How Much Did the DEA Spend on its Africa Vacation?

By Jeralyn, Section War on Terror
Posted on Fri Dec 18, 2009 at 07:01:50 PM EST
Tags: DEA, DEA Africa, African Adventures (all tags)

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So, the DEA and its paid informants go to Africa for a sting. (AP here, NY Times here, U.S. Attorney press release here.)

The DEA informants pretend to be from FARC, willing to ship cocaine from South America to Africa where three Africans with claimed al- Qaida ties promise to transport it across the African desert into Spain.

Here's the Complaint (pdf). It doesn't sound like they got any cocaine or there ever was any cocaine, and the deal almost fell apart a few days before the bust.

It wasn't really FARC, just paid DEA informants pretending to be FARC. There never was any drugs, the pretend drugs weren't headed to the U.S. but Europe, yet the three would-be purchasers/transporters are arrested in Ghana and flown to New York for prosecution on terror and narco-terror charges here. [More...]

The DEA forked over $25,000 so the Africans could by a truck. The Africans then tried to demand another $15,000 for outfitting the truck, and to prove they really bought one, showed the DEA informants a cell phone photo of a truck and gave them what they said was a key to a truck. Then the Africans increased the transport price from $2,000 a kilo to $10,000 a kilo, demanded $75,000 euros as down payment on the transport (instead of the agreed upon 10% or $15,000 euros) and the deal began to fall apart.

One of the African men said he is the head of a militia. The militia's size: 11 men.

The e-mails are laughable. The DEA informant writes to the African, addressing him by his real first name, refers to the Colombians, the need to protect the merchandise, writes that once the passport is completed, he'll pay him separately for the drivers' license and ID card he'll need to go with it -- and then writes:

The load will be ready and that&#