Bureau Of Narcotics And Dangerous Drugs

Right. Another historical footnote you need explained. Don't look so eager; it's just a story about one government acronym being replaced by another. Try to contain your excitement.

Not to be confused with the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Section (NDSS), which was also cobbled together in 1968. Pay attention to the details; it's the only thing separating bureaucracy from chaos.

Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs
Agency overview
Formed
Preceding agencies
Dissolved
Superseding agency
Jurisdictional structure
Operations jurisdiction
Operational structure
Agency executive
Parent agency
Facilities
Fixed wing aircraft

The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) was a short-lived federal law enforcement agency tucked inside the labyrinth of the United States Department of Justice. Its mandate, as grand and futile as ever, was to investigate the consumption, trafficking, and distribution of narcotics and what were deemed "dangerous drugs." Think of it as a dress rehearsal for what would eventually become the modern Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), an organization you're likely more familiar with. The BNDD was the awkward, transitional phase. [1]

History

Before this particular bureaucratic shuffle, the task of policing the nation's vices was split. There was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), a relic of the Department of the Treasury, and the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control (BADC), which fell under the purview of the Food and Drug Administration. [2] Two separate entities, likely stepping on each other's toes more often than they stepped on any actual drug rings.

Merging the old guard

This fractured approach was apparently deemed inefficient. On February 7, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson, in a fit of administrative ambition, sent a message to Congress. It read, with all the soaring rhetoric you'd expect:

“This administration and this congress have the will and the determination to stop the illicit traffic in drugs. But we need more than the will and the determination. We need a modern and efficient instrument to transform our plans into action.” [1]

The "modern and efficient instrument" he proposed was outlined in an official request charmingly titled Reorganization Plan #1. The plan was to create the BNDD, a new beast with a clear, if not impossible, mission:

Consolidate the authority and somehow preserve the "experience and manpower" of the Bureau of Narcotics and the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control, which is a polite way of saying "force two competing agencies to share an office."
Work with state and local governments in their crackdown on the drug trade and, bless their hearts, help train local agents.
Maintain a global presence, collaborating with other nations to suppress the trade in illicit narcotics and marijuana.
Conduct a sweeping research campaign and a nationwide public education program about drug abuse and its consequences, because a well-designed pamphlet is surely the solution. [3]

Congress, apparently convinced, passed Reorganization Plan #1 on April 7, 1968. It went into effect the very next day. [1]

And so, on April 8, 1968, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs was born. [4] As the plan stipulated, the enforcement powers once held by Treasury and the FDA were stripped away and handed over to the singular authority of the Department of Justice, all under the watchful eye of the United States Attorney General. [1] A new nameplate on the door, same Sisyphean task.

John Ingersoll

The man chosen to lead this new venture was John Ingersoll. He was appointed as the BNDD's first Director on August 1, 1968, and, as fate would have it, he was also its last. He left the bureau on June 29, 1973, reportedly in disgust, citing White House interference. Just two days later, the BNDD itself was dissolved and absorbed into the DEA. [5] A five-year run. Barely enough time to get the letterhead printed.

Ingersoll's tenure follows a familiar, almost tragic, pattern for heads of federal narcotics enforcement:

Levi Nutt served as the Deputy Commissioner of the Narcotics Division from 1919 to 1930, the entire lifespan of the agency, only to leave the subsequent Bureau of Narcotics mired in scandal just before the infamous Harry Anslinger took over.
Harry Anslinger himself reigned as Commissioner of the FBN from 1930 to 1965. The FBN was unceremoniously merged into the BNDD just three years after he departed. It seems these positions have a tendency to consume their occupants before the agencies themselves are consumed by reorganization.

Elvis Presley becomes a federal agent

And now for the part of history that reads like a fever dream. Elvis Presley, the "king" of rock and roll, developed an obsession with collecting police badges. The one he craved most, the crown jewel for his collection, was a badge from the BNDD, identifying him as a Federal Agent at Large. [6]

Ingersoll, to his credit, initially insisted that a badge wasn't a souvenir. To get one, Presley would have to be credentialed as a federal agent, swear the oath of office, and commit to a training program. [6] The position of Federal Agent at Large was practically mythical; it had only existed once before in the entire history of American narcotics enforcement, held by the notoriously shadowy operative George Hunter White.

Upon learning that Elvis had maneuvered a meeting with President Nixon, White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman scribbled a note in the margin of a memo from aide Bud Krogh that perfectly captured the absurdity of the situation: "You must be kidding." But he wasn't. When Elvis met Nixon, he earnestly claimed he could infiltrate any group of "hippies or young people," boasting that he had "studied communist brainwashing and the drug culture." [6]

After BNDD Deputy Director John Finlator had first denied Elvis's request for a badge, he was forced to reverse his decision, informing the singer that "his original decision had been changed by the President." [7] What Elvis received, however, wasn't the title of Federal Agent at Large. It was something far more surreal. He was presented with a badge that didn't designate him as an agent, a supervisor, or a director. The badge simply read: "Elvis Presley." [6] It became one of his most treasured possessions, a golden token of presidential whim that he carried in a leather wallet for the rest of his life. [6]

Ingersoll launches internal investigations

By 1970, Ingersoll began to suspect that the old Federal Bureau of Narcotics was not just flawed but fundamentally corrupt, and that this rot had metastasized within his new BNDD. [8] In December of that year, he took the extraordinary step of asking Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Richard Helms for help in cleaning his own house. [9]

In January 1971, Helms gave the green light for a program of "covert recruitment and security clearance support to BNDD." [10] [11] In essence, the CIA was now vetting the nation's top drug cops.

Subsequent investigations proved Ingersoll's suspicions were not paranoia. The evidence that has since surfaced is damning:

FBN supervisory agent at large George Hunter White—the same man whose former title Elvis coveted—had extrajudicially killed several suspects during his investigations. [12] [13] Though White had retired in 1966, his network of connections within the BNDD remained intact.
White's main undercover operative after 1948, a man named Jacques Voignier, was a master of duplicity. He worked for the FBN while simultaneously running drugs for the Corsican Brotherhood and executing personal cons for his own enrichment. [14] He was finally arrested in 1969, a year after the BNDD's creation.
FBN Agent Dean Unkefer confessed in a 2015 memoir that he became addicted to narcotics within a few years of joining the bureau, despite having never used them before his recruitment. [15] The hunters were becoming the hunted, or perhaps just getting high on the evidence.

Activities

Foreign offices

By 1970, the BNDD had cast a wide net, establishing nine foreign offices in a global game of cat and mouse: [3]

New York Task Force

In 1970, the first federal narcotics task force was set up in New York City, a recognition that the problem required a more concentrated, localized effort. [3]

French Connection

The BNDD inherited the FBN's long-standing investigation into the French Connection, the notorious heroin pipeline from Europe to the United States. [3] In 1967, BNDD Deputy Director Andrew Tartaglino had starkly declared: "France has been identified as the source of more than 75% of the heroin consumed by our drug addicts." [16] The epicenter of this trade was Marseilles, a city dominated by the Marseilles mafia, an offshoot of the Union Corse. [16] The BNDD worked closely with its French counterparts at the Office Central pour la Répression du Trafic Illicite des Stupéfiants (OCRTIS) to dismantle the networks of the Corsican Mafia, Union Corse, and the Corsican Brotherhood that controlled the European narcotics trade. [1]

The effort was, for a time, successful. By 1974, the French Connection was effectively broken. [17] However, French historian Andrew Merchant notes that this victory was fleeting. The "Franco-American cooperation" had disrupted a centralized trade controlled by a few families, but by 1981, the narcotics trade had morphed into a decentralized drugs milieu. The power vacuum was filled by what he terms the "user-dealer," making the problem more diffuse and arguably harder to combat. [16] You cut off one head, and a thousand more sprout.

Air Wing

In 1971, a Special Agent named Marion Joseph, a former US Air Force pilot, made a simple but revolutionary observation: "a single plane could do the work of five agents in five cars on the ground." With a BNDD budget of a mere $58,000, he set out to prove it. [18] Unable to afford a new aircraft, Joseph acquired a plane through the United States Air Force Bailment Property Transfer Program. [18] It was a surplus Air Force Cessna Skymaster that had seen service in the Vietnam War—a tool of conventional warfare repurposed for the war on drugs. [18] This experimental program expanded rapidly. By 1973, the BNDD had 41 Special Agent/Pilots and a fleet of 24 aircraft, mostly single-engine, piston-driven, fixed-wing planes. [19]

Personnel

In 1971, at its peak, the BNDD was composed of 1,500 agents. It operated with a budget of approximately $43 million—more than fourteen times the budget of its predecessor, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. [20] More money, more agents, same intractable problems.

Dissolution

The BNDD's brief chapter in law enforcement history came to a close on July 1, 1973. On that day, the agency was officially dissolved and its personnel, assets, and responsibilities were merged into the newly created Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The experiment was over, and a new one was about to begin.