Transcript:
A secretive unit to the Drug Enforcement
Administration is training its agents to cover up how it gets information used
to launch investigations of Americans.
The technique for concealing the information is
called Parallel Construction. Here's how it sometimes works.
A drug dealer wants to move narcotics, weapons or
cash in the United States. An informant or perhaps an undercover agent learns the
plans and alerts the secretive DEA unit called the Special Operations Division (SOD).
The intelligence could also come from an NSA
wiretap or electronic intercept. The Special Operations Division tells local or
state police that they need to stop a certain truck at a certain place and
time. Local police do that in a way that looks like a routine traffic stop.
But a drug sniffing dog is brought to the scene.
If police find drugs they arrest the driver. If the case goes to trial cops
know they can never say where the intel came from. They're under direct orders
to not disclose it.
Instead they might say the investigation began
with a routine traffic stop, a plausible story that creates a new investigative
trail that won't lead back to the secret source.
That’s the Parallel Construction.
What concerns some former prosecutors and judges
is that by hiding the origin of the investigation that the DEA could be hiding
evidence from the people arrested. This might jeopardize their constitutional
right to a fair trial.
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The video uses drug and gun dealers as examples...but from what we're learning today how far away are we from the Central Government using this against the people on their enemy list?...
You will note that all of these links today to Reuters are Reuters U.K.
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