Jump to content

Federal Bureau of Narcotics: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
added seal
Line 93: Line 93:


=== Dissolution ===
=== 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]] (BNDD), an agency of the United States Department of Justice. The BNDD was a predecessor agency of the current [[Drug Enforcement Administration]] (DEA), which was established in 1973.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Marijuana Timeline {{!}} Busted - America's War On Marijuana {{!}} FRONTLINE {{!}} PBS |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html |access-date=2022-12-16 |website=www.pbs.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-12-06 |title=Department of Justice {{!}} Drug Enforcement Administration {{!}} United States Department of Justice |url=https://www.justice.gov/doj/organization-mission-and-functions-manual-drug-enforcement-administration |access-date=2024-08-16 |website=www.justice.gov |language=en}}</ref>
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]] (BNDD), an agency of the United States Department of Justice. The BNDD was a predecessor agency of the current [[Drug Enforcement Administration]] (DEA), which was established in 1973.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Marijuana Timeline {{!}} Busted - America's War On Marijuana {{!}} FRONTLINE {{!}} PBS |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html |access-date=2022-12-16 |website=www.pbs.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-12-06 |title=Department of Justice {{!}} Drug Enforcement Administration {{!}} United States Department of Justice |url=https://www.justice.gov/doj/organization-mission-and-functions-manual-drug-enforcement-administration |access-date=2024-08-16 |website=www.justice.gov |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=21 USC Ch. 5A: BUREAU OF NARCOTICS |url=https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title21/chapter5A&edition=prelim |access-date=2024-08-16 |website=uscode.house.gov}}</ref>


==Legal disputes==
==Legal disputes==

Revision as of 18:04, 16 August 2024

For the Australian bureau, see Australian Federal Police.
Not to be confused with Central Bureau of Narcotics or Central Narcotics Bureau.
Federal Bureau of Narcotics
Seal of the Treasury
Badge carried by Special Agents
Agency overview
FormedJune 14, 1930; 94 years ago (1930-06-14)
Preceding agencies
Dissolved1968
Superseding agencies
JurisdictionU.S. Government
HeadquartersWashington, D.C.
Agency executives
Parent agencyDepartment of the Treasury
Credential used by FBN special agent Robert S. Obrien

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury, established in the Department of the Treasury by an act of June 14, 1930, consolidating the functions of the Federal Narcotics Control Board, the Internal Revenue Narcotic Division, and the BOI Narcotic Division.[1] These older 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.[2]

History

Anslinger

With the creation of the FBN in 1930, Harry J. Anslinger was appointed its Commissioner by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon under President Herbert Hoover. Under Anslinger, the FBN lobbied for harsh penalties for drug usage.[3][4]

The Drug War

The FBN is credited for criminalizing drugs such as marijuana with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, as well as strengthening the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. Even so, the main focus of the FBN was fighting opium and heroin smuggling. One instance against opium was the Opium Poppy Control Act of 1942.[5]

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

"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..."[6]

Billie Holiday

The famous jazz singer Billie Holiday was pursued by the FBN from the moment she was first introduced to heroin until her death.[7] FBN Special Agent George Hunter White was her arresting officer at the Mark Twin Hotel in San Francisco. White allegedly had his men plant evidence in her hotel room, while he was downstairs in the lobby requesting her play his favorite songs. After his men were finished, he had her arrested for possession.[8] It is also alleged that White was high on narcotics when he arrested Holiday.[8][7]

Years later, in 1959, Holiday died in police custody, handcuffed to a hospital bed and surrounded by FBN agents.[8] The agents did not allow her to see family or friends, and denied her doctors from administering methodone.[8]

World War II and the OSS

When World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, William J. Donovan, Millard Preston Goodfellow, and David K. E. Bruce requested a list of names from Commissioner Anslinger to use in the effort against the Axis powers in their new wartime intelligence agency - what was at that time called the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), the direct precursor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and what would eventually become the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).[9]

FBN special agents that were loaned to special duty at COI/OSS include George Hunter White and Garland H. Williams, among others.[9] These men were sent to attend training at a British Special Operations Executive training camp outside of Toronto, Canada, called Camp X.[9][10] White is quoted as calling this the "school of mayhem and murder."[11][12][13]

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.[14][10] Those operatives and operators who were successful were then deployed all around the world to fight the Axis powers.[10]

Another effort that OSS and the FBN undertook during the war was the pursuit of the Nazi "truth drug," or "T drug," and the agencies collaborated in experiments on unwitting American citizens to see the effects of certain narcotics.[3][4]

Overseas offices

The FBN over time established several offices overseas in;

Other hotspots of international narcotics smuggling also maintained offices.[15]

These internationally deployed special agents (never totaling more than 17 at one time) cooperated with local drug enforcement agencies in gathering intelligence on smugglers and also made undercover busts locally.[15]

Vietnam War

The work against heroin and opium was however hamstrung by US foreign policy considerations: during the Vietnam War for instance great importance was placed on investigating minor Vietnamese smugglers that could be connected to the resistance while investigations of large scale smugglers from the US ally Thailand were left unfinished.

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 (BNDD), an agency of the United States Department of Justice. The BNDD was a predecessor agency of the current Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which was established in 1973.[16][17][18]

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.[19]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Narcotics Enforcement In The 1930s". Drug Enforcement Administration Museum.
  2. ^ "Records of the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA]". 15 August 2016.
  3. ^ a b (VIDEO) McWilliams, John C.; Lutz, Charles H.; Fearns, Sean (15 October 2014). "Standing In The Shadows: The Legacy Of Harry J. Anslinger, First Commissioner Of Narcotics". Retrieved 29 June 2024.
  4. ^ a b "Transcript of the above video" (PDF).
  5. ^ Anslinger, Harry Jacob; Tompkins, William F. (1 January 1980). The Traffic in Narcotics. Arno Press. ISBN 9780405135675 – via Google Books.
  6. ^ Harney, Malachi L. "The U.S. Bureau of Narcotics". Current History. 53 (311) – via University of California Press.
  7. ^ a b "The Story Behind "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"". FLOOD. Retrieved 2024-07-05.
  8. ^ a b c d Hari, Johann (17 January 2015). "The Hunting of Billie Holiday: How Lady Day was in the middle of a Federal Bureau of Narcotics fight for survival". Politico.
  9. ^ a b c "OSS Agents: Kill or be Killed". Warfare History Network. 2021-09-21. Retrieved 2024-06-30.
  10. ^ a b c "OSS: LTC Ellery Huntington's Staff". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 2024-06-27.
  11. ^ Mcintosh, Alex (2014). Camp X and the Birth of the CIA. United Kingdom: BBC.
  12. ^ "How Camp X Worked". HowStuffWorks. 1970-01-01. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  13. ^ "A Terrible Mistake: H.P. Albarelli's Investigation into CIA Scientist's Murder, at the Crossroads of Mind Control and Assassination". HuffPost. 2010-05-04. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  14. ^ ""Wild Bill" Donovan and the Origins of the OSS (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  15. ^ a b c "White (George) papers". oac.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2024-06-30.
  16. ^ "Marijuana Timeline | Busted - America's War On Marijuana | FRONTLINE | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2022-12-16.
  17. ^ "Department of Justice | Drug Enforcement Administration | United States Department of Justice". www.justice.gov. 2022-12-06. Retrieved 2024-08-16.
  18. ^ "21 USC Ch. 5A: BUREAU OF NARCOTICS". uscode.house.gov. Retrieved 2024-08-16.
  19. ^ "Webster BIVENS, Petitioner, v. SIX UNKNOWN NAMED AGENTS OF FEDERAL BUREAU OF NARCOTICS. | Supreme Court | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute". Law.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2022-05-09.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Federal_Bureau_of_Narcotics&oldid=1240675299"