What a reporter found when uncovering why federal agents allowed a deadly drug to hit the streets

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Jim Mustian reported and co-wrote Story by Associated Press It revealed that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had authorized hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to be distributed in New Mexico as part of an effort to launch larger federal investigations.

Mustian, along with AP journalist Joshua Goodman, reviewed hundreds of internal DEA records and interviewed current and former agents, including a whistleblower who alleged the agency gambled with public safety and violated U.S. Justice Department rules regarding the seizure of the dangerous synthetic opioid. The White House last year called fentanyl ” weapon of mass destruction.”

This is an interview with Mustian by Del Quentin Wilber, who edited the story.

It is often very difficult to obtain such insider knowledge of RIA operations. Where did the idea come from and how did you come up with it?

My AP colleague Goodman first noticed the whistleblower complaint accusing the DEA of allowing fentanyl to hit New Mexico’s streets. The report was sent to the White House in September but escaped media attention at the time.

As is often the case with government records, these records were heavily redacted to protect not only the identity of the tipster but also the amount of fentanyl that was not seized.

There was critical oversight in the government’s corrections. I noticed that the tipster’s name ends with “l”; This single letter was missed by the black pen for some reason.

I sent a series of messages on LinkedIn to DEA agents with names ending in “l” who worked in Albuquerque. One afternoon in March, I was at my desk when I received a response from an agent who linked me to whistleblower David Howell. A few weeks later, I flew to New Mexico and met with Howell.

The DEA has long allowed drugs to ‘walk’ as you describe in the story, in an effort to catch larger dealers. What is different about fentanyl that makes this tactic problematic in the eyes of some current and former agents?

The simple answer: the sheer power and lethality of fentanyl. In its “One Pill Can Kill” campaign, the DEA warns that just a few grams (the amount that fits on the tip of a pen) is enough to kill the average adult. Nowadays, with fentanyl, we’re often talking about counterfeit pills designed to mimic brand-name painkillers. The pills are almost always produced in Mexican laboratories by the cartels and contain unknown amounts of fentanyl.

Our reporting highlighted an example of a 2023 fentanyl shipment that DEA agents tracked but did not seize at an Albuquerque mobile home park. Agents gathered such detailed intelligence that they wrote in their investigative report that 74,000 pills had been turned over. The decision, made during the peak of fatal overdoses nationwide, was akin to “giving everyone a fentanyl pill in a football stadium,” Howell told me.

Federal officials defended the decision not to seize the drugs.

Alex Uballez, the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque at the time, acknowledged that authorities sometimes “run” drugs to ultimately catch a “bigger fish”; He said this approach saves more lives than trying to intercept every shipment.

“Public statements suggesting that DEA knowingly allowed fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts,” the DEA said in a statement. Spokesperson Amanda Wozniak wrote in an email that “the investigative decisions at issue were lawful, reasonable under the circumstances, and consistent with the Department’s guidance.”

What was the most interesting outcome for you during the reporting process?

This story underscores the enormous gap between what law enforcement does with taxpayer resources and what the public knows — or should know — about those activities. This is true even in an event as significant as the drug war. Federal agents have tremendous discretion and make decisions that affect public safety every day.

In most cases, the government wants us to trust that it is doing the right thing. In fact, the records we uncovered would not be published under the Freedom of Information Act. These recordings and interviews with Howell revealed the complexity of these investigations that we rarely see. While Howell’s complaint raises serious concerns about allowing fentanyl to reach drug users, the Justice Department rewrote its nonpublic rules to give law enforcement more discretion in deciding whether to seize the deadly painkiller.

The DEA’s decision to allow fentanyl onto the streets troubled some longtime agents, one in particular. What did Howell do to raise the issue with his superiors?

Howell, a 19-year DEA veteran, filed a formal whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, a government agency that protects whistleblowers, in late 2023. submitted DEA reports, emails, and text messages; these included discussing a 100,000-pill transaction that their colleagues witnessed but chose not to stop.

The OSC was initially so concerned that it found “a significant likelihood of wrongdoing” and took the unusual step of asking the Justice Department to investigate.

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, a type of internal affairs office, found in 2024 that the DEA and the U.S. attorney’s office made reasonable decisions in allowing the drugs to be seized and that their inaction did not pose a “specific danger to public health.”

Howell and other critics said internal investigators overlooked the question of whether the DEA allowed large amounts of fentanyl to hit the streets.