After
the president designated Myles Ambrose the administration's
"drug czar" in 1972, a nationwide program
of public appearances and speeches was arranged for
him so that he could focus public attention on the administration's
war on heroin. "Anyone who isn't aware that President
Nixon has been leading the light against drug abuse
hasn't been paying attention," Ambrose said In
a typical appearance before the 18th National Republican
Women's Conference, at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel,
in Philadelphia, on May 20, 1972. "As the president's
special consultant on drug abuse, I can assure you that
this is true and not empty rhetoric.... The fight has
been all the tougher because, prior to 1969, the government
napped for most of the decade while drug abuse ballooned
into a national epidemic." Though Ambrose proved
to be a "highly dramatic spokesman" for the
administration, according to Krogh, the White House
also wanted him to undertake a more "media-oriented
approach" which could reach tens of millions of
potential voters. At one meeting, in March, 1972, Ehrlichman
suggested to Krogh that Ambrose should establish "some
sort of hotline system which could be nationally advertised
on television throughout the United States. Accordingly,
in three weeks of frenetic planning, Ambrose established
a national heroin hotline system through which citizens
anywhere In the continental United States Could call,
without charge, a special ODA LE "Intelligence
center" and report suspected heroin sellers in
their neighborhood. The intelligence center would then
alert a strike force in the area, which would immediately
swoop down on the suspect. To make, the hotline operational,
ODALE took over a communications center located in a
mine shaft in Virginia, which was originally planned
by the Office of Emergency Preparedness as a nuclear-attack
refuge for high White House officials and was already
wired for emergency telephone communications. Geoffrey
Sheppard, one of Krogh's young assistants on the Domestic
Council, later recalled, "When I first heard that
Ambrose intended to put all those narcotics agents in
a fortified mine shaft in Virginia, I thought he was
being overly paranoid about the possibility of having
his center attacked by heroin pushers; they later told
me that this was the only facility the White House could
find on three weeks' notice which had the necessary
telephone cables." In order to process the expected
flood of telephone calls from informers, ODALE leased
twenty wide-area telephone systems (called WATS lines)
from the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Almost
the entire staff of the Office of Emergency Preparedness,
which had been established in the White House after
World War II to plan for nuclear disasters, was requisitioned
by Ambrose to man the telephones twenty-four hours a
day. Agents who had been transferred to ODALE, from
the BNDD were reassigncd to this mine shaft to evaluate
the contents of the tips and, if they were relevant,
to pass the information on to the appropriately located
strike force. Since the success of the hotline depended
on national publicity-the entire citizenry of America
had to be made aware of ODALE's toll-free number-Ambrose
contracted with Grey Advertising Agency, in New York
City, for a nationwide publicity campaign. Television
licensees across the country were expected to donate
tens of millions of dollars' worth of free time on local
television stations for these advertisements from Ambrose's
office. Since there was no provision in the budget of
any federal agency to pay the Grey Advertising Agency
for designing this campaign (which presumably would
also help alert the electorate to the Nixon administration's
fight against heroin dealers), Krogh arranged to finance
Grey's work through grants from the always available
Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. In his April
7statement to the press Ambrose justified this hotline
in terms of a new "citizen's crusade." He
explained, "To give each citizen the opportunity
to join in this battle, the president has today directed
that a national heroin hotline be established and manned
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Public-spirited
citizens having information heroin traffickers are urged
to dial this number [800-368-5363]."
Since the hotline required
that a large number of narcotics agents be detached
from ongoing investigations of major traffickers in
order to process telephone calls, BNDD director John
Ingersoll was appalled by what he considered to be nothing
more than a "White House publicity stunt."
He argued that all analyses of heroin transactions showed
that the vast preponderance of addicts acquired their
heroin supply from other addicts or from persons with
whom they had long-term ties, rather than from strangers
who might be likely to turn them in. Therefore, the
hotline was not likely to produce many valid tips. An
audit of the first three months of telephone calls received
over the hotline supported Ingersoll's contention. Of
33,313 calls received and evaluated by narcotics agents,
28,079 were deemed useless-obscene calls, pranks, or
simply heavy breathing over the phone. Most of the remaining
5,234 were appraised as sincere, but of no immediate
use. For example, agents were told merely that "drugs
were bad" or that the caller thought "Nixon
was doing a good job." Only 113 calls provided
any lead at all for the strike forces, and even these
calls produced only four cases of arrests and one seizure-two
grams of adulterated heroin. which Ingersoll estimated
at "a street value of two dollars." Despite
such meager results, and the fact that agents were diverted
from more profitable investigations, the hotline messages
continued on national television. Playing on popular
fears, for example, a typical ODALE commercial designed
by Grey Advertising would show a person cringing in
his room behind barred windows. The message would state,
"The pusher should live behind bars, not you,"
followed by the hotline telephone number. Indeed, the
commercials proved so successful with local television
station owners as a means of fulfilling their public-service
requirements that they continued broadcasting these
messages long after the narcotics agents had deserted
the fortified mine shaft in Virginia and relinquished
the wide-area telephone system to the American Telephone
and Telegraph Company, those who continued to call the
hotline (whether to provide valid tips or simply obscene
denouncements) received a recorded message asking them
to call their local police. Even after the entire concept
of a hotline was abandoned, there was simply no way
of "gracefully recalling the commercials,"
Krogh explained.
Ambrose's strike forces proved
to be very aggressive: they executed well over one hundred
no-knock search warrants in the first six months of
their existence, compared to only four such warrants
executed by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs
in its entire five-year history. However, they failed
to generate as much publicity as had been hoped for,
since they were arresting mainly local street pushers.
And the night raids on the wrong homes in Collinsville,
Illinois, were a source of negative publicity.
Whatever
other purposes it may have served, ODALE did not gain
the favorable publicity that Haldeman and Ehrlichman
desired, even with its hotline.
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When
you have a loved one who needs heroin
addiction help, there are a number of hotlines that
you can call so you
will know what you can do for them.
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