ASPEN — When Montgomery Chitty was arrested during the bust of a senior-citizen cocaine ring in 2011, there were more titters about an “over-the-hill” drug gang operating in this celebrity-studded, laissez-faire resort town than there was outrage over the smuggling of hundreds of kilos of cocaine.

From the luxury Gucci and Fendi shops in the heart of the town to the murky interior of the iconically funky Woody Creek Tavern up the valley, the fact that there are big lots of drugs being bought, sold and consumed where the world comes to party isn’t much of an eyebrow-raiser.

But Chitty’s prosecution and conviction have raised angst of another sort.

In a town that prides itself on having no cops devoted to busting drug dealers and that views drunken driving as a bigger threat to public safety than cocaine, Chitty has become emblematic of a long-standing quandary.

Aspen is locked in a war over drugs because the town isn’t part of the war on drugs.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency doesn’t trust the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office and, to a lesser extent, the Aspen Police Department, so the DEA keeps investigations and busts as secret from those agencies as it does from drug dealers. The feds’ excuse is that local law enforcement officials are not to be trusted: They are too chummy with dealers, and Chitty is a prime example of those too-close ties.

When Chitty’s quickly dubbed “over-the-hill” gang was busted after a 15-month investigation that included wiretaps and surveillance cameras, it was as much a surprise to Aspen law enforcement as it was to those arrested — by design.

“Our extensive and prolonged investigation showed relationships between persons who had active arrest warrants and members of the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office,” said DEA agent Jim Schrant.

Local officers counter that it is hard to be in a town the size of Aspen and not be acquainted with just about everyone, including those who, it turns out, sell drugs. That doesn’t mean officers are turning a blind eye to drug problems.

But the local departments have policies in place that eschew undercover drug investigations, that don’t condone the use of drug users as undercover informants and that put the focus of local law enforcers’ jobs on public safety.

In that context, armed drug agents operating in secret in Aspen are viewed as a menace.

“Community safety can be jeopardized by these people,” Pitkin County Commissioner Michael Owsley said about federal drug agents.

That became a very open controversy in 2005 when federal agents stormed two downtown bars and eateries during a busy happy hour. In a locally unpopular show of force and weapons, the agents arrested kitchen workers who were dealing drugs.

Local law officers knew nothing about the operation until calls started coming in from the public that armed men were on the downtown mall.

Fast-forward to 2011 and the arrest of the golden-years gang. Ten Aspen and Los Angeles-area residents — mostly in their 60s and 70s — were arrested for dealing about 200 kilos of cocaine over an eight-year period.

Chitty, 61, ended up being the only one who went to trial and the only one who received a lengthy sentence.

A colorful character

Chitty was a well-known colorful character who came to Aspen in the freewheeling ’70s with the late Hunter S. Thompson and who once served as a consultant to the Democratic National committee, a researcher for the late Ed Bradley of “60 Minutes,” a gem hunter in Africa, a Navajo rug aficionado, an ocean fishing guide and a one-time sheriff’s reserve deputy.

That Chitty is guilty of dealing drugs for a long time is a given: He used to make bank deposits with bags of cash that reeked of marijuana. He was sentenced to prison in Louisiana in 1990 for bringing pot into the country from South and Central America. He had graduated to cocaine when he was arrested two years ago.

“He knew a lot of people and was respected by a lot of people. I don’t think anybody had a clue that he was in drug dealing of this magnitude,” said longtime friend John P. Van Ness, an Aspen attorney.

Chitty, who didn’t live any kind of high-rolling drug-dealer lifestyle around Aspen, sees himself as a pawn in the bad-blood relationship between the DEA and local law enforcement.

Chitty said DEA agents told him after his arrest that if he were to “roll over” and inform on former Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis and current Sheriff Joe DiSalvo, he would get a sentence-lessening deal.

“I said, ‘You people are crazy. They have never been involved,’ ” Chitty recounted from his cell in a federal detention center in Englewood. He is being held there while awaiting sentencing for a conviction of conspiracy to sell more than 5 kilograms of cocaine. He will be sentenced to a minimum of 20 years and could get life.

Schrant denies that the DEA went after Chitty because of his relationships with law enforcement officials.

“Montgomery Chitty was the target of a DEA operation because he was literally bringing hundreds of kilos of cocaine into Pitkin County,” Schrant said.

Rumor about Clinton

DiSalvo, a former truck driver from Brooklyn, said he believes agents tried to use Chitty to get to him. He said he knows that federal agents have investigated his office numerous times over the years.

DiSalvo stresses that his department is clean. It is so much on the up-and-up, he points out, that the Secret Service trusts his officers to guard the presidents, first ladies and heads of state who visit regularly.

No local officers have been charged with drug offenses. Drug use and drug dealing by officers remain only fodder for rumors, including one that makes DiSalvo throw back his head and laugh. That one had deputies supplying former President Bill Clinton with cocaine when he would come to town during his time in office.

“(The DEA agents) are just obsessed. They want to connect those dots really bad. But they are never going to. It’s not there,” said Pitkin County jail administrator Don Bird, an Aspen resident for 42 years, a deputy for 28 of those, and a volunteer with local drug-treatment efforts.

Bird is well-acquainted with Chitty, who was a friend of Pitkin County sheriffs’ going back to the late Dick Kienast. It was Kienast who first opted not to take part in the federal war on drugs in 1976, a year after his deputies nearly had a shootout with an unidentified armed drug agent.

Six-term former sheriff Bob Braudis was a buddy of Chitty’s and Thompson’s and a nemesis of the DEA. DiSalvo characterizes Chitty as an acquaintance in a town where it’s hard for year-around locals to not know one another — especially someone such as Chitty, who wrote a column for the Aspen Times and who was known not to pull any punches in public when expressing his opinion.

After the DEA was criticized for the 2005 raids at Little Annie’s and the Cooper Street Tavern, there was enough public outcry that the DEA agreed to address concerns in a public meeting, which lasted five hours.

Chitty was one of those who spoke up at the acrimonious meeting — in a loud and forceful way. He stood in a packed room, pointed a finger at the Colorado DEA agent in charge and told him, “We don’t want you here.”

Jeffrey Sweetin, who was then an agent in charge, declared at the end of that meeting, “My guys will be back.”

His promise was good.

Slaps on the wrist

The DEA, in its most recent high-profile Aspen bust, paints Chitty as a major dealer who took over a drug ring eight years ago when the previous leader, Wayne Reid, was busted and went to prison on a marijuana charge .

Reid was also one of those arrested with Chitty in 2011 and is serving a four- to eight-year prison term.

Others rounded up in the bust were given either immunity from prosecution, slap-on-the-wrist sentences or no sentences in plea agreements that included cooperating with drug authorities. Chitty refused to testify against any of the other defendants — or finger any law officers.

Rewarding snitches and targeting other suspected dealers, including in his own office, raise DiSalvo’s hackles.

“They don’t understand the Aspen lifestyle. They see us as soft on crime,” DiSalvo said of the DEA. “We are in a cocoon of peacefulness here that they can’t understand.”

DiSalvo said he has told the DEA that he will fully cooperate with busts they carry out in Aspen — if they are told ahead of time.

“We could set up a perimeter that would help keep our citizens safe,” he said.

Residents have let their views on drug enforcement be known at the ballot box.

More than 70 percent of Aspen-area voters were in favor of Amendment 64, which legalized recreational marijuana. DiSalvo was elected sheriff three years ago with 79 percent of the vote. His opponent had promised to crack down on drugs and enlist undercover agents, while DiSalvo promised to carry on as his predecessor had.

Mike Connolly, director of the Valley Partnership for Drug Prevention in Aspen, said there is definitely a different mind-set in Aspen in regards to drug use. It’s not that it’s condoned — rather, it’s viewed as more of a health issue than something to make war on through law enforcement crackdowns.

“This community, in a lot of ways, has a fairly lenient view of what people choose to do on their own,” Connolly said.

That doesn’t help Chitty, who friends say is paying for more than he deserves — and for a war over drugs.

“He was one of the boys, and all of a sudden, it turns out that he has a secret life as a drug dealer,” Van Ness said. “It just doesn’t add up for me.”

Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957, nlofholm@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nlofholm