Pubdate: Tue, 06 Aug 2013
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA)
Copyright: 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Contact:  http://www.ajc.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28
Authors: John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke, Reuters

DEA DIRECTS SECRET PROGRAM

Agents Apparently Told to Conceal How Probes Began.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement 
Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence 
intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone 
records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal 
investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, 
documents show that law enforcement agents have been directed to 
conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense 
lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to 
"recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the 
information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a 
defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't 
know how an investigation began, they cannot ask to review potential 
sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal 
entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the 
Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies make 
up the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service 
and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to 
combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen 
employees to several hundred.

Today, much of the SOD's work is classified.

"Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed 
in any investigative function," a document presented to agents reads.

A spokesman with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA, 
declined to comment.

But two senior DEA officials defended the program and said trying to 
re-create an investigative trail is not only legal but also a 
technique that is used almost daily.

A former federal agent who received such tips from SOD described the 
process. "You'd be told only, 'Be at a certain truck stop at a 
certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the 
state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a 
drug dog search it."

After an arrest was made, agents then pretended their investigation 
began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent 
said. The training document that was reviewed refers to this process 
as "parallel construction."

The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but 
only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to 
protect sources and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is 
a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. 
"It's decades old, a bedrock concept."

Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using "parallel 
construction" may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest, 
but employing the practice as a means of disguising how an 
investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence.

Some lawyers say there can be legitimate reasons for not revealing 
sources. Robert Spelke, a former prosecutor who spent seven years as 
a senior DEA lawyer, said some sources are classified. But he also 
said there are few reasons why unclassified evidence should be 
concealed at trial.

Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from 
intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a 
caller's citizenship can be verified, according to a senior law 
enforcement official.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom