DALLAS — Phillip “Phil” Jordan, a long-time DEA supervisor who headed key drug investigations and, upon retirement, was an outspoken critic of law enforcement corruption, has died.
Jordan, 81, served as a special agent-in-charge of DEA operations in Dallas and also as director of the El Paso Intelligence Center, a premier center providing tactical and intelligence support to officers on drug trends and money laundering.
He’s also credited with identifying and indicting Pedro Aviles Perez, one of the earliest Mexican drug lords to smuggle drugs into the United States.
Upon his retirement, Jordan consulted on international and domestic security issues and specialized in expert witness trial testimony.
He also spoke out against police corruption and became a key figure in the Netflix documentary, “The Last Narc,” in which whistleblowers claim a CIA operative and Mexican officials were tied to the torture-murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in 1985.
In 2001, he served as WFAA’s key source in the “Fake Drug” scandal in which more than two dozen individuals, mostly Mexican immigrants, were falsely arrested when paid Dallas police informants planted fake drugs.
Charges against the individuals – many facing lengthy prison sentences - ultimately were dropped. Several informants and four Dallas Police were criminally charged, with one of the officers sentenced to prison.
Jordan also spoke out against the federal government’s use of confidential informants. In particular, he voiced his concern in several WFAA stories when U.S. Immigration and Customs Service officials turned a blind eye to possible criminal acts by an informant in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez.
The murder of Jordan’s brother, Bruno, became the subject of the book Down by the River, authored by Chuck Bowden. The book recounts how, in 1995, soon after Jordan’s investigations helped bring indictments against the Juarez Cartel, his brother was murdered. The incident was prosecuted as a carjacking, but Jordan believed it was a hit ordered by drug traffickers.
During his ten-year tenure as special agent-in-charge in Dallas, he was credited with bringing greater cooperation between the federal agencies and state and local authorities.
Prosecutors also credited Jordan with increasing the DEA’s investigative focus on entire drug organizations, that resulted in the imprisonment of entire networks of drug dealers.
Besides working for the DEA, Jordan also worked for the state of Texas. He served as a senior advisor to the Texas Attorney General. He served as a liaison between state, federal and local agencies and provided guidance on issues dealing with money laundering and homeland security as related to drug trafficking within the state of Texas.
Jordan graduated from Jefferson High School in El Paso and attended the University of New Mexico on a basketball scholarship.
After earning a degree in psychology, he was recruited to work for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which later became the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. In 1973, the agency was renamed the Drug Enforcement Administration.
He had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Following emergency surgery, he died while recuperating.
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