible criminal activity in late 1985, some DEA agents admit that they looked the other way in earlier years when they witnessed instances of unusual conduct.

One senior drug agent said it was widely known that the three agents had outside businesses. Jackson spoke openly of heavy gambling and, according to one source, Garcia sometimes tried to sell expensive gold watches and diamond rings to his colleagues.

‘The Way Things Are’

“Everybody except upper management knew what they were doing. But nobody’s going to run to management to be a snitch. That’s just the way things are,” one top federal agent said. “Ted Hunter was hard to get to. Nobody was sure that it wouldn’t get back to them through one of the secretaries if you went up through the chain of command.”

There were other reasons not to report such matters as Jackson’s alleged gambling activity, including the question of racial discrimination that was then a major DEA concern, one source said. Jackson and Countryman are both black. Garcia is half black and half Puerto Rican, and successfully defeated a move to fire him in 1986 in a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals discrimination case.

“Race had something to do with it,” one senior drug agent said. “People were reluctant to touch them. But mostly it was the code. Your life may depend on him (a fellow agent) tomorrow. No cop wants to be an informant.”

In fact, however, Zienter said that some DEA agents did report their suspicions of the three agents at various times. The entire office has been strongly encouraged to come forward with any information at this point in the case, he said.

Toward the end of Garcia’s career, the DEA made strong efforts to discipline him, then to fire him. The agency also threatened to fire Countryman for running a private detective agency in his off-duty hours and unsuccessfully tried to discipline Jackson for his outside business activities.

Regarded as Good Agents

Both Jackson and Countryman were regarded as good agents by DEA management, but Garcia was a problem who was moved from squad to squad, then shifted from days to nights, sources said. That approach, according to Zienter, was simply good management.

“When we hire an employee, we spend huge amounts for training,” Zienter said. “You do everything you can to salvage a poor agent. What I see with Garcia was a good management attempt to improve him.”

There were very few DEA agents with outside jobs in the early 1980s, Zienter said. Partly as a result of experiences with Jackson and Garcia, he said, the drug agency has adopted formal rules banning such activity except in emergency financial cases.

“I don’t know of anyone with an outside job today,” Zienter said. “We don’t allow it because this is a full-time job.”

Increasingly, Zienter said, it has also become a job where the possibility for corruption must be constantly considered.

Tons of Cocaine

In the late 1970s, Zienter said, a kilogram of cocaine was still viewed as a significant drug bust for federal drug agents in Los Angeles. A decade later, he said, tons of cocaine and suitcases of cash are part of almost every work week.

In 1988, DEA agents in the Los Angeles division seized $50.5 million in cash alone.

“We have extremely tight controls of evidence--both drugs and cash,” Zienter said. “We are all cops, and we know that these kinds of amounts are going to tempt somebody sooner or later. Believe me, that is a major concern.

“What we have here so far is three agents who are accused of going bad,” Zienter said. “Frankly, this is no real news to me. I’m glad it’s over with. It’s the other agents that concern me. These are good cops I’m talking about.

“They are out there under incredible stress in very dangerous situations day in an day out, and they are exposed to every temptation. My heart goes out to them for the job they do.”