="red">WELCOME TO THE ASAC CONFERENCE
The following document was compiled by concerned Hqs agents. It was distributed to all who attended the ASAC Conference. It is sincerely hoped that the contents will be used as a guide to correct the problems we have encountered since Constantine arrived and put DEA back on its proper course.
As DEA Assistant Special Agents in Charge (ASAC's) you men and woman meeting here today hold the very future of the DEA in your hands. If DEA survives Constantine then you will be left to pick up the pieces. If it doesn't then you will be called upon to supervise the transfer of mission to the FBI. One thing each of you should know is that like all despots... Constantine has been found out. His reign of terror and mismanagement at DEA has been exposed.
Many of your current bosses are willing members of the Constantine "Vichy" regime. They are chameleons as are many of you and thus will survive into the next Administrator's reign. We have lost 90% of our most senior SES managers during the Constantine purge. We can survive those losses, but we can't survive the loss of many ASAC's who prematurely quit before becoming SAC's. You people are left. Look in the mirror.
Were you case-makers? Do you run productive divisions?
Are you putting "bad guys" in jail, or are you going with the flow?
Do you have the guts to lead this agency into the next century?
We now know that Constantine was a Louie Freeh pick after Bonner defeated the FBI overt take-over of DEA. It was a bone Janet Reno threw Freeh - that and the chairmanship of the Justice Departments law enforcement coordination committee - after her decision not to merge the DEA into the FBI. The recent book,"Main Justice" written by Jim McGee and Brian Duffy accurately reports these events.
Instead of thinking about your next promotion, or your next post of duty, you should be thinking about why drug-use is skyrocketing among our youth and what you have done or failed to do about it. You should ask yourself these questions:
Has Constantine made the "drug war" his primary mission? If not, why not?
Does Constantine respect you and the efforts you make on a daily basis to stop the flow of drugs to your community? If not, why not?
Did Constantine come to DEA with an agenda other than that proudly stated in our mission statement? If so, what do you think that agenda is?
What can you do individually or collectively to help focus DEA back on it's primary mission?
Has Constantine or for that matter the Clinton Administration embraced our mission statement? Is our mission Constantine's mission?
At this conference are you free to openly discuss what is needed in the field to do a better job?
Are you aware that earlier this year the agents overwhelmingly voted "no confidence" in Constantine?
Are you ASAC's, who privately bemoan the man, ready to publicly assert at this meeting your true beliefs about him?
Now for the questions many of you would ask at this ASAC conference if you were not fearful of retaliation from Headquarters senior managers.
Will this conference start off, as last years, with a statement by a Deputy Administrator or Constantine himself stating morale is high in DEA when we all know the contrary to be true? Will any of you challenge that?
Will you ask when DEA will stop using OPR, and the practice and threat of administrative leave to disrupt the lives of our personnel?
Have you experienced (as most DEA employee's have) that all conflicts between DEA and State and Local agencies are decided in favor of the local agencies when they choose to bring the issue to the attention of the Administrator? Is it possible that all of us can be wrong so often when history has showed DEA to have excellent relationships with our state and local counterparts? Who among you will address this question?
Why is the career board passing up extremely qualified senior agents for promotion while advancing less experienced "cronies?"
Are you concerned that the headquarters rotation policy is broken, stranding many of us here, especially when our experience is needed in the field.
Are any of you concerned about the agents who have been rotated and promoted back and forth within the New York - Washington corridor, who can effect their transfers with little or no disruption of their children's schooling or spousal employment? When on the other hand those who are less fortunate and were rotated from other parts of the country were required to move family, lose money, and have no expectation of returning to the office of their choice.
Aren't you curious to ask why none of our senior SES's, who have retired during the last 18 months, have stood up and criticized DEA's direction and decline?
Why is blame so frequently laid at the GS and ASAC level when SAC's and senior Headquarters managers should, in fact, be blamed?
Do we all share the concern of reaching retirement age and having senior headquarters managers reward our long years of loyalty by a forced transfer to a location that they know will be unacceptable to us? All for the purpose of soliciting our early retirement.
Most of us have had a long and loyal career of risking our lives, uprooting and transferring our families, and sacrificing countless family affairs for DEA's mission. All of us must agree that the recent ASAC transfer list was clearly unfair. We should all reach out for those ASAC's on that list, who are attending this conference, and hear for ourselves their sense of betrayal.
Finally, those of us at last years ASAC conference know that the primary concern "VOICED" was the shambles the agent recruitment program was in. Did Dickerson, Fulmore, and Mathis get blamed for this? No! The agent recruiters were blamed, discredited, and removed! Were any of these three non agents given monetary awards for their performance in the last three years?
=
Please direct any replies/correspondence to:
PHILL COLEMAN,
Editor
DEA Watch
16907 Brighton Avenue, Suite B
Gardena CA 90247
Or, emaildeawatch@pacbell.net,
Or, fax 1-310-532-0634.
If you wish your correspondence stripped of all identifying information and re-sent to another addressee please include the following paragraph...
="red">
"DEA Watch: Please remove my name and any identifying information about the origin of this communication, then send it to...."
(Postage and fax costs for re-transmission are covered by the generous contributions ofDEA Watch supporters.)
If your are using Netscape or a compatible web browser, click thebutton to return to the previous screen, or click here.
