It appears that “The Rifleman” has been disarmed.
“The Rifleman,” “Dirty Harry” and “The Wizard” are nicknames for Frank White, a legend among drug-fighting law enforcers and until late the associate special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago Field Division.
The news surfaced briefly in a story on DEA internal turmoil in last week’s U.S. News & World Report: White, 52, has essentially been booted.
Technically, he retired. But he has done so amid allegations of sexual harassment made against him and four other Chicago DEA agents, their countercharges of reverse discrimination because they’re white males, and a possible lack of mutual admiration between White and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno dating to when both worked in Miami.
If I doubted that this was a big deal at the DEA, it was dispelled by a call to a DEA official who’s the sort not inclined to talk to a reporter. He was more than willing to unload on his new boss, DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine:
“The new administrator is looking for victims and he’s started out with a vengeance by picking Frank,” said the DEA agent, who runs a major field office. “He’s trying to micromanage agents’ integrity.
“Frank is an agent’s agent. He’s what makes us good. He’s unique. The rest of us have bits and pieces of what it takes to be a great agent. Frank has it all.”
As a March 1994 Tempo profile underscored, the man who heretofore oversaw 160 DEA agents covering Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota, may be one of a kind. A hot dog to a few, he’s a hero to most.
He grew up in New York City, the son of a liquor store owner, attending Catholic school and then the Citadel military college in South Carolina. After graduation, he became an Army paratrooper and served in Vietnam, where he won a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star. White and his wife (he’s now divorced) adopted a Vietnamese boy injured in the fighting.
Upon his return home, he joined the predecessor to the DEA, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was assigned to New York and gained the nickname “Wizard” as a result of prodigious success in heroin and cocaine cases.
When Miami became a major port of entry for cocaine, and a key outpost in dealing with South American drug cartels, White was reassigned there.
It was there that he became known as “Dirty Harry” because of controversy inspired by some high-profile endeavors.
In a 1980 incident, a drug dealer handcuffed five DEA agents in a warehouse and then tried to flee with a truck filled with marijuana. White and colleagues blocked the escape, with White hopping the sideboard of the truck only to find himself staring at the barrel of the dealer’s gun.
White and chums opened fire. The dealer wound up dead, with 32 bullet wounds. The dealer did not fire a shot. Nine of the bullets apparently came from White’s gun.
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In 1981, White was involved in a wild car chase and shootout with a murder suspect and drug-dealing fugitive who was confronted outside a South Miami restaurant. The dealer ultimately crashed into other cars before hitting a wall, but not before apparently firing shots at agents from inside the car. White fired twice from behind the guy’s car, hitting him in the back of the head and killing him.
White was subject of local homicide investigations into both incidents, as well as a DEA inquiry. It was generally believed that Reno, then Dade County state’s attorney, wanted to charge him.
But the evidence was insufficient and there were no charges. He was also cleared by the DEA. But he was openly badmouthed as negligent and reckless by a Reno aide, and he returned the rhetorical fire in a Miami Herald interview.
White stayed in south Florida but moved briefly to DEA headquarters in Washington in 1984 after then-Vice President George Bush appointed him to run a task force on drugs. Later, it was off to postings in San Francisco and the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.
In 1988, he was named the boss of Operation Snowcap, a clandestine DEA operation aimed at getting behind cartel lines in South America and sabotaging laboratories and trafficking operations.
In 1990, he was assigned to Chicago as part of what he termed his DEA “career development” path. He lived on the North Shore, waking at 3:30 a.m. so he could head to a Loop gym and a regular three-hour workout before going to the office.
His duties included running training sessions throughout the Midwest for local law enforcers. Several of those sessions inspired the current mess.
Constantine, who took over the DEA last year, has spent a lot of time and money on internal discipline and what he sees as an institutional self-examination aimed at ensuring the agency’s integrity. After a female police officer in Madison, Wis., complained to her chief about alleged sexist comments by a Chicago agent, the agent got a letter of reprimand and DEA’s Office of Professional Responsibility began an extensive investigation of the sessions run by the DEA Five.
It was told, among other matters, that White had used a well-known slang term for lesbian to refer to Reno. In these politically correct days, that’s right up there with an “L” platform homicide.
Many agents believe the alleged misdeeds in no way justified the extent of the internal investigation (and ultimate punishments). White, who has been publicly critical of the Clinton administration’s commitment to drug enforcement, was especially furious at what he sensed was a move targeted at him.
Not only did the five file a reverse discrimination complaint with the DEA, but White also brought charges to the Justice Department inspector general, alleging that Constantine had been drinking during a DEA session for young people in Bloomington, Ind., last summer. At the same time, Constantine, a former New York state police superintendent whose supposed paramilitary management style is seen by some as sending morale plummeting, was hit with allegations that he had used bureau personnel to help write a doctoral thesis for a friend.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit, filed April 5 by the Madison officer and two female colleagues in federal court in Chicago, alleged “outrageous” behavior by the DEA Five, including interspersing instructional slides with photos of nude women and referring to them as “hon,” “babe,” “bitch” and “little girl.” The officers will flatly deny those claims.
The DEA further angered the five by placing them on paid administrative leave, prompting them to let their boss know they were going to file a new equal employment opportunity complaint with the DEA. Hours after that, four of the agents, three of whom are on the brink of retirement, were told they were being transferred to St. Louis, Atlanta, Newark and McAllen, Texas, respectively.
To be dispatched to McAllen is Michael Flanagan, 42, a White loyalist who worked with him in San Francisco and Peru and has just adopted three children from Russia. Informed of his personal situation, the DEA gave him a 45-day reprieve (who says the government doesn’t have a heart?).
Frank White? Told that he was to be fired, the 27-year veteran retired.
Justice Department spokesman Carl Stern could not comment on the inspector general investigation. As for whether White is a victim of Reno retribution, he said, “The allegation, that there is some past history of feuding and now it’s payback time, is an incorrect conclusion based on a false assumption.”
Stern said that Reno doesn’t participate in internal disciplinary decisions, which are left to a three-member panel.
David Schippers, a Chicago attorney representing the five agents, is unmoved. “I have never seen a more calculated effort to destroy five human beings. It makes me sick.”
Further, the Justice Department informed Schippers Friday that it would neither provide the men with an attorney nor pay for one in the Chicago suit, which is unusual.
In pursuit of vindication, the DEA Five are holding a fundraiser Friday at 7 p.m. at Niko’s, 7600 S. Harlem Ave., Bridgeview. Tickets are $50.