Confidence Games

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An ensuing probe by the U.S. Attorney in Miami focused on Guillen. The general, who has since retired as head of the anti-drug unit, was offered immunity from having his own words used against him -- and came to Miami to testify. According to DEA agents, he has confessed to setting up the smuggling ring and profiting from the operations. "He cried, collapsed, admitted everything he had done," recalled a DEA agent. Guillen, he said, "was trying to do exactly what Noriega did -- no worse, no better." The general has since returned home; he failed to appear before a grand jury earlier this month.

Was the CIA, which began its own investigation in 1991, taken for a ride? Trying to head off accusations that it profited from the scheme, a CIA spokesman declared that "there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing" by the agency's operatives. But, he said, an internal probe uncovered "instances of bad judgment and poor management on the part of some CIA officers involved, and appropriate disciplinary action followed." Station chief Campbell has retired; McFarlin has resigned.

Some DEA officials, however, do not buy the disclaimers by the CIA that its officers were unaware the National Guard was in the drug trade for profit. McFarlin, says a DEA man close to the investigations, "was no naive child, and neither was his boss." And he raises the specter of a heightened interagency feud. "The DEA has knowledge that the CIA had knowledge about what the Guard was doing. They didn't try to stop it." Furthermore, he says, "they didn't advise the DEA." The congressional intelligence committees are likely to investigate the matter further.