Chapter 26
DEA Headquarters, 2015
There is a long-standing tradition at the DEA: When agents retire, one of the agency’s top two officials presents them with their retirement credentials. The credentials—a badge and ID enshrined in a leather case—are handed to the retiring agent in a brief but emotional ceremony, capping off a long career. That did not happen for Joe Rannazzisi, who had served the agency for twenty-nine years and six months.
On the morning of his last day, October 30, 2015, Joe received a call from Mark Mazzei, an official in DEA’s security programs branch. He asked Joe who should present his credentials—Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg or Acting Deputy Administrator Jack Riley?
They were the last two people Joe wanted to touch his credentials.
“Why don’t you come over to my office, Mark, and let’s talk,” Joe said. “And let me see the retirement credentials because I’ve never seen them before.”
When Mazzei arrived at Joe’s desk in “The Hinterlands” and showed him his credentials, Joe looked at him. “Mark, I have no respect for Jack Riley. And I have a lot less than that for Chuck Rosenberg. I don’t want them touching my credentials. But you’re a working agent. I’ve known you for a long time. I want you to give them to me.”
“That’s not protocol, Joe,” Mazzei replied, noting that Joe was his superior officer.
“Mark, give me my fucking credentials,” Joe said. “Hold out your hand. Say, ‘Joe, congratulations on a job well done.’”
Mazzei handed Joe the leather case and shook his hand.
“Now I’ve got my credentials,” Joe said.
“What am I going to tell them?” Mazzei asked.
“Tell them I left,” Joe said. “I’m done.”
Joe saw himself as a casualty of the way Washington worked. Key members of Congress were caving to the drug industry, which helped to finance their campaigns. The lawmakers were putting enormous pressure on DEA administrators to fall in line. If they didn’t, Congress could cut the agency’s funding and demand leadership changes.
Joe’s friend Jimmy Soiles stopped by his desk at two that afternoon. Soiles had decided that under the new regime it was also time for him to retire. This would be his last day as well. No one had organized a formal farewell lunch for Joe. He and Soiles went to the Athena Pallas in Arlington, Joe’s favorite Greek restaurant and hangout. At particularly stressful times, he would grab a corner table, order chicken Mediterranean, a house specialty, and quietly ponder his cases. The Athena Pallas lunch with Soiles would have to suffice as Joe’s retirement celebration.
The next day, Joe took his two daughters, Rachel and Gabby, and two of their friends to adopt a rescue coonhound mutt that had been brought to a PetSmart in Centreville, Virginia. He drove his Ford Excursion to pick up the puppy, one of seven siblings who had been badly abused. When he arrived at the PetSmart, he saw that the puppy he picked out had mange and was blind in one eye. Someone at PetSmart suggested that he name him Banjo. Joe, a big music fan who plays the guitar, thought the name was perfect.
Driving home, Joe glanced in his rearview mirror to see Banjo cowering in the backseat. He looked hurt and scared.
“Don’t worry,” Joe said. “I feel the same way.”
The days and weeks after leaving the DEA were monotonous and depressing. For nearly thirty years, Joe had gone full throttle, working twelve- to fourteen-hour days, fueled by a constant adrenaline rush. Now there was little to do except train the dog. He would take Banjo on long walks in the woods, trying to nurse the puppy—and himself—back to health.
But Joe couldn’t stop thinking about his cases at the DEA. He reread the old cases—Cardinal, McKesson, Masters, AmerisourceBergen, Mallinckrodt, Walgreens, CVS. What more could we have done? he wondered. Were there other steps that he and his team could have taken to protect the public?
Over and over, he listened to a recording of the oral arguments in his favorite Supreme Court case—United States v. Moore. He traced his life’s work back to this landmark 1975 case—it was the linchpin to all the cases Joe had built against the industry. In Moore, an appeals court had overturned the conviction of a Washington, D.C., doctor who unlawfully prescribed methadone. The doctor sold prescriptions for large quantities of the narcotic to his patients. On one day, he wrote 271 prescriptions without performing a single physical exam.
In his October 7, 1975, oral argument, Assistant Solicitor General Paul L. Friedman said that the evidence was overwhelming that the doctor had acted no differently than a street-corner drug pusher. The lawyer for the doctor said his client was protected from being prosecuted because he was registered to sell the drugs by the DEA. But Justice Thurgood Marshall noted that under the Controlled Substances Act, licensed doctors or drug companies are not protected when they act illegally.
“A wholesaler can sell a million dollars’ worth of methadone to the Mafia and he can’t be convicted?” Marshall asked rhetorically.
Joe was struck by how Marshall seemed to anticipate what would happen in the future. The case was argued thirty years before the opioid epidemic. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of upholding the doctor’s conviction.
One day, Joe’s daughter Rachel saw him rereading the cases. “Dad,” she said. “You’re not with the DEA anymore. Why do you keep doing this?”
“These cases were my life,” Joe told her.
As he continued reading, Joe was struck by something else. With each drug company he investigated, a voluminous number of court documents had been produced. Joe and his investigators had left a bright trail for any attorney to bring a civil action. Where were all the mass tort lawyers?
That question also haunted Jim Geldhof. On Christmas Day 2015, he and his family gathered at his home in Lake Orion, Michigan, an hour north of Detroit. They sat around the dining room table, platters of Beef Wellington, mashed potatoes, and vegetables spread out before them. Geldhof was one week away from retirement after his forty-three-year career—and feeling morose. The McKesson case had been settled without serious consequences for the company. The future of the Masters case remained uncertain. The Mallinckrodt case was in limbo. Joe had been removed from his job. The Marino-Blackburn bill was hurtling through Congress. Geldhof remembered the grieving families he had met. It was hard to give himself over to the holiday celebration. Toward the end of dinner, the conversation turned to his retirement. His youngest son, Matt, perhaps sensing his father’s mood, asked an unexpected question.
“Dad, what’s the most disappointing thing that happened in your career?”
“That’s an easy one,” Geldhof said. “That the American people will never know what these companies did to our country. They’ll never know.”