Customer Reviews

The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War : An Undercover Odyssey

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Note that this review is 4 years after publication... four years of silence.

A book that tears the mask off the fraudulent "War on Drugs". It exposes the growth of the war from two (highly mutually destructive) agencies in 1971 (Customs and DEA) to 55 and counting. It describes very extensive, high-volume CIA involvement in smuggling itself to obtain unaccountable funding.

It documents the cost of the fraudulent war. In dollars misspent, in innocent lives lost through raids gone amok and witnesses silenced, in the credibility of government agencies and the news media, and in the harm resulting from the 5-fold increase (his figures) in drug usage during the time $1 trillion has been wasted in the fight.

Recommend finding this book used or in a library, or reading Levine's chapter in "Into the Buzzsaw" by Kristina Borjesson.

I rank this book with "Dark Alliance" and "C.I.A.: Cocaine In America" as the most telling indictment of America's pseudo-war on drugs. Unlike most suthors who pontificate solutions from ivory towers and exhort stratagem with quill pens, Mr. Levine, not unlike Mr. VesBucci, for that matter, advises from hard-fought experience.

Michael Levine is a former DEA agent who, throughout the 1980's, worked to uncover, expose and convict many of the leading suppliers of cocaine to the United States. Unfortunately for Levine, many of the most powerful cocaine dealers proved to be CIA assets, supported and even bankrolled by the American government in pursuit of shadowy foreign policy objectives. Levine's diligence in fighting the so-called "drugs war" brought him the ruination of his reputation within the DEA and ultimately the destruction of his career. The cynicism that Levine exposes within the highest levels of American government is breathtaking - and profoundly depressing.

Mike Levine is a good writer. Add that to the fact that he was one of the best undercover agents in American history and you've got the equation for a great book. I had to stop myself a number of times to remember that this is NON-Fiction. The bumbling and deception that goes on at the higher levels of our Criminal Justice system would be laughable had this been a work of fiction. There is just too much detail here for it NOT to be true. This book, coupled with Levine's other book "Deep Cover" show you how the people in power manipulate the media to show the public the reality they want them to see. In light of the Iraq war "intelligence" misinformation, we can see that nothing has changed. In fact, the stakes have gotten higher.

The first sign of corruption in a society ... is that the end justifies the means. ~Georges Beranos, "Why Freedom?" (1955)

When you finish going through this book, you will gain a new perspective on the drugs war, and some of the root causes of the drugs problem in United States.

"Look Mike, our country has many diverse interests and you're one man in one little corner of the world. There are a lot of people a lot smarter than you and I involved in this business who might know a few things we don't. So just because an action might seem right doesn't mean it is; and even if it's the right thing to do, sometimes it's not the healthiest."

...

He was silent for a long moment. "Mike, don't ever forget a peanut butter sandwich."
"You're kidding."
"No, I'm not. I'm telling you this because I like you."

...

"Bario was one of the best and most committed undercover agents in DEA; he had done some of the agency's highest-level deep cover work. He was also a friend of mine. A year earlier he had been arrested for smuggling heroin from his post of duty in Mexico. While in jail in a Texas border town awaiting a removal hearing, he took a bite of a peanut butter sandwich and went into convulsions, and then a deep coma. He died a month later. He wife was told by the prison warden that strychnine had been found in his blood. The official autopsy report listed the cause of death as asphyxiation -- he choked on a peanut butter sandwich.
Many of Bario's fellow agents were aware that he was involved in cases that overlapped CIA interests. The rumor was that he "knew too much" about the CIA smuggling drugs into the United States to support its own interests and that he was killed by either members of DEA's Internal Security (who was in reality CIA) or by the CIA itself. I had always been one of those who had placed little credence in the rumor. Who could really believe that a branch of the U.S. government would assassinate its own people for any reason?"

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I dont think I would be priviliged enough to be in the same room as this superhero. No need for reviews as the others did a pretty good job. After you read this, you will never trust the government again.

He deserves 10 stars.

Well, you could imagine that the subject of this book is rather sensitive and controversial -- the author alleges no less than overt CIA complicity in freeing several members of the "Roberto Suarez" cartel of Bolivia, whom he brought to justice, after which (so he alleges) the CIA assisted the cartel's strongmen (corrupt officers of the Bolivian military) in overthrowing Bolivia's civilian government and installing another Operation-Condor military dictatorship (like those of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil at the same time). This coup (one of the bloodiest in Bolivian history) has since become known by mainstream historians as the notorious "Cocaine Coup" due to the obvious drug links of the military dictatorship -- but CIA involvement has only been scantly explored. Levine's investigation, along with this book, is the primary source for allegations of CIA culpability, and there has been corroboration (explored in Peter Dale Scott's masterful book "Cocaine Politics") in several other cases, such as the defection of Roberto Suarez's son from the cartel, when the son of the drug lord claimed that the cartel's processing plants were operated by CIA men and invited the press to see for themselves; on another occasion, Col. Oliver North himself was reportedly sighted at a Suarez cartel lab.

Levine painstakingly outlines the deep cover operation that he participated in, in Bolivia -- these operations, where a DEA agent goes undercover in a foreign country, are very sensitive and very dangerous, he explains, as being uncovered almost certainly means death for the undercover agent, as happened with DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in Mexico during the 80s. So, having risked his own life to bring the cartel leaders to justice in Miami, you could imagine how livid Levine must have been when the CIA intervened to have the cartel leaders set free (one got the charges dropped and the other got his bail lowered, enabling him to flee the country and escape trial -- both as a result of CIA intervention).

He also explores a few of the other, very odious, collaborators in the coup, such as the former Nazi Klaus Barbie (the SS "Butcher of Lyon"), a longtime CIA operative in Bolivia who previously helped Felix Rodriguez and co. in their successful efforts to capture and execute Che Guevara in that country. Other associated coup collaborators included members of the ultra-right Argentine military junta, at a time when they were not only helping with the (drug-related) Contra effort but also carrying out their own extensive human rights abuses.