Getting in the Way of Good Policy a U.S. Drug Enforcer In

By J.F.O. McAllister/Washington

His reports were mangled, he claims. His home phone was bugged. A valued source was betrayed. During the 14 months he spent in Rangoon, Drug Enforcement Administration agent Richard Horn contends, he was lied to, electronically surveilled and finally kicked out of the country -- not by the Burmese heroin traffickers he was trying to nab but by State Department and CIA officials who thought his antidrug campaign should be played down in favor of other diplomatic interests. Horn, a 23-year DEA veteran now posted to New Orleans, has taken the highly unusual step of suing the acting head of the U.S. embassy who had him recalled, as well as the CIA station chief. The State Department's Inspector General and the Justice Department are investigating Horn's charges. It is not the first time the priorities of U.S. agencies abroad have come into open conflict, but it is rare, to say the least, that the result is a suit by a federal agent against his colleagues for harassment over policy disputes.

To U.S. drug busters, Burma is Asia's mother lode, the source of 60% of the heroin coming into America. Last year, officials say, Burma seized less than 1% of the estimated 2,575 metric tons of opium its drug lords produced.

That is what drove Horn to push for better cooperation with Burma's military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council. He and his DEA bosses concluded there was no other way to hurt Burma's drug kingpins like Khun Sa, who has some 20,000 men organizing production and distribution routes. But that goal collided with the main thrust of U.S. policy. After the junta nullified an election and killed thousands of protesters, the U.S. cut off aid and trade privileges and then refused to send a new ambassador. Ever since, the State Department has tried to minimize its contacts with the junta.

The State Department had forced out Horn's two immediate DEA predecessors in Rangoon, but he still considered it his "dream job" when he arrived in June 1992. Not for long. Horn is bound to silence by DEA rules, but his lawyer has provided TIME with a long letter he wrote to Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel detailing Horn's allegations. It recounts that Horn and Franklin Huddle, the embassy's charge d'affaires, clashed over a report to Washington & that Horn thought unfairly denigrated the junta's antidrug efforts. Horn says Huddle refused to obtain expert help from the U.S. to draft manuals for Burmese police and prosecutors implementing new drug laws, but did approve training at the CIA for Burmese intelligence officers. He claims that the CIA divulged the name of a DEA informant to the junta and sabotaged a DEA survey of opium yields by revealing to the government that the CIA -- distrusted by the Burmese -- had secretly given the DEA the funds to conduct it. The ultimate insult was discovering Huddle's cable to Washington relaying exact quotes from a phone conversation Horn had made from his home. Horn knew of another instance where the CIA had bugged a DEA agent, and concluded the same had been done to him.

Sources familiar with the Inspector General's investigation say the former CIA station chief absolutely denies wiretapping Horn. For his part, Huddle says "there's absolutely no truth whatsoever in Horn's allegations." Personality clashes played their part: a State Department colleague calls Huddle "a little martinet," while a DEA buddy admits that Horn is "sometimes pigheaded." But the core of the fight in Burma was a vexing question of policy: How intimate should Washington be with a vicious regime to win its help on curbing drugs?

The diplomats argue that putting too much emphasis on drugs is parochial and that the DEA often gets manipulated by corrupt governments. The junta, they say, set up splashy drug busts for the Americans that traffickers were happy to treat as a cost of doing business. "The DEA," says an intelligence source,"was being played for a patsy by a bunch of Burmese military folks who were getting a cut of the action."

Nevertheless, the Clinton Administration has decided after a long review to offer Burma some incentives for better behavior, hoping that one payoff will be serious help in combatting heroin. A U.S. delegation will meet this week in Rangoon with junta leaders, who have just visited opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The junta has kept her under house arrest since July 1989. Diplomats will continue to emphasize human rights, but "our efforts at pure isolation have not been tremendously successful," acknowledges Robert Gelbard, Assistant Secretary of State in charge of narcotics matters. One result of the new policy should be more unanimity among the different agencies that work in the Rangoon embassy where, as Richard Horn's saga shows, Burma's military * bosses have had plenty of opportunity to play the Americans against each other.

With reporting by Sandra Burton/Hong Kong and Elaine Shannon and Douglas Waller/Washington