According to current and former DEA agents and records reviewed by The Associated Press, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets of New Mexico from 2023 to 2025.

“We poisoned our community to make cases,” DEA Special Agent David Howell told AP in a series of interviews in New Mexico. “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 reported in his whistleblower disclosures that agents on that case permitted the delivery of at least 1.8 million fentanyl pills.

That investigation, the former supervisor and Howell told AP, culminated in the largest fentanyl bust in DEA history, a takedown announced in May 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi that resulted in the seizure of more than 3 million pills.

“The amount we ultimately seized was hitting the streets every month while that case was going on,” the former supervisor said, adding that the DEA could have dismantled the organization six months earlier.

  • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    11·
    11 days ago

    for that special we have:

    A former high-level agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and an associate have been charged with conspiring to launder millions of dollars and obtain military-grade firearms and explosives for a Mexican drug cartel, according to an indictment unsealed Friday in New York.

    Paul Campo, 61, of Oakton, Virginia, who retired from the DEA in 2016 after a 25-year career, and Robert Sensi, 75, of Boca Raton, Florida, were caught in sting involving a law enforcement informant who posed as a member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, prosecutors said.

    i don’t think there is any conspiracy here, just observation they are trying to make flashy cases (kingpin strats), while letting the harm (or alleged harm) go by