EXCLUSIVE: DEA agents arranged prostitute for Secret Service agent. U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency Expands War on Drugs. DEA teaches agents to recreate evidence chains to hide methods. Trainers justify parallel construction on national security and PR grounds: "Americans don't like it" by Shawn Musgrave on Feb. 3, 2014, 10:30 a.m. Drug Enforcement Administration training documents released to MuckRock user C.J. Ciaramella show how the agency constructs two chains of evidence to hide surveillance programs from defense teams, prosecutors, and a public wary of domestic intelligence practices. In training materials, the department even encourages a willful ignorance by field agents to minimize the risk of making intelligence practices public. The DEA practices mirror a common dilemma among domestic law enforcement agencies: Analysts have access to unprecedented streams of classified information that might prove useful to investigators, but entering classified evidence in court risks disclosing those sensitive surveillance methods to the world, which could either end up halting the program due to public outcry or undermining their usefulness through greater awareness.
Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans. This method is so acceptable, the DEA won't even release its name. By Shawn Musgrave on Feb. 4, 2014, noon Training documents released to MuckRock user C.J. Ciaramella by the Drug Enforcement Administration provide unprecedented details on the tactic known as “parallel construction,” by which agents reverse engineer evidence to hide surveillance programs from defense teams, prosecutors and a public wary of domestic intelligence practices. But the DEA redacted all references to another, apparently more secretive method of concealing sensitive sources. Per DEA slides, there are precisely four such methods that are both “workable” and acceptable to the American public. But the first of these certified, “acceptable” methods is redacted entirely. To reiterate, the DEA redacted the name of a method its trainers and legal auditors deemed not only constitutional but also palatable to the public. As with parallel construction, agents apparently pair this unknown tactic with routine traffic stops and drug dog sniffs as pretext for arrest.
Exclusive: IRS manual detailed DEA's use of hidden intel evidence. Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans.