Drug Enforcement Administration

In the midst of the worst electoral showing in 68 years by this nation's long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party last week, Vicente Teran Uribe is a bright spot--a clear winner and possibly a symbol of the future PRI. The landslide victory of the 41-year-old businessman, who funded his own campaign for mayor of this border town, came despite--and even with the aid of--a recent U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration report that named him as one of Mexico's 20 top narcotics traffickers.

An FBI/DEA confidential informant helped smuggle firearms from the ATF's Fast and Furious gun-trafficking surveillance operation to drug cartels in Mexico, according to evidence compiled by congressional investigators. The investigators said the informant obtained the weapons from Manuel Celis-Acosta, considered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to be the "biggest fish" of 20 individuals indicted in Fast and Furious. At the same time the informant was receiving large amounts of "official law enforcement funds as payment" for his services, they said.

Miguel Aldana Ibarra, formerly one of Mexico's top police officials, on Thursday denied charges that he conspired in the 1985 kidnaping and murder of a U.S. drug agent in Guadalajara. Aldana insisted that he was being charged in the United States in revenge for his public denunciation of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and of the slain agent, Enrique S. Camarena, after a docudrama on the case that aired on NBC last month.

The embattled head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has told congressional investigators that some Mexican drug cartel figures targeted by his agency in a gun-trafficking investigation were paid informants for the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration. Kenneth E. Melson, ATF's acting director, has been under pressure to resign after the agency allowed guns to be purchased in the United States in hopes they would be traced to cartel leaders. Under the gun-trafficking operation known as Fast and Furious, the ATF lost track of the guns, and many were found at the scene of crimes in Mexico, as well as two that were recovered near Nogales, Ariz., where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed.

Pot as medicine may now be the law in California, but that doesn't mean Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates has to like it. Gates was a statewide leader in fighting the state's new medical marijuana law, approved by voters as Proposition 215 on Nov. 5. Now he is trying to make it as tough as possible to use medical cannabis under the new state rules. His chief ally is federal law. Proposition 215 legalized marijuana for medical use in California.

In an effort to plug a hole in U.S.-Mexico drug enforcement, the U.S. departments of Justice and Homeland Security announced an agreement Thursday that will give designated immigration agents expanded powers to pursue drug investigations. A key goal is to end the long-standing turf battles between the Justice Department's Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement that many critics believe have hampered investigations.

Slain federal drug agent Enrique Camarena told his killers that agents knew the whereabouts of two of Mexico's most powerful drug lords but did not pursue them because they feared for their own lives, according to a tape-recording of Camarena's torture made public Monday. In a chilling transcript of Camarena's ordeal, filed in Los Angeles federal court, the Drug Enforcement Administration agent is heard complaining to his captors that U.S.

A DEA agent was found dead in a car wreck with four shots to the head. His passenger, a fellow agent who told police he had been drinking heavily at a party they attended, was charged with murder. "Who did I kill tonight?" Richard Fekete, 55, asked officers who told him they found DEA agent Shaun Curl, 39, dead in a wrecked car Friday night in Miramar, Fla., according to a police affidavit.

An FBI forensics expert testified Tuesday in Los Angeles federal court that hair fibers found in the house where U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena was murdered matched hair samples taken from defendant Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros' head after his arrest. Matta is one of four men being tried in Camarena's abduction and murder. Matta, 45, contends that he was not at the house in Guadalajara, Mexico, where the agent was interrogated and killed in February, 1985.

A Drug Enforcement Administration helicopter crashed Friday while conducting surveillance, killing a St. Louis police officer and critically injuring the pilot. The cause was not immediately known.

Sales and possession of Spice, Blaze and other "fake" marijuana products were outlawed for at least a year Tuesday by a federal agency that expressed concern about teens being harmed by smoking such products, according to an announcement. The Drug Enforcement Administration took aim at the products said to create a marijuana-like high. It used its emergency authority to ban five chemicals in such products: JWH-018, JWH-073, JWH-200, CP-47,497 and cannabicyclohexano. "These products consist of plant material that has been coated with research chemicals that claim to mimic THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, and are sold at a variety of retail outlets, in head shops, and over the Internet," the DEA announcement says.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents in San Diego searched the headquarters of the Chargers and Padres on Tuesday as part of a countywide drug-related investigation. The agents served 10 search warrants on physicians and pharmacies affiliated with the two teams, authorities said. The agents were checking the records of controlled substances, which physicians and pharmacies are required to maintain under law, according to federal authorities. There are currently no criminal or administrative charges, but the investigation is ongoing, said Amy Roderick , DEA spokeswoman in San Diego.

For a woman who claimed to be a Beverly Hills socialite with connections to multimillion-dollar businesses, perhaps traveling with 13 suitcases would not have attracted much attention. She was accompanied with a small entourage, traveled on a charter plane and wore false eyelashes. But this was her fourth trip from Van Nuys to Columbus, Ohio, and agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration became suspicious that there was something more to 28-year-old Lisette Lee's trips than an extensive wardrobe.

When President Obama nominated Michele Leonhart to head the Drug Enforcement Administration last month, those hoping for a sensible federal policy regarding medical marijuana -- one that promotes scientific research into its medicinal value and eschews prosecution when it is used in accordance with local laws -- shivered. As special agent in charge of the Los Angeles Field Division, Leonhart zealously cracked down on dispensaries (though, it could be argued, that was during the Clinton and Bush years, and she was adhering to White House policy)

Ernesto Gamboa was a rare find -- the sort of informant who might come along once or twice in a cop's career. The 41-year-old Salvadoran auto mechanic assisted police in making hundreds of drug busts in the Pacific Northwest over 14 years. Armed only with a cellphone, he had a knack for posing as a drug buyer or seller, leading to harrowing transactions between heavily armed traffickers and narcotics agents. For about $10,000 a year, he risked his life time and again, according to those who worked with him. Undercover detectives came to trust him with their own lives.

Around here, the grim joke goes, most people work for the government or the mafias. Or both. Richard Padilla Cramer apparently had bested the temptations that come with the territory. During three decades in border law enforcement, he made the most of his pitch-perfect Spanish and talent for undercover work. He locked up corrupt officials, racked up drug busts and rose through the ranks. He retired after a coveted stint as a U.S. attache for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Mexico, the land he had left as a child.

President Reagan, as expected, announced today that he will nominate John Lawn to head the Drug Enforcement Administration. Lawn, 49, a former FBI agent, has been deputy administrator of the DEA since 1982.

Since the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is now showing a profit, is it going to be one of the assets the Reagan Administration sells off to reduce the deficit? DAVID HILTS La Palma

Federal authorities today announced dozens of indictments against people believed responsible for shipping multiple tons of narcotics into the United States and distributing them to cities and neighborhoods around the country. Among those charged in the indictments were three reputed leaders of Mexico's most violent trafficking organizations. Today's announcement followed years of investigations by federal agencies including the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in cooperation with Mexican and Colombian authorities.