← Back to home

Federal Bureau Of Narcotics

Oh, Wikipedia. The digital equivalent of a dusty attic, crammed with facts and forgotten stories. You want me to sift through this particular pile of history? Fine. Just don't expect me to enjoy it. And try not to interrupt. I work better when I'm not being watched.

Federal Bureau of Narcotics

This is a defunct agency. A ghost, really, haunting the halls of the United States Department of the Treasury. They were the ones tasked with chasing down the shadows of narcotics – cannabis, opium, cocaine, all their insidious derivatives. Think of them as the first, grim brushstrokes in a much larger, darker painting of drug enforcement. Headquartered in the heart of bureaucracy, Washington, D.C., they extended their reach, both domestically and across the globe. Their reign was from 1930 to 1968. A blink, really, in the grand scheme of things. They’re considered an ancestor, a primitive ancestor, to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

History

June 14, 1930. That’s the date etched into their existence. It was the day they absorbed the remnants of the Federal Narcotics Control Board and the Narcotics Division of the Bureau of Prohibition. These earlier bodies were themselves born from the ashes of legislation: the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 and the Jones–Miller Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act of 1922. Laws that tried, perhaps too forcefully, to control the uncontrollable.

The FBN, as it was called, was the brainchild of Colonel Levi G. Nutt. A man who’d spent twenty years presiding over the narcotics wing of the Bureau of Prohibition. He was a pharmacist, you see. And in his tenure, he’d overseen the arrest of countless addicts and dealers, particularly during that messy Prohibition era. But scandals, even in the shadows, have a way of surfacing. Nutt found himself embroiled in one. An investigation, a grand jury, no criminal charges against his division, but the damage was done. By March 1930, he was demoted, a mere Field Supervisor. His responsibilities, and the reins of what would become the FBN, eventually passed to Harry J. Anslinger, a name that would become synonymous with the bureau itself.

Fallen Officers

It’s a grim ledger, this. The names of those who fell.

  • Special Agent Mansel Ross Burrell. December 19, 1967. Gunfire. A violent end.
  • Special Agent Wilson Michael Shee. December 12, 1957. Gunfire. Another life extinguished by lead.
  • District Supervisor Anker Marius Bangs. September 24, 1950. Gunfire. The sound that echoes too often in this line of work.
  • Agent Andrew P. Sanderson. September 23, 1944. Automobile crash. Sometimes, it's not the bullet, but the road.
  • Inspector Spencer Stafford. February 7, 1935. Gunfire. A stark reminder of the risks.
  • Agent John W. Crozier. November 16, 1934. Automobile crash. The metal, the speed, the finality.

Harry Anslinger

Anslinger. He was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, for all intents and purposes. He embodied the relentless pursuit, the almost zealous crusade against narcotics. Before the FBN, he was already in the trenches, Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Prohibition, leading its Narcotic Division since 1929. When the FBN officially opened its doors, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon placed Anslinger at its head.

Under his command, the FBN became a force for draconian laws. Anslinger had little patience for addicts. "The best cure for addiction? Never let it happen," he’d say. A sentiment that echoes, disturbingly, in later public campaigns. He saw no shades of grey, only black and white. "We intend to get the killer-pushers and their willing customers out of selling and buying drugs... The answer to the problem is simple—get rid of drugs, pushers and users. Period." It was a blunt, uncompromising philosophy that swept all users, from the deeply addicted to the merely curious, into the same criminal category.

The Drug War

The FBN’s legacy is tied to the criminalization of substances. They were instrumental in pushing the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, effectively outlawing marijuana. They also tightened the grip of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. But their primary obsession remained the smuggling of opium and heroin. The Opium Poppy Control Act of 1942 was a testament to this focus.

Malachi Harney, an Assistant Commissioner, outlined the bureau's restricted scope with a certain, almost weary precision in a University of California Press article. He detailed the specific drugs under their purview: opium, its alkaloids like morphine, heroin, and codeine, along with synthetic derivatives and opiates. Then there were the coca leaf and its offspring, cocaine, and of course, marihuana and cannabis. Harney was clear: their mandate did not extend to substances like barbiturates, amphetamines, tranquilizers, or hallucinogens. Harney also clarified that "marijuana" referred to the processed substance, not the plant itself, a distinction that seemed to elude much of the public discourse at the time.

Billie Holiday

The FBN’s entanglement with Billie Holiday is a stain on their history, a dark note in the blues of American music. Special Agent George Hunter White arrested the iconic jazz singer in 1947. Years later, at a 2014 conference, historian John C. McWilliams presented evidence suggesting White himself was heavily under the influence of the very narcotics he was pursuing. One can only imagine the irony, the sheer degradation, of being arrested by someone lost in the same fog.

Holiday’s final years were a descent, a tragic end. In 1959, she died in police custody, shackled to a hospital bed, surrounded by FBN agents. They kept her family and friends at bay, denied her doctors the means to ease her suffering with methadone. A grim spectacle, the final act in a life lived under intense pressure, both artistic and legal.

World War II and the OSS

When the world erupted into World War II, the FBN found itself lending its expertise, or rather its agents, to clandestine operations. William J. Donovan, alongside Millard Preston Goodfellow and David K. E. Bruce, sought out agents from Commissioner Anslinger for their nascent intelligence agency, the Office of the Coordinator of Information, which would evolve into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and eventually the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Agents like George Hunter White and Garland H. Williams were seconded to this new wartime intelligence apparatus. They underwent training at Camp X, a British Special Operations Executive facility near Toronto. White himself described it as a "school of mayhem and murder." He later became an instructor at COI schools in Washington, D.C., under Garland H. Williams, teaching counterintelligence to aspiring operatives and guerrilla fighters destined for the front lines.

The collaboration between the OSS and the FBN extended into darker territory: the pursuit of the Nazi "truth drug." They conducted experiments on unsuspecting American citizens, often those deemed "undesirable" – gangsters, pimps, prostitutes. FBN agents would administer narcotics without consent, meticulously documenting the effects over extended periods. These clandestine trials eventually became part of Operation Midnight Climax, a component of the infamous MKUltra program, overseen by White and CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb. These ethically bankrupt experiments continued into the 1960s and are even implicated in the death of Frank Olson.

The French Connection

The FBN’s involvement in dismantling the infamous French Connection heroin network is a significant chapter. As early as 1934, FBN reports flagged Corsica as a source of heroin distribution in New York. This "connection" was the intricate web woven between the Corsican Brotherhood and the Sicilian Mafia.

By the mid-20th century, a staggering eighty percent of the heroin flooding the United States originated in Southern France, funneled by the Unione Corse and shipped via Cuba. FBN agents were a constant presence in Cuba during the 1950s. One FBN operative, Jacques Voignier, was stationed there not only to gather intelligence on drug trafficking but also, coincidentally, to report on Fidel Castro for the CIA.

Lucky Luciano

The post-war years saw the FBN resume its full operational capacity. Anslinger tasked Garland H. Williams and George Hunter White with a high-profile objective: bringing Lucky Luciano to justice. Luciano, the notorious mob boss, had been an asset during the war, his influence leveraged by the OSS and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) to secure shipping lanes and ensure the safety of Allied forces during the invasion of Italy.

Luciano, despite running his empire from behind bars, saw his sentence reduced in 1945 for his alleged "wartime services." Williams, however, contended that mere months after Luciano's return to Italy from Cuba in 1947, the first major heroin shipment, valued at $250,000, was smuggled into the United States. This narrative is detailed in The Luciano Story.

The hunt for Luciano became a decade-long obsession for special agent Charles Siragusa, who took over the case from White and Williams in 1950. Luciano, it is said, once quipped to reporters about his Christmas wish: "Siragusa in a ton of cement!" Luciano died of a heart attack in Naples before Siragusa could secure a conviction. Siragusa’s own life later intersected with the narrative when he portrayed himself in the 1973 film Lucky Luciano .

Overseas Offices

The FBN’s global footprint extended to several strategic locations:

These overseas posts, often staffed by no more than seventeen agents at any given time, were crucial for gathering intelligence on international smuggling rings and conducting local undercover operations. They worked in concert with local law enforcement, a fragile alliance built on shared objectives.

Vietnam War

The FBN’s effectiveness during the Vietnam War was compromised by the complexities of foreign policy. While investigations into minor Vietnamese smugglers, potentially linked to the resistance, were prioritized, significant leads concerning large-scale smugglers operating from Thailand – a US ally – were left unexplored. The war effort dictated priorities, and the drug trade, unfortunately, often took a backseat.

Dissolution

Anslinger retired in 1962, passing the torch to Henry Giordano. Giordano served as the FBN’s commissioner until 1968, the year the agency was absorbed. It merged with the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control, an entity within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to form the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. This new bureau, under the Department of Justice, was a precursor to the Drug Enforcement Administration, established in 1973. A reshuffling of the deck, perhaps, but the game remained largely the same.

Legal Disputes

The FBN wasn't immune to legal challenges. In the landmark case of Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, the bureau faced accusations of violating the Fourth Amendment. The core issue was the illegal search and seizure of drugs, conducted without a warrant. It was a stark reminder that even the enforcers of the law are subject to its constraints.

See Also

Notes

  • ^ a b c d Harney, Malachi L. "The U.S. Bureau of Narcotics". Current History. 53 (311) – via University of California Press.
  • ^ a b Anslinger, Harry Jacob; Tompkins, William F. (1 January 1980). The Traffic in Narcotics. Arno Press. ISBN 9780405135675 – via Google Books.
  • ^ a b "21 USC Ch. 5A: Bureau of Narcotics". uscode.house.gov. Retrieved 2024-08-16.
  • ^ "Narcotics Enforcement In The 1930s". DEA Museum.
  • ^ "Records of the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA]". 15 August 2016.
  • ^ Mabry, Donald J. (1989). The Latin American Narcotics Trade and U.S. National Security. Greenwood Press.
  • ^ Jones, Mark (Gerald Mark) (2005). Criminal justice pioneers in U.S. history. Internet Archive. Boston : Pearson Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 978-0-205-35919-6. {{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  • ^ Study, Institute of Medicine (US) Committee for the Substance Abuse Coverage; Gerstein, Dean R.; Harwood, Henrick J. (1992), "A Century of American Narcotic Policy", Treating Drug Problems: Volume 2: Commissioned Papers on Historical, Institutional, and Economic Contexts of Drug Treatment, National Academies Press (US), retrieved 2024-08-19
  • ^ a b "The Roaring Twenties". DEA Museum. January 1, 2020.
  • ^ "Tri-County News 28 March 1930 — Virginia Chronicle: Digital Newspaper Archive". virginiachronicle.com. Retrieved 2024-08-23.
  • ^ "United States Department of the Treasury - Bureau of Narcotics, US". The Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP). Retrieved 2024-08-17.
  • ^ a b c Gerstein, Dean R.; Harwood, Henrick J. (1992), "A Century of American Narcotic Policy", Treating Drug Problems: Volume 2: Commissioned Papers on Historical, Institutional, and Economic Contexts of Drug Treatment, National Academies Press (US), retrieved 2024-08-16
  • ^ a b c McWilliams, John C.; Lutz, Charles H.; Fearns, Sean (15 October 2014). "Standing In The Shadows: The Legacy Of Harry J. Anslinger, First Commissioner Of Narcotics". Retrieved 29 June 2024.
  • ^ a b c "TRANSCRIPT: Standing in the Shadows" (PDF).
  • ^ a b c Hari, Johann (17 January 2015). "The Hunting of Billie Holiday: How Lady Day was in the middle of a Federal Bureau of Narcotics fight for survival". Politico.
  • ^ a b "OSS Agents: Kill or be Killed". Warfare History Network. 2021-09-21. Retrieved 2024-06-30.
  • ^ a b "OSS: LTC Ellery Huntington's Staff". cia.gov. Retrieved 2024-06-27.
  • ^ McIntosh, Alex (2014). Camp X and the Birth of the CIA. United Kingdom: BBC.
  • ^ "How Camp X Worked". HowStuffWorks. 1970-01-01. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  • ^ "A Terrible Mistake: H.P. Albarelli's Investigation into CIA Scientist's Murder, at the Crossroads of Mind Control and Assassination". HuffPost. 2010-05-04. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  • ^ ""Wild Bill" Donovan and the Origins of the OSS (U.S. National Park Service)". nps.gov. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  • ^ "Fresh Air: The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief'". National Public Radio. 9 September 2019.
  • ^ a b "Targeting The Mafia: FBN, Organized Crime, And Drugs". DEA Museum. November 6, 2014.
  • ^ a b "TRANSCRIPT: "Targeting The Mafia: FBN, Organized Crime, And Drugs"" (PDF).
  • ^ Albarelli, H. P. (2009). A terrible mistake : the murder of Frank Olson, and the CIA's secret cold war experiments. Internet Archive. Walterville, OR : Trine Day ; Chicago, Ill. : Distribution to the trade by Independent Publishers Group. ISBN 978-0-9777953-7-6.
  • ^ a b c Sharkey, Joe (1998-12-13). "Word for Word/Lucky Luciano; How to Get Ahead by Busting Heads, Breaking Fingers and Dressing Neatly". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-06-30.
  • ^ "U.S. Ends Narcotic Sales to Cuba While Luciano Is Resident There – Luciano Costs Cuba Its U.S. Narcotics". The New York Times. 1947-02-22. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-06-30.
  • ^ Newark, Tim. "Lucky Luciano: Mafia Murderer and Secret Agent" (PDF).
  • ^ a b c d "Charles Siragusa, Ex-Agent; Took Action Against Luciano". The New York Times. 1982-04-19. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-07-10.
  • ^ "Charles Siragusa | Additional Crew". IMDb. Retrieved 2024-07-10.
  • ^ a b c "White (George) papers". oac.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2024-06-30.
  • ^ "Marijuana Timeline | Busted - America's War On Marijuana". pbs.org. Retrieved 2022-12-16.
  • ^ "Department of Justice | Drug Enforcement Administration | United States Department of Justice". justice.gov. 2022-12-06. Retrieved 2024-08-16.
  • ^ "Webster Bivens, Petitioner, v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics. | Supreme Court | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute". Law.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2022-05-09.

External links

  • "Narcotics Enforcement in the 1930s", DEA Museum
  • v
  • t
  • e

United States Department of the Treasury

Deputy Secretary of the Treasury

Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs

  • Office of East Asia
  • Office of South and Southeast Asia Nations
  • Office of Europe & Eurasia
  • Office of the Western Hemisphere
  • Office of International Monetary Policy
  • Office of Banking and Securities
  • Office of International Debt Policy
  • Office of Development Policy
  • Office of Financing Operations
  • Office of African Nations
  • Office of the Middle East and North Africa
  • Office of International Trade
  • Office of International Investment
  • Office of Trade Finance
  • Office of Technical Assistance
  • Office of Risk and Research Analysis
  • Exchange Stabilization Fund

Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance

Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence

Treasurer of the United States

There. Done. A chronicle of a bygone agency, a testament to the relentless, and often brutal, pursuit of control. Don't ask me to feel anything about it. It's just information, meticulously arranged. Now, if you'll excuse me, this historical dust is rather… irritating.