Bonner, Robert

Robert C. Bonner (1942–) was the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration from 1990 to 1993. Born in Wichita, Kansas, Bonner was educated at the University of Maryland (B.A.) and Georgetown University Law Center (J.D.), after which he served as a JAG officer in the U.S. Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps from 1967 to 1971. When he left JAG in 1971, he had attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He served as assistant U.S. attorney in the Central District of California for four years, worked as an attorney in private practice from 1975 to 1984, and then returned to public service as his district's U.S. Attorney. While serving in that capacity, he developed a close working relationship with the DEA, particularly in the agency's major money-laundering cases (Operation Polar Cap and Operation Pisces), and also led the prosecution of the murderers of a DEA special agent.

Bonner briefly served as a federal judge when Judge Pamela Ann Rymer's seat was vacated by her appointment to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. President George H. W. Bush nominated him on February 28, 1989, and he was confirmed by the Senate on May 18 and commissioned a week later. However, Bush soon nominated him to be Administrator of the DEA following John Lawn's departure to work for the New York Yankees. Bonner resigned his judgeship and accepted the DEA position in August 1990.

[Page 101]Bonner's stint at the DEA lasted until 1993, a period when Colombian cocaine cartels had stepped up their operations on American soil, with the Cali Mafia establishing a firm network of cells throughout the northeast. The Colombian constitution ratified in 1991 prevented Colombian nationals from being extradited to the United States, making it increasingly difficult to prosecute cartel members even when they were caught, leaving the DEA to attempt to work with the Colombian National Police to conduct operations on Colombian soil. Bonner's previous work alongside the DEA informed his view of the drug problem as a global one, and he was proactive in working to target drug trafficking operations in their home countries, and to disrupt trafficking networks worldwide, rather than waiting for drugs to arrive in the United States. His efforts were helped by the priority Bush had placed on the War on Drugs (the DEA's budget increased by about 20 percent over Bonner's tenure), and the highly publicized (and controversial) arrest of Panamanian head of state and drug trafficker Manuel Noriega in early 1990.

During this period, drug cartels were expanding into and strengthening their presence in Europe, taking advantage of the fall of the Soviet Union and the resulting political and economic chaos throughout the region. Heroin became a more serious and prominent problem as production efforts became more sophisticated, doubling production over the course of the previous decade and putting a purer, cheaper heroin on the streets. Both San Francisco and New York were major destinations for heroin trafficked from Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle.

The “Kingpin Strategy” Bonner implemented in 1992 was designed to be a sophisticated, modernized approach to the drug war. Designed to reduce drug traffic rather than simply produce arrests, the strategy called for striking drug cartels at their vulnerable joints: financial, transportation, and communications infrastructure; access to the chemicals used to process the drugs; and the American leadership required to conduct business in the United States. Such efforts steadily weakened the Medellín cocaine cartel, culminating in the death of its head, Pablo Escobar, at the hands of the Colombian National Police in 1993.

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