Josh Meyer at POLITICO offers a piece on how the Obama administration killed a major DEA operation against the Hezbollah terrorist group, who are major drug traffickers, so Obama could get his Iran nuclear deal (and to his mind, his august place in history).
In its determination to
secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious
law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed
terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United
States, according to a POLITICO investigation.
The campaign, dubbed Project
Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration
amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle
East-focused military and political organization into an international crime
syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year
from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal
activities.
Over the next eight years,
agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used
wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit
networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.
They followed cocaine
shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the
Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They
tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics,
buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of
some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they
believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.
They followed cocaine
shipments, tracked a river of dirty cash, and traced what they believed to be
the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.
But as Project Cassandra
reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration
officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way,
according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for
the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government
documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for
some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions,
officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected
their requests.
The Justice Department
declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal
charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a
Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a
central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And
the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries
where they could be arrested.
The money, allegedly
laundered through the Lebanese Canadian Bank and two exchange houses, involved
approximately 30 U.S. car buyers.
“This was a policy decision,
it was a systematic decision,” said David Asher
Veteran U.S. illicit finance
expert sent from Pentagon to Project Cassandra to attack the alleged Hezbollah
criminal enterprise., who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra as a
Defense Department illicit finance analyst. “They serially ripped apart this
entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from
the top down.”
The untold story of Project
Cassandra illustrates the immense difficulty in mapping and countering illicit
networks in an age where global terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime
have merged, but also the extent to which competing agendas among government
agencies — and shifting priorities at the highest levels — can set back years
of progress.
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
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