DRUG CONTROL PROGRAM TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1979 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:20 a.m., in room 5110, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Joseph Biden Jr., presiding. Present: Senators Biden and Cochran. Also present: Michael Gelacak, staff director; Kathy Zebrowski, counsel; William Marshall, legislative assistant; Michael Fay, counsel; Barbara Parris, research assistant; and Edna Panaccione, chief clerk. Senator BIDEN. The hearings will come to order. I will begin by apologizing to the witnesses for the delay. The full Judiciary Committee was in executive session dealing with judicial nominations, several of which were very controversial and that was the reason for the delay. Today, we will begin with Senator Nunn, who is enroute to this room and then proceed with Mr. Charles Ruff. We have a total of six witnesses today and we will try not to keep you all any longer than is appropriate. I will begin with my opening statement and hopefully by that time Senator Nunn will have arrived and we can go right into his testimony. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BIDEN Today the Subcommitee on Criminal Justice opens the first 2 days of hearings on the Federal Government's drug control program. This subcommittee has routine annual oversight responsibility for the Drug Enforcement Administration and therefore, DEA will always be at the center of our concerns. However, the subcommittee had determined that it is necessary to understand DEA's functions as the lead enforcement agency within the context of the work of the other Federal agencies. Therefore, we have invited representatives of the White House, the Department of Justice, HEW, and State and local police to discuss with us today the domestic aspects of the drug problem. On Thursday, when we delve into the international aspects, we will be hearing from representatives of the State Department and CIA. We have also invited prominent Members of the House and Senate who have similar oversight responsibilities to share their thoughts with us today and on Thursdays. The basic purpose of these hearings is to educate the members of the subcommittee. From the various Federal agencies we are attempting to gain an assessment of what they view as the nature and scope of the drug problem as it relates to their responsibilities, a description of their responsibilities, and their judgment on how well they and their sister agencies are fulfilling their charge. We hope the dialog with the agency representatives and the congressional witnesses will assist the subcommittee in developing a program of routine congressional oversight on the State side of DEA and her sister agencies. As we enter this more intensive stage of oversight of DEA and the Federal drug control community, I think that it might be useful to lay out three basic points that I hope will allay some concerns among the witnesses. First, although I definitely believe that any representative of a Federal agency spending taxpayers money must always be prepared for tough questioning and constructive criticism. I believe that a fullfledged exposé of DEA does not at this point seem appropriate. We are not here for an exposé. This is not an attempt to once again have a major rehash, subject to the political whims of the Drug Enforcement Agency, on what we should be doing in this country in drugs. Indeed I agree with Prof. James Q. Wilson in his recent book on DEA, "The Investigators," that what DEA needs most is routine oversight. Second, I believe that drug abuse is among the top two or three most serious problems we face domestically. I believe that President Carter stated it most eloquently in his drug abuse message to the Congress 2 years ago: Among young American men aged 18-24 years, drugs are the fourth most common cause of death. Only automobile accidents, homicides, and suicides rank higher. The estimated cost of drug abuse in America exceeds $15 billion each year. Among some minority groups, the incidence of addiction and the harm it inflicts are disproportionate. Finally, in the 6 months I have had responsibility for DEA oversight, I have spent a great deal of time studying the problems of drug control. Although I still see myself very much as a novice, I have come away with a very healthy respect for the magnitude of the challenge we face in drug control and what seems in many cases the intractability of the problem. Like other areas of social concern, drugs is not one that can be totally resolved by Government action and overpromising in this area simply undermines our credibility as a government and undermines our ability in terms of our confidence. I agree completely with President Carter's statement in the conclusion of his drug control message: No government can completely protect its citizens from all harm-not by legislation, or by regulation, or by advice. Drugs cannot be forced out of existence; they will be with us for as long as people find in them the relief or satisfaction they desire. But the harm caused by drug abuse can be reduced. We cannot talk in absolutes-that drug abuse will cease, that no more illegal drugs will cross our borders because if we are honest with ourselves we know that is beyond our power. But we can bring together the resources of the Federal Government intelligently to protect our society and help those who suffer. So it is with this spirit of constructive but sympathetic criticism. that we open these hearings. I hope that you will take our sometimes pointed questioning in that vein, not as a criticism but as an attempt to get at what we seek to determine. I have a particularly keen interest in this area because I am, for good or bad, uniquely positioned in this Senate to deal with the drug problem. I am the only person in the U.S. Senate that is on the Intelligence Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee and on the Judiciary Committee. The subcommittees which I chair in each of those committees, I have jurisdiction over the related areas as they relate to this problem. So I should make a personal note that I have decided that this is one of the major congressional responsibilities which I think has gone unattended. It is the lack of coordination or the apparent lack of coordination and the conflicting signals that have come from the various agencies that I would like to learn a great deal more about. I plan on involving myself very deeply with this issue. But having been a criminal defense lawyer, who did mostly drug-related work, I would like to reiterate my agreement with the President's statements that there is no way we are going to solve the drug problem. If there is a way we can solve the drug problem, I sure would like to know about it. I would be anxious to hear it and after you have told me, I will ask you for your solution to inflation, worldwide inflation. I would not be satisfied with just domestic inflation because what we have is a worldwide problem as it relates to drugs. The interlocking interests that the three committees upon which I serve have in this area help to point this out. I guess the formality that we must engage in here is that I will recess the hearings for 5 minutes until Senator Nunn arrives, because it would not make much sense for us to begin without him. If we proceed with another witness, we will have to interrupt that witness when Senator Nunn arrives. So we will recess until the call of the Chair which hopefully will be in less than 5 minutes. [A brief recess was taken.] Senator BIDEN. The hearing will come to order. We are pleased to begin these hearings with Senator Nunn of Georgia, who is the chairman of the Permanent Investigation Subcommittee and has been very involved in trying to get a handle on the problems of organized crime and related issues, and drugs are an extremely related issue. We welcome you, Senator Nunn, proceed in any way you feel most comfortable. STATEMENT OF SENATOR NUNN Senator NUNN. Thank you very much, Chairman Biden and Senator Cochran. It is a pleasure to testify before you and your subcommittee this morning as you open your hearings into oversight of the Drug Enforcement. Administration and the Federal drug enforcement effort generally. As you know, during the past 4 years the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations-of which I became chairman this year and of which I was vice chairman for the past 2 years-has conducted extensive investigations into these areas of inquiry. Since June 1975 we have held 20 days of public hearings on Federal drug enforcement and issued one report on what we found wrong with our efforts to enforce the Nation's narcotics laws. We have continued our oversight activities right up to the present and have plans for more vigorous activities for oversight in the future. A number of significant facts surfaced during our investigations. Among other things, we found that drug agents could be better utilized to foster cooperation and coordination with State and local authorities rather than to conduct investigations and to arrest dealers and addicts at the street level. We also found that Federal drug enforcement personnel should concentrate on conspiracy cases against high level narcotics traffickers in an attempt to reduce the amount of narcotics brought into our country. Additionally, we focused on DEA's internal integrity problems; DEA's ability and willingness to get along with its sister Federal agencies; and most important, in the course of our hearings we asked DEA to define what "success" means in narcotics law enforcement, particularly in terms of heroin enforcement. DEA Administrator Peter Bensinger is here this morning, I know you will hear from him and get a more complete update. One of the first things Mr. Bensinger did before our subcommittee was to outline their goals for the future. That is something that had been sadly missing throughout the whole drug enforcement area. We had declared war on narcotics many times, but nobody ever defined the battlefield, and nobody ever defined the area that we could define as progress. That was done, and these definitions, I think, are still relevant. They are not the only definitions, and certainly they need to be expanded and updated, but I felt that was a beginning and I believe that has helped focus DEA in at least the right direction as far as heroin traffic is concerned. We also examined the methodology used by DEA and the other agencies with drug enforcement responsibilities, and we studied DEA's organizational approach. We studied the various agencies' gathering and use of intelligence. And we heard a great deal of testimony about the need for tougher sentencing and higher bail requirements for narcotics law violators. In all of these areas, we discovered problems of various magnitude. Fortunately, under the leadership of Administrator Bensinger, DEA has made great strides in streamlining its organizational structure; in shifting its emphasis toward catching the big fish in the narcotics world instead of the smalltime street pusher who can be easily replaced by large smuggling and distribution syndicates; in improving its own internal security; in cooperating with other Federal agencies in gathering information and pursuing prosecutions; in assisting other law enforcement agencies, both foreign and domestic; and in setting realistic goals for itself. Mr. Chairman, anyone who looks at the magnitude of the problems now and says we are not doing the job, I would agree with. We have a long way to go. But if you look where we were 3 or 4 years ago, progress has been made. The Federal narcotics effort has never been very well defined or very well coordinated both with the sister agencies and particularly with local government. |