TERROR CONNECTION PUTS
DRUG WAR INTO PARALLEL LEGAL UNIVERSE
Earlier this month,
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the FBI
and the Drug
Enforcement Administration had disrupted two separate attempts
to use drug
sales to underwrite weapons for terror groups.
There is a "deadly nexus
between terrorism and drug trafficking," Ashcroft
said. He was joined by Asa
Hutchinson, DEA chief, who said, "We have
learned, and we have demonstrated,
that drug traffickers and terrorists work
out of the same jungle; they plan
in the same cave and they train in the
same desert."
This nexus is no
surprise. In this year alone:
* A massive drug ring was busted that had
sent millions of dollars in
methamphetamine proceeds to the Hezbollah
terrorist group.
* In Colombia, a nation devastated by ongoing civil war,
a number of rebel
leaders of the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, were
indicted for drug-trafficking, as were members of the
paramilitary groups
they fight.
* And two Pakistanis and an American
were arrested for hatching a plan to
trade tons of opium and hashish for
Stinger missiles. They allegedly planned
to sell the missiles to
al-Qaida.
Can anyone truly doubt that drug money is destabilizing nations
and
enhancing the power of our enemies? (Al-Qaida doesn't appear to be using
the
drug trade to fund operations, but other Middle Eastern terror groups
are.)
Even the antidrug advertising campaign put out by the White House
Office of
National Drug Control Policy tells young people that using drugs
helps
terrorists.
In one ONDCP ad, "Timmy's" decision to use drugs is
said to help "kill
mothers" by fueling brutal terrorist groups. While a bit
hysterical, in some
infinitesimal way the ad is right. But the real culprit,
the elephant in the
room, is our national drug policy and the way it makes
the drug trade so
very lucrative. This is why terrorists are
interested.
After 30 years of overdrive prohibition -- putting millions
of people behind
bars and spending half a trillion dollars -- we know we
can't eliminate
drugs. Illegal drug usage numbers have changed little since
the 1980s.
Ninety-four million Americans over age 12 admit to having used
them at least
once in their lives.
What we can control, however, is
the money in drugs. Due to prohibition,
$1,000 worth of coca base from
Colombia sells for $25,000 here. If this
market were turned legit, the profit
margin would drop like a stone,
eventually driving out the criminal element.
(Remember alcohol prohibition?)
But that is not going to happen. There is
no political will to consider any
form of decriminalization.
Here's
what is happening instead.
The drug war and the war on terrorism is
converging both practically and,
more important, rhetorically. This will
allow the Justice Department and the
Defense Department to use all their new,
extraordinary powers for both.
Timmy the drug user will go from being an
exaggerated fictional ad to a
basis for ignoring due process for street-level
drug investigations and for
involving the military in more domestic law
enforcement.
On Monday, Ashcroft celebrated a decision by the secret
Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court of Review dismantling the wall
between domestic
intelligence gathering and criminal prosecution.
The
wall had been there because our law makes it far easier to secure
covert
surveillance and wiretap authority if the purpose is to watch the
activities
of suspected spies than regular criminals. The danger is that
prosecutors
might be tempted to use these special Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act
warrants as a way to get around the Constitution's probable
cause
requirements.
But the three-member court, all handpicked by
Chief Justice William
Rehnquist, pooh-poohed that concern. It gave Ashcroft a
free hand to use
FISA warrants in criminal investigations anywhere there is a
tangential
association with a suspected terrorist. Ashcroft already views
looking for
drugs and terrorists as one and the same. It is no surprise that
he
immediately announced a doubling of the number of attorneys assigned to
move
FISA warrant applications along.
In the name of fighting
terrorism, the Executive Branch has instituted
secret arrests, detained
people for months without charge and put Americans
in military brigs without
access to a lawyer. It has established a large
detention camp at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, to hold unlawful enemy combatants
out of reach of U.S. courts and
international law. And it is embarking on
huge data-mining programs in at
least three federal agencies designed to
examine everyone's personal business
for clues into terrorist associations.
With a potential narco-terrorist
connection looming behind every drug
transaction, it won't be long before all
these shortcuts, justified by
exigent circumstances and national security,
will become a regular part of
law enforcement. This parallel legal system,
where few of the traditional
protections for the accused remain, will soon
become the norm.
Suspected drug dealers at Guantanamo? It's closer than
you
think.
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