‘I’m a throwaway’

But the dollar notes were always “marked” for St Rose, a young man in his 30s in the early 1980s, whose mission was to penetrate drug dens as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Authority (DEA).

Born in St Lucia, St Rose’s father brought him to Trinidad when he was just nine months and they settled in Mayaro. When he was 19, St Rose went back to his homeland and eventually migrated to the United States where he married and made Florida his home.

In the 1960s there was a hectic migration from small Caribbean states, including Haiti and Cuba, to the US, many settling in Miami.

St Rose, 71, sat on the Moruga beach next to his shack and told Sunday Newsday his amazing life story, of how he got “roped” into working for the DEA because he had a special talent. St Rose could speak English, Spanish, French and Patois.

In the late 70s, the drug trade between the US and small Caribbean countries grew. St Rose claims he was recruited by the DEA as an informant to catch drug barons involved in the drug trade from the Caribbean.

He returned to Trinidad in 1992, because he was forced to flee the US when his life was threatened by dealers. He contended the DEA owed him a new identity in a country of his choice, money and a house, for his job of “putting away” hundreds of drug barons in the 19 years he infiltrated the drug trade for the agency.

St Rose said he’s now a “throwaway” because, according to him, the DEA is not responding to him despite his repeated telephone calls and letters to them in the US.

San Fernando-based attorney Sean Sobers has taken up St Rose’s cause. In several letters to the US Embassy, Port of Spain, the attorney contended that St Rose in the late 1980s and early 1990s, worked for the DEA in “their infiltration of a number criminal organisations that were involved in nefarious activities across the length and breath of the US”. Requesting compensation for St Rose, Sobers has asked for an update on his status, adding that St Rose was supposed to be placed into a Witness Protection Programme in the US.

St Rose recalled the many operatives he conducted with the DEA which resulted in putting away cocaine and marijuana drug-pushers and traffickers.

“I just got wired up,” St Rose recalled telling his wife one day, referring to police officers in Virginia having just prepared him for a “hit” on a drug baron.

“I’m about to go down, Wish me luck; I’m on my way,” he remembered telling his wife in another operation in South Carolina. A father of five daughters and a son, St Rose recalled a drug bust in Pennsylvania in which the state police had equipped him with US$27,000.

They wanted to bust a major drug trafficking don and St Rose, in his 40s then, was their most experienced confidential informant to get into the place where enforcement officers could not go.

His job was to buy the drugs, then the DEA, watching his every move with high-powered guns, would then move in. St Rose went into the secluded homes of men who sold cocaine by the kilogrammes.

“I was given thousands of marked US dollar bills. Without people like me, narcotic operations is almost impossible. I put away plenty drug dealers, from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida,” St Rose told Sunday Newsday.

He claimed 80 per cent of the cases he helped crack, involved men and women who had migrated from the Caribbean to the US, including from his homeland, St Lucia.

Sobers stated, in one of his letters, that St Rose’s recruitment by the DEA was due to his ability to speak several languages. Sobers told Sunday Newsday yesterday he has never received a response to his letters.

In 1992, St Rose said, he was living “the good life” in Florida courtesy the DEA, until his worst nightmare was realised. Men began to stalk him and his family.

According to one of Sobers’ letter, “Pursuant to Mr St Rose being an undercover informer, his identify was made known to one of the organisations which sanctioned a hit on his family. Based on certain threats, he petitioned the DEA to be replaced somewhere else. The Witness Protection Unit informed him that it would take two months to set up the facilities for him and advised Mr St Rose to ‘lie low’.” The attorney informed the embassy that one eventual morning, St Rose emerged from his house to face a man brandishing a firearm and retreated into his house. “Mr St Rose could no longer risk it and he got onto a flight to St Lucia. A DEA official was at the airport to see him off,” Sobers wrote.

The attorney went on to state that St Rose was given money and contact information for DEA officials, however, his numerous telephone calls and letters to the DEA, fell on deaf ears.

Two years after he arrived in St Lucia, St Rose fled to Trinidad to look for his father in Mayaro.

He eventually settled in Moruga and have been living there since.

He never heard from the DEA since and has grown old and weak.

He said he no longer feels he’s at risk, but is ailing from a kidney disease and must visit San Fernando General Hospital twice weekly for dialysis.

St Rose said, “I have done my work. I have no regrets, though I have no thanks to get from the American government.”