By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A top FBI official is expected to take over the troubled DEA following the forced resignation of DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, the L.A. Times reports. Attorney General Loretta Lynch tapped Chuck Rosenberg, the chief of staff to FBI Director James Comey, as the acting administrator in an effort to shake up…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Thomas A. Constantine, the former tough-talking chief of the DEA, died May 3 at a hospice in Pinehurst, N.C., the Washington Post reports. He was 76. Constantine. who died after getting a staph infection, was chosen as the head of the DEA by President Bill Clinton in 1994 after the former…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The Justice Department criticized the DEA for the lax discipline of agents who detained a San Diego college student and left him without food or water for five days, NPR reports. Daniel Chong was handcuffed and left in a dark room during the 2012 detention in which he tried to stay…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com DEA agents who left a 23-year-old college student in a holding cell for five days without food or water for allegedly possessing marijuana received a slap on the wrist. The agents, who said they forgot about Daniel Chong, were reprimanded or received short suspensions, even though the illegally detained student nearly…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com DEA Agent Joseph Piersante, who was shot and wounded by enemy gun fire while on a counter-terrorism and narcotics mission in Afghanistan in 2011, became the first DEA agent to receive the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom. The The Defense of Freedom Medal is the civilian equivalent…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A judge has ruled that the DEA is not required to compensate a Texas trucking company for damaging a tractor trailer that the agency used during a wild 2011 sting without permission. The Washington Post reports that the tractor trailer was riddled with bullets after the sting ended in the execution-style…
By Bill Piper Huffington Post Bill Piper is the director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. The resignation of the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Michele Leonhart, comes as no surprise to those of us working to reform the agency. The DEA is a bloated, wasteful, scandal-ridden bureaucracy charged with the…
Charles Lutz is a retired DEA Senior Executive. This column was written for ticklethewire.com By Charles Lutz Things in Washington are seldom what they seem. The media has portrayed the forced retirement of DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart as the result of agents in Colombia holding parties with prostitutes paid for by Drug Cartels, and the…
