Colombia Secret Service Prostitution Scandal Spreads to the DEA

ABC News
May 22, 2012

A month after the Secret Service was rocked by allegations that agents brought prostitutes to a Colombia hotel where they were preparing for a visit by President Obama, the Drug Enforcement Administration today announced that at least three of its agents are also under investigation for allegedly hiring prostitutes in Cartagena.

Two of the agents allegedly had encounters with masseuses in the apartment of one of the agents, according to Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

"It's disturbing that we may be uncovering a troubling culture that spans more than one law enforcement agency," the Maine Republican said this evening. "In addition to the Secret Service scandal, we now learn that at least two DEA agents apparently entertained female foreign national masseuses in the Cartagena apartment of one of the agents. The evidence uncovered thus far indicates that this likely was not just a one-time incident."

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Federal Agents of DEA Helped Major Drug Trafficker Move Millions in Cash

Village Voice
January 9, 2011


Investigators with the Drug Enforcement Agency helped a Mexican narcotics kingpin transfer million of dollars in illegal cash profits, the New York Times reports today.

The DEA program recalls a similar, much smaller scale operation first reported in the Voice last month in our article about government informant Angel Perez. The Voice article disclosed that Perez convinced U.S. Immigration and customs agents to move $500,000 in cash from the Dominican Republic to Miami and Puerto Rico. But, somehow, the smuggling operation didn't result in any arrests or even the identification of the source of the money.

The Times report, meanwhile, says that DEA agents got involved in the illegal scheme back in 2007 to infiltrate and take apart drug organizations in Mexico. The agents also helped the kingpin, Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, move a big shipment of cocaine from Ecuador through Dallas to Madrid. DEA agents posed as pilots offering to ship cocaine for $1,000 a kilo.

Rightly, the Times article asks the question of whether the DEA was "fighting or facilitating crime." And the conclusion? Well, in Timesian fashion, we don't get an answer. The article quotas a former federal prosecutor saying that stateside rules don't apply overseas, so law enforcement agencies "make up the rules as they go along."

"It's a slippery slop," Morris Panner tells the Times. "The United States could end up helping the bad guys more than hurting them."

As for the DEA, the Times got a statement defending the practice, and saying that the operation allowed "Mexican authorities to kill or capture dozens of high-ranking and mid level drug dealers."

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How the US Drug Enforcement Agency became a global intelligence operation

Todayonline.com

Dec 27, 2010

WASHINGTON - The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been transformed into a global intelligence organisation with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables.

Created in 1973, the DEA has steadily built its international turf, an expansion primarily driven by the multinational nature of the drug trade but also by forces within the agency seeking a larger mandate.

In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organisations, offer glimpses of DEA agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be hard to tell the politicians from the traffickers, and where drug rings are themselves mini-states whose wealth and violence permit them to run roughshod over struggling governments.

Diplomats recorded unforgettable vignettes from the largely unseen war on drugs:

- In Panama, an urgent BlackBerry message from the President to the American ambassador demanded that the DEA go after his political enemies: "I need help with tapping phones."

- In Sierra Leone, a major cocaine-trafficking prosecution was almost upended by the attorney-general's attempt to solicit $2.5 million in bribes.

- In Guinea, the country's biggest narcotics kingpin turned out to be the son of the President, and diplomats discovered that before the police were able to destroy a huge narcotics seizure, the drugs had been replaced by flour.

- Leaders of Mexico's beleaguered military issued private pleas for closer collaboration with the drug agency, confessing that they had little faith in their own country's police forces.

- Cables from Myanmar, the target of strict US sanctions, describe the drug agency's informants reporting both on how the military junta enriches itself with drug money as well as on the political activities of the junta's opponents.

Like many of the cables made public in recent weeks, those describing the drug war do not offer large disclosures.

Rather, it is the details that add up to a clearer picture of the corrupting influence of big traffickers, the tricky game of figuring out which foreign officials are actually controlled by drug lords, and the story of how an entrepreneurial agency operating in the shadows of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has become something more than a drug agency.

The DEA now has 87 offices in 63 countries and close partnerships with governments that keep the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at arm's length.

Because of the ubiquity of the drug scourge, today's DEA has access to foreign governments, including those, like Nicaragua's and Venezuela's, that have strained diplomatic relations with the US. Many are eager to take advantage of the agency's drug detection and wiretapping technologies.

In some countries, the collaboration appears to work well, although victories have come at a high price, with scores of DEA informants as well as a handful of agents killed in Mexico and Afghanistan. The New York Times

Julian Assange

Assange claims he reluctantly signed book deals to keep WikiLeaks 'afloat'

Controversial WikiLeaks founder and chief Julian Assange (picture) has said he has signed book deals worth more than £1 million ($2 million) but not because he is cashing in on his notoriety.

Speaking to Britain'sSunday Times newspaper, Mr Assange said he has agreed to write his memoirs in order to keep his whistleblowing website "afloat" and for legal costs as he defends himself against sexual assault allegations in Sweden.

"I don't want to write this book but I have to," said Mr Assange, who is currently under house arrest in Britain as he fights Sweden's attempts to extradite him, with a full hearing in a London court due to start on Feb 7.

"I have already spent £200,000 on legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat."

Mr Assange confirmed he has signed deals with publishers in the United States and Britain which, together with deals from other markets and serialisations in newspapers, will net him about £1.1 million.