By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
Having interim heads of major federal law enforcement agencies for too long often sends a message that the agency isn’t as important as some other agencies like the FBI.
Now comes Robert W. Patterson, acting head of the DEA, who told staff Monday in an email that he is retiring in about two weeks, saying that running the agency as a temporary fill-in had become “increasingly challenging,” Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post reports.
Patterson said he “realized that the administrator of the DEA needs to decide and address priorities for years into the future — something which has become increasingly challenging in an acting capacity.”
A replacement has not been named.
