The US Department of Justice is reviewing a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) unit that passes tips culled from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a large telephone database to field agents, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Monday.
Reuters reported on Monday that agents who use such tips are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively conceal the DEA unit’s involvement from defense lawyers, prosecutors and even judges, a policy many lawyers said could violate a defendant’s right to a fair trial.
Federal drug agents call the process of changing the true genesis of an arrest “parallel construction,” according to a training document.
Although the DEA program may use legal means to collect and distribute the tips, critics say that by hiding the origin of a case, defendants may not know about potentially exculpatory evidence.
“It’s my understanding that the Department of Justice is looking at some of the issues raised in the story,” Carney said during his daily briefing at the White House.
Carney referred reporters to a justice department spokesman, who confirmed that a review was under way, but declined further comment.
In an interview last month, two senior DEA officials defended the program, saying it has been in place since the late 1990s, has been reviewed by every US attorney general since then and is perfectly legal.
One DEA official said “parallel construction” is used every day by agents and police nationwide and is “a bedrock concept.”
The program, run by the DEA’s Special Operations Division (SOD), differs in several respects from US National Security Agency (NSA) activities revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Among these is disclosure to the accused.
Collection of domestic data by the NSA and FBI for espionage and terrorism cases is regulated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
If prosecutors intend to use FISA or other classified evidence in court, they issue a public notice and a judge determines whether the defense is entitled to review the evidence.
In the DEA’s case, a document reviewed by Reuters shows that federal drug agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to conceal the SOD’s involvement.
Defense attorneys say the practice prevents defendants from even knowing about evidence that might help their cases.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion