[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 29, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5477-S5478]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    RETIREMENT OF JOHN B. BROWN III, ACTING ADMINISTRATOR OF THE DEA

 Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, James Bryant Conant once said that 
``each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own 
aristocracy, based on excellence of performance.'' I rise today to pay 
tribute to a man who is a member of the law enforcement elite, John B. 
Brown III, the Acting Director of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
  John Brown has spent more than three decades as a special agent in 
the Drug Enforcement Administration. Last year he capped his law 
enforcement career when he was appointed deputy administrator of the 
agency. And when former Administrator Asa Hutchinson was appointed as 
under secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, John Brown was 
tapped to be Acting Director of the DEA.
  John Brown is a dedicated, hard-working government leader. He is 
known at the DEA and in the larger law enforcement community as a 
thoughtful, personable administrator and a man of great humility.
  His career at the DEA has been a distinguished one. As a young agent 
he worked in Mexico where he was deeply involved in the investigation 
into the murder of Kiki Camarena, the brave DEA agent who was tortured 
and killed by Mexican drug traffickers. During that time as in the rest 
of his career--whether it was in Miami, the Dallas field division, the 
El Paso intelligence center or at DEA Headquarters--John Brown rose to 
the challenge and excelled at each assignment.
  But it was John Brown's first job as a teacher that really shaped him 
as an agent. John is known by the people who worked for him at DEA as a 
great teacher, someone who took the time to coach them, to motivate 
them, to counsel them. For that reason, he is one of the most popular 
administrators at DEA, and one of the most respected.
  As a school teacher, John quickly found that many of the problems he 
saw among students in his classroom involved learning the skills and 
attitudes and character to cope with life. Drug use was becoming 
widespread in the early 1970s and prompted John to decide to join DEA 
as a special agent.
  In truth, he never left the classroom. He has said many times that 
one of his proudest moments at DEA came when a former student--someone 
who as a young student had listened to one of his talks about the 
perils of drug use came up to him in an airport years later. He 
introduced himself, said that he had a great job and a wonderful 
family--both of which he said would have been impossible had he joined 
his many friends who used drugs in high school. He credited John 
Brown's talk on drugs with keeping away from a life of substance abuse.
  I would be remiss if I did not mention John's wife, Christine Brown, 
who has been a source of tremendous support

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and strength to John and their family. I know that she and their two 
children P.J. and Michael are incredibly proud of John and the superior 
and important work that he has done over the course of his career.
  John Brown is a leader of integrity and total dedication. He has 
served his country well and I wish him all the best.

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