DEA'S LATIN DRUG OPERATION'S NUMBERS SHOW DISCREPANCIES

MIAMI - A 36-nation anti-drug operation that the Drug Enforcement
Administration hails as a major success counted nearly 1,000 misdemeanor
marijuana arrests among its totals and could not account for several
hundred other arrests, according to a report published Thursday.

The investigation of last fall's "Operation Libertador" also found some
numbers on the burning of marijuana plants were double-counts of a nearly
20-year-old State Department program, according to the report by Knight
Ridder's Washington bureau.

And, while the DEA claimed $30.2 million in criminal assets were seized
during the operation, $30 million of that was taken four weeks before the
operation started, according to the report, which was published in The
Miami Herald and other newspapers.

Michael Vigil, former chief of the DEA's regional office in San Juan,
Puerto Rico, headed the operation that was touted as a "major takedown" of
drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Latin America. He admitted some
discrepancies in names and numbers but still called the exercise a
"tremendous success."

"The key here is that we have 36 countries that put aside cultural,
political, and economic differences to come together," said Vigil, now DEA
head of international enforcement.

The exercise reported 2,876 arrests, but the DEA could not account for 375
of those, according to the article. The agency also accepted whatever
numbers reported by the participating countries, according to the article.
The numbers also were skewed because 996 arrests reported in Jamaica were
for misdemeanor marijuana possession, and most of the defendants were fined
and released.

The DEA didn't require participating countries to report the names of those
arrested, the outcomes of their cases, or what happened to the drugs and
cash that was seized, the article said.

It also said that the $30 million in assets seized from alleged drug
trafficker Martires Paulino Castro were actually confiscated on Sept. 27, a
month before Libertador began, DEA records showed.

DEA spokesman Michael Chapman said the agency found no problems with the
operation, which began on Oct. 27 and ended Nov. 19 and included major
Latin American and Caribbean drug-trafficking countries like Colombia,
Bolivia, and Haiti.

"Everything was done properly and aboveboard," Chapman said.