Cocaine smuggling ring used abandoned shipwreck to refuel high-speed "narco boats," police in Spain say
Combating narco-subs and narco-terrorism in the U.S. and abroad
Police forces from several countries have dismantled an international drug trafficking ring that used what authorities called high-speed "narco boats" to smuggle large quantities of cocaine from Brazil and Colombia to Spain's Canary Islands, Spanish police said Friday.
The ring is suspected of using 11 speedboats to pick up drugs from larger "mother ships" in different points in the Atlantic and then bring them to the archipelago located off northwestern Africa, police said in a statement. They also allegedly used an abandoned shipwreck as a refueling platform for the speedboats, authorities said.
It is believed to be "one of the largest criminal organizations dedicated to cocaine trafficking operating from South America to the Canary Islands" using this method, the statement added.
Officers arrested 48 people as part of the operation, which was carried out in cooperation with Britain's National Crime Agency, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and pan-European police agency Europol.
The authorities have so far this year seized nearly 3,800 kilos of cocaine that was being smuggled by the gang, along with 19 boats and around 100,000 euros ($114,000) which belonged to the ring. Six properties and electronic and geolocation equipment were also seized, authorities said.
Police forces from Colombia, France, Portugal, Poland and Cape Verde also took part in the operation.
Spain is a major gateway to Europe for drug trafficking networks due to its ties to former colonies in Latin America and its proximity to Morocco, a top cannabis producer.
The bust was announced one day after the U.S. Treasury announced it had sanctioned six accused drug traffickers allegedly using boats and "narco subs" to traffic cocaine. Four Guyanese nationals and two Colombians — Yeison Andres Sanchez Vallejo and Manuel Salazar — were accused of allegedly trafficking tons of cocaine from South America to the United States, Europe and the Caribbean.
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Associated Press
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- Associated Press
Spain hopes for Bonmati recovery at Euro 2025 and bids for 'historic generation' status
MADRID (AP) — Spain's final preparations for the Women's European Championship have been upended. Again. Three years ago, Alexia Putellas tore an ACL days before the competition. This time, a different Ballon d'Or-winning midfielder's tournament is in question after Aitana Bonmatí was hospitalized with viral meningitis. Bonmatí came down with a fever during practice Friday and later checked in to a Madrid hospital. The team planned to travel to Switzerland on Sunday for the tournament, where it is considered one of the favorites after winning the 2023 World Cup, even though it has never reached a Euros final before. Spain coach Montse Tomé revealed after Friday's 3-1 victory in a friendly against Japan that the 27-year-old star tested positive for viral meningitis. 'The word is scary, but the doctor tells me that she is under control. She will remain in the hospital and we don't know for how long,' Tomé said. Spain's first game is against Portugal on Thursday in Bern. It will also face Belgium and Italy in Group B. Stability after Rubiales scandal Bonmatí's setback aside, Spain had been enjoying some peace and stability now that the Luis Rubiales scandal is behind them. Spain is arriving for Euro 2025 just a few months after Rubiales was convicted of sexual assault for an unsolicited kiss on player Jenni Hermoso during the 2023 World Cup awards ceremony. The conviction helped end one of the worst chapters in the history of Spanish soccer. The kiss sparked outrage and marred the nation's celebrations of the team's first major title in women's soccer. It ignited an unprecedented crisis that left the Spanish federation and women's soccer in turmoil. Spanish society called for more support for women, and sports officials ultimately were forced to review outdated protocols and improve the conditions for the women's team that is among the main title favorites at Euro 2025. 'I remember when I used to come to play for the national team and I didn't enjoy it. I just wanted to go home, to be honest,' playmaker Bonmatí, a two-time Ballon d'Or winner, said a few days before falling ill. 'It was tough to play here. The situation wasn't good. But now everything is better, there is more stability for everyone and that benefits the group.' The crisis prompted by the kiss on Hermoso — who was not called up by Tomé for the Euro 2025 squad — helped expedite changes that players had been demanding for a long time, including by some who refused to play for the national team even before the World Cup. 'The conditions have changed a lot,' said Putellas, another two-time world player of the year. 'Especially in terms of travel, nutrition, training. Things have changed radically. Now we are enjoying conditions that are at the top level of the men's team. It's something that has taken a lot of effort and work by many people.' Putellas said it's clear that the structure provided for the women's team is much more professional now, including in areas such as marketing and communication. 'We are finally where we wanted to be for some time,' she said. 'Because we have pushed for it, and also because a lot of people have helped us. Now we are just ready to compete and enjoy it.' Rubiales was convicted in February and ordered to pay more than 10,000 euros ($11,700) in fines. He was prohibited from approaching Hermoso or communicating with her for a year. Prosecutors had asked for a prison sentence. Rubiales was acquitted of a charge of coercion for allegedly trying to make Hermoso downplay the kiss on the lips. Tomé left out Hermoso from the squad saying that 'there's a lot of competition in her position.' Spain established itself as one of the powerhouses in women's soccer by winning the World Cup and following it up by lifting the trophy of the inaugural Women's Nations League in 2024. It then just missed out on a medal by finishing fourth at the Paris Olympics, when it lost to Brazil in the semifinals and to Germany in the bronze-medal match. Spain still a favorite Spain has never reached a final at the European Championship. Its best result was a last-four appearance in 1997. It was eliminated in the quarterfinals at each of the last three Euros. Still, it's a team that includes Barcelona and Real Madrid stars — and they've been playing well. In early June, Cláudia Pina scored twice in Spain's 2-1 victory over defending European champion England in the Nations League. 'We have been carrying the 'favorite' tag for a few years now, since we won the World Cup,' Bonmatí said. 'We are used to it and we take it with responsibility. There are other top teams and we need to respect them.' Even if Bonmatí needs time off, Spain will feel confident in the group stage. Spain had a 4-0 record this year against Portugal and Belgium — all in the group stage of the current Nations League edition. That included a 7-1 home victory over Portugal in April. 'Winning the European title would come as a confirmation that this is a historic generation for Spain's women's soccer,' Bonmatí said. ___ AP soccer:
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Confessions of a gun smuggler: Former trafficker reveals how she brought weapons into Canada
Everyone knows guns used by Canadian criminals are often smuggled from the U.S. Not everyone knows how — not like Naomi Haynes does. That's because she did the smuggling. A native Montrealer who's been living in the U.S. for decades, she helped traffic dozens of weapons into Canada, some linked directly to drug gangs. "I wasn't thinking about the havoc I was causing in my birth land," she told CBC News last week. "I've got my kids, I've got bills. The only thing I [was] thinking about is monetary gains. I wasn't thinking about the people who are going to be affected." CBC News established contact with Haynes while she was in prison — at first communicating by email, then with a glitchy prison video app and then in a lengthy interview following her release last year. Her story helps shed light on the thousands of guns a year in Canada that police trace to the U.S. She described, in detail, tricks of the smuggling trade. And how she managed to move drugs, cash and, eventually, guns, for many years, depending on the product — either into the U.S., between U.S. states or into Canada. Rule No. 1: Only one person per car. If the vehicle gets stopped at the border, you don't want two partners tripping over each other's story during secondary questioning. "There's only one story this way," said Haynes, 45. "If you have two drivers, there's conflicting stories, and that's when you have problems.… 'Oh, you're coming from Virginia, but your friend says [she's] coming from Baltimore.' "So just one driver, so they can stick with their one lie." I wasn't thinking about the people who are going to be affected. - Naomi Haynes Rule No. 2: Find a good hiding spot. She would stash items in hidden compartments under seats; in door panels; in the trunk. She'd also move drugs in a gas tank — in triple-sealed, vacuumed bags. Rule No. 3: Get drivers who won't arouse suspicion. Haynes didn't transport guns herself; she got pulled over too often. She'd ride in a separate vehicle. "I started paying white girls and guys to move stuff for me," she said. Especially white women. They never got pulled over, she said. Until one did. Haynes was arrested in 2019, charged with smuggling, and with conspiracy to make false statements; she pleaded guilty, was sentenced, and served just under five years in prison. Hers is an unusual story. She's a vegan, millennial, Jamaican Canadian political science grad in South Florida who supports Donald Trump, became a grandma and wound up in an international conspiracy. Then again, her life story was atypical from the start. Escaping Montreal "At the end of the day, you become what you know," Haynes said. She grew up around drug dealers. Her late father dealt crack, then smoked it. In a book she's writing about her life story, Haynes describes a period when he became meaner, zoned out and indifferent, his eyes bloodshot. Her book describes one sister jailed for selling ecstasy. Another sibling, her brother, led a local street gang, according to the Montreal Gazette. She grew up in the area just south of the old Montreal Forum; her grandmother worked in the hallowed hockey shrine. From childhood, Haynes earned money in unconventional ways. Her half-complete memoir, entitled The Runner: Tripped by the Feds, begins with the words: "For as long as I can remember I have had a hustle." She ran store errands for adults and got to keep the change; collected beer bottles from their parties and returned them for cash; and, later, resold contraband cigarettes. "I made my first $1,000 in the seventh grade," she writes. She was desperate to escape the scene, to flee the bad influences. Haynes harboured a childhood dream of living in the States, and in 1997, she made it happen. She enrolled in college. She got a bachelor's degree from Florida Atlantic University, according to court documents, and also studied criminal science. She started smuggling to pay for school. And she made poor choices, she says, about whom she surrounded herself with. The man who became her husband made a $5,000 down payment on a Jeep Cherokee for her; she used that vehicle and received thousands of dollars more to move hashish, hash oil and marijuana into Canada. Over the years, she shipped contraband countless times: ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana, hash and cash, occasionally driving on her own, but usually hiring someone. She'd move products from buyer to seller, often across international lines, but also domestically, say, from Florida to Chicago. It was only many years later that she started selling guns. Around 2016, Haynes was desperately low on cash — she was divorced, with a baby, not working and with an older boy playing intercity baseball. "Everybody that I always did business with always said, 'No guns, no guns, no guns,' because there's a trail," she told CBC News. But it was great cash, about $4,000 Cdn per gun. On a nine-millimetre handgun that costs a couple of hundred bucks in South Florida, it's an astronomical profit. She'd ship about 20 at a time, and there were multiple shipments. She admits to two of them, which she figures generated about $160,000. Subtracting the cost of the purchase, the driver and her partner's share, she estimates she kept about $30,000, which helped her live comfortably for a few months. And then it cost her everything. WATCH | Major Toronto gang busts connected to Hayes's network: Police started closing in on Haynes from different angles — arresting associates, seizing phones, recording conversations and catching her in lies. It started after she purchased 20 weapons from different Florida gun stores in February 2018. On March 1, a day after her last purchase, she crossed into Canada through New York. She was stopped re-entering the U.S. two weeks later at Champlain, N.Y., carrying $4,300 in cash, and multiple cellphones. Border officers seized her phones and downloaded the contents. According to court filings, they found fraudulent or counterfeit IDs for several associates and shared that with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. On the morning of April 27, two ATF agents arrived at her home in Boca Raton, Fla. She lied to them, insisting she'd been buying and selling guns to friends with legal permits. She insisted she had a storage unit. She took them to a CubeSmart facility and professed to be shocked when she found her unit empty. "You remember Martha Stewart?" ATF agent Tim Trenschel asked her, according to court documents. "The lady on TV that does fancy crafts. Do you remember that she spent some time in prison? Do you remember why?" Haynes replied: "Because she lied." The agent said: "Exactly." Haynes added: "About insider trading." The agent said: "You're way ahead of most people I talk to." WATCH | Majority of guns coming into Canada from U.S., data shows: Haynes insisted upon her truthfulness. "Listen, I get it, and I respect the law… I am being a thousand per cent honest." She was not, in fact, being 1,000 per cent honest. Far from it. The agent's observation about the risks of lying to a federal officer proved prescient. A couple of weeks later, guns she'd bought started turning up in police investigations in the Toronto area, identified despite attempts to deface the serial number. One loaded Taurus 9mm was found hidden in the panel of a car, alongside approximately $300,000 worth of cocaine. Days later, a Ruger .380 was found in another drug bust. The suspect tossed it aside while attempting to flee police. In September of that year, a friend she'd hired was stopped while crossing into Canada from New York state, carrying 20 hidden guns. Haynes was recorded following right behind her — crossing the border 62 minutes later. A number of the seized guns traced back to her circle. By this point, police had gained an informant. They were secretly recording conversations within her circle, even one involving Haynes's daughter. On Feb. 27, 2019, her daughter's boyfriend, Mackenzie Delmas, was caught. The informant delivered guns to him and Delmas was arrested immediately. Agents searched his home — and Haynes's. That's when Haynes knew she was done for. She was visiting her parents' home in the Montreal area. Her daughter called from Florida in the middle of the night with the news, and Haynes collapsed on the family couch. "I've never experienced a panic attack before in my life, but at that point, I started shaking. I couldn't talk, I couldn't breathe," Haynes said. "I was trying to gasp for air." Her mother tried calming her down, rubbing her back. She recalled her mother asking: "What's going on?" Haynes confessed what she'd been up to. The whole story. "My mother was so disappointed." At that point, Haynes made a decision: To give herself up. "I knew I was cooked," she said. "[I thought], I'm not gonna live on the run. I've got to face it. My time has come." Court documents confirm what happened next: She called the ATF in the wee hours of Feb. 28, and promised to return to the U.S. and speak with investigators. In subsequent recorded interviews on March 13 and April 3, she confessed everything: the fake identities, the illegal gun purchases, the shipments to Canada, the sales to known Canadian gangsters, her own trips north to collect cash and, crucially, her lies to police. She was arrested, and spent four years, nine months in prison, serving time in a low-security prison in Alabama. It was predictably miserable. She recalled guards treating inmates cruelly and arbitrarily — being decent to some of the meanest inmates, and mean to decent ones, people who got mixed up, in some cases accidentally, in bad situations. The worst was during COVID-19. After testing positive, she was sent to solitary confinement. "I was in the shoe for 13 days," she said. "I felt like a dog in a kennel. … The room was filthy. It was disgusting. The sinks — the water was brown. The toilet, it was disgusting." Her main diet in prison consisted of peanut butter. She gave up meat and dairy years ago, grossed out by it. Given the choice between baloney and peanut butter, she'd take the latter. She recalls paying $7 for a cauliflower once and air-frying it with a blow-dryer. But the absolute worst thing about prison? Her parents dying, and being unable to see them or attend their funeral. Her beloved mom slowly died of cancer while Haynes was in jail. By the time her father died, she was out, but she had to attend the funeral on Zoom. Haynes can't leave and re-enter the U.S. because she's fighting deportation. A Canadian citizen, she's a green-card holder in the U.S., and of her three kids, they're either living there or hoping to live there with her. She now works an office job at a landscaping company. "My mom was sick with cancer and I failed," Haynes said. "My choices and the things I was doing caused me to not be there for the person that was always there for me." What about potential gun victims: does her sense of guilt extend to them? As a vegan who avoids hurting animals, does she ever wonder whether any humans were harmed by those chunks of steel she trafficked? Initially, no, she said. As she got into the business, the only thing on her mind was money — paying the bills. Then she had four years, nine months in prison to think. And she started thinking about other people's pain, about other families and whether her guns killed any young kids in a drive-by. She now prays that those guns are confiscated. "I stay in constant prayer that they get seized," she said. "I don't want to know that I'm responsible for somebody losing their life."
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
A New Trump Plan Gives DHS and the White House Greater Influence in the Fight Against Organized Crime
This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. The Trump administration has launched a major reorganization of the U.S. fight against drug traffickers and other transnational criminal groups, setting out a strategy that would give new authority to the Department of Homeland Security and deepen the influence of the White House. The administration's plans, described in internal documents and by government officials, would reduce federal prosecutors' control over investigations, shifting key decisions to a network of task forces jointly led by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, the primary investigative arm of DHS. Officials said the plan to bring law enforcement agencies together in the new Homeland Security Task Forces has been driven primarily by President Donald Trump's homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, who is closely overseeing the project's implementation. Current and former officials said the proposed reorganization would make it easier for senior officials like Miller to disregard norms that have long walled off the White House from active criminal investigations. 'To the administration's credit, they are trying to break down barriers that are hard to break down,' said Adam W. Cohen, a career Justice Department attorney who was fired in March as head of the office that coordinates organized crime investigations involving often-competing federal agencies. 'But you won't have neutral prosecutors weighing the facts and making decisions about who to investigate,' he added of the task force plan. 'The White House will be able to decide.' The proposed reorganization would elevate the stature and influence of Homeland Security Investigations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement among law enforcement agencies, while continuing to push other agencies to pursue immigration-related crimes. The task forces would at least formally subordinate the Drug Enforcement Administration to HSI and the FBI after half a century in which the DEA has been the government's lead agency for narcotics enforcement. Trump's directive to establish the new task forces was included in an Inauguration Day executive order, 'Protecting the American People Against Invasion,' which focused on immigration. The new task forces will seek 'to end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States,' the order states. They will also aim to 'end the scourge of human smuggling and trafficking, with a particular focus on such offenses involving children.' Since that order was issued, the administration has proceeded with considerable secrecy. Some Justice Department officials who work on organized crime have been excluded from planning meetings, as have leaders of the DEA, people familiar with the process said. A White House spokesperson, Abigail Jackson, did not comment on Miller's role in directing the task force project or the secrecy of the process. 'While the Biden Administration opened the border and looked the other way while Americans were put at risk,' she said, 'the Trump Administration is taking action to dismantle cross-border human smuggling and trafficking and ensure the use of all available law enforcement tools to faithfully execute immigration laws and to Make America Safe Again.' The task force project was described in interviews with current and former officials who have been briefed on it. ProPublica also reviewed documents about the implementation of the task forces, including a briefing paper prepared for Cabinet-level officials on the president's Homeland Security Council. The Homeland Security Task Forces will take a 'coordinated, whole-of-government approach' to combatting transnational criminal groups, the paper states. They will also draw support from state and local police forces and U.S. intelligence agencies. Until now, the government has coordinated that same work through a Justice Department program established by President Ronald Reagan, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces — which the Trump administration is shutting down. Known by the ungainly acronym OCDETF (pronounced 'oh-suh-def'), the $550-million program is above all an incentive system: To receive funding, different agencies (including the DEA, the FBI and HSI) must come together to propose investigations, which are then vetted and approved by prosecutor-led OCDETF teams. The agents are required to include a financial investigation of the criminal activity, typically with help from the Treasury Department, and they often recruit support from state and local police. The OCDETF intelligence center, located in the northern Virginia suburbs, manages the only federal database in which different law-enforcement agencies share their raw investigative files. While officials describe OCDETF as an imperfect structure, they also say it has become a crucial means of law enforcement cooperation. Its mandate was expanded under the Biden and first Trump administrations to encompass all types of organized crime, not just drug trafficking. As recently as a few months ago, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, declared that OCDETF would play a central role in stopping illegal immigration, drug trafficking and street gangs. He even suggested that it investigate the governments of so-called sanctuary cities for obstructing immigration enforcement. But just weeks after Blanche's announcement, the administration informed OCDETF officials their operations would be shut down by the end of the fiscal year in September. In a letter to Democratic senators on June 23, the Justice Department confirmed that the Homeland Security Task Forces would absorb OCDETF's 'mission and resources' but did not explain how the new structure would take charge of the roughly 5,000 investigations OCDETF now oversees. 'These were not broken programs,' said a former Homeland Security official who, like others, would only discuss the administration's plans on condition of anonymity. 'If you wanted to build them out and make sure that the immigration side of things got more importance, you could have done that. You did not have to build a new wheel.' Officials also cited other concerns about the administration's plan, including whether the new task force system will incorporate some version of the elaborate safeguards OCDETF has used to persuade law enforcement agencies to share their case files in its intelligence database. Under those rules, OCDETF analysts must obtain permission from the agency that provided the records before sharing them with others. Many officials said they worried that the new task forces seem to be abandoning OCDETF's incentive structure. OCDETF funds are conditioned on multiple agencies working together on important cases; officials said the monies will now be distributed to law enforcement agencies directly and without the requirement that they collaborate. 'They are taking away a lot of the organization that the government uses to attack organized crime,' a Justice Department official said. 'If you want to improve something, great, but they don't even seem to have a vision for how this is going to work. There are no specifics.' The Homeland Security Task Forces will try to enforce interagency cooperation by a 'supremacy clause,' that gives task force leaders the right to pursue the cases they want and shut down others that might overlap. The clause will require 'that any new or existing investigative and/or intelligence initiatives' targeting transnational criminal organizations 'must be presented to the HSTF with a right of first refusal,' according to the briefing paper reviewed by ProPublica. 'Further,' it adds, 'the supremacy clause prohibits parallel or competitive activities by member agencies, effectively eliminating duplicative structures such as stand-alone task forces or specialized units, to include narcotics, financial, or others.' Several senior law enforcement officials said that approach would curtail the independence that investigators need to follow good leads when they see them; newer and less-visible criminal organizations would be more likely to escape scrutiny. In recent years, those officials noted, both Democratic and Republican administrations have tried at times to short-circuit competition for big cases among law enforcement agencies and judicial districts. But that has often led to as many problems as it has solved, they said. One notable example, several officials said, was a move by the Biden administration's DEA administrator, Anne Milgram, to limit her agency's cooperation with FBI and HSI investigations into fentanyl smuggling by Los Chapitos, the mafia led by sons of the Mexican drug boss Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as 'El Chapo.' Although the DEA eventually indicted the Chapitos' leaders in New York, officials from other agencies complained that Milgram's approach wasted months of work and delayed the indictments of some traffickers. Later, when the FBI secretly arranged the surrender of one of the sons, Joaquín Guzmán López, DEA officials were not told about the operation until it was underway, officials said. (Guzmán López initially pleaded not guilty but is believed to be negotiating with the government. Milgram did not respond to messages asking for comment.) As to the benefits of competition, prosecutors and agents cite the case of El Chapo himself. Before he was extradited to the United States in January 2017, Guzmán Loera had been indicted by seven U.S. attorneys' offices, reflecting yearslong investigations by the DEA, the FBI and HSI, among others. In the agreement that the Obama Justice Department brokered, three offices led the prosecution, which used the best evidence gathered by the others. Under the new structure of the Homeland Security Task Forces, several officials said, federal prosecutors will still generally decide whether to bring charges against criminal groups, but they will have less of a role in determining which criminals to investigate. Regional and national task forces will be overseen by 'executive committees' that are expected to include political appointees, officials said. The committees will guide broader decisions about which criminal groups to target, they said. 'The HSTF model unleashes the full might of our federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to deliver justice for the American people, whose plight Biden and Garland ignored for four years,' a Justice Department spokesperson said, referring to former Attorney General Merrick Garland. 'Any suggestion that the Department is abandoning its mission of cracking down on violent organized crime is unequivocally false.' During Trump's first term, veteran officials of the FBI, DEA and HSI all complained that the administration's overarching focus on immigration diverted agents from more urgent national security threats, including the fentanyl epidemic. Now, as hundreds more agents have been dispatched to immigration enforcement, those officials worry that the new task forces will focus on rounding up undocumented immigrants who have any sort of criminal record at the cost of more significant organized crime investigations. The first task forces to begin operating under the new model have not assuaged such concerns. In late May, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced that the Virginia Homeland Security Task Force had arrested more than 1,000 'criminal illegal aliens' in just two months, but the authorities have provided almost no details connecting those suspects to transnational criminal organizations. On June 16, the Gulf of America Homeland Security Task Force, a new unit based in Alabama and Georgia, announced the arrests of 60 people, nearly all of them undocumented immigrants, at a cockfighting event in northern Alabama. Although cockfighting is typically subject to a maximum fine of $50 in the state, a senior HSI official claimed the suspects were 'tied to a broader network of serious crimes, including illegal gambling, drug trafficking and violent offenses.' Once again, however, no details were provided. It is unclear how widely the new task force rules might be applied. While OCDETF funds the salaries of more than a thousand federal agents and hundreds of prosecutors, thousands more DEA, FBI and HSI agents work on other narcotics and organized crime cases. In early June, five Democratic senators wrote to Bondi questioning the decision to dismantle OCDETF. That decision was first reported by Bloomberg News. 'As the Department's website notes, OCDETF 'is the centerpiece of the Attorney General's strategy to combat transnational-organized crime and to reduce the availability of illicit narcotics in the nation,'' the senators wrote. In a June 23 response, a Justice Department official, Daniel Boatright, wrote that OCDETF's operations would be taken over by the new task forces and managed by the office of the Deputy Attorney General. But Boatright did not clarify what role federal prosecutors would play in the new system. 'A lot of good, smart people are trying to make this work,' said one former senior official. 'But without having prosecutors drive the process, it is going to completely fracture how we do things.' Veteran officials at the DEA — who appear to have had almost no say in the creation of the new task forces— are said to be even more concerned. Already the DEA has been fighting pressure to provide access to investigative files without assurances that the safeguards of the OCDETF intelligence center will remain in place, officials said. 'DEA has not even been invited to any of the task force meetings,' one former senior official said. 'It is mind-boggling. They're just getting orders saying, 'This is what Stephen Miller wants and you've got to give it to us.''
