CBS News Transcripts 60 MINUTES November 21, 1993

HEADLINE: THE CIA'S COCAINE; CIA APPARENTLY BEHIND SHIPPING OF A TON OF COCAINE INTO THE US FROM VENEZUELA

BODY: THE CIA'S COCAINE

MORLEY SAFER: A ton of cocaine--pure cocaine, worth hundreds of millions—is smuggled into the United States. Sound familiar? Not the way this ton of cocaine got here, according to what the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration told Mike Wallace. This drug shipment got here courtesy of what he calls drug trafficking by the CIA, in partnership with the Venezuelan national guard. While rumors of CIA involvement in drug trafficking have circulated for years, no one in the US government has ever before publicly charged the CIA with this kind of wrongdoing. It is not the kind of accusation anyone in government would make without thinking long and hard.

MIKE WALLACE: Let me understand what you're saying. A ton of cocaine was smuggled into the United States of America by the Venezuelan national guard...

Judge ROBERT BONNER (Former Head, Drug Enforcement Administration): Well, they...

WALLACE: ...in cooperation with the CIA?

Judge BONNER: That's what--that's exactly what appears to have happened. (Footage of Wallace and Bonner walking)

WALLACE: (Voiceover) Until last month, Judge Robert Bonner was the head ofthe Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA. And Judge Bonner explained to us that only the head of the DEA is authorized to approve the transportation of any illegal narcotics, like cocaine, into this country, even if the CIA is bringing it in.

Judge BONNER: Let me put it this way, Mike. If this has not been approved by DEA or an appropriate law-enforcement authority in the United States, then it's illegal. It's called drug trafficking. It's called drug smuggling.

WALLACE: So what you're saying, in effect, is the CIA broke the law; simple as that.

Judge BONNER: I don't think there's any other way you can rationalize around it, assuming, as I think we can, that there was some knowledge on the part of CIA. At least some participation in approving or condoning this to be done. (Footage of Wallace and Bonner; the CIA seal)

WALLACE: (Voiceover) Judge Bonner says he came to that conclusion after a two-year secret investigation conducted by the DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility, in cooperation with the CIA's own inspector general. And what reason did the CIA have for promoting this drug smuggling?

Judge BONNER: Well, the only rationale that's ever been offered is that that--this would lead to some valuable drug intelligence about the Colombian cartels. (Footage of a drug inspection; a ship; trucks; a building; General Ramon Guillen Davila)

WALLACE: (Voiceover) Over half of the Colombian drug cartel's cocaine crosses the border with Venezuela on its way to the United States and Europe. Back in the 1980s, the CIA was mandated by then-President Reagan to develop intelligence on the Colombian drug cartels. And so the CIA, with Venezuela's Guardia Nacional, or national guard, set up an undercover operation, a drug-smuggling operation in Venezuela that could handle the trans-shipment of the Colombian cartel's cocaine on its way to market.

The plan was to infiltrate the cartel, and it worked, for the CIA-national guard undercover operation quickly accumulated this cocaine, over a ton and a half that was smuggled from Colombia into Venezuela inside these trucks and then was stored here at the CIA-financed Counternarcotics Intelligence Center in Caracas. The center's commander and the CIA's man in Venezuela was national guard General Ramon Guillen Davila.

Ms. ANNABELLE GRIMM (Drug Enforcement Agency): I tried to work together with them. I was always aware that they were not telling me everything they were doing. (Footage of Grimm; a building; Mark McFarlin; a plane taking off)

WALLACE: (Voiceover) Annabelle Grimm was a DEA agent with 18 years' experience when she was made agent-in-charge in Caracas. And she says that the CIA station chief, James Campbell, and this man, Mark McFarlin, the CIA officer in charge at the center, told her that to keep the undercover smuggling operation credible, they had to keep the cartel happy, and the way to do that was simple: deliver their dope, untouched by US law enforcement, to the cartel's distributors, their dope dealers in the United States.

Ms. GRIMM: The CIA and the Guardia Nacional wanted to let cocaine go on into the traffic without doing anything. They wanted to let it come up to the United States, no surveillance, no nothing.

WALLACE: In other words, you weren't going to stop them in Miami or Houston or wherever. These drugs were simply going to go to the United States and then go into the traffic and eventually reach the streets.

Ms. GRIMM: That's what they wanted to do, yes. And we had very, very lengthy discussions. But I told them what the US law was and the fact that we could not do this.

WALLACE: So here you've got Jim Campbell, chief of station, who knows about this; Mark McFarlin, CIA officer, knows about this and are stimulating this--this business of sending what are uncontrolled deliveries of drugs--smuggling drugs into the United States, right?

Ms. GRIMM: Right.

WALLACE: Why in the world would they want to do that?

Ms. GRIMM: As they explained to me, that--this would enable them to gain the traffickers' confidence, keep their informant cool and it would result in future seizures of larger quantities of drugs. And also, they hoped to--I guess they thought they were going to get Pablo Escobar at the scene of the crime or something, which I found personally ludicrous.

WALLACE: But if Annabelle Grimm thought this was ludicrous, the CIA station chief, James Campbell, did not. He enlisted the assistance of CIA headquarters in Washington to get approval for the drug shipments. And his bosses at the CIA in Washington went over Annabelle Grimm's head, directly to her bosses at DEA headquarters in Washington.