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• Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places (RAND Studies in Policy Analysis) by Robert J. MacCoun
• The Phoenix Program by Douglas Valentine
• The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade by Alfred W. McCoy
• Hot Shots and Heavy Hits: Tales of an Undercover Drug Agent by Paul Doyle
• Ending the War on Drugs by Dirk Chase Eldredge

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From Publishers Weekly
Before the Drug Enforcement Administration was created in 1973, before the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs was founded in 1968, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) served as the country’s primary drug law enforcement agency. In this thoroughly researched history, Valentine (The Phoenix Program; The Hotel Tacloban, etc.) offers an in-depth look at the FBN’s obscure organization and its various activities, which lasted from 1930 until the end of the ‘60s. Valentine writes extensively about Harry J. Anslinger, the commissioner whose "personality, policies and appointments" defined the agency and the government’s war on drugs for more than 30 years. He describes how FBN officers were trained to "make arrests, gather evidence for presentation in court, test and handle seized narcotics, tail suspects without being seen, and rule their informants with an iron fist." Drawing upon interviews with former agents and federal officers (such as Howard Chappell, George Gaffney and Col. Tully Acampora), Valentine also provides firsthand accounts of bureau operations both at home and abroad, and of business relationships fostered among FBN ranks. Despite the volume’s ambitious premise and Valentine’s hard work, however, this lengthy history will probably fail to engross most casual readers since its material proves dense and, occasionally, difficult. But for political historians and those already interested in the history of the war on drugs, Valentine’s unearthing of rare primary sources should prove invaluable. 16 pages of b&w; photos
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeffrey St. Clair
Valentine's book tells us how we got to where we are.

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The best way to begin this book is with an account of the Treasury Department's investigation of Arnold Rothstein's worldwide drug-smuggling operation. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
acting district supervisor, federal drug law enforcement, enforcement assistant, assistant secretary for law enforcement, intelligence angle, morphine base, blue valise, agent wrongdoing, foreign policemen, undercover cases, heroin trail, first overseas office, deep politics, international drug smuggling, integrity investigation, drug syndicate, unilateral operations, counterintelligence staff, international drug traffickers, international drug trafficking, clandestine labs, drug smuggling operation, federal narcotic agents, special employee, unstated policy Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, George White, Charlie Siragusa, San Francisco, New Orleans, George Gaffney, Meyer Lansky, Far East, Hank Manfredi, Hong Kong, Lucky Luciano, Bobby Kennedy, Paul Knight, Garland Williams, State Department, Treasury Department, Andy Tartaglino, Lenny Schrier, Vito Genovese, James Angleton, Los Angeles, Pat Ward, Frank Selvaggi, Henry Giordano, Luciano Project New!
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful: Important but little known history, July 28, 2004 Reviewer: D. G Wood - See all my reviews    Based on exhaustive research and interviews, this detailed and extensively footnoted history of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics is both a fine reference work for scholars, and an eye-opening, exciting narrative for the general reader. The book itself is the highest quality, made to last for generations, and includes a section of rare photographs, and an appendix consisting of a rogue's gallery from the FBN's files. The FBN, headed by Harry J. Anslinger, was the precursor agency to today's DEA. The War on Drugs that has been waged for years now, with a price is no object mentality, is now being reconsidered by more and more people as either an ill-considered mistake, or perhaps even as a Big Government/Big Brother monkey on the public's fiscal back. The War has surely not stopped the supply of drugs, and if you have ever thought that it was never intended to, but wondered why that was so, The Strength of The Wolf, will provide some answers. There are many books about drug enforcement (or lack thereof) in the recent past, but this work is unique in that it looks at what might be called the dawn of drug enforcement.

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• Subjects > Biographies & Memoirs > General
• Subjects > Health, Mind & Body > Recovery > Drug Dependency
• Subjects > History > Americas > General
• Subjects > History > Americas > United States > 20th Century > General
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Bureau of Narcotics
Drug Crimes
Drug control
Drug traffic
History
History - General History
History - U.S.
Intelligence Agencies
Narcotics, Control of
Penology
Political History
Social Science
Sociology
Sociology - General
United States
United States - 20th Century
Central government
Crime & criminology
Drug addiction & substance abuse
Inter-war period, 1918-1939
Second World War, 1939-1945
USA
c 1945 to c 1960
c 1960 to c 1970


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