Senator BIDEN. Thank you, Senator Cochran. Thank you very much, Senator. Senator NUNN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator BIDEN. Our next witness will be Mr. Charles Ruff, Acting Deputy Attorney General. Mr. Ruff, thank you for your patience. I apologize again for the delays. STATEMENT OF CHARLES F. C. RUFF, ACTING DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE Mr. RUFF. Not at all, Senator. Mr. Chairman and Senator Cochran, if it is appropriate from your point of view, I will simply summarize briefly what is contained in my lengthy prepared statement, which I will submit for the record and then I will be prepared to answer whatever questions you may have. Senator BIDEN. That is fine; your entire statement will be put in the record though as if read. Mr. RUFF. As you know, the Attorney General early on in-Attorney General Bell in his tenure declared narcotics enforcement to be one of the four major priorities of the Department of Justice and responsibility for narcotics enforcement in the coordination of both internal Department of Justice efforts and interagency cooperation as well as cooperation with local and State law enforcement is assigned to the Deputy Attorney General. Under him in the Criminal Division there is, of course, the Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section which has with it 23 lawyers principally responsible for coordinating the work of the U.S. attorneys, helping to support the work of the Drug Enforcement Administration and generally to develop the Department's internal drug enforcement policy. I understand. Senator Biden, that you have met Alex Williams, the new Chief of that section. The man who comes to that section with substantial experience as a narcotics investigator in Los Angeles and I think that section is more vital and stronger than it ever has been in the past. Last year, among the principal tasks that then Deputy Attorney General Civiletti assigned to the Criminal Division was the development of a formal mission statement for the Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section, the first time that such an effort had formally been undertaken. Clearly, the principal mission of the section is to provide support for the U.S. attorneys who are our frontline prosecution forces in the area of narcotics enforcement, particularly through the devices of the 23 major drug traffic and prosecution units which exist in those U.S. attorneys' offices. The Department further has directed the Criminal Division to review on a continuing basis the functioning of those units to insure that indeed they are vehicles for the most effective use of our available resource. In addition to the support for the U.S. attorneys which the section provides, the ways of traffic, in the way of legal support, the development of new approaches to prosecution, the section is also directly involved in field operations, although given the limited resources. The section is working closely with the Drug Enforcement Administration in its Centac programs to develop prosecution in the more complex drug cases. Beyond the immediate prosecutorial forces of the Department's office and the Criminal Division, Judge Bell in the early months of 1977 directed that a study be undertaken of the role that the FBI should be playing in narcotics enforcement. This is a study which I think admittedly was long overdue and the conclusion was that at least initially we should begin with some formal DEA-FBI task forces designed to make use of the special expertise that the Bureau developed over the years in the organization of criminal activity and the flow that occurs of assets and funds of any sophisticated operation, together with DEA's narcotics enforcement. A few years later, Director Webster of the FBI reviewed the work of those task forces. I think it is fair to say that the success of the first of this kind was limited, but they are more than enthusiastic for the individual ad hoc arrangements, the principal arrangements of which, and certain among the most effective of any Federal interagency cooperation is the recent and ongoing Banco investigations in South Florida which are designed to track the extraordinary flow of funds and to sketch out the organization or organizations that are involved in major narcotic trafficking and the trafficking of other forms of drugs in that area. Beyond that, of course, the principal concerns of DEA and the Department of Justice itself is the work that DEA undertakes with State and local task forces. As Senator Nunn suggested in his statement, one of the crucial roles that DEA must play, and we certainly recognize this on the prosecutor's side of the Department of Justice, is the close cooperation with State and local law enforcement. By training members of the State and local task forces, by supporting them, by providing them with our expertise, we can multiply many times the useful and effective forces that can be brought to bear in the narcotics area. Among then Deputy Attorney General Civiletti's principal concerns, during his tenure both as Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division and then as Deputy Attorney General, was to coordinate and oversee all aspects of the narcotics enforcement process. Senator BIDEN. I should note that he maintains that strong interest and has asked that I sit down with him as we begin to coordinate this effort anew in the Congress. He has indicated that he wants to be very involved. Mr. RUFF. Indeed, Senator, I know he is very interested in discussing it with you and he continues to keep close tabs on the work that I am doing as Acting Deputy Attorney General and the Criminal Divisions are doing in this area. There have been a number of changes over the last year which I think are all to the good in the growing Department of Justice role in oversight and political development. Assistant Attorney General Heymann of the Criminal Division now sits with the principals group of the Strategy Council to discuss government wide approaches to the narcotics enforcement and narcotics problems generally. Alex Williams, the Chief of the Narcotics Section, meets regularly with DEA service enforcement staff in a new and helpful development in that area. Particularly last fall, Deputy Attorney General Civiletti directed for the first time that a formal study be undertaken of the manner in which the domestic enforcement guidelines for DEA, which has first been promulgated by Attorney General Civiletti in 1975, had been enforced. That study, which was chaired by my office and was conducted by representatives of DEA and the Department staff and the Criminal Division, is now in its final stages and it will, I think for the first time in the Federal law enforcement area, provide us with real insight as to how the formal guidelines process has its impact on the law enforcement business, the extent to which it has improved the quality of enforcement in the narcotics area, the extent to which guidelines do affect the day-to-day business of both the agents on the street and the prosecutor who must handle DEA narcotics cases. I look forward to sharing the results of that study with the committee when it is completed later this fall. Of course, and I think this again goes to Senator Nunn's point, it is crucial that the Department have a very clear sense of its mission and a very clear sense of what its enforcement policy ought to be. There are obviously ongoing mechanisms for developing this policy, whether it be through the annual budget process which we take extraordinary seriously and which involves a close look at the way Drug Enforcement Administration as well as the Criminal Division is allocating its resource. More broadly, of course the Attorney General is a member of the Strategy Council on Drug Abuse and the development of the annual drug abuse strategy is an important factor in our assessment about how we ought to be spending our resource. In particular, I should note that in the area again which Senator Nunn so appropriately addressed, the growing problem of narcotics enforcement, we have undertaken a very specific internal departmental study of how it is we can go about developing a truly credible enforcement structure, an enforcement policy, given the many conflicting pressures which are at work in this extraordinarily difficult area. That is a process which is going on in conjunction with the Criminal Division and with DEA and when we have our internal house in order, I would expect that that would bring in as well the work of the Strategy Council, the State Department, and others who are involved as well as those who are concerned with health and research aspects of the marihuana problem. But assuming that we do develop a reasonable strategy, and I think we are working in that direction, it must be vital that we assess how we are doing in seeing to it that that enforcement policy is carried out. Administrator Bensinger will, I am sure, talk to you about the various tests that he uses in judging whether or not DEA and the Department of Justice are being effective in this area, certainly the substantial reduction in heroin purity on the street, the substantial reduction of the price of heroin, the substantial reduction of overdose deaths, and other health repercussions is an indication of extraordinary accomplishments over the last several years. Although we must always be on the alert to show that there is not a new influx of heroin from either the Middle East or Southeast Asia and I know that through the intelligence arm of DEA, we are very closely monitoring those developments. It is more difficult perhaps for the Department to assess from a purely prosecutorial point of view whether it is being successful. It is not worthy that in the last 5 or 6 years there has been a major drop in the number, pure based number of marihuana cases that have been brought in the Federal courts. But at the same time it is clear that those cases are indicative of the quality over quantity approach which has been the focus of the Department's efforts during the last 2 or 3 years. A major percentage of those cases arise from the development of class I and class II violator investigations, at the same time that the lowest ranking class IV cases has declined. We in turn can point to a number of specific major conspiracy prosecutions as evidence of our success, but I think it is fair to say and I think anyone associated with the prosecutor's end of this business would acknowledge that it is very difficult on a case-by-case basis or even over 1 or 2 years' experience to say to you competently that we as prosecutors are pursuing and achieving the goals that we need to pursue. The ability of the Department to make that kind of assessment is one of the Attorney General's particular priorities and we intend to work over the course of the next year in developing both statistical and other analytical vehicles for judging whether indeed we as prosecutors, in addition to the efforts of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the investigative end are succeeding in achieving the goals that our policy sets. That is briefly an overview of the Department's role in this area, Mr. Chairman, and I would certainly be glad to answer any questions that you or Senator Cochran may have. Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Ruff. I do have several questions. According to your prepared testimony on page 4, you say that there has been increased emphasis on prosecutions under the RICO statute. How often and with what success has this statute been used? Mr. RUFF. Well, of course, the statute is not restricted, Mr. Chairman, to the narcotics area, and indeed is most frequently employed outside the narcotics field. We have a variety of recent cases using the RICO statute which have resulted in at least the potential for substantial forfeitures under civil provisions of that statute in Florida. I am told, and perhaps Administrator Bensinger has more detailed statistics on this, that some 26 forfeiture-related actions or the potential for them have been lodged over the last 6 to 10 months. I can probably come up with something much more accurate in the way of specific RICO numbers over the last 2 years and I will be glad to do that and submit them to the committee. I think it is fair to say that we Senator BIDEN. I appreciate your doing that. [The following was received for the record:] Hon. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., THE DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL, Chairman, Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, DEAR SENATOR BIDEN: During the course of my testimony before the Subcommittee on September 11, 1979, you asked me to provide additional information on the use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes, 18 U.S.C. 1961-1968, in drug trafficking cases. During the past three years, fourteen RICO prosecutions have been approved for drug cases. Two of these cases currently are in trial. Forfeiture of property has been obtained in one of the completed cases, and allegations of.property to be forfeited have been made in the two cases now being tried. As my testimony indicates, the Department believes that use of the RICO statutes is valuable in appropriate cases. Federal prosecutors and DEA agents are being trained in the use of these statutes in the drug area, and the Criminal Division provides counseling and litigation support for these prosecutions. Please contact me if you require any additional information. Sincerely, CHARLES F. C. RUFF, Acting Deputy Attorney General. Mr. RUFF. I think it is fair to say that we in the Department take intentionally a cautious and restrictive view of the use of the RICO statute because it is one that is subject to overuse or misuse. We use it only where there really is evidence of major sophisticated organized criminal activity and I think it is clear also to acknowledge that we have perhaps not in the past used its civil and forfeiture aspects as much as we should have, although the increased use of those aspects of the statute I know is a major focus of Assistant Attorney General Heymann's concerns. Senator BIDEN. I do not know if you have any statistics-I am not sure what they would tell us anyway-but in your professional opinion, what percentage or how much of the activity recommended for prosecution by DEA do you go through with? How does it break down? Mr. RUFF. I do not have figures on the number of cases in which DEA comes forward with something that would be a recommendation for prosecution. Senator BIDEN. Is there any way to measure that? Mr. RUFF. There would, I am sure, be a way of measuring the number of completed cases presented to the U.S. attorney's office by DEA, recognizing that we brought I believe, in 1978, some 7,000 narcotics cases. Judging against that standard, we could then come up with a percentage figure. Senator BIDEN. Of the narcotics cases prosecuted, if you are going to characterize the level of the case, of those 7,000 cases, what number of them, in your judgment, would be categorized as major cases? Mr. RUFF. I think my assessment on that, and I think it is an accurate one and not just the normal executive branch hyperbole when it is asked that kind of question, is that some clearly more than 50 percent and even perhaps as much as 70 percent of the cases we bring are either directly classifiable as major cases or as closely linked to the development of major cases. To the extent that you can look at statistics and to the extent that they are meaningful, and I have the same suspicion that you do about some statistics. Senator BIDEN. I do not want to overstate it, but it can really be misleading. Mr. RUFF. Sixty percent of all the arrests that DEA makes are related to class I and class II violator cases. Even granting some flexibility in these standards, I think it is a meaningful figure because that means that whether or not each of those defendants is himself a class I or class II violator, the people arrested and prosecuted are indeed linked to major trafficking organizations. One thing is clear and it is |