A retired drug enforcement investigator who claims to have exposed hypocrisy surrounding the “war on drugs” will speak tonight at NIU.

Michael Levine, one of the country’s most acclaimed Drug Enforcement Agency investigators, will lecture as a Campus Activities Board sponsored speaker. The former government agent will appear at 7:30 p.m. in the Carl Sandburg Auditorium in the Holmes Student Center.

“The drug war is a massive failure and is being lost by deceptive, incompetent and ineffectual leaders more concerned with misleading and manipulating the American public than halting the flood of narcotics into this country or treating the domestic source of the problem,” Levine said in a Washington Post interview.

Levine is a 25-year veteran of undercover work who has used his skills to infiltrate the drug underworld. He has been responsible for the arrest of 3,000 criminals during his career.

However, he has recently called into question the methods used by the leaders of both the DEA and the federal government.

Levine’s first book, Deep Cover: The Inside Story of How DEA In-Fighting, Incompetence and Subterfuge Lost Us the Biggest Battle of the Drug War, describes the drug war as a political fraud.

Levine told the Post he is seeking exposure for his work because he believes the DEA has an enemy worse than the crack cartels of South America and the brutal Asian drug rings. The organization must watch the enemy within, he said.

Levine said the “suits”—a term he uses for the bureaucratic positions at DEA—are the real enemy of the agency. He said they are politicians with no experience in the drug war or interest in listening to their agents.