Deep Cover, a New York Times non-fiction bestseller, is a first-hand account of how the CIA, State and Justice Departments teamed up to destroy a DEA undercover sting operation that threatened to expose US government ties to drug-financed governments in Mexico, Panama and Bolivia.

In Deep Cover, Michael Levine takes us with him on one of the most far-reaching drug cases ever mounted — Operation Trifecta — an operation that could have implicated top government officials of three South American countries in the drug trade, and could have gotten American agents deep inside La Corporation, the powerful, deadly, heretofore untouchable group of Bolivian drug lords who supply the likes of the Medellín cartel.

But, according to Levine, the DEA and the customs agency are so mismanaged, disorganized, negligent, and rivalrous that this operation, like most drug war operations, was hopelessly bungled-locked in a bureaucratic political frenzy that left agents' lives dangling, drug lords laughing, and the Washington “suits” fighting for air time and promotions.

This is the explosive, real story of why we're losing the drug war — told in the words of a true American hero whose life is dedicated to winning it.

“Deep Cover describes an undercover assignment in which the operative completely abandons the protection of his official identity and adopts a new one as a criminal, isolating himself in the dominion and complete control of his target. This type of assignment is rare in law enforcement and even rarer in overseas operations, where exposure will almost always be fatal.”
- DEA Lecture on Undercover Work

“It is both sobering and painful to realize, after twenty-five years of undercover work, having personally accounted for at least three thousand criminals serving fifteen thousand years in jail, and having seized several tons of various illegal substances, that my career was meaningless and had had absolutely no effect whatsoever in the so-called war on drugs. The war itself was a fraud.” - Michael Levine