Word: mcfarlin
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...Kate McFarlin...
...investigated a key meeting in December 1989, when CIA officer Mark McFarlin and his boss Jim Campbell, the CIA station chief in Venezuela, met with Annabelle Grimm, attache of the DEA in Caracas. McFarlin, who was assigned to coordinate counternarcotics operations with Guillen's National Guard antidrug unit, wanted Grimm's assistance. He asked her to allow hundreds of pounds of cocaine to be shipped to the U.S. through Venezuela. And he asked that the DEA make sure the contraband would not be interdicted -- in other words, "let the dope walk...
Guillen was undeterred. His agents took delivery of drugs from Colombia and stored them in a truck at the CIA-funded counternarcotics center near Caracas. Several caches were then flown off to the U.S., and all went well -- until the Miami bust in late 1990. According to DEA sources, McFarlin allegedly shared information with Guillen that the Venezuelan secret police were on to the scheme. The shipments continued, however, until Guillen tried to send in 3,373 lbs. of cocaine at once. The DEA, watching closely, stopped it and pounced...
...spokesman declared that "there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing" by the agency's operatives. But, he said, an internal probe uncovered "instances of bad judgment and poor management on the part of some CIA officers involved, and appropriate disciplinary action followed." Station chief Campbell has retired; McFarlin has resigned...
Some DEA officials, however, do not buy the disclaimers by the CIA that its officers were unaware the National Guard was in the drug trade for profit. McFarlin, says a DEA man close to the investigations, "was no naive child, and neither was his boss." And he raises the specter of a heightened interagency feud. "The DEA has knowledge that the CIA had knowledge about what the Guard was doing. They didn't try to stop it." Furthermore, he says, "they didn't advise the DEA." The congressional intelligence committees are likely to investigate the matter further...