Obama Picks Seattle's Top Cop for Drug Czar

Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske will become President Obama's drug czar, FOX News has learned.

If confirmed by the Senate, Kerlikowske will oversee a department of more than 100 full-time employees. He will be responsible for evaluating, coordinating and overseeing both the international and domestic anti-drug efforts of executive branch agencies and ensuring that such efforts sustain and complement state and local anti-drug activities.

Kerlikowske has been Seattle's top cop since 2000. Before that, he served for two years as deputy director of the Justice Department's division on community-oriented policing. During that time, Kerlikowske met then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who was recently confirmed as attorney general.

Community-oriented policing was a high priority for the Clinton White House and then-Sen. Joseph Biden. Biden, now vice president, co-authored the 1994 crime bill that put millions of dollars behind federal efforts to hire police officers in cities struggling to expand their forces. The Community Oriented Police Services program sought to put 100,000 more officers in the field.

On the campaign trail last year, Biden often said the crime bill he authored hired 100,000 officers and helped reduce violent crime. Obama praised Biden's work on this front too.

But a 1999 report from the Justice Department's Inspector General found the program had hired only 60,000 police officers. A 2005 General Accounting Office study found that from 1994 to 2001, only 88,000 new police officers had been hired as a result of the COPS program.

As for reducing crime, a separate General Accounting Office report concluded that from 1993 to 2000, the nearly $8 billion in COPS spending contributed to a 1.3 percent reduction in overall crime and a 2.5 percent reduction in violent crime.

In that same period, overall crime fell 26 percent and violent crimes fell 32 percent -- reductions the GAO report said were attributable to "other factors" such as longer sentences for repeat offenders.

The official title of drug czar is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, created by Congress in 1988. Former President Bush requested $421.5 million for the agency in his 2009 budget.

The current interim director is Edward Jurith, who has served as general counsel of the office since 1994.

FOX News' Major Garrett contributed to this report.