[A-List] Leaked Memo: DEA agents in Colombia aid Narcos and Paramilitaries

Mon Jan 16 08:48:40 MST 2006

http://narconews.com/Issue40/article1543.html

Leaked Memo: Corrupt DEA Agents in Colombia Help
Narcos and Paramilitaries
   Internal Justice Dept. Document Alleges Drug
Trafficking Links, Money Laundering and Conspiracy to
Commit Murder

By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

January 9, 2006

The drug war is supposed to follow a very clear
script: According to the official screenwriters, the
U.S. justice system is pitted against corrupt players
in foreign countries who are trying to flood American
streets with illicit drugs. The narco-traffickers,
crooked cops, and thieving politicians in the drug war
are always over there, in Latin America, and
elsewhere, and U.S. law enforcers and government
officials are always the good guys battling these
forces of evil.

But what happens when evidence surfaces that turns
that script on its ear? What happens if proof emerges
that it is the U.S. justice system that is corrupt? A
document obtained recently by Narco News makes those
questions more than hypothetical queries. In this
document, Department of Justice attorney Thomas M.
Kent claims that federal agents with the Drug
Enforcement Administration’s office in Bogotá,
Colombia, are the corrupt players in the war on drugs.
(The DEA is part of the larger Justice Department.)

The information in that document is also corroborated
by a number of other sources that spoke directly to
Narco News, including former government officials who
are familiar with the DEA’s Bogotá operations

Kent’s memorandum contains some of the most serious
allegations ever raised against U.S. antinarcotics
officers: that DEA agents on the front lines of the
drug war in Colombia are on drug traffickers’
payrolls, complicit in the murders of informants who
knew too much, and, most startlingly, directly
involved in helping Colombia’s infamous rightwing
paramilitary death squads to launder drug money.

The memo further claims that, rather than being simply
a few “bad apples” who need to be reported to their
superiors, these allegedly dirty agents are being
protected by an ongoing cover-up orchestrated by
“watchdog” agencies within the Justice Department.

These charges blow away the smoke concealing the
pretense of the war on drugs. If they are true, there
will be no brushing them aside at pre-scripted press
conferences; everyone who becomes aware of these
allegations will be forced to consider where we go
from here in that so-called war.

The Kent Memo

On Dec. 19, 2004, Thomas M. Kent, an attorney in the
wiretap unit of the Justice Department’s Narcotic and
Dangerous Drugs Section (NDDS), sent off a memo to his
section chief. Law enforcement sources tell Narco News
that a number of other high-level officials within
Justice and the DEA soon received copies of the same
memo. In it, Kent raised a series of corruption
allegations centering on the DEA’s office in Bogotá.

Kent says his claims are supported by a number of DEA
agents in Florida who the agency muzzled and
retaliated against after they tried to expose the
corruption. Specifically, Kent contends that the DEA’s
Office of Professional Responsibility (or OPR,
essentially the agency’s Internal Affairs department)
and elements of DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General
(OIG)  have worked to keep a lid on the corruption
charges. According to Kent, these offices – which are
supposed to serve as watchdog agencies that
investigate corruption  – sabotaged investigations
being carried out by the Florida DEA agents and by one
of the OIG’s own agents.

>From Kent’s memo:

As discussed in my (prior) memorandum dated December
13, 2004, several unrelated investigations, including
Operation Snowplow, identified corrupt agents within
DEA. As further discussed in my memorandum, OPR’s
handling of the investigations into those allegations
has come into question and the OIG investigator who
was actively looking into the allegations has been
removed from the investigation. As discussed in my
email, dated December 17, 2004, I want to speak
directly with the (DOJ) Public Integrity Section
because I want to ensure that the allegations are
fully investigated and acted upon if true.

As promised, I am providing you with further
information on the allegations and evidence that is
already in files at OPR and OIG. Agents I know were
able to vouch for my credibility and several
individuals close to the prior investigations that
uncovered corruption agreed to speak with me. I had a
limited time frame in which to speak with them and ask
questions. They were able to provide me with some of
the highlights, but certainly not all of the
information that is sitting at OPR and OIG. Such a
debriefing, based on what I learned in a few hours,
would take days.

Having been failed by so many before and facing
tremendous risks to their careers and their safety and
the safety of their families, they were understandably
hesitant to reveal the information I requested,
including the names of those directly involved in
criminal activity in Bogotá and the United States.
They agreed to reveal the names to me on the condition
that I not further disseminate these for the time
being. They are prepared to provide the Public
Integrity Section with those names and everything in
the files at OPR and OIG, and then some, if called
upon to do so.

Why is an attorney within Justice afraid to reveal the
names of the DEA whistleblowers out of fear that it
might jeopardize their law enforcement careers and the
lives of their families? And why, as Kent contends, is
it all being covered up?

What do Glenn Fine, the head of the DOJ’s OIG, and
Rogelio E. Guevara, who currently oversees the DEA’s
OPR, know about Kent’s charges, which were brought
forth in his memo more than a year ago?

A look at the nature of the alleged corruption may
give us some clues.

(Remember that all of these allegations come strictly
from the Kent memo, though law enforcement sources
have corroborated much of this information on
condition of anonymity.)

Money Laundering and Paramilitaries

Kent alleges that one of the corrupt agents from
Bogotá was caught on a wiretap some time in 2004
discussing criminal activity related to the huge
right-wing paramilitary group known as the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC in its Spanish
initials). The group is widely recognized to be
involved in narco-trafficking and arms dealing at the
highest levels. Working closely with various sectors
of the Colombian military, it has fielded death squads
responsible for murdering thousands of Colombians.

The following is from a 2004 report prepared for
Congress by the Congressional Research Service:

The AUC targets real and perceived supporters of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the
National Liberation Army (ELN), as well as political
activists, police officials and judges. The group is
known for its brutality and has killed more civilians
than the leftist insurgencies have killed: in 2001,
the AUC killed at least 1,015 civilians, compared to
the 197 civilians killed by the FARC. The AUC also
committed over 100 massacres in 2001, a tactic it used
to displace large portions of the peasant population
in order maintain firmer control over the major
coca-growing lands.

Kent contends, in the memorandum, that during the
wiretap, the corrupt Bogotá DEA agent “discusses his
involvement in laundering money for the AUC.” But
despite being caught on tape admitting to helping the
most murderous political force in the hemisphere today
to launder the money from their extensive drug
trafficking operations, the agent faced no punishment.
In fact, says Kent, the agent was essentially
promoted: “That call has been documented by the DEA
and that agent is now in charge of numerous narcotics
and money laundering investigations.”

Kent, in the memorandum, also alleges that DOJ
officials shut down a money laundering investigation
because they discovered that it was linked to the
alleged DEA corruption in Bogotá. He claims that the
nail in that coffin was driven in by OPR after it
discovered that an OIG agent was investigating the
Bogotá corruption and related money laundering
operation

“In June 2004, OPR and DEA, the two agencies
embarrassed by the prior allegations (involving the
Bogotá agents) and likely to come under tremendous
scrutiny for their own actions in response, demanded
that my case agent turn all of the (investigation)
information 
 over to OPR,” Kent states in the
memorandum. “One week after submitting the
(information) to OPR, the money laundering
investigation was shut down.”

Kent details three further cases of extreme corruption
in his memo, all involving Bogotá DEA agents
persecuting or conspiring to kill Colombian informants
who threatened to bring down their activities. Sources
told Narco News that these corruption allegations
involve cases launched in 1999 or 2000, but which
resulted in investigations that carried on for months
or years.

(Kent wrote his memo in late 2004 only after he became
aware of the alleged corruption and then had exhausted
other internal channels within DOJ for addressing the
problems.)

Allegation One:
 Corrupt DEA Agents In Bogotá Conspired to Murder
Informants Who Betrayed Them

During the course of an investigation into a Colombian
narco-trafficking operation, a group of DEA agents in
Florida had zeroed in on several targets, with the
help of several Colombian informants. Once the targets
were identified as being part of the drug ring, they
began to cooperate with the Florida-based agents.

 They made startling revelations concerning DEA
agents in Bogotá,” Kent writes. “They alleged that
they were assisted in their narcotics activities by
the [Bogotá] agents. Specifically, they alleged that
the agents provided them with information on
investigations and other law enforcement activities in
Colombia.”

The traffickers eventually gave the Florida agents
copies of confidential DEA reports, which the Bogotá
agents allegedly had handed over to the traffickers.
After the Florida agents turned these documents over
to the OPR and OIG, one of them was put on
“administrative leave” — the first sign that a
cover-up was underway.

While the Florida agent was out on leave, the Bogotá
agents set up a meeting with one of the informants.

“As the informant left that meeting, he was murdered,”
Kent states. “Other informants 
 who also worked with
the DEA group in Florida were also murdered. Each
murder was preceded by a request for their identity by
an agent in Bogotá.”

Allegation Two:
 Bogotá DEA Agents Imprison and Possibly Conspire to
Murder Informants to Prevent Their Travel to U.S.

A separate DEA group, also based in Florida, ran into
trouble with the same DEA office in Bogotá while
investigating another Colombian narco-trafficking
operation. Informants tipped off the Florida agents
that that this drug ring had developed an ingenious
method for smuggling cocaine into the United States, a
method that seems to have been lifted right out of the
script of the drug-war movie Traffic.

“Specifically, the narcotics traffickers in Colombia
were infusing acrylic with cocaine and shaping it into
any number of commercial goods,” Kent states. “The
acrylic was then shipped to the United States and
Europe where, during processing, the cocaine was
extracted from the acrylic.”

Informants working for the Florida agents sent samples
of the cocaine-laced acrylic to the DEA, but the
agency’s chemists couldn’t figure out how to extract
the cocaine. As a result, the Florida agents decided
to have the informants come to the United States with
a sample of the acrylic, so they could walk DEA’s
chemists through the extraction process.

“Agents contacted the Bogotá Country Office to discuss
the informants’ planned travel and their bringing
cocaine out of Colombia infused in acrylic,” writes
Kent. “They were advised that the best tact was for
the informants to carry it out themselves.”

But when the informants got to the airport to leave
for the U.S., they were arrested. A DEA agent in
Bogotá, it turns out, had told Colombian officials to
“lock them (the informants) up and throw away the
key,” according to Kent. The Bogotá agent then claimed
that he had no idea the Florida agents had given the
informants permission to transport the cocaine.

“His misrepresentations were backed by another agent
in Bogotá,” Kent states. “The informants were
imprisoned for nine months while the accusations flew
back and forth. Once it was determined that the agents
in Bogotá were lying, the informants were released.
One of the informants was kidnapped and murdered in
Bogotá where he had gone into hiding.”

Allegation Three:
 Informant Outed by Traffickers with Ties to Bogotá
Agents

In yet another case outlined in Kent’s memorandum, the
second Florida DEA group was working with an informant
in Colombia who claimed to have made contact with a
FARC guerilla while in prison. Sources told Narco News
that the informant is a wealthy Colombian businessman
with investments in high-tech firms and ties to
narco-trafficking. The FARC (Spanish initials for
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the largest
leftist insurgent group in that country’s civil war,
accused by U.S. officials of drug and arms
trafficking) was supposedly interested in buying
communications equipment from him.

While this investigation eventually ended up in the
hands of the National Security Agency, from the
beginning it appeared to be related to drug
trafficking and the Florida DEA agents decided to
investigate. Agents from the Bogotá office promised to
help, one of them assuring the Florida agents that the
informant’s release from prison could be arranged. But
when the Florida agents arrived in Colombia, another
Bogotá DEA agent told them that the informant was
going to stay in prison.

The Bogotá agents seemed obsessed with stopping the
informant from working with the Florida agents, and
began doing everything in their power to prevent the
investigation from moving forward. “As the two sides
argued back and forth, the informant was challenged by
the Bogotá agents to prove his allegations,” the
memorandum states. “He did so by making a videotape of
a conversation he then had with a member of the FARC
in jail in which they discussed their desire for him
to provide them with communications equipment. When
confronted with the actual tape that confirmed the
informant’s story, the agents in Bogotá complained
that what the informant and DEA group from Florida had
done was illegal and they would be unable to obtain
the informant’s release (from prison).”

The Florida agents kept trying to revive the
investigation, but Bogotá agents continued to thwart
it one way or another. Eventually, the informant was
released from prison and tried to start working with
the Florida agents again, but an agent from the Bogotá
office traveled to Washington, D.C., and managed to
convince DEA brass to derail the investigation.

When the informant approached the DEA once again with
information, writes Kent, “the Bogotá agent that
traveled to Washington, D.C., now claimed that the
informant was a pedophile. The investigation was
halted. The Bogotá agent was called on his claim and
could not provide any evidence.” The agent then
switched tactics, arguing that the DEA could not work
with the informant because the FARC might end up with
the communications equipment. He also claimed that one
of the targets of the FARC-related investigation was
not involved in narco-trafficking — even though the
Bogotá office had previously identified that
individual as a narco-trafficker.

“The (Bogotá) agent was unable to dissuade those
involved in the investigation, and it finally took off
with the assistance of the NSA,” the memo states. “The
investigation continued until the informant was faxed
a document that identified him as a DEA informant on
the FARC. The document mirrored information the DEA
group in Florida provided the corrupt agents in Bogotá
previously.”

In other words, someone outed the Florida group’s
informant, making him into a target for many dangerous
people including the FARC guerrillas, and the tool
used to expose him was proprietary DEA information
that appeared to have come out of the Bogotá DEA
office. The DEA agents in Florida looked further into
the source of that information and followed the trail
to several other DEA informants. The Florida agents
then set up a wiretap and recorded conversations
between their own informants and the other DEA
informants who were tied to the leaked DEA
information. The recordings revealed that a
narco-trafficker had indeed obtained the internal DEA
information that was used to expose the Florida
group’s informant.

“That person (the narco-trafficker) is also a DEA
informant,” the memorandum states, “and is believed to
have been controlled by the Bogotá Country Office.
Among other things, it was alleged that the informant
(the narco-trafficker) had several agents on his
payroll who provided him with classified information.
The agents were believed to work in Colombia and
Washington, D.C.”

The tape recordings that revealed this damning
information were turned over to both the Office of
Professional Responsibility and the Office of the
Inspector General, Kent states in the memorandum. The
agents in the Florida DEA office also tried to set up
a sting targeting the allegedly corrupt agents from
Bogotá and Washington, D.C.

“The meeting (the sting) was called off when it was
learned the agents likely knew of the trap,” the
memorandum states. “
 The informant who was identified

 as the narcotics trafficker with several agents on
his payroll was eventually brought to Florida to take
a polygraph test on the allegations that he was
obtaining classified documents from agents in Bogotá
and elsewhere.”

Kent says that the narco-trafficker passed the lie
detector test in Florida, at which he was asked
whether agents had passed him classified documents and
he claimed that they hadn’t. But the OPR mysteriously
ordered the polygrapher not to report on the test: “He
was instructed (to say) that the test never took
place.”

The Deluge

The corruption allegations raised in Kent’s memorandum
are startling, but agents in the Bogotá DEA office are
not the first to have been accused of participating in
a narco-trafficking conspiracy. Similar tales of
corruption involving overseas DEA agents have surfaced
in the past. And although the charges raised by Kent
in his 2004 memorandum have now passed before many
eyes, they have still not been addressed in the light
of day. Instead, as in similar past cases, they have
been buried in the contorted layers of the Justice
Department bureaucracy.

Kent is no longer with the Washington, D.C.-based
wiretap unit of NDDS. He has been transferred to
Nashville, according to sources familiar with the
memorandum. Ironically, the NDDS chief to whom Kent
addressed the memorandum, Jodi L. Avergun, is now the
chief of staff for DEA.

In addition, Kent’s request to send the Bogotá
corruption allegations to the Justice Department’s
Public Integrity Section was denied, and his
memorandum deep-sixed — until now.

A full investigation of his allegations may well prove
that the DEA’s Bogotá office is clean as a whistle.
But if that is indeed the case, then why has Justice
chosen to silence and punish the whistleblowers in
this case rather than look into their claims?

>From Kent’s memorandum:

If we are unable to arrange for a sit-down between the
reporting agents and those attorneys within the
Department of Justice who are tasked with ensuring
that corrupted agents and officials are held
accountable, then I firmly believe that we will watch
from the sidelines as the allegations play out in a
courtroom, on the news, and/or on Capital Hill. The
reporting agents have placed their trust in me. 
 I
have assured them that I will lay the issue before you
with a much more detailed accounting of the
allegations and how the DEA and OPR, and now seemingly
OIG, have failed to fully investigate the allegations
and hold those responsible accountable.

If we can put them together with the Public Integrity
Section, they assured me that other agents who have to
this point remained silent for fear of retaliation
will come forward. Those agents have additional
evidence not in the files maintained by OPR and OIG. I
believe, based on their representations, that that new
evidence alone would put the corrupt agents in prison.

Given the pretense that defines the war on drugs,
Kent’s memorandum (which basically rewrites the script
of that war) is not likely to be a hot seller in
Washington, D.C., anytime soon—absent pressure from a
major media blitz.

And what of the mainstream-media guardians of our
liberty? Will they step up to the plate on this story,
given their penchant for adhering to the standard
drug-war script? The fact that Narco News is breaking
this story first may tell us all we need to know on
that front.

But the truth, like water, always brings the scum to
the surface. And in this case, the dam holding back
the truth in the so-called war on drugs may be close
to breaking. For how much longer will nations in Latin
America and around the world accept U.S. drug
warriors’ imposing presence in their lands, when those
same agents and bureaucrats get neck-deep in the very
drug trade they are supposedly trying to wipe out,
with complete impunity and protection from their
superiors back home?

“The agents who reported the 
 allegations (of
corruption) did so to correct wrongs committed by
other members of the DEA and OPR,” Kent states in the
memorandum. “Their attempts to do so led to
retaliation. 
 The cracks in the lid DEA and OPR has
attempted to place on this problem are getting bigger.

“It is only a matter of time before this thing
explodes. 
”

To read Kent’s memorandum for yourself, go to this
link:
http://narconews.com/docs/ThomasKentMemo.pdf

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