The Region - News from May 13, 1987

“The Underground Empire,” a controversial best-seller which purports to tell the true story of a band of secretive federal drug agents who were breaking up the world’s largest drug conspiracy until they were shut down by the FBI, became the target of a $30-million federal libel suit. Los Angeles attorney Barry Tarlow, who represented some of the drug suspects described in author James Mills’ book, claims the book falsely implies he was involved in criminal activity on behalf of his clients, including laundering of drug profits and a murder-for-hire scheme, describing incidents which Tarlow said never took place. The suit claims the book was based primarily on the assertions of a pair of paid government informants who were “lifelong criminals, drug dealers and con men” and asserts that dozens of those involved in events described in the book never had a chance to refute the informants’ accounts. A spokesman for Doubleday, the publisher, did not return phone calls.