Nuevo Herald on DEA Colombia Scandal

Miami’s Spanish-language daily El Nuevo Herald published a story today on the allegations revealed this week in Narco News of corruption, murder, and alliances with drug traffickers and paramilitaries in the DEA’s Colombia office.

In the coming days there will by much to say about how the commercial media – El Nuevo Herald, the AP, and others – have dealt with this story since Bill Conroy brought it to light. For now, here is a translation of the story from the Herald…

Corruption Scandal in Colombia DEA

Agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Bogotá obstructed an investigation by their own colleagues in Miami, who hoped to follow leads on the sale of nuclear material in Spain, according to a memo from a Justice Department attorney who denounced various cases of alleged acts of corruption in the DEA’s Colombia office.

First published this week by the Internet newsletter The Narconews [sic] Bulletin, the document contains denunciations, without mentioning names or citing dates, of the of the suspicious deaths of agency informants; help some agents gave to drug traffickers and paramilitaries; bribe payments; false declarations; and protests over the leniency of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), charged with the DEA’s internal investigations.

“Can I, given that we are aware of the specific allegations and the fact that the investigating agencies are dropping the ball, go directly to the Public Integrity Section and disseminate what we have learned through our investigation…?” asks attorney Thomas M. Kent at the end of his memo.

At the time he wrote the memo, in December 2004, Kent was an attorney with the wiretap unit of the Justice Department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Substances Section.

He now works as an assistant U.S. attorney in Tennessee. Kent did not respond to calls from El Nuevo Herald to his office in Nashville.

Both an active agent and a former agent of the DEA in Miami told El Nuevo Herald that the memo is true and reflects the state of moral decay in some of the agency’s offices.

“The information in the memo is accurate as far as what I know from being involved in some of those cases, and reflects a climate of cover-up in the executive branch,” said former DEA Associate Special Agent in Charge in Miami and former head of the agency’s El Paso, Texas office, Sandalio González. “The DEA is incapable of supervising itself,” added the agent, who has sued the DEA for discrimination.

On Friday the DEA announced that the OPE is investigating the content of the memo signed by Kent on December 19, 2004.

“The allegations that are reported in the Narconews [sic] Bulletin are extremely serious,” said Garrison K. Courtney, spokesman for the DEA’s communications office in Washington.

The DEA, according to Kent’s memo, found out the information about the nuclear weapons material through conversations that it held with an informant serving time in a Bogotá prison.

During his imprisonment, the informant forged a close relationship with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

A DEA agent in Miami, who was familiar with the operation, explained to El Nuevo Herlad that Spanish vendors contacted the informant to offer him the material. The memorandum does not explain what kind of material it is, and it remains unclear if the Spanish vendors have any relationship with FARC.

“He was offered the material to in order to profit by selling it to some terrorist group,” explained the DEA agent.

According to the seven-page memo, the problems began when one of the DEA agents in Colombia, whom Kent identifies as corrupt in another case he describes in the same document, opposed freeing the informant from jail, as the agents from the Miami division had proposed.

When his story was put into doubt, the informant secretly recorded FARC guerrillas in the prison who requested his help in obtaining communications equipment, explains Kent.

In an attempt to convince their colleagues of the informant’s importance, the Miami agents showed the video to the Bogotá agents. But the latter protested, saying that the recording had been made illegally.

While the investigation languished due to disagreements among the agents, the informant left prison and contacted the Florida agents to inform them that he was still in contact with the FARC and willing to continue the investigation.

One of the agents from the Bogotá office traveled to Washington “and convinced the DEA to shut [the investigation] down and not work with the informant,” says Kent.

Nevertheless, the informant was insistent this time with his information on the nuclear material from Spain. Once again, the DEA agent in Bogotá flew to Washington and discredited the informant, claiming he was a pedophile, adds the document. But when he was asked if he had proof, he could not back up his accusation.

Faced with a fourth proposal from the informant, the same agent protested, claiming that he was against the operation and came out in defense of a drug trafficker who was under investigation by his own group.