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ACTING ON A DEADLY STAGE: A DRUG AGENT'S LIFE IN DEEP COVER

ACTING ON A DEADLY STAGE: A DRUG AGENT'S LIFE IN DEEP COVER
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June 16, 1986, Section B, Page 1Buy Reprints
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Some drug traders first saw him as a heroin smuggler in Thailand. Others met him as a cocaine buyer in Buenos Aires. And others as a gunrunner in Buffalo.

He can recall how they all looked into his eyes, trusted him and, as a result, went to jail.

So as Michael Levine, a special agent of the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, sat down to dinner at a restaurant in Greenwich Village last week, his eyes shifted from table to table in search of a familiar face. He was armed with a boyish smile under a thick mustache and, in case of the worst, a 9-millimeter automatic pistol under his pant leg.

Mr. Levine is described by his agency as an expert in ''deep cover'' - an agent who assumes invented characters to penetrate underworld organizations. Deep cover means living among criminals for weeks or months at a time, unable to return home or admit to anyone one's real name.

''An agent is what I am, not what I do,'' said the 46-year-old Mr. Levine. ''You create the person they want you to be. It's a slow process because first you have to know who they want to meet.'' Now a Supervisor

After playing the part of underworld figures for the Federal Government for 21 years, Mr. Levine now works as a supervisor in the D.E.A.'s New York office. His eyes are dark. His words recall the past in the tough cadences of his native Bronx.

''Sometimes I've thought I've got nothing but this job,'' he said. ''My wife would say, 'I didn't sign up for this. I married an accountant.' ''

Deep cover specialists play a crucial role in the D.E.A.'s long-term narcotics investigations, as well as in major investigations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms of the Treasury Department and some local police departments. Rarely, however, do law-enforcement officers who engage in deep cover discuss their techniques publicly, and rarely, if at all, do they describe the psychological difficulties they experience or the sometimes devastating effects of their job upon their families.

But over several hours last week, Mr. Levine outlined how he gave up a career as an accountant to become a Federal agent, how he learned to invent and portray characters that criminals would trust and how he and colleagues cope with the psychological strain of life both in and out of deep cover. 'Divide Your Brain in Half'

The interview took place with the permission of his superiors, who said they wanted the public to understand the kind of work D.E.A. undercover agents do and the difficulties they face.

''You have to divide your brain in half,'' Mr. Levine said. ''This half is the character you are playing. This half is always a Federal agent recording the details. If the half that is a Government official becomes inefficient, it can cost you your life.''

Mr. Levine, who has acted in community theater productions, said acting in the theater was easy compared with playing roles undercover. ''The audience is sometimes six inches away from your face and far more critical.''

He admits that his career involves something like an addiction to the fast-paced and deadly way of life known only to international drug traffickers and the people who try to apprehend them. But, he says, it is also an act of vengeance on behalf of his younger brother, who died a heroin addict.

''At one point I felt that if I could fill the jails I could cure him,'' he said of his brother, who died in 1977. ''But there was nothing I could do. His salvation was in his own head.''

Mr. Levine was born, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, in the Tremont section of the Bronx in 1939. During his childhood blacks and Puerto Ricans were moving into the neighborhood as Jews and Italians were moving out. To fit in and survive, he joined a teen-age gang dominated by Puerto Ricans. Eventually he grew into a tough street fighter, 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighing more than 200 pounds, with a keen ear for Spanish accents and dialects. No Career Behind a Desk

After four years in the Air Force and graduating from Hofstra University with a degree in accounting, Mr. Levine, then 25 years old, with a wife and a child, decided he could not stand a career behind a desk. He joined the Internal Revenue Service as an agent investigating gambling operations and by 1969 he had entered his first major deep cover operation as an agent for Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The assignment involved joining a Buffalo motorcycle gang, ''The Knight Riders,'' that was believed to be selling drugs and arms. Mr. Levine said he interviewed an informer for three days. Then he was introduced to the gang as a biker of Cuban ancestry with connections to an anti-Castro terrorist group. A Severe Test

After several weeks of living with the gang in its clubhouse, Mr. Levine faced a severe test of his acting skills. A drunk in a bar approached Mr. Levine in front of the gang members and began shouting obscenities. The gang members expected him to respond to the drunk as they would - with a violent attack. But as a Federal agent, he could not attack the man - that would be assault - and he did not want to get into a fight.

''I could see a glimmer of fear in his eyes, so I stood up, half grinning and did this laugh,'' Mr. Levine said. Later he realized that the laugh was stolen from the 1947 movie, ''Kiss of Death,'' in which Richard Widmark portrayed a psychopathic killer with a monstrous cackle.

''It was just showbiz,'' Mr. Levine said.

The gang members, however, burst into laughter at his bravado, and the drunk, after an exchange of threats, apologized. The incident gained the gang's full trust, Mr. Levine said, and at the end of three months, a dozen gang members were arrested for selling guns, drugs and explosives.

One night during those years, his mother called him at home to report finding something in his brother's bedroom, a hypodermic needle and a spoon. When his brother came home that night, Mr. Levine was there with his mother and they talked and cried until dawn.

'' 'You're dead,' I told him, 'Anyone who gets into heroin dies,' '' he said. ''My heart went out to him. I told him we would try to do the best.''

Mr. Levine's brother lived with him and his wife as he moved in and out of drug rehabilitation programs and tried to hold down a job. In 1975, he disappeared to Florida. Two years later, he shot himself to death.

In 1970, Mr. Levine joined the Customs Service and when his section was merged with other Federal agencies in 1973 to form the Drug Enforcement Administration, he became a D.E.A. agent. Over the years he has been stationed in New York, Washington, Miami, Buenos Aires and Germany, and has followed investigations to Asia, South America and the Middle East. Often they required deep cover identities. 'The Alimony Gang'

He and other agents sometimes worked on cases 24 hours a day, even when they were not under deep cover, sleeping on desks or in the office gym. So many of their marriages fell apart, he said, that his group of investigators was known as ''the alimony group.'' For several years, he and his wife were legally separated.

''All of our lives were being narcs, moving from country to country, living as though you are bigger than life,'' Mr. Levine said. After a major deep cover operation, he said, ''For the first 24 hours you are a rubber band, taut, taut, taut.''

In Thailand, Mr. Levine used half of a torn photograph of him and a American drug buyer to gain entry to a major heroin syndicate. After two weeks under cover, the heroin wholesalers were arrested by the Thai police.

From Argentina, Mr. Levine sent informers into Bolivia to put out the word that a Puerto Rican named ''Miguel'' was in Buenes Aires ready to buy cocaine for a major American organized-crime family. An emissary of Roberto Suarez Gomez, the head of a Bolivian cocaine empire, came to Argentina to negotiate a deal. The representative, Marcello Ibanez-Velez, met ''Miguel'' over dinner in Buenes Aires.

''He was very much a family man,'' Mr. Levine recalled. ''He didn't drink. His profession was cocaine.

''As I sat there I created a character. A Latin man. A family man. A businessman. He doesn't drink. He is soft-spoken. Someone you can trust. Very decent.'' D.E.A. Family The two men became friends and Mr. Levine invited Mr. Ibanez to Miami to see his home, family and cocaine processing operation. When Mr. Ibanez arrived in Miami he saw Miguel's life, as constructed by the Federal Government and acted out by D.E.A. agents: a wife, servants, pilots, a luxurious beach house, limousines, an airplane, a cocaine processing plant and a $9 million roll of cash.

Taken in, Mr. Ibanez agreed to fly to the Bolivian jungle with Mr. Levine's pilot to sell them cocaine. But, as he was about to board the plane Mr. Ibanez turned to him, Mr. Levine recalls, and said, ''If something is wrong, Miguel, you are killing me.''

A few hours later the agents seized 854 pounds of cocaine. Mr. Ibanez and another cocaine dealer eventually were returned to the United States and sentenced to 13 years in prison. And, according to informers, Mr. Suarez, the head of the cocaine empire, put out a $150,000 contract on Mr. Levine's life.

''It was a seduction,'' Mr. Levine said. ''There was a real relationship happening. The feelings are genuine. They have to be.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: ACTING ON A DEADLY STAGE: A DRUG AGENT'S LIFE IN DEEP COVER. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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