New Wikileaks Emails Show DEA Told to Backoff in Afghanistan
Wikileaks has released 2,694 emails that were stolen from the security firm Stratfor by the hacking group Anonymous in winter of last year. Business Insider reports that one of these released emails shows the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was asked to back off of an investigation that the DEA said would tie drugs to terrorism. The subject of the email is “RE: Humint – Afghanistan – Karzai (Strictly Protect – Confidential)” and says:
The brother of President Karzai of Afghanistan is under investigation by DEA as a major narcotics trafficker. For political reasons, DEA has been told to backoff by the White House and CIA. DEA is seeing a direct nexus between terrorism and narcotics in Afghanistan with narcotics sales being used to fund jihadist operations.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was apparently the center of the investigation. The emails that were released date from 2004 to 2011. The emails were part of what Wikileaks calls the “Global Intelligence Files,” and says the files show:
the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.
From the Business Insider blog:
The crackdown on narcotics in Afghanistan has not yet occurred as opium production rose by about 61 percent from 2010 to 2011 and continued to rise in 2012 as U.S. troops have patrolled the poppy fields during this time.
Wikileaks released the first set of documents in February of this year.
