- Joined
- May 21, 2005
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The DEA has a Special Operations Division (SOD) whose work is classified for the most part. They work on the coattails of the warrantless wiretapping program, which was intended to thwart terrorist activity, to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant. Once they illegally and unconstitutionally determine that a person might be involved in illicit drug activity, they contact local law enforcement who then make up some reason to perform a "routine" traffic stop on the individual, at which point drug dogs are brought in.
If an arrest is made, the true nature of how the defendant became a suspect is kept hidden from the defense, and in some cases even from the prosecution and judge. Instead, a process known as "parallel construction" is invoked, whereby a "good" reason to perform the traffic stop is fabricated by the police.
"It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean," said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
"That's outrageous," said Tampa attorney James Felman, a vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. "It strikes me as indefensible."
Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey defense lawyer, said any systematic government effort to conceal the circumstances under which cases begin "would not only be alarming but pretty blatantly unconstitutional."
Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans
Yet more civil liberties lost and Constitutional restrictions on government circumvented and ignored in the name of enforcing already unconstitutional drug laws. Boogey men make people stupid.
If an arrest is made, the true nature of how the defendant became a suspect is kept hidden from the defense, and in some cases even from the prosecution and judge. Instead, a process known as "parallel construction" is invoked, whereby a "good" reason to perform the traffic stop is fabricated by the police.
"It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean," said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
"That's outrageous," said Tampa attorney James Felman, a vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. "It strikes me as indefensible."
Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey defense lawyer, said any systematic government effort to conceal the circumstances under which cases begin "would not only be alarming but pretty blatantly unconstitutional."
Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans
Yet more civil liberties lost and Constitutional restrictions on government circumvented and ignored in the name of enforcing already unconstitutional drug laws. Boogey men make people stupid.