In 2014, cocaine was second only behind heroin in U.S. drug deaths.
A major player in the cocaine traffic into the U.S. was the Iranian-sponsored terrorist group Hezbollah. For year it has been known that Hezbollah has infiltrated criminal gangs in South America and set up its own billion-dollar international criminal enterprise to finance its terror activities. None of this was a secret.
U.S. law enforcement came up with an aggressive plan to take down the Hezbollah international network and its key individuals. But it never happened. We now know why.
Politico Magazine has an amazing expose on how the Obama White House derailed the plans to take down the Hezbollah network, and to allow Hezbollah to continue drug-running into the U.S., in order to avoid upsetting the Iran nuclear deal.
The Politico article is so long, so detailed, and so powerful, it’s impossible for me to give a brief summary, so read the whole thing, The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hoo. The subheadline tells the story:
An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah’s billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House’s desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.
The opening paragraph of the Politico article is stunning in revealing the Obama administrations callous disregard for Americans afflicted by the cocaine epidemic, fed in part by Hezbollah:
In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.
There is so much detail in the article, you really do need to read it (but I repeat myself). Here’s a short intro segment on the U.S. law enforcement plans that were scuttled by Obama:
The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.
Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies….
And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran….
But then law enforcement ran headlong into Obama’s obsessive desire to strike a nuclear deal with Iran. That deal would fulfill Obama’s goal, exhibited since the earliest days of his administration, to keep the Mullahs in power and to establish Iran with regional hegemony, as I documented in Obama sweeps history toward the Mullahs.
In order to fulfill that goal, Obama and his communications assistant Ben Rhodes, deliberately deceived the American public into believing the nuclear deal negotiations were the result of a moderating Iranian leadership. In order to perpetuate that falsehood, Rhodes created an echo chamber of think tanks and pundits, and deceived reporters.
David Gerstman detailed the Iran nuke deal fraud in Grand Deception: How Obama and Ben Rhodes Lied Us Into the Iran nuke deal.
[Ben Rhodes and Barack Obama]
Politico reports:
But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.
The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.
These were no rogue players, it was top-down interference:
“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” said David Asher, who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra as a Defense Department illicit finance analyst. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”
And the results are being felt to this day:
The derailment of Project Cassandra also has undermined U.S. efforts to determine how much cocaine from the various Hezbollah-affiliated networks is coming into the United States, especially from Venezuela, where dozens of top civilian and military officials have been under investigation for more than a decade. Recently, the Trump administration designated the country’s vice president, a close ally of Hezbollah and of Lebanese-Syrian descent, as a global narcotics kingpin.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah — in league with Iran — continues to undermine U.S. interests in Iraq, Syria and throughout wide swaths of Latin America and Africa, including providing weapons and training to anti-American Shiite militias. And Safieddine, the Ghost and other associates continue to play central roles in the trafficking of drugs and weapons, current and former U.S. officials believe.
How many Americans got hooked, overdosed, or died on Hezbollah cocaine so Obama could get his Iran nuke deal?
And it all was to appease and please the Iranians:
“During the negotiations, early on, they [the Iranians] said listen, we need you to lay off Hezbollah, to tamp down the pressure on them, and the Obama administration acquiesced to that request,” the former CIA officer told POLITICO. “It was a strategic decision to show good faith toward the Iranians in terms of reaching an agreement.”
The Obama team “really, really, really wanted the deal,” the former officer said.
We knew Obama and others were willing to sacrifice Israelis to obtain the Iran nuclear deal. Now we know they were willing to sacrifice Americans.
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