NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/10400

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From: [e-mail] (John DiNardo)
Subject: Part 1, U.S. Government Smuggles Heroin Inside Corpses of U.S. Soldiers
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        I made the following transcript from a tape recording
        of a broadcast by Pacifica Radio Network station
               WBAI-FM (99.5)
               505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
               New York, NY 10018       [phone]

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
ROBERT KNIGHT:
This is UNDERCURRENTS for Monday, November 11th, 1991. I'm Robert
Knight, with Paul DeRienzo in the field, at the Marble Collegiate
Church in New York City where Saturday there was held a conference
-- a 100-city national teleconference called, "Causes and Cures:
A National Campaign on the Narcotics Epidemic." Present at that
teleconference were such experts in the drug field as Michael
Levine, Peter Dale Scott, Alfred McCoy and Daniel Sheehan of the
Christic Institute.

In today's program, we'll be hearing a special interview, conducted
by Paul DeRienzo, with former United States Drug Enforcement Agency
officer Michael Levine.

MICHAEL LEVINE:
I was a very wild kid from the South Bronx. Really bad. By some
miracle I never got into heroin. Heroin was already rampant in the
`50s in my neighborhood. My brother David became a heroin addict at
fifteen. But I was a wino -- a wino who joined the Military. I was
a very violent kid, looking for some direction. In the Air Force, I
became a boxer. I was still looking for direction, for some meaning
in my life.

The odyssey began with a fight that I had with another guy in the
Air Force. We were both military policemen -- dog-handlers. It was
over a three-dollar hat. He stuck a gun in my stomach -- pulled the
trigger. It misfired. Of course, everyone was arrested. The gun was
test-fired. It fired every time after that. From that point on, I
considered my life a gift. And I became, I guess .... I don't want
to sound too Shirley MacLaineish, but I became very much a fatalist.
I thought: "Well, I must be here for some reason, because it was
just too fantastic that I should survive that."

Again, in searching for meaning in my life, what evolved out of
that incident was someone who was really terrified of reaching the
end of my life and having to say the words: "I wish I had done it."
I wanted to experience everything. I wanted to go everywhere. I
wanted to taste it. I wanted to visit every country. Because, at
that moment, I realized that that Arab saying, "Any day is a good
day to die," is very true.  So I was in a rush to live.

How I ended up in 1965, graduating from Hofstra University with a
degree in acccounting, married with a baby -- I don't know. I was a
very depressed young man. But again, fate stepped in. I ran into a
buddy of mine who was carrying a little folio in his pocket, and it
said: "Take the Treasury Department law enforcement test. Become a
G-man."  I saw a picture of a guy on this folio who looked like
James Bond. And there goes the wild imagination of young Michael
Levine: "Wow! That's it. That's the key to adventure -- the key to
living the full life."  I took the Treasury test and, incredibly,
I found myself on the job with the Internal Revenue Service
Intelligence Division in 1965. My job was working undercover in the
Organized Crime Wagering Division. That is, I would ride around
wearing a little hat, betting with bookmakers and arresting them
for violations of the fifty-dollar wagering tax, which was kind of
a joke. I mean, it was a lot of fun. But I became very disenchanted
-- depressed.  I said: "Was I saved for this?"

Toward the end of that time, in my first year with intelligence, we
found out that my brother was a heroin addict. I won't go into the
whole thing, but the discovery destroyed my whole family. And, at
that point, my brother had been a heroin addict since he was
fifteen. He was then twenty. At first, it amazed us that we didn't
know. I then jumped into the "War on Drugs," feet first. I was
fighting to get into it because I believed that I wanted to do
something: "This is what I was saved for!" I took it to be my
mission. And I listened to all the words -- all the verbiage of
politicians -- all this inflammatory stuff:  "They're killing our
children. `THEY,' they're dropping white death bombs on our country.
`THEY' are invading us with powder."   And I BELIEVED all of that.
And I got into the "War on Drugs" -- became an undercover agent --
started locking up people in droves. A man, Donald Goddard, wrote a
book about me called UNDERCOVER wherein the Government itself
credited me with three thousand arrests up to 1977.

PAUL DeRienzo:
How dangerous was that?

MICHAEL LEVINE:
I was naive and kind of crazed, and angry. I took the "War on Drugs"
very personally. I probably was someone very much akin to a
Japanese kamikaze or someone who believes that they're on a mission
from God. As crazy as it is to look back now, I have to admit that
that's what I felt -- that I had been "saved" for something, and
that nothing was going to hurt me.

PAUL DeRIENZO:
What was the secret to your success? Were you particularly good at
undercover work?

MICHAEL LEVINE:
The secret to my success was ..... A police lieutenant, with whom
I worked many years later, looked at me, after I had done, in one
day, something like four or five undercover buys from different
groups -- from Hispanics, from Blacks, from Whites -- and he was
covering me along with my group. He said: "You know what the thing
is about you, Levine? You're a guy who should've gone bad. You
should have been a gangster. You should have been in jail. But
somehow you turned out right. And that's why you're so ..."
[convincing]. And I thought about it, and I thought about my youth
and about the way I grew up, and I realized that there was a lot of
truth in what he said. I was FROM the streets. The streets were in
me. There was a thin line between me and the guys who I was working
against. And that line was so thin that drug dealers couldn't see
it.  Do you understand? The line that separated them from me as a
suspected agent was so thin that drug dealers could NEVER believe
that I was an agent. And that's an attitude .... that's something
you can't teach.

I still teach narcotics undercover for a company. The thrust of my
teaching is to keep these guys alive. I try to teach young police
officers involved in it that: "Hey. This isn't for real. If you
want to do it -- if you want to take any satisfaction from it, you
can take satisfaction from the fact that you're taking bad people
-- murderers and rapists, who happen to be drug dealers, off the
streets. Okay, in that sense, go ahead out there and risk your butt.
But if you're in this business thinking that you're going to save
the youth of America from "the white death", I advise you to find
another career because you're going to end up dead!   It's very
dangerous.
                        (to be continued)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

    As you will see in coming episodes, this story is one of the
    most appalling, infuriating, explosive and vital expose`s that
    could ever be brought before the eyes of the American People.
    Don't let these episodes go by the boards without saving them,
    because we have a patriotic duty to disseminate, circulate,
    deliver, pass on this information in the cause of millions of
    people on the American Continent, including those in the
    United States, who are or who will become victims of the
    CIA-sponsored War FOR Drugs which is resulting in wholesale,
    continent-wide murder, torture, imprisonment, street crime,
    life-destroying addiction, and even the takeover of governments
    by fascist drug barons, further intensifying the poverty, misery
    and despair that is rampant among entire national populations.

    Please post the episodes of this series to computer bulletin
    boards, and post hardcopies in public places, both on and
    off campus.  The dial-in numbers of many BBSs can be found
    in the Usenet newsgroup "alt.bbs.lists".

           John DiNardo