By the time he was 9 years old, White knew he wanted to be a soldier, a dream that took him first to Vietnam and then to Nixon’s drug war on America’s mean streets.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/DEAOn the muggy summer night of July 31, 1980, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) organized a sting operation at the Pompeii Warehouse south of Miami. Five undercover agents waited inside the warehouse with the drugs—15,000 pounds of marijuana in the back of a GM rental truck, which they planned to sell for a million cash.Leading the sting was group supervisor Frank White, a 37-year-old Vietnam war hero. He and fellow agents were