FBI says military recruiters in Arizona smuggled cocaine

TUCSON- A dozen high school military recruiters have been charged with taking bribes to transport cocaine, according to an FBI investigation.

The recruiters, who worked in the Tucson metro area, were exposed by a federal sting called Operation Lively Green, which unfolded in southern Arizona from 2001-04. Details of the investigation were made public last year.

The Arizona Daily Star, which reviewed the investigation and court documents related to the military recruiters, found that the FBI allowed many recruiters to stay on the job even though they were suspected drug runners.

Some were still recruiting three years after they first were caught on camera running drugs in uniform, though none of the recruiters are accused of providing drugs to students.

Most have pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in March. Some honorably retired from the military.

The sting began in 2001 after the FBI received tips that a former Army National Guardsman was taking bribes to fix military aptitude tests for recruits, FBI Special Agent Adam Radtke said.

The FBI put an undercover informant in place to check it out. As the informant was paying to fix a test score in the parking lot of a Tucson restaurant, the recruiter opened the trunk of his vehicle and offered to sell part of a kilogram of cocaine, Radtke said.

The Army National guard recruiters later offered their drug-running services to undercover informants who posed as Mexican drug lords during the sting, Radtke said.

So far, Operation Lively Green has led to the convictions of 69 members of the military, prison guards, law enforcement employees and other public servants on charges they accepted bribes to help smuggle cocaine.

Military officials say the criminal acts of Tucson's recruiters were regrettable but rare.

Janice Hagar, a Marine Corps recruiting spokeswoman, pointed out that there are thousands of recruiters working across the country: "This was an isolated incident."

Military officials say they kept the recruiters on the job because the FBI told them to leave the suspects alone so as not to jeopardize the sting. The military said it also didn't know some recruiters were under investigation.

This isn't the first time the FBI has come under criticism in the Lively Green case. Allegations of sexual misconduct by undercover informants also have dogged the case and could result in reduced punishment for the recruiters and dozens of other defendants.

Judy Burns, a governing board member with the Tucson Unified School District, criticized the FBI for allowing the recruiters to stay on the job so long.

"It's ludicrous to me that the FBI would leave these people in place and allow them onto our high school campuses," Burns said. "They should have been monitoring them constantly."

Monica Young, who has two children attending Tucson high schools, agreed.

"It is appalling that recruiters who were known to be involved in such activity were allowed on any school campus," she said.

Special Agent Deb McCarley said the FBI generally performs risk assessments before deciding to keep suspects who work in public positions on the job during undercover probes.

"We recognize the range of ethical issues that inherently arise in the course of our undercover investigations," McCarley said in an e-mail. "We have sound policies in place" to address such dilemmas, she said, and "this case has been no exception."