Confidence Games

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan

Weighing in at 998 lbs., the shipment of cocaine that slipped into the country through Miami International Airport in late 1990 was large but not extraordinary. The clues to its origins, however, were tantalizing. The U.S. Customs Service, which discovered and confiscated the drugs, learned from Venezuela's secret police that their country's National Guard was behind the contraband. Joining the probe, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration made an even more surprising discovery: the shipment was under the direct supervision of General Ramon Guillen Davila, Venezuela's top drug fighter and a close collaborator with U.S. counternarcotics operations.

And it was not the first such shipment. Earlier ones totaling nearly 2,000 lbs. had already made their way onto the streets of American cities. A DEA investigation then uncovered a scandal in which a fellow U.S. agency, the CIA, may have unwittingly helped Venezuelan paramilitary officers run a profitable coke-trafficking operation. Details of the scheme emerged last week as the CIA, prompted by reports that TV's 60 Minutes was preparing an expose, acknowledged that its actions in Venezuela were "regrettable" and the result of "poor judgment." Says one DEA official, "They got caught with their pants down."

The DEA investigated a key meeting in December 1989, when CIA officer Mark McFarlin and his boss Jim Campbell, the CIA station chief in Venezuela, met with Annabelle Grimm, attache of the DEA in Caracas. McFarlin, who was assigned to coordinate counternarcotics operations with Guillen's National Guard antidrug unit, wanted Grimm's assistance. He asked her to allow hundreds of pounds of cocaine to be shipped to the U.S. through Venezuela. And he asked that the DEA make sure the contraband would not be interdicted -- in other words, "let the dope walk."

The stated purpose of the scheme was to help one of the Venezuelan general's agents win the confidence of Colombia's drug lords. It would also help the CIA and the DEA gather crucial information about the cartel's methods. But Grimm refused to cooperate. As she later told 60 Minutes: "I really take great exception to the fact that 1,000 kilos came in funded by U.S. taxpayer money." Besides, said DEA agents, they already had enough information about the Medellin cartel's activities. They did not need a "cockamamie" scheme to distribute tons of drugs to gain a little more color.

Guillen was undeterred. His agents took delivery of drugs from Colombia and stored them in a truck at the CIA-funded counternarcotics center near Caracas. Several caches were then flown off to the U.S., and all went well -- until the Miami bust in late 1990. According to DEA sources, McFarlin allegedly shared information with Guillen that the Venezuelan secret police were on to the scheme. The shipments continued, however, until Guillen tried to send in 3,373 lbs. of cocaine at once. The DEA, watching closely, stopped it and pounced.

An ensuing probe by the U.S. Attorney in Miami focused on Guillen. The general, who has since retired as head of the anti-drug unit, was offered immunity from having his own words used against him -- and came to Miami to testify. According to DEA agents, he has confessed to setting up the smuggling ring and profiting from the operations. "He cried, collapsed, admitted everything he had done," recalled a DEA agent. Guillen, he said, "was trying to do exactly what Noriega did -- no worse, no better." The general has since returned home; he failed to appear before a grand jury earlier this month.

Was the CIA, which began its own investigation in 1991, taken for a ride? Trying to head off accusations that it profited from the scheme, a CIA spokesman declared that "there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing" by the agency's operatives. But, he said, an internal probe uncovered "instances of bad judgment and poor management on the part of some CIA officers involved, and appropriate disciplinary action followed." Station chief Campbell has retired; McFarlin has resigned.

Some DEA officials, however, do not buy the disclaimers by the CIA that its officers were unaware the National Guard was in the drug trade for profit. McFarlin, says a DEA man close to the investigations, "was no naive child, and neither was his boss." And he raises the specter of a heightened interagency feud. "The DEA has knowledge that the CIA had knowledge about what the Guard was doing. They didn't try to stop it." Furthermore, he says, "they didn't advise the DEA." The congressional intelligence committees are likely to investigate the matter further.

With reporting by Elaine Shannon/Washington