Bill Piper The Seattle Times Note: Piper is the director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance This year is the 40th anniversary of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Already plagued by scandals, the agency has recently been revealed to be collaborating with the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Bath salts, a synthetic stimulant blamed for the deaths and panic attacks of users nationwide, appeared to become a craze in Syracuse before spreading elsewhere, the Syracuse Post-Standard reports. A former candidate of the Syracuse Common Council received a shipment of the drug, which he called “molly,” a name for the pure…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Revelations that the DEA uses NSA data to investigate non-terrorism cases against Americans has prompted a coalition of two dozen civil rights groups to call for congressional hearings, Reuters reports. The call for hearings comes after Reuters revealed that the DEA uses telephone surveillance from the NSA to build criminal cases against…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com AT&T agreed to provide the DEA with real time access to an unprecedented amount of phone records as part of a recently revealed partnership, The Atlantic reports. Since 2007, the DEA has had access to every call that goes through AT&T’s switchboard, The Atlantic wrote. The phone company even provided four employees…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com New memos leaked by WikiLeaks shows the DEA asked the White House for permission to kill notorious kingpin and fugitive Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the Latin Times reports. The messages come from Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence and an expert on Mexican drug cartels. “If the DEA can specifically locate the…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Federal lawmakers are calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to respond to a Reuters report that showed the NSA was supplying the DEA with surveillance information about domestic, non-terrorism cases, Reuters reported Monday evening. Five Democrats in the Senate and three congressmen want to know if the DEA – as reported – passed NSA…
By Scott Higham, Sari Horwitz and Steven Rich WASHINGTON –– When Sen. John McCain spoke during an Armed Services Committee hearing last year on security issues in the Western Hemisphere, he relayed a stark warning about the spread of Mexican drug cartels in the United States. “The cartels,” the Arizona Republican said, “now maintain a…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The parents of an 18-year-old honor student who was shot and killed by plainclothes DEA agents in a state of confusion in southern California were awarded $3 million in a wrongful death lawsuit, the Los Angeles Times reports. U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald ruled that the DEA agents were not negligent in…
