The Justice Department discovers lack oversight of DEA's informants.
A study conducted by the Department of Justice Inspector General discovered that the Drug Enforcement Administration is negligent towards established protocol in dealing with informants The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
The study conducted by the Department of Justice Inspector General found that millions of dollars have been gifted away without proper verification of federal disability settlements to informants and their families. The survey was extrapolated on a review of particular case files from a San Diego office that utilized confidential informants.
The account determined sloppy execution of agency’s program in handling informants, who play an imperative role in surveillance and data gathering and arrests. The agency had 240 long term informants on its payroll, which means those who are used for more than six consecutive years, without conducting sufficient oversight. The analysis also discovered inattentive monitoring of informants given permission to break the law in order to capture a criminal, a practice labeled as Otherwise Illegal Activity.
The Justice Department oversight said that their auditors received mixed responses regarding specifics on the policies they use to justify illegal actions. The scope of the program’s dysfunction couldn’t be determined because of a general lack of compliance from the DEA. Information requests were delayed and inspection of confidential information was prevented. Thus, reviewers had a limited perspective.
The inspection included case files from the San Diego and Chicago offices, which were targeted at random. The memorandum detailed that between 2013 and 2014, $1,034,000 were paid out in death and disability benefits to 17 informants and their dependents. But the program’s most egregious issue is mismanagement of payments by the DEA and Department of Labor. For instance, the family of an informant that was shot to death has received $1.3 million in receipts since 1989.
Other claims also didn’t have suitable approval. In one example, money was given to an informant that had been killed overseas but no witness was followed up with to substantiate it.
