Levine, Michael. The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic
-- An Undercover Odyssey. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993. 472 pages.
Michael Levine's earlier book, Deep Cover, occasionally mentioned CIA
double-dealing in the war against drugs. Now this theme is his central
thesis. Levine is a 25-year veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration,
whose career included undercover work in Argentina at the time of the 1980
"Cocaine Coup" in Bolivia. In this book Levine places his anti-drug war in
its proper context, and concludes that it was futile. In Argentina the CIA
was assisting a brutal junta, which was responsible for "disappearing" its
own citizens, and in Bolivia the scheming of longtime CIA asset Klaus Barbie
helped put Luis Arce Gomez into power. To top it off, the well-connected
Argentinean and Bolivian fascists behind it all just happened to be some of
the same people that boy scout Levine was trying to bust. Needless to say,
he didn't get his merit badge, and was ordered back to headquarters.
Back in the U.S. by early 1982, working out of DEA headquarters, Levine
was disillusioned. DEA was harassing him with a nit-picking internal affairs
investigation while drug lords were running governments. Levine settled for
working a sting to entice Bolivia's queen of cocaine, Sonia Atala, into
a U.S. prison. But she too was CIA-protected, and ended up in the witness
protection program, waiting to return to Bolivia with all of her vast
property holdings intact.
ISBN 1-56025-064-X
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