Inside The DEA

Ten weeks later, I found myself heading south on I-95 with my partner to Washington D.C. after being called by my boss, Jerry Carey.

“Report to Headquarters, now” declared Carey. President Nixon had ordered all BNDD Federal Narcotic Agents from six states surrounding Washington D.C. to come to the Capital to collect evidence of drug abuse on the part of the protestors of ‘The March on Washington,’ and if need be, to protect the city from insurrection.

After arriving at Headquarters, we were directed to the State Department auditorium in Foggy Bottom. There were assembled three hundred agents who were told that we were to infiltrate, in an undercover capacity, the crowd gathered between the Lincoln and Washington monuments on The Mall. We were to report all drug offenses that we observed by calling a designated phone number. The Operation was called Bent Penny since this was the only way we could be identified in the crowd because we would be carrying a bent penny which was issued to us as our identification credentials. This was amusing since it is against Federal law to deface U.S. currency or coinage.

I thought I was in a bad movie. The briefing continued and I felt that I was in a Bund meeting in Berlin. Paranoia was rampant, and we were supposed to be the heroes that would save Washington. They obviously knew that we were a dangerous and untrustworthy brood as they explained that they were taking everything away from us including guns, handcuffs, official and personal identification. We were only allowed to keep the money we had on us. We were to leave our cars at the auditorium and walk to the Mall between the Lincoln and Washington Monuments to spend the night with the enemy who had gathered to perform their anti-social acts. Here we would lurk, stalk, and peep to gather evidence against the enemy and report it back to the Command Center at DEA Headquarters. The evidence would be collected and documented in an affidavit to cancel the protestors’ permit, disperse the crowds in all directions with the business end of a police baton, and cast them in small groups out of Washington. This was going to be a Cossack scene out of Dr. Zhivago.

You cannot imagine the facial expressions of everyone when they were given their personal ‘secret decoder ring’ which was in the form of a ‘bent penny.’ We were assured that Chief of Police Jerry Wilson and all of his men knew that this token indicated “Good guy here- don’t shoot.” At least, I knew that if my body was found on the battlefield of honor as they took my clothes off, they would find the mutilated copper badge and know that I was one of them—a hero.  

The agents in the auditorium dispersed in teams of two with our bent pennies and a phone number to call in our observations. My partner, John Tully, said the only sensible thing that I had heard in the last hour.

“Let’s get my cooler, and you know what.” 

Being rebellious New York Agents, we went to our vehicle, picked up our spare guns in our briefcases in the truck, took the car down to the Mall so we had shelter, and filled the cooler with cold beer—our undercover props. Down to the Mall we went where there had to be over a half a million people singing and dancing as if it was the last night in Sodom. At least ten percent of the hippies were nude and one hundred percent were either drunk, high or out of it. We joined them except for the nude part. The remarkable observation was that they were all peaceful—guitars and rock and roll, harmonicas and folk songs were the music of the night with fires and marihuana smoke filling the air. One could get high by just standing amongst them.

My partner and I carried our cooler, put head bandanas on and opened our shirts. We cruised the crowd who were ingesting every imaginable drug, which was handed out like candy on Halloween. It was the first time that I and my partner became official hippies with only a bent penny to our names.

One of the groups were probably on hallucinogens as one young man, who was completely nude, was sitting in a Yoga position and soon swayed so far that his head fell into the fire. No one did anything, but just stared as his hair was set on fire. “Cool, man” and “woo” were the reactions to the potential disaster. I went over and pulled his head out of the fire and poured my Budweiser over his head putting the fire out. He didn’t even know what had happened to him as he just stayed in the Yoga position and continued meditating in his own mystical world. He must have been with Eleanor Rigby.  

Around midnight, I felt guilty in that we hadn’t reported anything into Command Center from our team, which was given the designation of ‘Team 34.’ I told my partner that I was going to call in so that we could fulfill our duty. He, who now had a floral wreath in his hair, was talking to a blonde who had nothing on, but a matching floral wreath, said,

“Sounds cool to me, but I’m a little busy now.”

That meant in New Yorkese, “Okay asshole, can’t you see I’m busy, so go do it yourself.” 

I then set out on my quest for a phone in that this was the era of ‘B.C.’— Before Cellular. After an hour of searching for a phone, I could now report that there are no public phones on the Mall. So much for our explicit instructions at the meeting. I then got a brain storm in that I knew that there was a phone up in the security station in the Lincoln Monument. I traveled the whole length of