Worth Reading: A Report on Drug Trafficking That is Terrifying and Incomplete
By Douglas Farah
If you want a fairly complete, and completely terrifying view of the power of organized criminal activity in the United States, take some time to read the National Drug Threat Assessment of the National Drug Intelligence Center.
Yet as good and comprehensive as it is, it reflects one of the fundamental weaknesses and walls that still exist.
The entire report mentions the overlap with terrorist activities exactly ONE time, and that, in a footnote relating to prison radicalization.
While different law enforcement agencies (the DEA in particular) have made drug cases leading directly to Hezbollah, the FARC and the Taliban, this is not mentioned. The FARC is the primary trafficking organization in Colombia, while the Taliban controls most of the heroin heading to Europe. Hezbollah skims from illicit drug laundering from Venezuela to Colombia to Maracaibo and Panama. At least 19 of the 43 designated terrorist organizations have been shown to have direct ties to drug trafficking.
Yet the NDIC is kept completely separate from terrorist analysis, just as terrorist analysts are still largely segregated from anything to do with drug trafficking and organized crime. It is called stovepiping information, as the 9/11 Commission made famous.
This, despite the fact that there is an undeniable and growing link between terrorist organizations and the organized criminal pipeline.
I understand the report was on the threat of drugs in the United States. But, given the existing case precedent and stated desire of different terrorist organizations to attack the United States, I cannot help reading things like the following and wondering what it portends in terms of terrorism. My full blog is here.
