In Phoenix, where the now infamous Ken Williams memo originated, counterterrorism agents complained bitterly about their efforts being given "the lowest investigative priority" by a supervisor who preferred glamorous drug-fighting investigations. Even though the anti-terror squad was understaffed, having been assigned only eight of the division's 200 agents, it had managed to infiltrate groups of suspected terrorists through the use of paid informants, including a man who was being trained to be a suicide bomber. They had also uncovered local men with ties to World Trade Center bomber Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and to a virulently anti-American Muslim organization linked to al-Qaida.
So what was their reward for all this? Regular head-butting sessions with higher ups who balked at having to allocate resources for information that didn't lead to immediate arrests. I’ll bet doubloons to donuts that the Phoenix agents doling out cash to drug case snitches very rarely ran up against the same sort of resistance -- what one veteran terrorism squad member described as "micromanaging, constant indecision, and stonewalling."
Meanwhile, across the country in Boston, Raed Hijazi, an admitted al-Qaida member who had become an informant in exchange for avoiding jail, tried to warn FBI agents about Arab terrorists and sympathizers, particularly Nabil al-Marabh, a member of an al-Qaida terrorist cell who was arrested in the wake of 9-11. But the FBI wasn't interested in Hijazi’s terror leads -- they only wanted to hear what he knew about heroin being smuggled into America from Afghanistan.
And it wasn't just the FBI. This Drug War Uber-Alles mindset infected the entire law enforcement community, starting at the top. "I want to escalate the war on drugs," said Attorney General John Ashcroft in his first interview after being nominated for the post. "I want to renew it. I want to refresh it." And he was true to his word. Witness the $43 million the Bush administration gave to the Taliban just four months before Sept. 11. Sure there was the small detail of harboring a guy named bin Laden, but the Taliban had agreed to ban the production of opium poppies. And so the drug war trumped the terror war once again.
So is this kind of thinking finally a thing of the past? I'm not so sure. Even after last week's highly touted reorganization, which included the reassignment of 400 narcotics agents to counterterrorism, there will still be 2,100 agents spending their invaluable time and energy fighting a fruitless drug war. This despite the fact that combating drugs didn't even make Director Mueller's official Top Ten list of priorities.
http://cannabisnews.com/news/13/thread13041.shtmlAs the soaring budget deficit reminds us, federal coffers are not a bottomless well.
Everything comes with a price. Sadly, it's looking more and more like the price of the drug war may have included the 3,056 lives lost on Sept. 11.
Complete Title: Did The Drug War Claim Another 3,056 Casualties On 9-11?
This is an answer to Diogenes who asks why I'm so rabid about ending the Drug War. It is the wrong fn priority. A waste of resources.
In a report issued April 13, the commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks on Washington and New York criticized Attorney General John Ashcroft for not making counterterrorism a top priority. The report, produced by commission staff, singled out a May 10, 2001, Justice Department memorandum setting out priorities for the year. According to that memorandum, the Justice Department's top priorities were fighting the war on drugs and prosecuting gun crimes.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old ... hunt.shtml
I do give the commission great credit for the fact that it pointed out, as I have shown, in a number of references that drug enforcement often had a greater priority than the prevention of terror but the Commission’s probing analysis went no further than that. It made one mention of the DEA, in its discussion of other law enforcement agencies in the Department of Justice, to wit: “The department’s Drug Enforcement Administration had, as of 2001, more than 4500 agents. There were a number of occasions when DEA agents were able to introduce sources to the FBI or CIA for counterterrorism use.”
The commission did not take the logical next step and say something like the following: While we are in the process of recommending massive changes in the way the federal government is organized, it is necessary to recognize that the prevention of terror is of an infinitely higher priority than the prevention of drug use. Accordingly, we recommend that virtually all of the resources of the DEA be assigned to the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division and to such other units of the FBI as are focused on counterterrorism intelligence gathering and field activity. Drug cases will be pursued only when there is strong evidence that the suspects are involved in violent international organized crime or have some connection to terrorist activity. However, nothing like those thoughts appeared in the massive report.
http://www.drugscience.org/Archive/bcr1/n1_trebach.html