In Drug War, Tribe Feels Invaded by Both Sides from The New York Times

January 25, 2010
War Without Borders
In Drug War, Tribe Feels Invaded by Both Sides
By ERIK ECKHOLM
SELLS, Ariz. — An eerie hush settles in at sundown on the Tohono O’odham Nation, which straddles 75 miles of border with Mexico.

Few residents leave their homes. The roads crawl with the trucks of Border Patrol agents, who stop unfamiliar vehicles, scrutinize back roads for footprints and hike into the desert wilds to intercept smugglers carrying marijuana on their backs and droves of migrants trying to make it north.

By the bad luck of geography, the only large Indian reservation on the embattled border is caught in the middle, emerging as a major transit point for drugs as well as people.

A long-insular tribe of 28,000 people and its culture are paying a steep price: the land is swarming with outsiders, residents are afraid to walk in the hallowed desert, and some members, lured by drug cartel cash in a place with high unemployment, are ending up in prison.

“People will knock on your door, flash a wad of money and ask if you can drive this bale of marijuana up north,” said Marla Henry, 38, chairwoman of Chukut Kuk district, which covers much of the border zone.

The tightening of border security to the east and west, which started in the 1990s and intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks, funneled more drug traffic through the Tohono O’odham reservation, federal officials said, and especially more marijuana, which is hard to slip through vehicle crossings because of its bulk.

A record 319,000 pounds of marijuana were seized on the reservation in 2009, up from 201,000 pounds the previous year, along with small amounts of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

Hundreds of tribal members have been prosecuted in federal, state or tribal courts for smuggling drugs or humans, taking offers that reach $5,000 for storing marijuana or transporting it across the reservation. In a few families, both parents have been sent to prison, leaving grandparents to raise the children.

“People are afraid that if they say no, they’ll be threatened by the cartel,” Ms. Henry said.

If residents of remote villages tried to call the police, she said, help might not arrive for two hours or more.

At the same time, some residents are angry at the intrusion of hundreds of federal agents, including some who stay for a week at a time on bases in remote parts of the reservation. The surge in agents who cruise the roads has meant more checkpoints and tighter controls on a border that tribal members, 1,500 of whom live in Mexico, once freely crossed.

The once-placid reservation feels like a “militarized zone,” said Ned Norris Jr., the tribal chairman, who also says the tribe must cooperate to stem the cartels. “Drug smuggling is a problem we didn’t create, but now we’re having to deal with the consequences.”

Many residents say they live in fear of the smugglers and hordes of migrants who lurk around their homes, and also of being subjected to a humiliating search by federal agents.

The elderly avoid the desert, even in the daytime, because they might stumble upon a cache of marijuana or drug “mules” hiding in desert washes until dark.

“We can’t even go out to collect wood for the stove,” said Verna Miguel, 63, who was traumatized three years ago when a group of migrants forced her to stop on a road, beat her and stole her vehicle.

“We’ve always picked saguaro fruits and cholla buds,” Ms. Miguel said, using such desert products for consumption and rituals. “But now we don’t dare do that.”

Until recently, the reservation’s international border was porous, defended by three strands of barbed wire. Over the last two years, it has been lined with metal posts and Normandy-style barriers to stop the trucks that used to barrel through and head for Phoenix.

Federal officials describe the rise in drug seizures on the reservation as a sign of growing success on what had long been a vulnerable section of border. Barriers and surveillance have forced most of the smugglers to enter on foot rather than in vehicles and spend hours or days sneaking through the reservation, making them more vulnerable to detection, said Agent Robert Gilbert, chief of the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol.

But the large busts, here and elsewhere on the border, are also a measure of the continued trade and profits reaped by the cartels.

“The cartels use the profit from marijuana to purchase cocaine in Colombia and Peru and the ingredients for meth and heroin from other regions,” said Elizabeth W. Kempshall, special agent in charge of the Arizona office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “So marijuana is the catalyst for the rest of the drug trade.”

The drug smugglers, mainly working for the Sinaloa Cartel, officials said, place scouts for days at a time on mountainsides, with night-vision goggles to monitor movements of the Border Patrol. The scouts communicate with Mexican or Indian guides using cellphones or two-way radios with rolling codes that cannot be intercepted, said Sgt. David Cray of the tribal police force, which has spent major amounts of money on border issues. During the day, the scouts hide in caves or under camouflage.

The Border Patrol has its own spotters and trucks with infrared video cameras that detect heat miles away. The tribe has agreed to electronic surveillance towers that in coming years will make a “virtual fence” across their lands.

Many agents spend their nights “cutting for sign,” a tracker’s term, making slow drives on dirt roads in search of footprints.

One recent chilly night, a Border Patrol spotter detected eight white dots on his screen moving steadily north, not meandering the way cows or wild mules do. With a laser beam he fixed their coordinates at a spot five miles from his mountaintop post.

Two agents in four-wheel-drive vehicles set out over a rutted ranch track, then hiked through half a mile of mesquite, cholla and prickly pear to intercept the group. Six escaped, but two Mexican men were captured with seven burlap packs, each filled with 50 pounds of marijuana that sells wholesale for $500 or more per pound.

For the agents, it was a good night’s work. “This is what we live for, stopping drugs,” said an agent who hiked in shortly after the bust to help bring in the smugglers and the contraband.

But many tribal members see the federal presence as a mixed blessing at best.

Ofelia Rivas, 53, of Meneger’s Dam Village is an Indian rights advocate and a rare border resident who agreed to speak to a reporter. She said that most families in border villages, including her own, had had a relative imprisoned for drug offenses, but that such individuals should not be blamed for the lack of legal jobs. Ms. Rivas has criticized tribal leaders for acquiescing to what she calls an oppressive federal occupation.

Federal law officials praise the tribe for its cooperation, and the Border Patrol has fielded community relations officers to minimize frictions.

Even Mr. Norris, the tribal chairman, said he had been stopped and questioned. “Quite frankly, the people are getting sick of it,” he said of the heavy outside presence. But he added that the smuggling was beyond the tribe’s ability to control.

“I hope in my lifetime we can go back to the way it used to be,” Mr. Norris said, “where people could go and walk in the daylight on our own land.”



Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

This Week's Corrupt Cops from Drug War Chronicle

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #616, 1/15/10
A sticky-fingering, meth-snorting cop goes away for awhile, and a trio of jail guards get in trouble. Let's get to it:

In Glendora, California, a former Glendora police officer was sentenced Tuesday to six months in jail, three years of probation, and a 24-month drug rehabilitation program after pleading no contest to grand theft and methamphetamine possession charges. Timothy Radogna, 34, was arrested in May in an "integrity sting" after superiors received reports he was failing to book drugs and cash into evidence. Police left meth and $1,000 in cash in a bait car, and Radogna took the bait. He could have gotten up to nine years.

In Beaumont, Texas, a former Texas Department of Corrections guard pleaded guilty Monday to trying to smuggle drugs and a cell phone into the Stiles Unit in his lunchbox. Eric Talmore, 25, copped pleas to bribery and having a prohibited substance in a correctional facility. He got busted with tobacco in his socks, rolling papers in his underwear, and marijuana and a cell phone hidden inside a container of fried rice. He faces up to 30 years in prison when sentenced on February 16, but his attorney is asking for probation.

In Manchester, Kentucky, a Clay County Detention Center guard was arrested Sunday on charges she smuggled drugs to inmates in the jail. Guard Dawn Hayes, 31, fell prey to an undercover investigation by the County Sheriff's Office, taking drugs to be smuggled into the jail from a confidential informant. Hayes is currently residing at her place of employment.

In Chesterton, Indiana, an Indiana State Prison guard was arrested January 2 for trying to smuggle tobacco and marijuana into the prison. Barb Roseborough, a nine-year veteran, got caught when prison staff found a package wrapped in electrical tape hidden in the lining of her bag as she reported for work. A second package was later found hidden on her person. She has been charged with trafficking with an offender and felony marijuana possession. She faces from two to eight years on the first count and up to three years on the second. At last report, she was being held at the LaPorte County Jail.


PERMISSION to reprint or redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet) is hereby granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and, where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we request notification for our records, including physical copies where material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail drcnet@drcnet.org. Thank you.

Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.

StoptheDrugWar.org • 1623 Connecticut Ave., NW, 3rd Floor, Washington DC 20009
Phone (202) 293-8340 Fax (202) 293-8344 drcnet@drcnet.org • Privacy Policy

McGwire Admits That He Used Steroids from New York Times

January 12, 2010
McGwire Admits That He Used Steroids
By TYLER KEPNER
Mark McGwire, whose inflated statistics and refusal to address his past came to symbolize a synthetic era in baseball history, acknowledged on Monday that he used steroids through the 1990s.

McGwire has been out of baseball since retiring after the 2001 season, making few public appearances besides his infamous performance before Congress in 2005, when he dodged questions about steroid use. He starts next month as the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, and said he needed to make the admission to move forward.

“It’s something I’m certainly not proud of,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “I’m certainly sorry for having done it. Someday, somehow, somewhere I knew I’d probably have to talk about this. I guess the steppingstone was being offered the hitting-coach job with the Cardinals. At that time, I said, ‘I need to come clean about this.’ ”

It was an orchestrated confession by McGwire, who first released a statement to The Associated Press, then conducted one-on-one interviews with several news outlets, including The Times. He also gave his first televised interview on the subject — to Bob Costas on the MLB Network.

McGwire and the Chicago Cubs’ Sammy Sosa captivated baseball in the summer of 1998 as they chased Roger Maris’s record of 61 home runs in a season. McGwire was the first to pass Maris and finished with a record of 70, the high point of a four-year stretch in which he bashed 245 home runs.

In the Costas interview, in which his voice cracked and his eyes watered several times, McGwire said he called Pat Maris, Roger Maris’s widow, on Monday and apologized.

“I think she was shocked that I called her,” McGwire said. “I felt that I needed to do that. They’ve been great supporters of mine. She was disappointed, and she has every right to be. I couldn’t tell her how so sorry I was.”

Still, McGwire told Costas he “absolutely” could have broken the record without using steroids, pointing to his home run prowess going back to Little League. “That’s why it’s the most regrettable thing I’ve ever done in my life,” McGwire said.

McGwire denied that he routinely injected steroids with Jose Canseco, his former Oakland teammate, as Canseco claimed in his 2005 book, “Juiced.” McGwire said he briefly tried steroids after the 1989 season but did not begin using them regularly until the winter after the 1993 season, when he was mired in a painful period of his career that included repeated trips to the disabled list, partly because of injuries to both heels.

During that time, he said, he began using steroids regularly. He told Costas that the drugs were readily available at gyms and that he took them orally and by injection. But he said he did not remember the name of the drugs.

In The Times interview, McGwire also cited health factors, saying: “In the winter of ’93, ’94, it was brought to my attention, ‘Have you ever thought of steroids or HGH; it can help speed up the healing process of injuries.’ ”

McGwire recalled a conversation with his father in 1996, when he was sidelined with another heel injury. “I remember telling him, ‘I want to retire,’ ” he told The Times. “ ‘I want to get away.’ At the time I knew my swing was developing, but I couldn’t get away from the injuries. I seriously thought about retiring, but my dad talked me out of it.”

McGwire kept playing but said he took steroids so he could stay on the field.

“I used very, very low dosages,” he said. “There’s no way I wanted to look like Lou Ferrigno or Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

He added: “I don’t want to use it as a crutch, but there was no drug testing. I didn’t use it for strength. I used it to help me recover from injuries.”

McGwire said he called Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa and Commissioner Bud Selig on Monday to tell them about his admission. In an interview with ESPN, La Russa defended the Athletics’ and Cardinals’ training programs as “100 percent legit” and said McGwire worked hard in the weight room.

“I didn’t know anything,” La Russa said of McGwire’s drug use. “Mark and I never confronted it, and he never told me until this morning.”

Selig said in a statement that he was pleased McGwire had “confronted his use of performance-enhancing substances as a player,” and said that the steroid era had come to an end.

“The use of steroids and amphetamines amongst today’s players has greatly subsided and is virtually nonexistent, as our testing results have shown,” Selig said. “The so-called steroid era — a reference that is resented by the many players who played in that era and never touched the substances — is clearly a thing of the past, and Mark’s admission today is another step in the right direction.”

McGwire’s refusal to talk about the past before Congress in 2005 subjected him to widespread ridicule, but he told Costas that he actually wanted to come clean at that point. He said his lawyers warned him he could subject himself to prosecution or a grand jury hearing if he admitted using steroids, although as users, rather than traffickers, athletes have rarely been charged in cases involving performance-enhancing drugs.

“My lawyers were downstairs trying to get immunity for me,” McGwire said. “I wanted to talk. I kept telling myself, ‘I want to get this off my chest.’ Well, we didn’t get immunity. So here I am in a situation, where I have two scenarios: a possible prosecution or possible grand-jury testimony.”

McGwire continued: “Well, you know what happens when there’s a prosecution? They bring in your whole family, they bring in your whole friends, they bring in ex-teammates, coaches, anybody that’s surrounding you. How the heck am I going to bring those people in for some stupid act that I did? So you know what I did? We agreed to not talk about the past. And it was not enjoyable to do that.”

McGwire said he was devastated to hear the moans in the room when he repeatedly declined to talk about his steroid use. But he said he had to protect his friends and family, based on the legal guidance he received.

“I was not going to lie,” McGwire added. “I wanted to tell the truth.”

Since then, McGwire has been roundly rejected by Hall of Fame voters despite having the best ratio of home runs to at-bats in baseball history, with one homer per 10.6 at-bats. He is tied with another admitted steroids user, Alex Rodriguez, for eighth on the career home run list, with 583.

In four appearances on the ballot, McGwire has never collected more than 25 percent of the voters. Candidates need 75 percent for election. Some voters, like Tom Haudricourt of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, had said they would not consider voting for McGwire until he addressed his past.

“I think his vote totals will go up now, but I’ve got to think about it,” Haudricourt said. “Should we be voting guys in who admit to doing it? The sticky wicket just got stickier.”

McGwire said he had not been in exile, but had simply been enjoying retirement and starting a family. He said that no family members had ever directly asked if he had used steroids, and that he first told his father on Sunday.

“It hasn’t been easy,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll get through it. It’s just something I look back now and it’s so regrettable, so ridiculous.”

Karen Crouse contributed reporting.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company