8/7/2019 Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cables-portray-expanded-reach-of-drug-agency 1/5

 

Search All NYTimes.com

Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency 

By GINGER THOMPSON and SCOTT SHANE 

Published: December 25, 2010

 WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been

transformed into a global intelligence organization 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.

In far greater detail than previously 

seen, the cables, from the cache

obtained by  WikiLeaks and made

available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of 

drug 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

D.E.A. 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 president’s son, and diplomats discovered that

 before the police destroyed a huge narcotics seizure, the

drugs had been replaced by flour.

Sia Kambou/AFP-Getty; Jose Mendez/EPA; Ramin Talaie/EPA; Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Leaked cables reveal the Drug Enforcement Administration ’s global reach, noting dealings with Lansana Kouyaté of Guinea,

left, Ricardo Martinelli of Panama, center left, and Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone. Karen Tandy, right, the D.E.A. ’s former

administrator, discussed Afghan missions in the cables.

Related Documents

A Well-Connected Drug

Trafficker in Guinea 

Faked Incineration of Seized

Drugs Alleged in Guinea 

In Sierra Leone, a Successful

Narcotics Case

A Bribe to Sabotage a Drug

Prosecution 

Mexican Military Welcomes U.S.

Help

Panama Wants U.S. to Wiretap

Opponents 

Pressure to Misuse D.E.A.

Wiretaps in Panama 

Grenade Attacks by Mexican

Drug Cartel 

Paraguay Presses for D.E.A.

Eavesdropping

All Related Documents » 

State ’s Secrets  Articles in this

series examine

 American

diplomatic cables

as a window on

relations with the rest of the world in an age of war and

terrorism.

MOST POPULAR

ADVERTISEMENTS

Today's Headlines Daily E-Mail

Sign up for a roundup of the day's top stories, sent every

morning.

See Sample | Privacy Policy 

1 . Op-Ed Contributor: Bundle Up, It’s Global

 Warming 

2 . Frank Rich: Who Killed the Disneyland Dream? 

3 . News Analysis: In ‘Daily Show ’ Role on 9/11 Bill,

Echoes of Murrow  

4 .  A Quest to Explain What Grades Really Mean 

5. Nicholas D. Kristof: The Big (Military) Taboo 

6 . Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused

Stir 

7 . The Stone: On Forgiveness 

8 . Thomas L. Friedman: Cut Here. Invest There. 

9 . How Superstars’ Pay Stifles Everyone Else 1 0 . Maureen Dowd: Because the Night Belongs to Her 

Go to Complete List »

A weekend away in Paris ALSO IN TRAVEL » 

Travel deals for Mexico 

Only in Madagascar 

Find your dream home with

The New York Times Real Estate 

Follow The New York Times onTwitter 

  Watch today's top videos 

See the news in the making. Watch

TimesCast, a daily news video. 

HOME PAGE  TODAY'S PAPER  VIDEO  MOST POPULAR  TIMES TOPICS 

World  WORLD U. S. N.Y. / REGION BUSINESS TECHN OLOGY SCIENCE H EAL TH S PORTS OPINION AR TS STYLE TRAV EL JOBS REAL ESTATE AUTOS

AFRICA AMERICAS ASIA PACIFIC EUROPE MIDDLE EAST

 

SIGN IN TO E-

MAIL

PRINT

REPRINTS

E-MAILED BLOGGED SEARCHED VIEWED

Subscribe to The Times  Log In  Register Now  Help 

8/7/2019 Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cables-portray-expanded-reach-of-drug-agency 2/5

¶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 United States sanctions, describe the drug

agency informants’ reporting both on how the military junta enriches itself with drug

money and on the political activities of the junta’s opponents.

Officials of the D.E.A. and the State Department declined to discuss what they said was

information that should never have been made public.

Like many of the cables made public in recent weeks, those describing the drug war do notoffer 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 F.B.I. has become something more than a drug

agency. The D.E.A. now has 87 offices in 63 countries and close partnerships with

governments that keep the Central Intelligence Agency at arm’s length.

Because of the ubiquity of the drug scourge, today ’s D.E.A. has access to foreign

governments, including those, like Nicaragua’s and Venezuela’s, that have strained

diplomatic relations with the United States. Many are eager to take advantage of the

agency ’s drug detection and wiretapping technologies.

In some countries, the collaboration appears to work well, with the drug agency providing

intelligence that has helped bring down traffickers, and even entire cartels. But the

 victories can come at a high price, according to the cables, which describe scores of D.E.A.

informants and a handful of agents who have been killed in Mexico and Afghanistan.

In Venezuela, the local intelligence service turned the tables on the D.E.A., infiltrating its

operations, sabotaging equipment and hiring a computer hacker to intercept American

Embassy e-mails, the cables report.

 And as the drug agency has expanded its eavesdropping operations to keep up with cartels,

it has faced repeated pressure to redirect its counternarcotics surveillance to local

concerns, provoking tensions with some of Washington’s closest allies.

Sticky Situations  

Cables written in February by American diplomats in Paraguay, for example, described

the D.E.A.’s pushing back against requests from that country ’s government to help spy on

an insurgent group, known as the Paraguayan People’s Army, or the EPP, the initials of its

name in Spanish. The leftist group, suspected of having ties to the Colombian rebel group

FARC, had conducted several high-profile kidnappings and was making a small fortune in

ransoms.

 When American diplomats refused to give Paraguay access to the drug agency ’s

 wiretapping system, Interior Minister Rafael Filizzola threatened to shut it down, saying:

“Counternarcotics are important, but won’t topple our government. The EPP could.” 

The D.E.A. faced even more intense pressure last year from Panama, whose right-leaning

president, Ricardo Martinelli, demanded that the agency allow him to use its wiretapping

program — known as Matador — to spy on leftist political enemies he believed were

plotting to kill him.

The United States, according to the cables, worried that Mr. Martinelli, a supermarket

magnate, “made no distinction between legitimate security targets and political enemies,”

refused, igniting tensions that went on for months.

Mr. Martinelli, who the cables said possessed a “penchant for bullying and blackmail,”

retaliated by proposing a law that would have ended the D.E.A.’s work with specially 

 vetted police units. Then he tried to subvert the drug agency ’s control over the program by assigning nonvetted officers to the counternarcotics unit.

 And when the United States pushed back against those attempts — moving the Matador

system into the offices of the politically independent attorney general — Mr. Martinelli

threatened to expel the drug agency from the country altogether, saying other countries,

like Israel, would be happy to comply with his intelligence requests.

Eventually, according to the cables, American diplomats began wondering about Mr.

8/7/2019 Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cables-portray-expanded-reach-of-drug-agency 3/5

8/7/2019 Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cables-portray-expanded-reach-of-drug-agency 4/5

internal ones, with traffickers opening new routes to accommodate new markets. As

Mexican cartels take control of drug shipments from South America to the United States,

Colombian cartels have begun moving cocaine through West Africa to Europe.

The cables offer a portrait of the staggering effect on Mali, whose deserts have been littered

 with abandoned airplanes — including at least one Boeing 727 — and Ghana, where

traffickers easily smuggle drugs through an airport’s “ VVIP (Very Very Important Person)

lounge.” 

Top-to-bottom corruption in many West African countries made it hard for diplomats to

know whom to trust. In one 2008 case in Sierra Leone, President Ernest Bai Koroma 

moved to prosecute and extradite three South American traffickers seized with about

1,500 pounds of cocaine, while his attorney general was accused of offering to release

them for $2.5 million in bribes.

In Nigeria, the D.E.A. reported a couple of years earlier that diplomats at the Liberian

Embassy were using official vehicles to transport drugs across the border because they 

 were not getting paid by their war-torn government and “had to fend for themselves.” 

 A May 2008 cable from Guinea described a kind of heart-to-heart conversation about the

drug trade between the American ambassador, Phillip Carter III, and Guinea’s prime

minister, Lansana Kouyaté. At one point, the cable said, Mr. Kouyaté “ visibly slumped in

his chair” and acknowledged that Guinea’s most powerful drug trafficker was Ousmane

Conté, the son of Lansana Conté, then the president. (After the death of his father, Mr.

Conté went to prison.) 

 A few days later, diplomats reported evidence that the corruption ran much deeper inside

the Guinean government than the president’s son. In a colorfully written cable — with

chapters titled “Excuses, Excuses, Excuses” and “Theatrical Production” — diplomats

described attending what was billed as a drug bonfire that had been staged by the Guinean

government to demonstrate its commitment to combating the drug trade.

Senior Guinean officials, including the country ’s drug czar, the chief of police and the

 justice minister, watched as officers set fire to what the government claimed was about

350 pounds of marijuana and 860 pounds of cocaine, valued at $6.5 million.

In reality, American diplomats wrote, the whole incineration was a sham. Informants had

previously told the embassy that Guinean authorities replaced the cocaine with manioc

flour, proving, the diplomats wrote, “that narco-corruption has contaminated” the

government of Guinea “at the highest levels.” 

 And it did not take the D.E.A.’s sophisticated intelligence techniques to figure out the truth.

The cable reported that even the ambassador’s driver sniffed out a hoax.

“I know the smell of burning marijuana,” the driver said. “ And I didn’t smell anything.” 

 Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting.

Get the full newspaper experience, and more, delivered to your Mac or PC. Times

Reader 2.0: Try it FREE for 2 full weeks.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 26, 2010, on

page A1 of the New York edition.

Get Free E-mail Alerts on These Topics

Drug Enforcement Administration

  Wikileaks

 State Department

 Drug Abuse and Traffic

SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW » OPINION » U.S. » WORLD » OPINION » SPORTS » 

SIGN IN TO E-

MAIL

PRINT

REPRINTS

INSIDE NYTIMES.COM

8/7/2019 Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cables-portray-expanded-reach-of-drug-agency 5/5