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this has been a paid presentation for principal secret reclaim, created by victoria principal, created by victoria principal, presented by guthy-renker. captioned by video caption corporation www.vicaps.com the case and on the trail. first, it's the newest front in

the drug war. >> people have to open their eyes. they have to realize the threats that are around us. >> numerous cartels operating not in mexico but in our own national forests. >> suddenly you got five people dead. >> suddenly you got five people dead. >> an exclusive on a ride along a dangerous mission. and remember this? our hidden cameras exposed a drug epidemic. >> we have kids who have no idea what it is they're taking. >> the drug right there at your corner store. >> you tell people to snort this stuff. >> yeah. >> now, big changes for a drug. these women were poisoned by vitamins. >> eventually i couldn't even stand up. my hair was pretty much gone. >> this is wrong. this is awful. >> how safe is your dietary supplement? we created one of our own and

then added something extra. >> we spiked in both arsenic and lead. >> would anybody catch us? would anybody stop us? >> these are all perfectly normal. >> so who tested your supplement? >> it's like the wild west. they can do whatever they want. >> "dateline" goes undercover as we open "the hansen files." thanks for joining us. i'm lester holt. chris hansen is here with two new investigations and big news in a previous one. we began with the surprising development in the war on drugs. chris? >> lester, we all know that drugs flow in from mexico, but with crackdowns along the border, cartels have been looking for new ways to get marijuana into the country. and boy, have they found one. by invading some of our most pristine and precious land, the kind of place where your family might be planning to take a vacation. we got exclusive access to an unprecedented dea effort trying to stop it.

we're on a dangerous mission with highly trained forces. we need to be quiet. because the men being hunted are members of a mexican drug cartel. they're armed and dangerous and could be anywhere. it's hot in these mountains, nearly 90 degrees. there are no trails up here. we've been hiking for miles through dust and dense brush. but what might surprise you about all this is that although we're hunting the mexican cartel, we're not in mexico. we're right here in the united states, in the state of utah in the shadow of zion national park. this federal agent thinks what's happening amounts to nothing less than an invasion of our

country. >> internally, it's probably the greatest threat facing our nation today. >> frank smith is an assistant special agent in charge for the drug enforcement administration. >> this is one of the times the american people has to open their eyes and they have to realize the threat is around us. >> this is the threat smith is talking about, a drug war that has scarred mexico with death in the street a daily occurrence in cities like juarez. and with mill yonions of dollar drug profits a threat, it spreads the violence. and most of the cartel's profit an estimated 60% comes from marijuana. but now the cartels aren't just smuggling the drugs over the border anymore. they've actually moved their growing operations into the united states. and where are they planting, growing and harvesting billions of dollars worth of marijuana? believe toit or not, they're dog

it in our national forests and on our public lands. >> i think it's fair to say the average american will be shocked to realize the cartels are actually growing marijuana here in the united states. >> not only should they be shot, they should be appalled. >> and the threat, he says, is very real and dangerous, even for a family who might happen to stumble across these men during a hike. >> you have drug traffickers who are protecting a multi-million-dollar crop and a family stumbles in there at harvest time -- >> suddenly you got five people dead. >> -- suddenly you got five people dead. >> if this is going on in utah, where else is it going on? >> wisconsin, michigan, wisconsin, georgia. it's going on around the country. >> so smith and the dea are fighting back, and they gave "dateline" exclusive access to smith's team as it plans and executes raids on mexican cartel members operating on u.s.

borders. >> if they're in there today, i think we have a good chance of getting them. >> smith has formed a dedicated team that finds and searches for marijuana grows, as they call them. it's a complex operation, not unlike what smith fought himself, narcoterrorism around the globe. >> when i came to utah, i ner thought i would have to use the skill sets that i used in afghanistan, but the fact is, that's exactly how we plan these operations. >> it's the night before a raid, and we're in a remote part of the state more than 300 miles from salt lake city. more than 100 local, state and federal law enforcement officers are being briefed for the next day's operation. the watch word? stay vigilant. >> to be aware, eyes up, head on, pay attention when you come

in. >> by sunrise the next morning, we're on the move. as if it isn't hard enough to pull off a raid of this magnitude, consider the sheer logistics of just getting to the location. we're on a dusty road driving through the mountains. it's 15 miles just to get to the staging location. >> once the road ends, we have to hike the rest of the way. it's hot. the terrain is unforgiving, and the marijuana grow is still miles away. and the closer we get, the quieter we need to be. >> about 300 meters away from the grow site. >> the cartel's men living in these mountains aren't stupid. the dea knows the suspects have an observation point of their own. they think it's on the top of this hill and agents need to be quiet as they make their

approach. >> they think they're going to take us down. >> right there, right there. i lost sight of them. >> they just went behind those trees. >> the question is, will they be able to find them in this dense landscape with so many places to hide? >> this would be the perfect way for the growers to escape. >> the chase is on. horses are brought in to search for the cartel's men who are on the run. then a search helicopter is brought in. back on the ground, we arrive at the grow, and it's massive. there are thousands of marijuana plants flourishing like they've been nurtured in a greenhouse. this one location is worth millions. we found the drugs, but apparently the suspects just jumped off a ridge. >> they turned around and looked as our guys were coming in to

apprehend them and they left. >> it appears they slipped away and are hiding somewhere in these vast mountains. but the dea is not giving up. there are marijuana fields and mexican cartel operatives all over utah and they will be with the agents as they continue to hunt them down. coming up -- >> we can see what the bad guys are doing but they can't see us. >> chasing more cartel members in another huge marijuana field. >> you can actually smell marijuana. >> what will we find this time? when "the hansen files" continues. ng sfx: sounds of marching band and crowd cheering so, i'm walking down the street, sfx: sounds of marching band and crowd cheering just you know walking, sfx: sounds of marching band and crowd cheering and i found myself in the middle of this parade honoring america's troops. which is actually quite fitting because geico has been serving the military for over 75 years. aawh no, look, i know this is about the troops and not about me. right, but i don't look like that.

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we are high up in the mountains of utah with dea agents as they hunt for mexican cartel operatives. they've already found thousands of plants at a so-called marijuana grow. >> right there, right there, right there. >> but the growers jumped down a steep embankment and disappeared into the landscape. now we've traveled about 100 miles away to another remote area of utah where the dea thinks there are more marijuana fields on public land. we've driven for miles up another mountain. to a high cliff where across a canyon we see another large marijuana field. from here it looks like a finely manicured garden. >> this location makes a perfect platform for surveillance over the grow. >> dea special agent sue thomas lets us know in case there's

somebody down there, we have to be quiet. >> as long as we talk in quiet voices and stay off the top of the ridge line, we can see what the bad guys are doing on top of the grow, but they can't see us. >> so are there any cartel members at this grow? we set up a long-range camera, one that can focus more than a mile away to record what was happening in the fields. we all need to stay camouflaged, so we covered our cameraman in a blanket of leaves to keep the sun from reflecting off the equipment. soon we spot them. we count six cartel members sitting under a tree. dea agent frank smith describes what he's seeing. >> one guy was carrying a bunch of weed. >> some of the suspects are wearing camouflage to avoid detection. and this man is wearing a gun in his waistband. the agents don't move in and make arrests now. they want to see if other suspects show up, so they will

wait the night and will try to take the suspects by surprise in the morning. >> we got the sunrise coming up. >> as the sun comes up, the agents get into position. it's about 5:30 in the morning and more than 100 federal and local law enforcement officers are staging for the raid. some of the agents climb into something they call a trojan horse, a nondescript trailer that will transport them to the grow site without being noticed. >> keep moving in. >> other teams are already in the mountains surrounding the grow. i'm with one of the teams led by special agent thomas. >> we're going to form a wall and we'll start pushing forward. >> we slowly begin the approach. >> you can tell we're getting close to the grow site because you can actually smell marijuana. >> we arrive at the very edge of a huge grow.

>> you can see behind me one area of the grow field. very mature marijuana plants. >> but something is wrong. it's too quiet. there doesn't seem to be any movement, and that doesn't make frank smith happy. >> we'll go ahead and do another search of the area, see if we can find anyone. we still have the observation point, so they'we'll be able to if they're moving. >> there are signs people were here very recently. half-eaten fresh food, clothing and lots of garbage. these guys clearly had to make a quick getaway. >> they've been here within the last, i would say, hour. we spotted somebody from our observation point earlier. they still have running water. >> while they have not captured the suspects, the dea did seize the drugs. marijuana is everywhere. >> this is a drying rack right here, then. >> they cut the weed. they lay them on these racks and

go ahead and dry it. once the bud is dry, they'll go ahead and put it in large plastic bags and then they'll manually carry it out. >> so this is almost the finished product. >> that's correct. >> so how much would just these few hanging plants right next to us be worth on the street? >> right here you're probably looking at $100,000 worth of bud. >> we were amazed at how resource ful these drug gardeners actually are. they use tubing to carry water from nearby streams. miles of it. >> if you see this black line that runs everywhere, it's called a feed. >> all the campsites look the same. bunk beds. >> they have bunk beds, and if you'll notice they made the bunk beds out of excess pipe from the water source. >> for irrigation. >> for irrigation. >> food is cooked with propane. >> hot peppers here.

cooler. >> stove. >> stove. cell phone charger. >> because these underlings need to be in touch with the cartel drug lords, cell phones must always stay charged. >> you can see the car batteries over there. that's how they charge their cell phones. >> what about all that marijuana? none of it is left behind. law enforcement agents pull up every plant. it's back-breaking work and can take hours to get it all. how does the dea know how many marijuana plants are in a field like this? every single one of them is cut down and counted, and they're put in a cargo net and hauled away by a chopper. a chopper is coming in now. >> they're bundled and taken to a dumpster where it's taken to a secret location and buried, not burned. the cartel is losing a lot of money now. >> somewhere between 30 and $40 million.

>> still, he's not happy the cartel got away. they think they may have been on high alert, because just two weeks earlier his team arrested 38 of them in a grow run by the same cartel. still, they seemed so close. >> when you do a raid like this, and the bad guys get away, is that a failure? >> you're not going to catch everybody. it's a percentage game. as much as i want to capture every one of those individuals and bring them to justice, these are labor intense. this is a war, but it's a war that's going to take time. but we're going to win. coming up, last year we told you about a drug epidemic going on at your corner store. >> so what are these? do you smoke them? >> yeah. >> tonight a big development for the dangerous drug with the innocent name. and later -- >> eventually i couldn't even stand up. >> it was a medical mystery, and you won't believe what was

making her so sick. >> this was

now an update on another case from our files. new information on a designer drug we reported on last year. it's a drug with a nickname that made it sound harmless, but bad salts turned out to be dangerous, even deadly. tonight a big development stemming from our hidden camera investigation. last spring we showed you on our hidden camera how easy it was to purchase a dangerous designer drug over the counter. at this so-called head shop in new york city, we bought something called bath salts, but this isn't the stuff you put in a bath. inside these vials is a chemical called mdpv, a white powder first seen by law enforcement just three years ago. it was legal to sell because it didn't fall into any known category of controlled substances, as they're called by the drug enforcement administration. and even though the containers say not for human consumption,

this clerk in new york readily admitted what you really do with them. >> what do you do, snort them or smoke them? >> yeah. >> bath salts can cause ha lo s hallucinations and extreme paranoia. john moody knows the dangers all too well. his son, 29-year-old jared, bought them near the gas station near his missouri home. jared committed suicide. his father got to the hospital just in time to say goodbye. >> about ten minutes later, his heart started to go and in 15 minutes he was gone. >> reporter: what did the people selling bath salts have to say? i went back to that new york head shop. do you know how dangerous this stuff is? >> they're bath salts. >> reporter: bath salts. and what are bath salts used

for? >> for the bath. >> reporter: for the bath. but you tell people to snort this stuff. >> some people do that, yeah. >> reporter: also on hidden camera, we met andrew freeman of minneapolis, minnesota who is manufacturing and distributing his own brand of bath salts called bliss. >> is this your unique group? >> freeman thought he was meeting with a potential investor, but he was really speaking with a "dateline" producer. >> how do you know what to brew it with? >> i've been around long enough. >> reporter: a few weeks later, we went back to see andrew, and this time i was there. >> i'm andrew. >> chris. >> reporter: we were there to purchase thousands of dollars worth of his bath salts. he assured me if the government suddenly declared his formula illegal, he was already a step ahead of them. >> we already have it. we're ready for that.

>> is it dangerous, anyway? >> andrew starts picking up on who i am. >> reporter: andrew, there is something you need to know. >> chris hansen? >> reporter: yes. of "dateline" nbc. we're doing an investigation. >> i thought that was you. your voice, i could tell a mile away. but i don't appreciate you trying to trap me. >> reporter: i'm not trying to trap you. i just want to talk to you. >> i told you it is for baths. >> reporter: what happened after our reporting? after this aired, new york state made the distribution and sale of bath salts illegal. and they arrested the owner of the convenience store, and he pleaded guilty to distributing this brand of drugs. last fall the dea also took action, issuing an emergency order abandoning the ingredients

in bath salts. we also spoke with andrew freeman who said he hasn't sold bath salts since our story aired and that he had nothing more to say. special agent gary bogg says the problem hasn't gone away. any time one drug is banned, a dealer finds another to replace it. >> there is a crackdown at the federal and state level, but this is still a big problem. >> it's absolutely a big problem. this drug is extremely dangerous. >> reporter: will you ever get this under control? >> we're doing the best we can. and one of the things we really want to do is get education out to people and get them to understand they just don't know what they're taking. >> reporter: coming up, why some dietary supplements may be dangerous to your health. >> somebody knew about it and somebody covered it up. >> reporter: when "the hansen files" continues. got it all. here. have a good day, honey. i love you, ok. bye, mom. [ female announcer ] sam's mom is muddling through her allergies. what can she do?

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>> reporter: did you take a vitamin today? capsules? maybe you used one of those natural weight loss pouders. then what you're about to hear may come as a bit of a surprise. because vitamin supplements are supposed to be natural, they don't have to be approved by the government like medicines do before they hit store shelves. and as we discovered, some supplements may not be as safe as they sound.

you're undercover with "dateline"'s hidden cameras inside one of the biggest growing businesses in america. dietary supplements being sold as medical miracles. >> it reduces cholesterol. >> dietary supplements like these have exploded into a $28 billion industry. once mostly for bodybuilders, now supplements are used by soccer moms and millions of others. everything from fish oil to weight loss formulas to vitam s vitamins, all on the promise of better health. but with your health at stake, you may be surprised to learn that unlike medicines, the government doesn't approve supplements before they can end up on store shelves. manufacturers don't have to prove supplements are safe. companies just have to put a list of ingredients on the label. >> it doesn't have to say it on

the front, but by law they have to have it on the back. >> most companies are responsible. but what if we told you some lists of ingredients may not be worth the paper they're printed on. even worse, what if you discovered some supplements can be more like poisons? >> my husband and i have a hobby. we have show dogs. >> reporter: barbara king says she trusted the label on her supplement, and it was the start of a living nightmare. >> and i just progressively started feeling extreme fatigue, my hair started falling out. >> reporter: your hair started to fall out. >> my hair started to fall out. every time i would get out of the shower and look, it looked like a dog had been in their shedding. >> i called my daughter, and i said, i've just started brushing my hair. i said, my hair is going, carla. >> reporter: donny holbrook didn't have any idea why her

hair was falling out, either. >> this is where my hair was pretty much gone within ten days. >> reporter: ten days. >> ten days. two weeks. yes. >> reporter: that's stunning, donna. in a matter of weeks, she had gone from looking like this to this. her nails were falling off, too, and for dozens of other people, those were just the first symptoms. people like wendy binion, an active young mother until her joints got so sore, she could barely walk. >> eventually i couldn't even stand up, it was so painful to stand up. >> reporter: at first, no one knew what was causing it, least of all the doctors. >> when the blood tests came back, he said, we can't find anything. he said, this is the most exclusive blood test we can find. >> reporter: and still nothing. >> and still nothing. >> reporter: so what was making people so sick? before barbara was struck by the

mysterious illness, she had started a new diet and a new liquid vitamin. could that be a clue? >> i just wanted a good supplement because i was dieting and i was afraid i wasn't getting everything i needed. and the store clerk recommended that. >> reporter: "that" was a liquid diet supplement called total body formula. this is the actual product. balance your body the way nature intended. the label had a detailed list of ingredients supposedly backed up by scientific testing. a republic outable -- reputable product bought by what she thought was a reputable store. >> i went back to get more and i asked where it was.

he said, i doubt we'll have any more of that. >> reporter: what did he mean by that? >> he said it had been recalled. >> reporter: what they had been taking was something that was toxic. mark somora, one of the lawyers suing on behalf of barbara kim and others who overdosed, said it was a release of senium. the government doesn't approve of labels but it can step in. apparently this was just a host of problems. in the past year, the government has released dozens of warnings about supplements containing potentially deadly ingredients. >> these products can cause death, strokes, heart attacks. they're very dangerous. >> reporter: for example, says dr. sydney wolf of the consumer advocate group public citizen, a dangerous ingredient called

sibutramine has found its way into dozens of supplements. how do we know it's dangerous? because it used to be in a drug called meridia until it was pulled from the market for causing heart attacks. everything from weight loss formulas to sexual enhancers. >> there have been an unending number of recalls, including more even today as we speak. >> given the current system, can people trust what's on the label of a dietary supplement? >> in too many cases, they can't. i think the best description of a dietary supplement label is "don't know" in big red letters. >> reporter: we wondered how could what are supposed to be natural supplements make people so sick? and how on earth could they make it all the way to reputable stores? >> it's like the wild west, they do whatever they want. >> reporter: wild, wild west. >> you and i could open a supplement store in the back of

a pickup truck. >> reporter: it may not be in the back of a pickup truck, but we're about to start our own company, create some supplements and ask labs to test them. all to find out how wild things can get when it comes to supplements. coming up, strange black specks show up in the total body formula. the fix is even stranger. tell them how you did that? >> we used nylon panty hose. >> when "dateline" continues. [ alarm buzzes ] [ female announcer ] wake up time,

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>> i didn't realize how bad it was. >> reporter: people taking total body formula said the overdose did more than just cause their hair to fall out. >> reporter: so this is more than just cosmetic. we're talking heart problems. >> oh, yes. >> reporter: stage 3 kidney failure. >> yeah. stage 5 is the end of it. kidney failure. yeah. >> reporter: we wondered how a product like total body formula ended up on the shelves in the first place. "dateline" started digging into memoirs marked confidential. we figure the problem started when the creator started

producing key amounts of ingredients. it said mg for milligram when it was supposed to be mcg for microgram. if it's been a while since you've been in science class, here's a reminder. this tiny dot represents a microgram. it would take a thousand of these dots to make one milligram. it's a frightening mistake but was ju the first in a whole series of errors. another example? when another company was blending the selenium into the bottles, workers noticed mysterious black specks floating around in the liquid. >> i want you to tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury -- >> reporter: listen to the plant manager under oath telling what the workers did to filter out the specks. >> we filtered the black specks out of it. >> tell them how did you that. >> we used nylon panty hose. >> reporter: you heard right. records show they stretched

women's panty hose over 5-gallon buckets and poured the formula through them. >> somebody knew about it and somebody covered it up and somebody then sent the product on to us. >> reporter: and it got worse. that company that supplied the selenium was supposed to test the ingredients in a lab to make sure the mixture was accurate. a worker at that company admitted in a video deposition that after people started getting sick, their supervisor realized there was way too much selenium. >> and she sees that this is through the roof crazy. this is why people's hair is falling out. >> reporter: but instead of starting a recall, the supplier, right in richmond, sent out this false certificate of analysis, saying the amount of selenium was safe. wright in richmond declined our request for an interview, but issued this statement saying the selenium mix was prepared to the exact requirements requested,

but they don't know how they issued that certificate apparently without testing the mixture in a lab. earlier this year, the three companies involved in making total body formula settled lawsuits with dotty holbrook and others. they denied the serious side effects, but admitted it made people's hair fall out. so the question remains, just how reliable are the labels you see on the back of supplements. they say they sometimes rubber stamp ingredients. >> a term we use as dry lab. >> reporter: dry lab. what does that mean? >> that means the sample comes in, the sample goes in the garbage can, never gets tested and the report goes out. >> reporter: jack owns a large company called chroma dax. he knows there are a lot of drug

makers. they hire him to test their products. when he started testing other ingredients from labs, he saw so many mistakes, he thought they were fronts for labs pretending to do testing. >> it seemed to be a case of double stamping. >> reporter: is this a situation where phoney products were getting on the market because of false testing? >> absolutely. >> reporter: we set up our own company, life root naturals. we created two supposedly all natural products. we're calling this white powder burn, our natural weight loss formula. but "dateline" asks experts in frank jackson's lab to add two different poisons. selenium, that's what caused people's hair to fall out, and

the dangerous drug that caused heart attacks. we also had a second ingredient and added things to it also. >> we added arsenic and lead. >> reporter: arsenic? that's what they put in rat poisoning. lead? >> highly dangerous, both of them. >> reporter: the poison is blended in. frank jack says there is no way a lab should miss that. so armed with our spiked samples, it's time to test one of the labs industry sources tell us may be rubber stamping ingredients. >> chris? >> reporter: we're undercover. i'm pretending to be the president of life root naturals, our new supplement company. dr. nesh patel runs a company called natural life science. he gives us a tour of his lab

and tells us how some companies even purchase his lab certifications on line to show he's doing things right. >> we have two products. one is kel powder. we have another product which is a weight loss supplement called burn. i'm hiring him to be on my team to help make sure my supplements are safe. >> they have also given us, obviously, their certificate of analysis. but i want your people to make sure that, in fact, it is what it's supposed to be. the certificate i'm giving him has phoney numbers, but i'm totally up front about everything i want his lab to test for, including that arsenic. we don't want to have high levels of heavy metals. >> we'll be looking for lead, arsenic and mercury. >> reporter: so will he find the poisons or just rubber stamp the phoney lab report we gave him? coming up --

>> these are all perfectly normal. >> that's way off. he's about a thousand times too low. >> reporter: doctor, there's something i need to tell you. i'm chris hansen with "dat

>> reporter: we've started our own company, created our own products, deliberately spiked them with arsenic and other poisons. and now we're about to find out if a lab will certify they're safe to sell even when they're not. >> you got the samples. >> that's all i need to know. >> reporter: when the e-mail arrives with his results, there are some big surprises. we take them back to the expert whose lab helped spike our samples with poisons. what about the arsenic we added

to our kelp powder? the scientist says dr. patel missed it by a mile. >> he's about a thousand too low. >> reporter: a thousand too low. >> yes. they didn't find it. >> reporter: mr. patel missed all of our poisons. what's more, they certified other ingredients that weren't there. >> reporter: his lab certified things that weren't there and didn't recognize things that were there. >> that's exactly right. >> reporter: it's beginning to look like dr. patel virtually copied those phoney reports we gave him. for example, arsenic. we spiked in 200 parts per million, but we wrote down 0.3. dr. patel's results? 0.26. off just enough from our fake number to look like a real test. >> so this number is almost identical to the number that we told them.

>> reporter: the phoney number we submitted. >> that's correct. >> reporter: is it really possible that he could be so wildly wrong, or could we somehow be misreading dr. patel's report? to make absolutely sure, i arranged another meeting. he still thinks i'm just a businessman, and he doesn't know we've brought along our hidden cameras. >> come on in. >> reporter: first i ask about our green powder, the one we spiked with arsenic and lead. but dr. patel assures me he didn't find anything unusual. >> absolutely. these are all perfectly normal. >> reporter: and it's the same story with our burn weight loss powder, the one we spiked with sibutramine and selenium. dr. patel is saying our poisonous substances are safe to sell. doctor, there's something i need

to tell you. it's time to tell dr. patel i'm not the businessman he thinks i am. i'm chris hansen with "dateline nbc" and we're doing a story on how bad supplements can possibly end up in stores. and as we pull out our regular cameras, i ask if he's even doing the lab tests. so the question is, did you do the tests at all, or did you just come up with numbers that were close to the ones we wanted? you know what a dry lab is, right? >> of course i do. >> reporter: is this a dry lab? >> absolutely not. we reject products as well. >> reporter: in this e-mail he blamed us for misleading him. in misleading him, we would not be aware the data being observed were not compromised due to matrix parameters we are not cognizant towards. we met up with dr. patel one more time. we came in here to test you.

>> correct. >> reporter: it appeared by the first results, you failed the test. dr. patel now admits he got the wrong results, but he gives scientific reasons for why the numbers could be off. >> when we're looking at very small quantities, these values do deviate. they deviate hugely. what i'm trying to get to is in the real world, a shady businessman is not trying to contaminate a product with arsenic and lead. >> reporter: either way, other labs didn't seem to miss what we planted. we took our samples to the national center for products research, one of the premier labs when it comes to supplements. he said his lab detected all of our poisons. >> in the kelp, we found lead and arsenic. >> reporter: when they hard to find? >> no. >> reporter: in fact, several other labs find our poisons, too. one even warns us about high

arsenic and high lead, saying our products deserve careful review before you decide to use them. but there was no warning like that from dr. patel. remember, he missed everything, and somehow, as if by magic, his wrong results were virtually identical to the phoney numbers we gave him. for arsenic, for lead, for sibutramine. even for selenium, the thing that caused people's hair to fall out. the bottom line is, dr. patel signed off on dangerous products we could have sold all across the country. we took our findings to the fda, the government agency responsible for supplements. >> reporter: we had poisons including lead and arsenic that the lab didn't find. does that surprise you? >> for some labs, unfortunately, no. >> reporter: daniel fabricant is the new man in charge of supplements at the food and drug

administrati administration. he's soft-spoken, but serious, he said, in cracking down on supplements. if the government knows about the problem, you might think they have a program to inspect labs. think again. >> reporter: independent labs, are they ever inspected by the fda. >> at the present, we're focused on the manufacturers and distribu distributers. >> reporter: so no investigation on the labs. >> no. >> reporter: does that concern you? >> yes. >> reporter: two major groups representing the supplement industry declined to do on-camera interviews. but they told us, we take seriously the allegations of fraudulent laboratory practices raised by this report. and they urged the fda to use its ample legal authority to take legal action. the national products association also said it

supports government action against any laboratories that may use improper testing methods. both groups stress the vast majority of supplements are safe. and that brings us back to total body formula and the people who say they've been sickened by supplements that were never properly tested. >> so to this day and forever going forward, you're going to worry about damage to your liver. >> right. >> reporter: your kidneys? >> right. >> reporter: your heart? >> that's right. >> reporter: all because of a vitamin. >> i never would have believed it if i hadn't gone through it myself. >> that's all for now. i'm lester holt. thanks for joining us. captions paid for by nbc-universal television this morning, the president on the world stage. hosting global leaders at two high-profile summits. and the agenda has as much to do with the u.s. economy as