About the Reuters DEA Special Operations Division Story

[ProSense]

About the Reuters DEA Special Operations Division Story

Posted on August 5, 2013 by bmaz

Reuters is out this morning with what is being hailed as somewhat of an eye opening expose on the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Special Operations Division. The article is very good and should be read in full, but I would like to make a couple of quick points.

First, the headline is misleading. The caption is:

Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

Well, not really (and, in fairness, the actual body of the article is about a practice that is a result of the SOD). DEA’s Special Ops Division is neither new nor secret in the least, and there is no way to “cover it up”. Google it; I got “About 289,000 results (0.29 seconds)” as a return. You will get something similar. The revelation that SOD was used in the Viktor Bout case is also not new, here is a Time story detailing it from 2011.

In fact, any criminal defense attorney who did cocaine hub conspiracy cases in the 90′s could have told you most of the Reuter’s article in their sleep. That was exactly the scene that DEA-SOD was born from. As the war on drugs went nuclear, the DEA devised what they termed the “Kingpin Strategy”:

In 1992, the DEA instituted the Kingpin Strategy that focused investigative and enforcement efforts on specific drug trafficking organizations. The DEA planned to dis- able major organizations by attacking their most vulnerable areas—the chemicals needed to process the drugs, their finances, communications, transportation, and leadership structure.

The Kingpin Strategy held that the greatest impact on the drug trade took place when major drug organizations were dis- rupted, weakened, and destroyed. This strategy focused enforcement efforts and resources against the highest-level traffickers and their organizations, and provided a systematic way of attacking the various vulnerabilities of the organiza- tions. By systematically attacking each of these vulnerabilities, the strategy aimed to destroy the entire organization, and with it, the organization’s capacity to finance, produce, and distrib- ute massive amounts of illegal drugs. Each blow weakened the organization and improved the prospects for arresting and prosecuting the leaders and managers of the organizations.

The Kingpin Strategy evolved from the DEA’s domestic and overseas intelligence gathering and investigations.

And from Kingpin sprung the Special Operations Division:

Under the original Kingpin Strategy, DEA headquarters often dictated the selection of Kingpin targets. In response to the SACs’ concerns, Administrator Constantine agreed to allow them more latitude in target selection. In conjuction with this decision, he established the Special Operations Division at Newington, Virginia, in 1994 to coordinate multi-jurisdictional investigations against major drug trafficking organizations responsible for the flow of drugs into the United States.

The above is from a history of the DEA right there on the Justice Department’s website, so “covering up” SOD is kind of a non-starter. However, what IS being covered up, and what really is the substance of the body of the Reuter’s article, is the practice of “parallel construction” of cases...And, as the “senior DEA officials” admitted, this, too, is not new in the least. Again, the Reuter’s quote of the incredulous former Judge Nancy Gertner aside, any number of longtime members of NACDL could have told you all of this at any point in time since the mid 90′s.

- more -

http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/08/05/about-the-reuters-dea-special-operations-division-story/

[David Krout]

1. Lawyers questioned by WaPo vs. a guy named "bmaz"

"Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using “parallel construction” may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest. But they said employing the practice as a means of disguising how an investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence that could prove useful to criminal defendants."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/the-nsa-is-giving-your-phone-records-to-the-dea-and-the-dea-is-covering-it-up/

[ProSense]

2. "As the lawyer bmaz comprehensively details in this excellent post"

The article was written by bmaz. Who is a lawyer.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002565363#post4

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023211921

Delaying Miranda warnings under the "public safety exception" - including under the Obama DOJ's radically expanded version of it - is one thing. But denying him the right to a lawyer after he repeatedly requests one is another thing entirely: as fundamental a violation of crucial guaranteed rights as can be imagined. As the lawyer bmaz comprehensively details in this excellent post, it is virtually unheard of for the "public safety" exception to be used to deny someone their right to a lawyer as opposed to delaying a Miranda warning (the only cases where this has been accepted were when "the intrusion into the constitutional right to counsel ... was so fleeting – in both it was no more than a question or two about a weapon on the premises of a search while the search warrant was actively being executed&quot . To ignore the repeated requests of someone in police custody for a lawyer, for hours and hours, is just inexcusable and legally baseless.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/29/tsarnaev-right-to-counsel-denied

[PoliticAverse]

5. "And it is a direct and tangible fraud upon defendants, the courts, Due Process and

several other important Constitutional concepts."

From the link: http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/08/05/about-the-reuters-dea-special-operations-division-story/

[ProSense]

7. Right, as

The takeaway that is important from the Reuters piece is that all the frothing about “golly, what if those NSA capabilities bleed out of terrorism and into traditional criminal cases” is nuts. It already is, and has been for a long time. It is the “clean teaming” of criminal prosecutions. And it is a direct and tangible fraud upon defendants, the courts, Due Process and several other important Constitutional concepts.

...an article about criminal prosecutions it highlights a long-existing practice that needs to be addressed. Conflating it with the debate over the NSA is ridiculous.

[truedelphi]

17. However, at this point in our history, the Constitution means little.

A friend of mine took on the entire US judicial system by framing her defense of her operating a medical marijuana clinic in Fairfax Calif as a fundamental right. She hired attorneys to go through the courts using a "Rational Basis of Law" as their main argument.

The first judge that heard the case said that it was "not my job" to consider such a pleading.

It did wind its way through the court system, finally landing at the Supreme Court of the USA, which refused to hear it. (The last thing SCOTUS wants to have to admit is that fundamental rights of free citizens should trump made up laws every time!)

All that matters to most attorneys and judges is the vast labyrinth of laws, put forth as being "legal" on the local, state and federal level. And also Agency requirements. Precedents that were established in other cases are also very important to the lawyers and judges.

Your rights and my rights as citizens, which were taught to us by ninth grade to be protected as "We hold these rights to be inalienable" is the central concept behind our governing bodies, mean so little that this case was not heard.

Oh and BTW, the remaining dispensary in Oakland Calif is operating due to the local government there insisting that the clinic is fundamental to the community as it protects the health and well being of its citizens. (Very few dispensaries remain inside the SF Bay area, with many patient having to go all the way to San Jose to get their meds.)

[Pholus]

4. Continuing that...

It begs the question of what other "Smaller intelligence units within the Drug Enforcement Administration" exist who are given access to NSA surveillance tools, if it isn't the DEA-Special Operations Group?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/us/other-agencies-clamor-for-data-nsa-compiles.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&

The reason that is important is the stated ATTITUDE towards this information collected at the edge of legality:

The security agency’s spy tools are attractive to other agencies for many reasons. Unlike traditional, narrowly tailored search warrants, those granted by the intelligence court often allow searches through records and data that are vast in scope. The standard of evidence needed to acquire them may be lower than in other courts, and the government may not be required to disclose for years, if ever, that someone was the focus of secret surveillance operations.

At least the NSA understands that if this stuff went mainstream, they might get shut down, so they provide at least a veneer of resistance.

[Mojorabbit]

3. Well then, that makes it ok! nt

[G_j]

6. LOL

really....

[ProSense]

8. Well, that's one way to dismiss facts. n/t

[Zorra]

9. "Move along now, folks! Nothing to see here.

Let the Damage Control Workers do their job. That's right, keep movin everything's juuuuust fine..."


...just follow ↓that nice man↓ down the garden path you can see on the right.

[Rex]

13. The sheer desperation to hide what everyone knows about now

is sad and little pathetic.

So all the spy agencies get together and talk about how to fix people illegally or legally depending on what kind of outcome they want.

Really sad.

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. We need to love big brother

into the labyrinthine world of doublethink.


To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.”
― George Orwell, 1984

[ProSense]

11. No, we don't. n/t

[Rex]

12. bmaz? Some blogger? LOL!

The desperation is getting really transparent now.

[ProSense]

14. Yeah,

"bmaz? Some blogger? LOL! The desperation is getting really transparent now."

...why would anyone use a bmaz post unless it was "desperation"?

The article was written by bmaz. Who is a lawyer.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002565363#post4

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023211921

Delaying Miranda warnings under the "public safety exception" - including under the Obama DOJ's radically expanded version of it - is one thing. But denying him the right to a lawyer after he repeatedly requests one is another thing entirely: as fundamental a violation of crucial guaranteed rights as can be imagined. As the lawyer bmaz comprehensively details in this excellent post, it is virtually unheard of for the "public safety" exception to be used to deny someone their right to a lawyer as opposed to delaying a Miranda warning (the only cases where this has been accepted were when "the intrusion into the constitutional right to counsel ... was so fleeting – in both it was no more than a question or two about a weapon on the premises of a search while the search warrant was actively being executed&quot . To ignore the repeated requests of someone in police custody for a lawyer, for hours and hours, is just inexcusable and legally baseless.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/29/tsarnaev-right-to-counsel-denied

[Rex]

15. Sorry but I laugh the blogger out of the room

As was done so many times before when the shoe was on the other foot.

[ProSense]

16. That's fine. n/t