DRUG WAR UPDATE: How The DEA Ditched An Informant.

The case is SGS-92-X003 v. United States, with the plaintiff identified only by her DEA informant number. Around the agency, however, she wasn’t called SGS-92. She was known as the Princess.

Over a four-year period in the 1990s, the Princess traveled repeatedly to Colombia at the behest of the DEA, and brought in solid information. Her work also took her elsewhere in Latin America and Europe. Then, in 1995, she was kidnapped by one of the drug cartels, and held for three and a half months until a ransom was paid. (The source of the ransom isn’t clear.)

So far, just another infiltration gone bad. It happens. But here is where the case grows particularly dismaying — and how it wound up in court. According to the Princess, it was the DEA’s repeated bungling that essentially blew her cover. Then, after her release, she developed a chronic medical condition that would require increasingly expensive care. The DEA refused to help out. She therefore brought an action claiming breach of contract. In particular, she argued that the DEA, in hiring her as an informant, had agreed to protect her.

It broke that promise.

The opinion is well worth reading, and many of the details are appalling. In 1994, the Princess returned from Colombia with a handwritten note from one drug dealer to another, warning that the Princess worked for the DEA. She turned it over to her handlers. The agency sent her back anyway. On her next trip, she was warned by a source that there were many dealers who would no longer meet with her. The agency sent her back anyway.

The state is not your friend, even when you work for it.