America is under attack literally under attack by an enemy who is well financed, well supplied,

and well armed, and fully capable of declaring total war against the nation and its people

as we've seen in Columbia.

Here in America the enemy is already ashore and for the first time we are fighting and

losing a war on our own soil.

America is under attack.

That was then Senator Joe Biden on September 5th, 1989, responding to a nationwide address

by then President George H. W. Bush unveiling a new national drug strategy.

Bush's speech that night remains as an iconic moment in the history of the country's

drug war.

It's the one where he held up a bag of crack that he said had been sold across the street

from the White House.

A scary claim that turned out to be something of a fraud, in fact, a young African-American

teenager from a poor neighborhood in Washington had been lured to Lafayette Park by the DEA

to make the sale in order to provide a problem for the President's speech.

But less well remembered was Biden's talk that same night, a speech filled with over-the-top

rhetoric that essentially argued the Bush administration wasn't being tough enough on drugs.

We'll look back at Biden's days as a hard-line drug warrior and explore what it tells us about

the Democratic presidential candidate then and now on this episode of Skull Buggarees

buried treasure.

Because people have got to know whether or not they're presidents of crook, well, I'm

not a crook.

...