DEA's "Cover Up Program" Revealed: More Troubling Than Pervasive NSA Surveillance?

Undated documents discovered by Reuters show [5] that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial.

"I have never heard of anything like this at all," is one law professor's response to the fact that a secretive DEA unit is funneling wiretap, informant, and telephone database information to authorities across the nation in order to launch investigations of Americans (targeting common criminals, primarily drug dealers), "It is one thing to create special rules for national security, ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."

Agents are instructed to use "normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by [the secret DEA source]," and as the documents reveal - "remember that the utilization of [data] cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function."

Stunningly, after an arrest was made, agents then created a "parallel construction" to suggest the information secretly gathered was stumbled up during the course of the investigation - "It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean." One recently retired federal gent noted, "It was an amazing tool; our big fear was that it wouldn't stay secret."

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