TOR Website Indictments

The DEA released a press release in connection with USDOJ in California that it has indicted several people in the on-line TOR network controlled substances website. The operation, "Atom Bomb", included eight named and seven unnamed conspirators. The twelve count indictment charges that each of the defendants was a member of a conspiracy to distribute a variety of controlled substances worldwide through the use of online marketplaces that allowed independent sources of supply to anonymously advertise illegal drugs for sale to the public. The drug network, "The Farmer's Market", sold all types of controlled substances in all fifty states and twenty-four countries to over three thousand people(!) The "Farmer's Market" was running on the TOR network. TOR is described by the Government as follows:

According to the indictment, TOR is a circuit of encrypted connections through relays on the TOR network that can be downloaded on home computers. TOR allows websites and electronic mail communications to mask IP address information by spreading communications over a series of computers, or relays, located throughout the world.

TOR is described by itself as:

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

Of interest is the investigation issues presented in a federal investigation of this type. First reported on in Rolling Stone, TOR which was allegedly used to provide privacy for its users on the online drug market was operating "above the radar" but is designed to allow people to be on the internet without leaving trails like Hansel and Gretel. It will be interesting to see what develops...stay tuned.

DEA Inquiries into Medical Marijuana Industry Include Legislators

The Missoulian:

Diane Sands is used to having her name taken in vain.

That's just part of being a liberal from Missoula in the Montana Legislature.

But her name surfaced recently in a way that offended and troubled her at a profound level.

A possible witness in a federal drug investigation was asked whether Sands might be part of a conspiracy to sell medical marijuana. The questions came from Drug Enforcement Administration agents from Billings who were investigating medical marijuana businesses, and Sands learned about the inquiry from the witness' attorney.

"So now, if you're a state legislator who has been working on medical marijuana laws, you are somehow part of a conspiracy," said Sands, who represents House District 95 in Missoula and works as development director for the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula. "It's ridiculous, of course, but it's also threatening to think that the federal government is willing to use its influence and try to chill discussion about this subject."

Sands isn't the only one with concerns. At least one other legislator declined comment regarding DEA questions about the legislator's duties out of concern over "additional harassment."

And the American Civil Liberties Union in Montana, which is itself full of attorneys, spoke with an outside attorney in regards to its advocacy work regarding marijuana.

"When you hear this sort of thing, there's a part of you that just gets irritated, but there's a part of you that knows you have to, as an organization, make sure you've dotted the I's and crossed the T's," said the ACLU's executive director, Scott Crichton.

Sands and the ACLU aren't actually worried about criminal charges. They've done nothing wrong other than advocate a point of view counter to the opinion held by federal law enforcement.

But both have played high-profile roles in the discussion over medical marijuana in Montana, and the ACLU has been vocal for years in its support for the legalization of marijuana. And they find abhorrent the idea that mere advocacy might be questioned.

"It's chilling, and it dredges up darker days from the '50s and '60s," said Crichton.

Sands is more blunt: "Can you say McCarthy? This sounds like stuff from the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy. So once you talk about medical marijuana in reasonable terms, you're on some sort of list of possible conspirators."

Sands was chairwoman of an interim legislative committee that went to work before the 2011 Legislature to try to fashion a fix for Montana's medical marijuana laws, which many viewed as responsible for the unregulated, Wild West atmosphere that seemed to be part of Montana's medical marijuana industry.

The committee's efforts, which would have imposed new regulation but kept the industry substantially intact, ultimately were swept aside as the Republican-controlled Legislature enacted a far more rigorous regulatory scheme.

In June, after the session ended, Sands suggested that the federal government "delist" medical marijuana - as it had done with wolves - and leave the issue to state control.

Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/local/dea-inquiries-into-medical-marijuana-industry-include-legislators/article_54b1b528-4a3a-11e1-99bc-001871e3ce6c.html#ixzz1kxbV7rOv

Lawmakers to Open an Inquiry on Undercover Drug Operation

From The New York Times:

Congressional Republicans said Monday that they would open an investigation into undercover operations by the Drug Enforcement Administration in which agents have laundered and smuggled millions of dollars in drug money as part of an effort to help Mexico fight organized crime.

The operations, which drug officials said had the support and cooperation of the Mexican government, have funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars across borders and moved millions more through shell accounts to help American agents identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and who their leaders are.

Critics said the operations blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime, raising questions similar to those around a gun-smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious that involves agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The gun operation has been under investigation for months by Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In a letter on Monday to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Mr. Issa said he would expand that investigation to include the drug agency, describing its money-laundering investigations as “dangerous schemes” and adding that “the consequences have been disastrous.”

Mr. Issa, Republican of California, asked Mr. Holder to provide a briefing on the undercover operations to his staff on Wednesday. He wrote, “It is almost unfathomable to contemplate the degree to which the United States government has made itself an accomplice to the drug trade, which has thus far left more than 40,000 people dead in Mexico.”

Agency Seizes Georgia’s Supply of Execution Drug

(AP) — The Drug Enforcement Administration said Tuesday that it had seized Georgia’s supply of a lethal injection drug because of questions about how it was imported.

Chuvalo Truesdell, an agency spokesman, said he did not know if other states’ supplies of the drug, sodium thiopental, were being collected. The seizure comes less than two months after a convicted killer was executed in Georgia, despite his raising questions about where the state had obtained the drug, an anesthetic, and whether it had expired.

Corrections officials released documents this year that showed Georgia obtained the drug from Link Pharmaceuticals, which was bought five years ago by Archimedes Pharma Ltd. Both are British companies.

The drug was used in January to execute Emmanuel Hammond, who was convicted of killing a preschool teacher. Mr. Hammond’s lawyers sought a delay, claiming the drug came from a “fly-by-night supplier operating from the back of a driving school in England.” They said it could have been counterfeit.

The United States Supreme Court rejected the argument.

Joan Heath, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Corrections, said state officials were not concerned with the quality of the drug. “We contacted the D.E.A. and asked them for a regulatory review, and that’s what we’re doing,” she said.

Viktor Bout Extradited

Viktor Bout, Extradited To U.S.: Read DEA Press Release here

After more than two years of legal proceedings, alleged international arms dealer Viktor Bout was extradited to the United States from Thailand on November 16 to stand trial on terrorism charges. Bout arrived in New York on a DEA charter plane and was brought to a high-security prison in Manhattan, where he will be held pending trial.

Bout has been accused of using a fleet of cargo airplanes to transport weapons and military equipment to various parts of the world. Specifically, between November 2007 and March 2008 Bout agreed to sell to the Colombian narco-terrorist organization Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), which is also the world’s largest supplier of cocaine, millions of dollars worth of weapons. Bout negotiated the sale to two confidential sources that were acquiring these weapons for the FARC, with the specific understanding that the weapons were to be used to attack U.S. helicopters in Colombia. These two confidential informants were in fact working with the DEA, and Bout was subsequently arrested.

Record Raids for DEA

DEA Huge Bust in Afghanistan 1 Metric Ton of Heroin

U.S. Attorneys Told to Go After Pot Traffickers, not Patients

From CNN.com

The Justice Department has provided federal prosecutors "clarification and guidance" urging them to go after drug traffickers, but not patients and caregivers, in the 14 states that have medical marijuana laws.

A memo sent to U.S. attorneys said that in carrying out Justice pronouncements made earlier this year indicating a policy shift to end prosecutions against users, authorities should continue to pursue drug traffickers.

"It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "But we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal," Holder added.

The memo from Deputy Attorney General David Ogden was sent to U.S. attorneys in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

The issue is particularly significant in California, where there has been uncertainty about the government's approach to raiding marijuana dispensaries, which are increasing and thriving.

At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "I'm not going to get into what states should do. The memo that was sent out today to U.S. attorneys simply adds guidelines to a decision that Attorney General Holder talked about in mid-March and has been administration policy since the beginning of this administration in January."

That policy marks a shift from the Bush administration's position, backed by the Supreme Court, that federal agents have a right to pursue marijuana dispensaries and customers any time federal drug law alone has been violated.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which advocates legalization of marijuana, declared the government's memo Monday a "major departure in the so-called war on drugs" and "a major victory for citizens who support cannabis law reform."

Drug Enforcement Administration officials disputed that assertion.

"We remain committed to pursuing large-scale criminal drug trafficking organizations," said one DEA official. "If you look at who we've gone after, you'll find they're clearly breaking California law. The threshold is state and local law."

Full story here.

AP IMPACT: New Meth Formula Avoids Anti-Drug Laws

This is the new formula for methamphetamine: a two-liter soda bottle, a few handfuls of cold pills and some noxious chemicals. Shake the bottle and the volatile reaction produces one of the world's most addictive drugs.

Only a few years ago, making meth required an elaborate lab — with filthy containers simmering over open flames, cans of flammable liquids and hundreds of pills. The process gave off foul odors, sometimes sparked explosions and was so hard to conceal that dealers often "cooked" their drugs in rural areas.

But now drug users are making their own meth in small batches using a faster, cheaper and much simpler method with ingredients that can be carried in a knapsack and mixed on the run. The "shake-and-bake" approach has become popular because it requires a relatively small number of pills of the decongestant pseudoephedrine — an amount easily obtained under even the toughest anti-meth laws that have been adopted across the nation to restrict large purchases of some cold medication.

"Somebody somewhere said 'Wait this requires a lot less pseudoephedrine, and I can fly under the radar,'" said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control.

An Associated Press review of lab seizures and interviews with state and federal law enforcement agents found that the new method is rapidly spreading across the nation's midsection and is contributing to a spike in the number of meth cases after years of declining arrests.

The new formula does away with the clutter of typical meth labs, and it can turn the back seat of a car or a bathroom stall into a makeshift drug factory. Some addicts have even made the drug while driving.

The pills are crushed, combined with some common household chemicals and then shaken in the soda bottle. No flame is required.

Using the new formula, batches of meth are much smaller but just as dangerous as the old system, which sometimes produces powerful explosions, touches off intense fires and releases drug ingredients that must be handled as toxic waste.

"If there is any oxygen at all in the bottle, it has a propensity to make a giant fireball," said Sgt. Jason Clark of the Missouri State Highway Patrol's Division of Drug and Crime Control. "You're not dealing with rocket scientists here anyway. If they get unlucky at all, it can have a very devastating reaction."

One little mistake, such as unscrewing the bottle cap too fast, can result in a huge blast, and police in Alabama, Oklahoma and other states have linked dozens of flash fires this year — some of them fatal — to meth manufacturing.

"Every meth recipe is dangerous, but in this one, if you don't shake it just right, you can build up too much pressure, and the container can pop," Woodward said. Full article can be found here.

Expert Witness in Drug Case

Located out of New Mexico, Kendal Johnson is a former DEA Agent that is available as an expert witness in drug cases. An excerpt from his expert posting:

HR Legal Consultants & Investigations will provide Expert Consulting and Expert Witness testimony in federal and state court on drug law enforcement matters with expertise in Title III authorized Wire Intercepts (wiretaps), Surveillance, Management of Undercover and Informant Operations, Criminal Enterprise Investigations and Murder and Violence in furtherance of the Criminal Enterprise, Asset Forfeiture Investigations based on Facilitation and Drug Proceeds, Complex Conspiracy Investigations, and State/Local drug seizures and resulting investigation (Interdiction Cases).

The website HG Experts has a listing for just about any type of expert witness you might need.

Teddy Ruxpin has Gone Bad...

Thirty-three pounds of Heroin worth an estimated $30 million were seized by Drug Enforcement Administration agents over the weekend.

DEA agents say they arrested 12 suspects in the Bronx who were allegedly using Build-A-Bear stuffed toys to conceal baggies of heroine.

Investigators believe the suspects were selling hundreds of thousands of bags stamped with brand names such as "Barack Obama" and "Swine Flu."

DEA Special Agent in Charge John P. Gilbride stated, "To transport heroin, which is poison to our children, in teddy bears is an indication of how those arrested devalue the life of our children."

On Friday, a team from the DEA's New York Drug Enforcement Task Force-comprised of DEA Special Agents, New York Police Department detectives and New York State Troopers--- and Investigators from the Special Narcotics Prosecutors Office's, seized approximately $150,000 in United States currency, 15 kilos of heroin and arrested 12 defendants.

Full story here.

DEA Speaks Out Against Legalization

Executive Branch or Legislative? You decide after reading the DEA Publication, "Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization". This 2003 publication is available on-line. An excerpt:

The Legalization Lobby claims that the “European Model” of the drug problem is successful. However, since legalization of marijuana in Holland, heroin addiction levels have tripled. And Needle Park seems like a poor model for America.

or

The Legalization Lobby claims that America’s prisons are filling up with users. Truth is, only about 5 percent of inmates in federal prison are there because of simple possession. Most drug criminals are in jail—even on possession charges—because they have plea-bargained down from major trafficking offences or more violent drug crimes.

An interesting read.

Immigration Agents to Get Expanded Powers

From the New York Times:

In an expansion of its crackdown on drug cartels, the Obama administration plans to announce Thursday that it will give Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents the authority to investigate drug crimes. Justice Department officials refused to divulge details of their plans, saying they did not want to pre-empt the news conference. But officials familiar with the plan said it would settle a long-running turf battle between the immigration agency and the Drug Enforcement Administration that has seriously undermined the efforts of both. The decision came amid drug-related violence that left more than 6,000 people dead in Mexico last year. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, called the Justice Department’s decision “welcome news,” saying, “The cartels that smuggle drugs and illegal immigrants have integrated their activities, and now the federal agencies will have a better integrated response.”

Confessions Of A Drug Smuggler

Brian O'Dea tried marijuana in college and saw dollar signs. A born salesman, he began dealing to fellow college students in the early 1970s.

By the early 1980s, he had built a $100 million a year smuggling operation, and a cocaine addiction. His narcotics racket took him around the world to places such as Bogota, Columbia and Montego Bay, Jamaica.

O'Dea had some successful multimillion dollar deals, but more often than not, rip-offs, double-crosses, getting wasted and waiting characterized the operations.

"High" is Brian O'Dea's memoir of dealing drugs, doing time, and seeking redemption.

Full broadcast and article can be found here.

Purchase "High."

Ex-DEA Agent: Treatment, Education Key in Drug War

From CNN:

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues high-level talks with Mexico's leaders this week, her comments about responsibility in the U.S.-Mexico drug trade have struck a chord with officials familiar with U.S. anti-drug efforts.

Clinton said the United States' "inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border" was a major contributor in Mexican violence along the border. She went on to say that the United States has "a co-responsibility."

In an interview Wednesday on "American Morning" with CNN anchor John Roberts, former Drug Enforcement Agency special agent Robert Strang talked about the three-pronged approach needed to curb drug use in America and the need to bust distribution rings. Strang is also CEO of Investigative Management Group.

The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity:

John Roberts, CNN anchor: Everybody's blaming Mexico for [the U.S. drug trade], but the secretary of state yesterday said, 'Hey, the United States shares a lot of the blame because of the pent-up demand here, the insatiable demand for drugs.' Do you agree with her? Watch Clinton say, "We have to do a better job"

Robert Strang, former DEA special agent: Let's face it, the average first drug use is 12 years old in our country. That means kids that are in the sixth grade are trying drugs for the first time. Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, all these drugs are coming across the border because we demand them. We have the cash to pay for them, and we really are pretty much the No. 1 consumer in the world for these drugs.

Roberts: Is the United States doing enough to try to curb demand? The Office of National Drug Control Policy, I don't remember much coming out of it during the Bush administration, and I haven't seen anything come out of it in the Obama administration.

Strang: We're trying all the time. I'm on the board for D.A.R.E. America, and that is teaching kids about the dangers of drugs and violence in schools. And constantly, we're trying to get money federally for this program and police officers go into the school. They teach the kids. It's a wonderful program in those trouble years, the fourth, fifth and sixth grade especially, and we need to have a little bit more money in this area.

There's three things, John: It's treatment, it's enforcement and it's education. And it's like a three-legged stool. If all three things don't work, it's going to fall down. So, we can send all of the agents in the world down to the border. We can seize all the coke, heroin, methamphetamine that we want. If we don't have treatment on demand, and if we're not educating our kids in our country about the dangers of drugs, the problem's going to grow.

Roberts: When you see the Department of Homeland Security prepared to spend these hundreds of millions of dollars on border security, what do you think?

Strang: I'm happy that they're doing something. This is a small piece of the enforcement operation. The best thing to do is like the case that we saw three weeks ago, when the DEA announced 750 arrests involving 250 cities between Mexico and the United States, mostly in the U.S., this huge distribution network.

Because when you dismantle those networks that constantly are putting drugs from the cartels to the street, when you can put those guys in jail, when you take their assets, then you have an impact.

Full article here.

Mexico Drug Spy Allegedly Leaked DEA Info

From the AP:

A major drug cartel has infiltrated the Mexican attorney general's office, and one cartel worker says he even spied on DEA operations from inside U.S. Embassy, Mexican prosecutors said Monday.

Five officials of the Attorney General's Organized Crime unit were arrested on allegations they served as informants for the Beltran-Leyva Cartel, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said, adding there are indications that other spies still work inside his agency.

The Embassy employee, who also worked for Interpol at the Mexico City airport, is a protected witness after telling Mexican officials in Washington that he leaked details of Drug Enforcement Administration operations, an attorney general's official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. He said he was not authorized to speak on the record.

U.S. Embassy officials had no immediate comment, saying they generally avoid discussing internal operating or security issues.

Separately, a U.S. official announced Monday that a high-ranking Mexican immigration official had been caught in Arizona with 170 pounds of marijuana in his vehicle.

The revelations of corruption inside the control centers of the U.S.-Mexican anti-drug effort were a major blow to President Felipe Calderon's anti-drug campaign, in which he has sent tens of thousands of troops and federal police across Mexico to combat violent cartels.

Calderon himself has long acknowledged corruption is widespread in police forces. Monday's case represents the most serious known infiltration of anti-crime agencies since the 1997 arrest of Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, then head of Mexico's anti-drug agency. Gutierrez Rebollo was later convicted of aiding drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

Despite the corruption, Mexico continues to arrest top smugglers. The latest victory came Saturday with the arrest of Eduardo Arellano Felix after a shootout in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. He had allegedly been running the Arellano Felix cartel with his sister since several brothers were arrested or killed.

Assistant Attorney General Marisela Morales said two top employees of her organized-crime unit and at least three federal police agents assigned to it may have been passing information on surveillance targets and potential raids for at least four years.

One of the officials was an assistant intelligence director and the other served as a liaison in requesting searches and assigning officers to carry them out.

All but one of the officials were arrested weeks ago.

The agents and officials each received payments of between $150,000 and $450,000 per month for the information, Morales said.

The Embassy infiltrator gave details of his involvement to Mexican officials in Washington, the prosecutors official said, but it is unclear if he is under Mexican or U.S. protection. The official did not give details of the information he allegedly passed on to the cartel.

National Drug Report

This assessment, available from USDOJ and the National Drug Intelligence Center, provides a strategic overview and predictive outlook of drug trafficking and abuse trends within the United States. The assessment contains useful information including studies of prices, sizes of busts, availability, production and cultivation, transportation, distribution, and demand. Worth a browse if you work with drug cases.

Under Obama, Drug War Tactics Poised to Shift

From U.S. News & World Report:

President Obama couldn't have been clearer about his take on the so-called war on drugs. In 2004, he called decades of get-tough law enforcement "an utter failure." So it doesn't come as much of a surprise that the new attorney general, Eric Holder, hinted this month that the new administration will take a radically new approach to one drug issue in particular—medical marijuana. "What [President Obama] said during the campaign is now American policy," Holder told a news conference this week.

Despite Obama's well-known views, federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided a few pot dispensaries in California two days after his inauguration, despite a state law permitting limited use and sale of medical marijuana. The raid came before Holder's confirmation, and it seems that no one in the new administration told the DEA to stop raiding some of the state's storefront dispensaries. The DEA has hit a few dozen every year since they began appearing in 2003.

This time, the agency was continuing on autopilot under Michele Leonhart, a holdover from the Bush years who remains in charge of DEA until a successor is picked. The White House moved quickly to quiet the nervous uproar from the outraged left. "Federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws," says Nick Shapiro, an Obama spokesman. Holder's latest remarks appear to signal that the raids will end.

The approach to states' rights in this case, however, is a notable departure from the one used to desegregate schools, close military bases, prosecute civil rights abuses, and link a drinking age to federal highway funds. "Frankly, it's extremely rare for the federal government to allow the states to say that something is legal when the federal law says the opposite," says Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University.

Not enforcing federal law in this instance is perhaps just a more politically palatable way of acknowledging how the political landscape of marijuana has changed in the past few years, says Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, which pushes for more lenient drug laws.

Full article here.

Operation Green Reaper Strikes Again

From the DEA.com:

On Monday February 23, 2009, federal agents and local authorities executed 8 federal search warrants involving indoor marijuana grow operations in Thurston and Pierce Counties. The collaborative effort by law enforcement was part of ‘Operation Green Reaper’, targeting the command and control components of the Puget Sound’s indoor marijuana grow organizations and was investigated by law enforcement officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Tahoma Narcotics Enforcement Team (TNET), which is comprised of the Washington State Patrol, Washington Department of Corrections, Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, and the Tacoma, Puyallup, Bonney Lake, and Auburn Police Departments.

Full article here.

Cartel Operation Leads to Indictments in Arizona

From the Arizona Republic:

A nationwide crackdown on a Mexican drug cartel included dozens of indictments in two major Arizona investigations, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Wednesday that the probe known as Operation Xcellerator tallied more than 750 arrests and the seizure of 23 tons of narcotics from the Mexican border to Canada, and from Arizona to Maryland.

Special agent Ramona Sanchez of the DEA in Phoenix said the two Maricopa County investigations broke last year and involved a total of 144 indicted suspects.

Sanchez said one of the probes involved a methamphetamine operation that stretched from Tempe to Sinaloa. "We went from the small dealer to the mid-supplier all the way back to the drug-trafficking organization in Mexico," she said.

In all, the Justice Department reported seizures of $59 million in cash, 12,000 kilograms of cocaine, 1,200 pounds of methamphetamine, and 16,000 pounds of marijuana. Holder described the Mexican narcotics syndicates as "a sustained, serious threat to the safety and security of our communities."

Michele Leonhart DEA's acting administrator, said the 21-month probe represents the "largest and hardest-hitting operation to ever target the very violent and dangerously powerful Sinaloa cartel. From Washington to Maine, we have disrupted this cartel's domestic operations."

Charges in the Xcellerator case include drug trafficking, money laundering and operating a criminal enterprise.

Full article here.