After 9/11, a ton of things changed in the US government. Including the drug war.
"I helped the bomber get a fake passport"
"All the kids do it"
President Bush reframed the war on drugs to make it
a part of the Global War On Terror.
Bush: "And the drug trade… supports terrorist networks”
The White House even spent around $4 million on two SuperBowl ads in 2002 saying so.
The Drug Enforcement Administration embraced its new role and began assembling the tools
it needed to pursue narco-terrorists anywhere in the world.
Rep: Henry Hyde: "Mr. Chairman I have an amendment…”
They got a statute added to the PATRIOT act which
Hyde: “...Makes it a federal crime to engage in drug trafficking that directly or indirectly
aides or provides support to a foreign terrorist organization…”
By 2007, the agency was armed with a 75% increase in its international budget.
But…. there was just one problem.
Ginger Thompson: "In almost all of those cases, the nexus between drugs and terror happens
with an informant working for the DEA. In other words, it’s created or manufactured
by the DEA’s own conspiracy."
Let’s just say that again: in almost all the cases the DEA pursued, without the DEA
informants there would have been no connection between drugs and terrorism.
Let’s start with a particularly high-profile example from 2008.
Ginger: "The DEA begins to target West Africa. "
They saw cocaine was moving through the region, on its way from Colombia to Spain, and asked
their informants to investigate whether any of the money was going to terrorists.
They posed as members of the FARC – a Colombian rebel organization that's considered a terrorist
group by the United States.
Ginger: "One of these informants, who was identified in the court files as “Mohamed”
led them to a Malian smuggler named Harouna Touré"
The informants offered to pay Touré millions of dollars if he could help them smuggle cocaine
through the Sahara. And they told Toure that they wanted to work with Al Qaeda.
Informant: "Al Qaeda is Arab." Touré: "Exactly, Qaeda is Arab."
Informant: "Do you know, do you know somebody with al..."
Touré: "I do!" Informant: "Good."
Ginger: "Mohamed keeps trying to test Touré to demonstrate that he really is who he says
he is. Can you bring someone who is actually a member of Al Qaeda to one of these meetings,
and I’ll bring my Farc commander to one of these meetings."
Touré obliges. And, soon after, the Ghanian police swoop in and arrest them.
"You're under arrest"
Ginger: "The Ghanians turn them over to the DEA, and they are loaded onto a private jet.
In 24 hours they land in NYC still wearing their long daishikis and sandals and land
here in new york on one of the coldest days of the year that year in 2009."
This is where things start to unravel. The DEA provided no evidence — outside of the
meetings recorded with its own informant— that Touré had any connections to Al Qaeda
at all.
Ginger: "Harouna never brought up Al qaeda. He would parrot it back to them, because it
became clear that that’s what they wanted him to say."
And his Al-qaeda friend? Touré had brought a childhood friend to play the role of an
Al Qaeda member.
He told his lawyers that he had pretended to be a terrorist because of the chance to
get rich. And to the DEA, that was enough to arrest him.
But Federal Judge Barbara S. Jones didn’t agree. She concluded there was no “narco-terrorism.”
Ginger: "She said, “there was no actual involvement by the defendants or the undercovers
either in the activities of the FARC or Al Qaeda.”'
The government dropped the narco-terrorism charge. Toure pleaded guilty to lesser charges.
Ginger: "These guys weren’t al qaeda operatives. They had been set up by an informant."
He and his friends were sentenced to between four and five years in prison
Ginger: "And I thought – are they the only ones? And I started asking my DEA sources
and one of them sent me this brag book.
And I started going through the cases and I realized the Malians were not the only ones."
The brag book makes reference to 32 people. 37, counting related cases.
Ginger: "In almost all of these cases, the only connection between drugs and terror is
the one established by the DEA’s conspiracy."
Three were convicted by juries. Others pleaded guilty to avoid lengthy prison terms. But
while the DEA claimed victories against Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and the FARC
— almost none of those charged were proven to be members of those groups.
Ginger: "We can’t think of a terrorist attack that was directly funded by drugs. The closest
that comes to that is the Madrid train bombings."
That attack, which killed 191 people on March 11, 2004, was funded in part by hashish sales.
But there was no direct link to a major terror network.
The biggest threats to the US currently get their money other ways – ISIS, through oil
and extortion. And Al Qaeda? The 9/11 commission and a more recent Senate report found no evidence
of an Al Qaeda role in drug trafficking.
So does drug trafficking fund terrorism? There’s evidence to suggest that it has in Colombia
and it funds both sides of the war in Afghanistan. But for the bigger threats to the west that
the DEA boasts about in this book, there just isn't compelling evidence. The DEA strongly
defends its use of sting operations, and says it has gathered lots of convincing evidence
– beyond meetings set up by paid informants – to prove the links.
It has presented almost none of that evidence in court.