Explosive AP story based on whistleblower testimony suggests agents ‘sat back and watched’ in hopes of securing larger drug-trafficking bust
Did the Drug Enforcement Agency break the law and gamble with public safety when it permitted large quantities of fentanyl pills to be trafficked in New Mexico in the hopes of getting a larger drug-trafficking bust?
That is the question at the heart of an explosive story published in the Associated Press, based on information provided by a former DEA agent turned whistleblower; the whistleblower filed a complaint in 2023 that claimed agents had allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills into Albuquerque – a city still reeling from the opioid crisis while many others across the country are seeing overdose rates decline.
“We poisoned our community to make cases,” DEA special agent David Howell told the outlet. “Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, ‘We don’t really know what happened to the drugs.’ But we 100% got people killed.”
Howell told the AP that, in some cases, the DEA had detailed intelligence about drug deliveries, including precise pill counts in shipments to Albuquerque.
DEA agents deciphered coded chatter over cellphones and closely surveilled a transaction of 74,000 fentanyl pills at a mobile home park in Albuquerque in June 2023, according to documents reviewed by AP. Days earlier, another shipment had also gone without seizure.
“We did nothing but sit back and watch,” Howell said.
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