He's a retired DEA special agent. He talks about what it was like being an
undercover narc in the early 1970s busting hippies with LSD; describes the
devastating impact of crack cocaine in the mid-1980s; and takes stock of DEA's
successes and failures and why he believes the U.S. should be doing more on
treatment and prevention.
For 16 years he was a star undercover informant for the DEA netting 445
dealer arrests and seizing 1.5 tons of cocaine and $6 million in assets. He
supplies some gritty details about the distribution chain for street level dope
dealing in U.S. inner cities--including how dope travels from Mexico to L.A.
and on to the rest of the country, with Mexican smugglers using `trap cars'
reworked to hide kilos of cocaine.
Over the past 20 years as Ass't U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of
Florida, he's prosecuted many drug cases including the Medellin cartel and
Gen. Manuel Noriega. He describes how Miami was the "Wild West," awash in
cocaine money in the 1980s; how legitimate businesses play a major role in
laundering drug money and the problems this poses for law enforcement. He also
explains Manuel Noriega's role in narcotics trafficking.
For over ten years,he was DEA's agent in charge in Mexico. His primary
target was Felix Gallardo--a Mexican trafficker known as Numero Uno. He
sketches out the history of the Mexican drug trade--starting with brown heroin
flowing into the U.S. in the 1960s--and paints a portrait of Gallardo and what
made him the most canny and powerful of Mexico's narco traffickers.
A retired U.S. Customs Service special agent, he worked the U.S.-Mexican
border on and off for 30 years. He talks about the systemic drug
corruption in Mexico, describing the 1991 incident when Mexican army troops, in
the pay of drug smugglers, attacked and murdered Mexican federal police trying
to intercept a Colombian cocaine shipment. He also details the startling
discoveries of "Operation Casablanca"--a 1995 money laundering operation
he oversaw which was the biggest in U.S. history.
He is former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. He
talks about how the Mexico-U.S. border region is "a shield and a sword"
for traffickers protecting their operations, and why a 1998 U.S.-Mexico
agreement severely limits US law enforcement's ability to work in Mexico. He
also discusses what it would take to capture the Arellano brothers, leaders
of Mexico's most vicious cartel.
Landgraff is a group supervisor at the DEA in San Diego, currently
investigating the Arellano-Felix cartel. De La Montaigne, retired special
agent for the FBI, was stationed in San Diego for seven years and supervised
the Arellano-Felix Cartel Task Force. They describe what makes this cartel
different from others in its operations, brutality, and strategy, and why it has
been able to survive so long.
He is a 27-year veteran of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal
Investigation Division, specializing in international money laundering. He
describes the late 1970s flow of cocaine and drug money "beyond any
imagination" into south Florida and offers eyewitness accounts about money
laundering operations. He also describes the Black Market peso exchange,
one the most successful money laundering methods ever devised by narco
traffickers, and how this money now has infiltrated large, legitimate U.S.
He is former DEA chief of financial investigations specializing in money
laundering crimes. He explains why drug money profits from the U.S. are
hurting Colombia's economy, the threat the 'black market peso' scheme poses
for legitimate U.S. companies doing business in Colombia. He also assesses the
damage done by asset forfeiture laws, and reflects on 'who won the drug war?'
A retired special agent for the DEA, he was Special Agent in Charge for the
New York City office. He explains cocaine's take over in the U.S. and the rise
and fall of the crack 'plague' and what it did to families. He also discusses
the difference between Mexico's and Colombia's wars on drugs, why Mexico is the
"worst case," and outlines what he thinks would be the most effective U.S. strategy to
He is a former FBI agent and a commander at IMPACT, a South Florida
police agency which tracks black peso and other money laundering crimes. IMPACT is fully self-funded through money seizures from drug dealers and
money launderers. He explains how the black market peso-dollar scheme works
for traffickers to launder U.S.drug profit dollars and responds to the
criticism that law enforcement agencies are becoming addicted to the drug money
Appointed by President Nixon in 1972 to coordinate federal and local task
forces to fight drugs and crime on the streets, Ambrose came up with the idea
of a new superagency--the Drug Enforcement Administration, created in 1973. He
outlines what was happening with drug use in the 1950s and 1960s and the
tools and tactics his office employed. He also speaks about Nixon's attitudes
on fighting drugs, and why his policies were the most "practical" in the
30-year history of the war on drugs.
He was President Jimmy Carter's controversial drug czar from 1976-1978. Like
many others in U.S. government during the 1970s, he believed cocaine was a
relatively harmless drug. He discusses why only hard-core heroin use was
considered a problem in the 1970s, and how government's attitude on drugs
shifted after Reagan took office--from drugs as a public health problem to
drugs as a political, law enforcement, and moral issue.
She was Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics Matters during the
Carter Administration. She explains why she changed from being an "enforcement
person" to a "treatment person" and evaluates the flaws in U.S. anti-drug
policies involving Panama in the 1980s and Colombia today.
Gelacak served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 1990-1998 when it
recommended that penalties for crack and powder cocaine be equalized because of
the unfair disparity. Gelacak criticizes mandatory minimum sentencing, outlines
why treatment and education should be emphasized in the drug war, and speaks
about the threat of a growing prison population.
While Deputy for Domestic Affairs 1970-1972 for President Nixon, he was
given the task of lowering crime rates in Washington, D.C. This led Krogh
to support a program which treated heroin addicts with methadone. He
discusses the methodone program, the overall drug problem during the
1970s--including U.S.Vietnam servicemen developing heroin habits.
He was administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration from 1985 to 1989.
He speaks about the rivalry among government agencies in the war on drugs,
Mexico's corruption, and the U.S. extradiction policy in Colombia during the
1980s. He also explains why crack changed his ideas on how to fight drugs and
why treatment and education is needed to fight the "perpetual" drug war.
He is the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, also known as
the Drug Czar. He discusses his support for continuing to strengthen treatment
and education programs in the war on drugs, defends the U.S. 'Plan Colombia-''
a $1.3 billion aid package to help Colombia fight its illegal drug trade. He
also outlines why he believes "things are moving steadily in the right
direction" in the war on drugs.