The Case of Agent Bario

In a bed at the Santa Rosa Medical Center in San Antonio, periodically plugged into life-support systems, lies Sante Alessandro Bario, 42, once a crack undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He has lain there more than a month, his eyes always open, his brain waves showing no sign of activity, except for occasional convulsions. He is a victim--for reasons that remain mysterious--of the international drug trade.

Bario was a policeman in his native Italy until 1960, when he met his first wife and followed her to Detroit and then Washington. There he got a job as an investigator for the IRS Intelligence Division, infiltrating organized crime syndicates in Boston, New Orleans and Detroit. He became a federal narcotics agent in 1969. He is believed to have posed as a gambler in the Bahamas, dropping federal money at the roulette wheels of Paradise Island. He liked to wear Cardin suits and Dior shirts. Acting under cover, he became the lover of the mistress of a French heroin ring boss, cracking a drug and counterfeit network extending from France to the U.S. and Canada. Working with New York City's Knapp Commission looking into police corruption, he helped convict an assistant district attorney of bribery. He was brought in from the cold in 1975 to become head of the DEA enforcement section in Mexico City, charged with investigating the flow of drugs from Latin America.

His striking good looks had always added to his James Bond panache, but last year he began to hear the winged chariot of middle age. He became depressed and nervous. His dark, curly hair started falling out, and he lost weight. He wanted to see a psychiatrist, but feared it would hurt his career. He was obsessed with producing a dramatic dope bust that involved trapping cocaine traffickers from South America and France in one place. To make his case, he relied heavily on a longtime DEA informant, a French Canadian who calls himself Claude Picault.

Last April, Picault helped Bario set up a raid in Mexico City that netted 33 lbs. of Colombian cocaine. Bario turned in 22 lbs. to the DEA, but let Picault keep the rest. Bario insisted later to his second wife and his lawyer that he was following standard procedure, allowing an informant to have some confiscated cocaine as a bonus to keep him loyal.

Picault, however, had a different story and in September told it to the DEA in Paris. Bario, he said, had allowed him to keep the coke in order to split the profits from its sale. DEA investigators eavesdropped as Picault set up a meeting with Bario in Chicago's O'Hare Airport, and they were on hand as $4,000 in marked bills was transferred. A few days later, on Oct. 7, they listened in on another meeting between Picault and Bario at a San Antonio hotel. Shortly after Bario accepted $5,000 from Picault, agents arrested him.

Held on $500,000 bail, Bario was sitting in his cell on Dec. 16 when the prisoners were served peanut butter sandwiches. Bario took one bite of his and threw the rest in the toilet. Moments later he was found in convulsions. He has been in a coma ever since. Initial tests revealed strychnine in his blood; subsequent ones did not. There was no poison found in his sandwich or in a white powder on the cell floor. His wife Joanne doubts the thoroughness of these tests, however. She was not told of the incident until two days later, when she came to the jail for a visit. Says she: "I was told then that Sandy had been poisoned. Those were the warden's words." The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility and Civil Rights Division are investigating.

Federal officials hint that Bario may have saved an antidepressant drug prescribed by a psychiatrist and either overdosed or committed suicide. That drug did not show up in lab tests either, however. Who had a motive to poison him? Mafia members may have wanted revenge for his undercover work. Or it may have been some of the traffickers against whom Bario was moving, allegedly including high Latin American officials. Some DEA officials might also have had reason to want Bario dead, if his trial were to expose illegal acts by certain agents. Says his lawyer: "He had an abiding fear of his own agency, although I have no evidence the DEA did anything to make this happen." The attending physician says there may be a more innocent explanation: "He may have choked on his sandwich." He adds, however, "But I don't think so."

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