Pubdate: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA) Copyright: 2013 Reuters Contact: http://www.ajc.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28 Authors: John Shiffman and David Ingram, Reuters DEA'S TIPS TO FEDS UNDER INVESTIGATION Agents Instructed to Omit References to Operation. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Details of a Drug Enforcement Administration program that feeds tips to federal agents and then instructs them to alter the investigative trail were published in a manual used by IRS agents for two years. The practice of re-creating the investigative trail is now under review by the Justice Department. Two high-profile Republicans have also raised questions about the procedure. A 350-word entry in the Internal Revenue Manual instructed agents to omit any reference to tips supplied by the DEA's Special Operations Division, especially from affidavits, court proceedings or investigative files. The entry was published and posted online in 2005 and 2006, and was removed in early 2007. The Internal Revenue Service is among two dozen arms of the government working with the SOD, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. An IRS spokesman had no comment on the entry or on why it was removed from the manual. The Special Operations Division of the DEA funnels information from overseas NSA intercepts, domestic wiretaps, informants and a large DEA database of telephone records to authorities nationwide to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Internal government documents show that law enforcement agents have been trained to conceal how such investigations truly begin, to re-create the investigative trail to cover up the original source of the information. DEA officials said the practice is legal and has been in near-daily use since the 1990s. They have said its purpose is to protect sources and methods, not to withhold evidence. Defense attorneys and some former judges and prosecutors say that systematically hiding potential evidence from defendants violates the U.S. Constitution. According to documents and interviews, agents use a procedure they call "parallel construction" to re-create the investigative trail, stating in affidavits or in court, for example, that an investigation began with a traffic infraction rather than an SOD tip. The IRS document offers further detail on the parallel construction program. The 2005 IRS document focused on SOD tips that were classified and noted that the Justice Department "closely guards the information provided by SOD with strict oversight." While the IRS document said SOD information could be used only for drug investigations, DEA officials said the SOD role has recently expanded to organized crime and money-laundering. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., expressed concern with the concept of parallel construction as a method to hide the origin of an investigation. "We're working with the DEA and intelligence organizations to try to find out exactly what that story is," said Rogers, a former FBI agent. Spokespeople for the DEA and the Department of Justice declined to comment. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said he was troubled that DEA agents have been "trying to cover up a program that investigates Americans." Officials have stressed that the NSA and DEA telephone databases are distinct. The NSA database, disclosed by Edward Snowden, includes data about every telephone call placed inside the United States. An NSA official said that database is not used for domestic criminal law enforcement. The DEA database, called DICE, consists largely of phone log and Internet data gathered legally by the DEA through subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom