HIDTA border task force mired in drug-war scandal

[Joanne98]

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/7/22/153556/982
HIDTA border task force mired in drug-war scandal

By Bill Conroy,

Posted on Sun Jul 22nd, 2007 at 03:35:56 PM EST
Over the past 17 years since its creation, probably no other initiative has done more in seeking to coordinate the resources of federal, state and local law enforcement in the so-called War on Drugs than the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program.
HIDTA, which operates offices across the United States, is a federally funded program with an annual budget of some $225 million that is administered by the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Its mission is to enlist the power of law enforcement “teamwork” to fight drug trafficking in key areas of the United States.

But this idyllic model of law enforcement camaraderie focused on disrupting the bad boys of the narco-trafficking world appears to have more than a few bad apples of its own — stemming from the same vice that fuels the illegal drug trade: the quest for the easy buck.



In fact, a federal whistleblower is alleging that some $300,000 in federal funds under the control of a HIDTA task force in Deming, N.M., has mysteriously disappeared.
Government documents obtained by Narco News reveal that this Deming-based task force is supposed to be overseen by federal agents but instead has been taken over by a group of state and local law enforcers who seem to play by their own rules. Those same documents reveal that this Deming-based HIDTA task force is linked to a disturbing trail of bookkeeping irregularities, multiple mysterious bank accounts and even claims of law enforcement corruption.

In March of this year, the problems with the HIDTA program in New Mexico appear to have come to a head as evidenced by the following press statement issued by the office of U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.:


The ONDCP has suspended funding for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program in New Mexico for repeatedly failing to comply with multiple federal guidelines over the past three years. These reportedly non-criminal infractions are related to not using HIDTA funding for core HIDTA purposes.
If we take the senator at his word, it would seem the New Mexico HIDTA funding was suspended due to some minor bureaucratic technical glitches. But what the senator seems to gloss over in his political speak is that some of the allegations involving the New Mexico HIDTA program are, in fact, extremely serious and do involve potential “criminal” violations related to waste, fraud, abuse and corruption.

Those allegations center on one particular initiative of the New Mexico HIDTA program that operates along the Mexican border in the southwestern corner of New Mexico: the Border Operations Task Force (BOTF) based in Deming. The BOTF-Deming is composed of some 25 individuals — including federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as state and local law enforcement officers from three participating New Mexico counties: Luna, Grant and Hidalgo.

Narco News recently obtained several hundred pages of documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that diagnose in some detail the symptoms of the BOTF-Deming dysfunction. The documents were obtained from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which is a quasi-judicial agency charged with adjudicating cases involving alleged retaliation against federal employee whistleblowers.

Among the documents released through the FOIA request is a February 2007 final report based on a review by the ONDCP of the entire New Mexico HIDTA program. In addition, the FOIA documents include a March 2007 report by ICE’s internal affairs unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which last year conducted an investigation of the allegations of waste, fraud and abuse leveled at the BOTF-Deming.

(The ONDCP report can be found at this link; the ICE OPR report can be found at this link.)

Funding Freeze

On Feb. 8 of this
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/7/22/153556/982