Federal Bureau of Narcotics

thumb|279x279px|Credential used by FBN special agent Robert S. O'brien

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury, with the enumerated powers of pursuing crimes related to the possession, distribution, and trafficking of listed narcotics including cannabis, opium, cocaine, and their derivatives. These preceding bureaus were established to assume enforcement responsibilities assigned to the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 and the Jones–Miller Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act of 1922.

Levi Nutt

The FBN was the brainchild of Colonel Levi G. Nutt, who had for two decades been the head of the Bureau of Prohibition Narcotics Division. In June 1930, Nutt was appointed by President Hoover to be the first Commissioner of Narcotics. He was a registered pharmacist, and led the Division to the arrest of tens of thousands of drug addicts and dealers in the Prohibition era. However, Nutt was hit with a scandal that rocked him. In February 1930, after the investigation was concluded, a grand jury found no criminal impairment of Narcotics Division activities, but the flak was too much for the government. In September, his duties were passed on to Harry J. Anslinger, the future Commissioner of the FBN.

Special Agent Mansel Ross Burrell. December 19, 1967. Gunfire.
Special Agent Wilson Michael Shee. December 12, 1957. Gunfire
District Supervisor Anker Marius Bangs. September 24, 1950. Gunfire.
Agent Andrew P. Sanderson. September 23, 1944. Automobile crash.
Inspector Spencer Stafford. Thursday, February 7, 1935. Gunfire.
Agent John W. Crozier. November 16, 1934. Automobile crash.

Harry Anslinger

Harry J. Anslinger was the "personification of the antinarcotic regime," and ran the bureau for the majority of its existence. He had been the Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Prohibition and took over the Bureau's Narcotic Division in 1929. He had little regard for addicts, saying once: "The best cure for addiction? Never let it happen."

Malachi Harney, Assistant Commissioner of the FBN, wrote in an article for the University of California Press on the enumerated powers of the agency:

<blockquote>"It should be borne in mind that the Bureau are confined to a rather narrow range of specifically enumerated drugs. These are opium... alkaloids and derivatives of opium (including such products as morphine, heroin, codine, dilaudid), and semisynthetic derivatives of opium... wholly synthetic substances... opiates... the coca leaf and its derivatives (cocaine)... marihuana... cannabis... The Federal Bureau of Narcotics does not have responsibilities in connection with many other chemicals generally described as dangerous drugs such as... barbiturates, amphetamines, tranquilizers... hallucinogens..."</blockquote>In this article, Harney defined marijuana as being the ground substance of the plant called cannabis. At a conference of the DEA in 2014, historian John C. McWilliams presented the evidence that White consumed most of the narcotics he was pursuing.

FBN special agents that were loaned to special duty at COI/OSS include George Hunter White and Garland H. Williams, among others. White is quoted as calling this the "school of mayhem and murder."

In the Spring of that year, White became one of the cadre of instructors at the COI schoolhouses in Washington, D.C. under the command of his FBN Supervisor and COI Training Director Garland H. Williams, where he taught counterintelligence to hundreds of would-be and hopeful undercover operatives and guerrilla warfighters. These experiments lasted into the 1960s, and are allegedly responsible for the death of Frank Olson.

The French Connection

In 1934, an FBN field report indicated that heroin in New York was being distributed from Corsica. The "connection" refers to the relationship between the Corsican Brotherhood and the Sicilian Mafia. The FBN was the major American federal law enforcement agency responsible for uncovering the networks of the French Connection.

Lucky Luciano

thumb|250x250px|Lucky Luciano mugshot

FBN agents immediately resumed to full-time status at the end of the war, and Anslinger gave Garland H. Williams and George Hunter White the assignment to track down and bring to justice Lucky Luciano - the Italian Chicago mob boss that the OSS and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) had heavily depended on to guarantee safety of shipbuilding in Chicago and New York. ONI and OSS during the war had also used Luciano as an asset to ensure protection of American forces by the Italian criminal underworld as they invaded the country and advanced northward against the Germans.

Lucky Luciano had still been running his mob from behind bars, but the US granted him reduced sentence in 1945 for "wartime services to the country." The hunt for Luciano would dominate the next decade of his life. On one particular occasion, Luciano was asked by a group of reporters what he would like for Christmas. His response was "Siragusa in a ton of cement!" Luciano died in Naples from a heart attack before Siragusa could bring a case against him. Siragusa later starred as himself in the 1973 film Lucky Luciano.

Overseas offices

The FBN over time established several offices overseas in;

France
Italy
Turkey
Beirut
Thailand

Other hotspots of international narcotics smuggling also maintained offices.

Dissolution

Anslinger retired in 1962 and was succeeded by Henry Giordano, who was the commissioner of the FBN until it was merged in 1968 with the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control, an agency of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to form the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, an agency of the United States Department of Justice and a predecessor agency of the current Drug Enforcement Administration, which was established in 1973.

Legal disputes

In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, the FBN was sued for violating the 4th Amendment rights of Bivens, through the illegal search and seizure of drugs without a warrant.

Notes

External links

"Narcotics Enforcement in the 1930s", DEA Museum