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The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War
The Big White Lie, by New York Times best-selling author and former DEA undercover agent, Michael Levine, is a fly-on-the-wall look at the top-secret deep cover operation that ripped the lid off CIA sabotage of the War on Drugs. The New York Times described the book as a “hair-raising” non-fiction book that “moves with the speed of a first-rate thriller.” Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review calling it a “shocking exposé.” Follow Levine, called “America’s top undercover agent” by 60 Minutes, into the world of ruthless drug barons, kill-crazy assassins, secret police and corrupt government officials. The trail leads to the breathtakingly beautiful woman whom Pablo Escobar called "The Queen of Cocaine” – Sonia Atala. Levine, posing as Sonia’s lover, barely escapes the operation with his life but not before learning that America’s true enemies in the War on Drugs are not found in the jungles of South America but in the basements and back rooms of CIA headquarters.
Operation Hun begins when Sonia Atala, deemed too powerful by the male dominated-cocaine aristocracy, is targeted for death. She strikes a secret deal: in return for protection, she will give DEA its first look into the inner workings of the organizations controlling the gusher of cocaine pouring into the US. Levine, posing as Sonia’s half-Sicilian, half-Puerto Rican Mafioso lover and business partner, is now targeted by her enemies. Supplied with a mansion, a fleet of luxury cars, an undercover Mafia crew, and a planeload of cocaine as props, he lures them to his luxurious home to settle their differences on hidden DEA video. It should have been enough evidence to indict those in control of the flow of cocaine into the US. But nothing was as it seemed. Levine discovers that Sonia has a secret: she is manipulating DEA with the help of covert and powerful forces in the US government to selectively destroy her enemies while leaving the cocaine pipeline intact.
Read The Big White Lie and experience the darkest secrets of America’s War on Drugs for yourself—from one who has lived it. RECENT NEWS: During a March 3, 2011 world press conference, the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, raised a copy The Big White Lie (La Guerra Falsa—the Spanish Translation) in front of news cameras proclaiming the book as one of the reasons he had banned DEA from his country. The photo of President Morales with the book in hand rocketed around the world. When interviewed, Levine said that if President Morales had really understood the book he would have banished CIA from his country and welcomed DEA as heroes. Now that the book is republished as an e-book, readers can decide the truth for themselves.
Operation Hun begins when Sonia Atala, deemed too powerful by the male dominated-cocaine aristocracy, is targeted for death. She strikes a secret deal: in return for protection, she will give DEA its first look into the inner workings of the organizations controlling the gusher of cocaine pouring into the US. Levine, posing as Sonia’s half-Sicilian, half-Puerto Rican Mafioso lover and business partner, is now targeted by her enemies. Supplied with a mansion, a fleet of luxury cars, an undercover Mafia crew, and a planeload of cocaine as props, he lures them to his luxurious home to settle their differences on hidden DEA video. It should have been enough evidence to indict those in control of the flow of cocaine into the US. But nothing was as it seemed. Levine discovers that Sonia has a secret: she is manipulating DEA with the help of covert and powerful forces in the US government to selectively destroy her enemies while leaving the cocaine pipeline intact.
Read The Big White Lie and experience the darkest secrets of America’s War on Drugs for yourself—from one who has lived it. RECENT NEWS: During a March 3, 2011 world press conference, the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, raised a copy The Big White Lie (La Guerra Falsa—the Spanish Translation) in front of news cameras proclaiming the book as one of the reasons he had banned DEA from his country. The photo of President Morales with the book in hand rocketed around the world. When interviewed, Levine said that if President Morales had really understood the book he would have banished CIA from his country and welcomed DEA as heroes. Now that the book is republished as an e-book, readers can decide the truth for themselves.
646 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 14, 1993
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August 25, 2019
Interesting Read
It has been widely established that U.S. government agencies have been complicit in the illicit drug trade. This book provides examples of specific cases where drug dealers were allowed to participate in the drug trade with impunity. Levine is a bit strident at times. He's a true believer. However, he brings up a good point; as long as American citizens create a multi-million dollar demand for drugs somebody will create the supply.
It has been widely established that U.S. government agencies have been complicit in the illicit drug trade. This book provides examples of specific cases where drug dealers were allowed to participate in the drug trade with impunity. Levine is a bit strident at times. He's a true believer. However, he brings up a good point; as long as American citizens create a multi-million dollar demand for drugs somebody will create the supply.
October 7, 2023
The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War by Michael Levine
I had several problems with this book. First, it could have been much more succinct and more effective accomplishing what the author states he wanted in writing it if he'd simply written what happened instead of recounting every sentence of every conversation, every emotion he felt, every nuance or hunch that he sensed, etc. Second, the reader has to get through hundreds of pages of a walking anxiety attack. Is he being followed and watched? Is the DEA sending him on a high-profile mission while also just hoping to arrest him in the middle of it? Is he being persecuted because he's Jewish? Will his world really come to an end if he leaves after 17 years of service instead of waiting it out a full 25 for a larger pension? It gets exhausting for the reader, and much of it just seemed irrelevant and absolutely distracted from the larger story he wanted to tell. Just flip to the last chapters of the book for the gist of what really mattered-- with actual trial transcripts.
Other problems: I saw an online interview with Levine that mentioned he first dealt with CIA interference while serving as an agent in Thailand at the beginning of his career. Thus, after 15 years it strikes me odd that he'd either be surprised or trying to blow a proverbial whistle about it. He also laments that he didn't get to spend the rest of his career in Buenos Aires. The Foreign Service Act of 1980 makes that impossible-- the longest he could have been posted in any country by the DEA was five years. Nobody appears to have done a FOIA search on Operation Hun, as you can't find any references to it online (unlike other major DEA cases). Levine mentions CIA-backed efforts to prop up right-wing regimes in South America to combat Communism, but never mentions Operation Condor or Operation Charly (Argentina) that were already known by 1993 (Noam Chomsky wrote about it). Argentina put its junta on public trial in 1985, and that information was available at the time of his writing and could have supported his earlier chapters.
This paragraph from his time at Embassy Buenos Aires strikes me as authentic:
"Week after week I attended top-level Country Team meetings with Ambassador (Raul) Castro...during which the number of desparacidos from the previous week would be announced. Ambassador Castro was grieved by what was going on, and we always discussed how we could pressure the Argentine government into changing its ways. The CIA representatives...in stony silence, never offering a single suggestion. The U.S. government was not resolved to end the mass murders, so the prevailing feeling at the embassy was one of helplessness and hopelessness...Some of the Argentine officers and agents upon whom I depended might have been cold-blooded murderers...in some cases there was little doubt."
Spoiler alert: The book is basically about how the DEA was kept from prosecuting major Bolivian drug traffickers like Roberto Suarez, Jose Gasser, Luis Arce-Gomez, who became the Minister of the Interior under the junta of General Luis García Meza, and others because they were CIA assets involved in the "Cocaine Coup" in Bolivia. The later prosecutions of these individuals (and various Colombians after the extradition treaty) came late in the game, and many were not the high-profile traffickers the DEA trumpeted them to be. Levine more or less accuses the Assistant U.S. Attorney who authorized Jose Gasser's release from a Miami jail to return to Bolivia despite overwhelming evidence against him as being corrupt. Another federal judge in Miami -- later impeached by Congress for unrelated reasons-- also granted bail to a Bolivian drug trafficker who went straight back to Bolivia to join the junta. Sonia Atala, the Bolivian "Queen of Cocaine," turned DEA informant along with her husband-- who was also part of the junta-- only after Sonia had already been muscled out of the cocaine business. It was basically a revenge play on her part, and she and her husband used taxpayer money and witness protection to prosecute rivals, reclaim their assets in Bolivia, and continue their drug trafficking from the United States.
"The notion that there were dealers whom I could easily indict and arrest next door in Bolivia getting ready to take over their country and not a single high-ranking DEA bureaucrat or Justice Department attorney seemed interested enough to make a move to stop them just wouldn't sink in." Once in power, now-Interior Minister Arce-Gomez made good on his promise to flood the US with cocaine.
Levine's frantic cables and phone calls to DC, and later offering himself to Newsweek as a source, bring him under internal investigation and removal from Buenos Aires. Despite what he describes as being constantly followed and surveilled by suits in vehicles and monitored by his bosses in DC, he's tapped to do a deep-cover sting operation with Sonia Atala in Tucson, AZ. While the workings of the high-profile deep cover operation might seem interesting, Levine's paranoia about whether each individual member of the DEA team is working with him or against him, and his own desire to flee this life soak up every page and kill the facts. The supposedly high-value cocaine the DEA had supplied is apparently deadly low-value and Levine implies someone at DEA was skimming cocaine from the evidence stashes. At trial, the surveillance tapes in the undercover house have significant portions of missing sound. Ultimately, the damage they do is minimal and the one trafficker that Levine develops sympathy and an outright crush on takes the biggest fall.
By 1983, the one person in the book that Levine seems to admire is able to push forward the indictment of Suarez, Arce-Gomez, and others. In 1989, the now-democratic Bolivian government decided to strip Arce-Gomez of his citizenship in order for the U.S. to extradite him to the United States. "He would be the perfect symbol to show the world that Bolivia was as serious about its war on drugs as Colombia. He would be worth at least $50 million in U.S. aid." He received a 30 year sentence. "He was truly an evil man...but when you consider that (he) would have had no drug customers were it not for Sonia (Atala), and that the coup that gave him power might never have occurred were it not for covert U.S. support, it's difficult to conceive of his extradition and conviction as a victory in the drug war."
I give the book 2 stars out of 5. It is perhaps an important story but told very badly.
I had several problems with this book. First, it could have been much more succinct and more effective accomplishing what the author states he wanted in writing it if he'd simply written what happened instead of recounting every sentence of every conversation, every emotion he felt, every nuance or hunch that he sensed, etc. Second, the reader has to get through hundreds of pages of a walking anxiety attack. Is he being followed and watched? Is the DEA sending him on a high-profile mission while also just hoping to arrest him in the middle of it? Is he being persecuted because he's Jewish? Will his world really come to an end if he leaves after 17 years of service instead of waiting it out a full 25 for a larger pension? It gets exhausting for the reader, and much of it just seemed irrelevant and absolutely distracted from the larger story he wanted to tell. Just flip to the last chapters of the book for the gist of what really mattered-- with actual trial transcripts.
Other problems: I saw an online interview with Levine that mentioned he first dealt with CIA interference while serving as an agent in Thailand at the beginning of his career. Thus, after 15 years it strikes me odd that he'd either be surprised or trying to blow a proverbial whistle about it. He also laments that he didn't get to spend the rest of his career in Buenos Aires. The Foreign Service Act of 1980 makes that impossible-- the longest he could have been posted in any country by the DEA was five years. Nobody appears to have done a FOIA search on Operation Hun, as you can't find any references to it online (unlike other major DEA cases). Levine mentions CIA-backed efforts to prop up right-wing regimes in South America to combat Communism, but never mentions Operation Condor or Operation Charly (Argentina) that were already known by 1993 (Noam Chomsky wrote about it). Argentina put its junta on public trial in 1985, and that information was available at the time of his writing and could have supported his earlier chapters.
This paragraph from his time at Embassy Buenos Aires strikes me as authentic:
"Week after week I attended top-level Country Team meetings with Ambassador (Raul) Castro...during which the number of desparacidos from the previous week would be announced. Ambassador Castro was grieved by what was going on, and we always discussed how we could pressure the Argentine government into changing its ways. The CIA representatives...in stony silence, never offering a single suggestion. The U.S. government was not resolved to end the mass murders, so the prevailing feeling at the embassy was one of helplessness and hopelessness...Some of the Argentine officers and agents upon whom I depended might have been cold-blooded murderers...in some cases there was little doubt."
Spoiler alert: The book is basically about how the DEA was kept from prosecuting major Bolivian drug traffickers like Roberto Suarez, Jose Gasser, Luis Arce-Gomez, who became the Minister of the Interior under the junta of General Luis García Meza, and others because they were CIA assets involved in the "Cocaine Coup" in Bolivia. The later prosecutions of these individuals (and various Colombians after the extradition treaty) came late in the game, and many were not the high-profile traffickers the DEA trumpeted them to be. Levine more or less accuses the Assistant U.S. Attorney who authorized Jose Gasser's release from a Miami jail to return to Bolivia despite overwhelming evidence against him as being corrupt. Another federal judge in Miami -- later impeached by Congress for unrelated reasons-- also granted bail to a Bolivian drug trafficker who went straight back to Bolivia to join the junta. Sonia Atala, the Bolivian "Queen of Cocaine," turned DEA informant along with her husband-- who was also part of the junta-- only after Sonia had already been muscled out of the cocaine business. It was basically a revenge play on her part, and she and her husband used taxpayer money and witness protection to prosecute rivals, reclaim their assets in Bolivia, and continue their drug trafficking from the United States.
"The notion that there were dealers whom I could easily indict and arrest next door in Bolivia getting ready to take over their country and not a single high-ranking DEA bureaucrat or Justice Department attorney seemed interested enough to make a move to stop them just wouldn't sink in." Once in power, now-Interior Minister Arce-Gomez made good on his promise to flood the US with cocaine.
Levine's frantic cables and phone calls to DC, and later offering himself to Newsweek as a source, bring him under internal investigation and removal from Buenos Aires. Despite what he describes as being constantly followed and surveilled by suits in vehicles and monitored by his bosses in DC, he's tapped to do a deep-cover sting operation with Sonia Atala in Tucson, AZ. While the workings of the high-profile deep cover operation might seem interesting, Levine's paranoia about whether each individual member of the DEA team is working with him or against him, and his own desire to flee this life soak up every page and kill the facts. The supposedly high-value cocaine the DEA had supplied is apparently deadly low-value and Levine implies someone at DEA was skimming cocaine from the evidence stashes. At trial, the surveillance tapes in the undercover house have significant portions of missing sound. Ultimately, the damage they do is minimal and the one trafficker that Levine develops sympathy and an outright crush on takes the biggest fall.
By 1983, the one person in the book that Levine seems to admire is able to push forward the indictment of Suarez, Arce-Gomez, and others. In 1989, the now-democratic Bolivian government decided to strip Arce-Gomez of his citizenship in order for the U.S. to extradite him to the United States. "He would be the perfect symbol to show the world that Bolivia was as serious about its war on drugs as Colombia. He would be worth at least $50 million in U.S. aid." He received a 30 year sentence. "He was truly an evil man...but when you consider that (he) would have had no drug customers were it not for Sonia (Atala), and that the coup that gave him power might never have occurred were it not for covert U.S. support, it's difficult to conceive of his extradition and conviction as a victory in the drug war."
I give the book 2 stars out of 5. It is perhaps an important story but told very badly.
July 25, 2021
Truth of the corruption of the fed agencies feckless war on drugs
Levine hits the nail on the head, being a retired federal agent ( from another agency) I believe that everything he says rings true, his depiction of the “suits” (the bureaucratic sycophantic hacks ) that populate these federal agencies & usually rising to management positions. Is dead on the money
Levine hits the nail on the head, being a retired federal agent ( from another agency) I believe that everything he says rings true, his depiction of the “suits” (the bureaucratic sycophantic hacks ) that populate these federal agencies & usually rising to management positions. Is dead on the money
July 8, 2021
Gripping story about a man’s fight against the system
Holy cow this is a very well written story of the drug war. Mr. Levine builds momentum in telling his story so that it is very difficult for the reader to put down this book.
Holy cow this is a very well written story of the drug war. Mr. Levine builds momentum in telling his story so that it is very difficult for the reader to put down this book.
June 6, 2018
Great Read!
This is a great read. The cover up by the government is unreal. Once I started reading I couldn't put it down.
This is a great read. The cover up by the government is unreal. Once I started reading I couldn't put it down.
November 5, 2025
The Big White Lie was a really interesting look into the inner workings of the DEA, and how they handled undercover drug operations in South America during the 1980s. The story is told in a thriller-style through the eyes of Micheal Levine, and it's split up into 2 parts. The first part of the narrative focuses on Micheal Levine's motivation, and his time stationed in Argentina, and the second part focuses on Operation Hun, an undercover operation undertaken in partnership with Sonia Atala, a drug kingpin known as the "Queen with the Snow Crown".
I like the way Micheal Levine told his story, and I was disgusted by the many coverups the government perpetrated in an effort to protect special interest groups and the covert operations of some 3 letter agencies.
The American people were lied to and deceived. The War on Drugs was a government operation shrouded in secrecy, and the truth is far from what the American people were told.
I feel like even today, in 2025, many people are unaware of the role 3-letter agencies played in the drug epidemics of the 80s and 90s. In fact, the role that these agencies played in the proliferation of drugs in our communities that exists, to this day!
I hope that we get more accountability and that books like these continue to come out. As a proud American, I am disillusioned and disappointed with the actions taken by the government.
I like the way Micheal Levine told his story, and I was disgusted by the many coverups the government perpetrated in an effort to protect special interest groups and the covert operations of some 3 letter agencies.
The American people were lied to and deceived. The War on Drugs was a government operation shrouded in secrecy, and the truth is far from what the American people were told.
I feel like even today, in 2025, many people are unaware of the role 3-letter agencies played in the drug epidemics of the 80s and 90s. In fact, the role that these agencies played in the proliferation of drugs in our communities that exists, to this day!
I hope that we get more accountability and that books like these continue to come out. As a proud American, I am disillusioned and disappointed with the actions taken by the government.
June 24, 2017
Stunning eye opener
It's weird to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the drug war is the biggest scam ever pulled on the American people.
To see it in writing with proof from a former agent just solidifies what everyone already knows.
It's weird to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the drug war is the biggest scam ever pulled on the American people.
To see it in writing with proof from a former agent just solidifies what everyone already knows.
March 27, 2020
Excellent Read!
Very well written with a good story flow which makes it easy to follow with do many different characters involved. What an incredible waste of tax payers money and a huge insult to the agents in charge.
Very well written with a good story flow which makes it easy to follow with do many different characters involved. What an incredible waste of tax payers money and a huge insult to the agents in charge.
November 13, 2017
GREAT BOOK !
GREAT BOOK, MUST READ FOR ONES SELF. A TRUE STORY OF SELF SACRIFICE TO DO "THE RIGHT THING" , AGAIN ALL THE ODDS , AND SOME .
GREAT BOOK, MUST READ FOR ONES SELF. A TRUE STORY OF SELF SACRIFICE TO DO "THE RIGHT THING" , AGAIN ALL THE ODDS , AND SOME .
March 12, 2018
Enjoyed the book and all of the goings on. Fairly realistic description of the view from Michael's World
April 25, 2020
Very good book. Everything in their favour was against them. Very informative well written could have read more more more.
February 13, 2022
The war on drugs is a sham.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This fake war on drugs is costing the American tax payer billions , not counting the human toll.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This fake war on drugs is costing the American tax payer billions , not counting the human toll.
July 14, 2022
The Truth
It truly shows the lengths that governments will go to in misleading us, the people!! America is the worst of all, but don't think you're is any better!!
It truly shows the lengths that governments will go to in misleading us, the people!! America is the worst of all, but don't think you're is any better!!
September 28, 2023
Amazing Book,Real life can be more captivating than fiction sometimes..
Enjoyed every moment of it!
Enjoyed every moment of it!
November 29, 2023
O realitate cruntă...un ritm alert care te tine in priza și care obliga la reflectie.
December 28, 2023
I wanted more details on what exactly the CIA did
November 29, 2025
It’s good, gives a good demonstration of how useless the dea and cia was in the drug war and how the basically created it, told through a narrative perspective of a man trying to fight it for the right reasons, how he slowly realises it’s futile which is the annoying bit as there is no true ending or payoff which i think is his point but I would’ve enjoyed seeing someone get their comeuppance although that would be rewriting history.
February 12, 2014
Final algo moralista, aunque con grandes revelaciones. Algunos detalles son refutados por la viuda del rey de la cocaína de Bolivia en otro libro editado en 2012.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews