Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, made the following statement during today's hearing entitled, "Narcoterrorism and the Long Reach of U.S. Law Enforcement, Part II":
Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, made the following statement during today's hearing entitled, "Narcoterrorism and the Long Reach of U.S. Law Enforcement, Part II":
Today, we continue our look at narcoterrorism. A few weeks ago, the Subcommittee heard testimony from private witnesses on the growing nexus between drugs and terrorism. This afternoon, we are joined by the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division.
Nothing better illustrates this threat than the Iranian-directed plot to assassinate a foreign ambassador on U.S. soil, detailed by the Justice Department last month. A key conspirator in this plot approached a DEA informant seeking to hire a Mexican drug cartel hit squad to carry out the attack. The plot was planned over multiple meetings in Mexico between the man now in U.S. custody and people he believed to be cartel members. This foiled plot is the latest example of how the DEA has reached beyond U.S. borders to investigate, arrest and bring to justice those involved in terrorist conspiracies.
This plot wasn’t a surprise to this Subcommittee. In 2006, I chaired hearings, held on the border, where we heard testimony from local law enforcement that the drug cartels would move anyone or anything: "so long as the price was right." Iran apparently believed $1.5 million was the right price for this brazen attack.
As we’ll hear today, an increasing number of U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations are involved in drug trafficking. As investigator Doug Farah testified last month, "growing ties between transnational organized crime from multiple regions, and terrorist organizations, are morphing into something new, which represents unprecedented dangers" for our country.
Whether it is the Russian mafia, FARC, Chinese Triads, Zetas, AQIM, Hezbollah, Qods Force or al-Shabaab – many of these disparate groups may be connected through "super fixers" or "shadow facilitators." These are the individuals or groups that provide the weapons, sophisticated document forgeries and money laundering facilities. They work for both terrorists and drug cartels.
One premier "super fixer" was Viktor Bout, who supplied weapons to insurgents, militias, and terrorists. Bout was brought down by DEA agents in 2008 for conspiring to supply weapons to the FARC, a designated terrorist group. After a long saga, Bout was extradited from Thailand to the U.S., and this month was found guilty of all charges against him.
The team that nabbed Bout is part of DEA’s Special Operations Division. They’ve had other high-profile successes. As Mr. Maltz will testify, these operations exemplify "what DEA does best: maximizing limited resources while working closely with foreign counterparts and leveraging [DEA’s] vast array of confidential sources to infiltrate the highest levels of the world’s most significant and notorious criminal organizations."
But there are always ways to get better. A former top DEA official told us last month that these shadow facilitators haven’t been "attacked to the extent necessary." Even with the will, the Special Operations Division has only two of these field enforcement teams dedicated to narcoterrorism cases.
With a unique set of authorities, human sources, and experience in running complex operations, the DEA has been bringing a "cutting edge" approach to attacking narcoterrorism. But the DEA’s presence in Africa is spread thin. Despite the dramatic increase in drug trafficking across West and North Africa, many of these countries are covered by DEA offices in Europe. With a mix of al-Qaeda presence, ungoverned spaces and weak institutions, the threat of narcoterrorism in this part of the world is a real concern.
###
