Word: panella
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...floating, polyglot population of young Europeans and North Americans who have made the place a kind of enduring Woodstock since the mid-1960s. Over the past 18 months, though, Amsterdam has changed from merely a drug-using city to the chief narcotics distribution point in Europe. Says Nicholas Panella, Paris-based deputy director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's European operations: "Products from there are finding their way into cities all over the Continent." Fearing that the stuff may also be starting to make its way to North America, Panella's office has set up a branch...
...toughest place Panella has worked in was Turkey. Frequently he posed as a buyer and approached the wagon trains by which heavily armed Turkish opium farmers moved their wares at night. "I never made a case in the interior when there wasn't shooting," Panella says, "but nobody ever got hit. The confusion is unbelievable. You just close in when the time comes and grab as many farmers...
...always nervous when it begins," says Panella. "You never get used to those first few minutes-you know, with the guns and all that." The closest call he has ever had was in Beirut, when he arranged the bust of a small-time dealer. "We got to the building where I was going to pick up the stuff. The police were supposed to stay at the top of some long narrow stairs until I climbed up there with the trafficker. But they started to come down too soon. I felt the automatic in my back. When I heard the hammer...
Eleven BNDD agents have been killed in the past four years. The chief occupational hazard is the "little guy," who is apt to panic when he finds he has been dealing with an agent. A regular trafficker would "just back off and split," says Panella. "These guys don't like messy stuff." They do not hesitate to rub out a suspected informer...
Many agents admit a respect for "the other team." Says Panella: "It's professional stuff. When you get them, they know you've played a good hand. When they get away, you know you've still got something to learn from them...