It’s hard to make Mike Vigil wince.

As a Drug Enforcement Administration undercover agent, Vigil spent years risking his life working narcotics trafficking cases from the alleys of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the remote jungles of Latin America. In more than three decades, he saw the violence and corruption wrought by the drug cartels firsthand.

Vigil rose from street agent to the head of DEA’s International Operations and was responsible for managing all of the agency’s offices outside U.S. soil. In retirement, he continues to provide a rare insight into the history and evolution of the world’s drug cartels.

With all that experience, there is little about the drug world that surprises him.

But when he learned that the DEA’s controversial former second-in-command, Louis Milione, had once again taken a position with a well-connected consulting firm with ties to Big Pharma, Vigil was spitting mad. He wasn’t shocked given Milione’s track record, but Vigil was embarrassed for the DEA just the same.

Thanks to the investigative work of The Associated Press, the public has learned plenty about Milione since he first left DEA in 2017 after 21 years, the final two as supervisor of the agency’s Office of Diversion Control, a division tasked with controlling the sale of highly addictive narcotics prescribed for medical use.

Once in the private sector, he spent four years working as a high-paid consultant for the very companies he was previously duty bound to scrutinize while many thousands of Americans were dying of opioid overdoses. One client was a wholesale painkiller distributor accused of failing to spot thousands of suspicious drug orders as the opioid crisis raged throughout America, The AP reported. Milione also provided his expertise on behalf of notorious Purdue Pharma as it battled charges of overaggressively marketing its OxyContin painkiller in multiple states.

In 2021, Milione returned as DEA Administrator Anne Milgram’s “principal deputy administrator,” a second-in-command post that spared him from needing a presidential appointment and a Senate confirmation. DEA’s official deputy administrator’s position has remained unfilled for more than a decade.

Milione resigned in July after The AP shined a light on his controversial clients, but has recently passed through Washington’s revolving door again and returned to the same consulting firm.

Milione’s hiring despite his coziness with bad actors in Big Pharma has also called into question Milgram’s judgment on that and other issues. She has been mocked by critics in Congress and now there’s a growing voice of discontent from former top DEA agents. Consider Vigil among them.

“You’re going to tell me that there’s no one in DEA that could fill those shoes, that you have to bring somebody back that has been consulting for pharmaceutical companies that created the opioid epidemic?” he says. “They talk about the fentanyl problem. They talk about all these issues, and then bring somebody back that has sold his services to these poisoners of American communities.”

For Vigil, the issue is just the latest example of a culture of favoritism at DEA that protects insiders and those who remain in the good graces of what agents sometimes call “mafias.” The  politically connected “suits” have a built-in advantage over the street agents, who are often minorities. Beyond the questionable decision-making of its current administrator, it’s another reason DEA suffers from a morale problem in the ranks, he says.

“In this case, you have someone who was supposedly combating drugs who goes to work for pharmaceutical companies that were misrepresenting the addictive properties of a drug,” he says. “That’s mercenary. That, to me, is almost criminal. Then, even worse, he was brought back to DEA. Then he leaves DEA when it gets slammed publicly, and then goes back to work for the pharmaceutical companies. If that is not mercenary, I don’t know what is.”

The Milione blowup comes at a time when some in the DEA have tried to highlight the extradition of Ovidio Guzmán López on drug and money laundering charges. He is the son of imprisoned Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Young Guzmán and his brothers, collectively called “The Chapitos,” are considered by the U.S. Department of Justice to be pioneers of the manufacturing and trafficking of fentanyl, “the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced.”

Vigil reminds us that it was the prescription opioid crisis that helped open the door for the rise of fentanyl trafficking.

“The opioid crisis, started by the pharmaceutical companies, led to fentanyl. And now their whole focus is fentanyl,” he says. “It’s great to say you’re going after the Sinaloa cartel, but then they bring in somebody as the No. 2 person who was obviously advising the people that actually started the opioid epidemic. What does that say about the administrator? They’re hyping this Ovidio extradition. It’s a victory for justice and the rule of law, but it is not going to have an impact on the Sinaloa Cartel. And to say otherwise is a fabrication.”

For Vigil, the Milione mess has marred whatever upside was felt in the DEA’s ranks.

Washington’s well-oiled revolving door between the government and corporations is no secret. Top law enforcement officials have long traded their badges for big paydays in the private sector. DEA is no exception.

But Milione’s merry-go-round is an egregious example by any measure.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR.