From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation

3. How "Narcs" Learn

3How ‘‘Narcs’’ Learn It was an offer few of the computer distributors could refuse: three days of fun and sun on the beaches of Miami with all expenses paid, including travel, five-star hotel accommodations, and tickets to Comdex, a leading computer trade fair, where they would sample the latest trinkets and gadgets in information technology. There was only one catch. The invitation was part of an elaborate undercover sting by American law enforcers to lure Colombian merchants to south Florida, where they faced criminal indictments for money laundering and drug traf- ficking. The sting was part of a larger three-year investigation known as ‘‘Operation Cashback,’’ targeting computer distributors and black market peso brokers believed to be exploiting a brisk trade in personal computers to launder drug profits. Undercover agents from the dea and irs set up fake export and import companies in Miami and Bogotá to infiltrate the money-laundering network and develop evidence for prosecution. Agents used the front companies to export personal computers from Miami, sometimes stuffed with cash, and computer parts to Bogotá-based wholesalers. These ‘‘controlled’’ transactions allowed law enforcers to gain the trust of their putative business partners and eventually trick them into making the trip to Miami, where they were arrested and prosecuted in American courts. By the conclusion of Cashback , police and prosecutors had convicted fifty Colombian and American money launderers and taken back close to $4 million in illicit cash.1 Essential to the operation’s success was law enforcers’ ability to outfox their adversaries through of a combination of ingenuity, cunning, and deceit. Mētis, as we shall see in this chapter, is indispensable not only for drug traffickers and money launderers who operate outside the law but for law enforcers who work within it. Before the 1980s, undercover investigations of the size and shrewdness of Operation Cashback were virtually unknown. In the 1970s, while Colombian traffickers expanded into the marijuana and cocaine trades, agents from the newly formed Drug Enforcement Administration were arresting low-level street dealers and confiscating small amounts of drugs. While popular among politicians eager to show their constituents they were getting tough on crime, the transactional ap- 80 j From Pablo to Osama proach to drug control was ill suited to a ‘‘super’’ law enforcement agency created to dismantle the largest transnational smuggling networks . For much of its first decade of existence, the dea came under intense scrutiny for its inability to target higher-level traffickers through complex conspiracy investigations. In response to these external pressures, as well as to changes in the international drug trade, during the 1980s and 1990s the dea developed numerous innovations in its undercover operations, including controlled deliveries and reverse stings. The agency also placed greater emphasis on intelligence collection and analysis, while increasing its use of electronic surveillance technologies such as telephone wiretaps and pen registers. During the same period, Washington and Bogotá created binational enforcement networks composed of elite drug enforcement units in Colombia that shared intelligence with their American partners and carried out joint investigations and interdiction operations. In part thanks to these reforms, by the late 1990s the dea and the Colombian National Police had become more competent in identifying, infiltrating, and disrupting trafficking networks than they had been in the early 1970s. In making these improvements, neither agency has proved to be immune from the corruption scandals, bureaucratic rivalries, and civil rights violations that have periodically undermined counterdrug law enforcement in both countries. They have, however, shown themselves to be adaptive institutions, capable of responding to feedback from other government organizations and changes in the international drug trade. Drug Enforcement as Techne and Mētis As illustrated in the previous chapter, drug traffickers require technical and experiential knowledge to perform their activities. But if drug smuggling involves knowledge about how to produce, export, conceal, and distribute illegal drugs, the information needs of contemporary law enforcement are substantially greater and more complex. Counterdrug law enforcement is a specialized form of police activity that requires knowledge of drug pharmacology, criminal investigation, penal law, civil rights, and telecommunications technologies, among other things. To be effective, law enforcers must learn how to identify different illegal drugs, initiate investigations against suspected smugglers, gather intel- How ‘‘Narcs’’ Learn j 81 ligence from a variety of human and electronic sources, plan and carry out undercover operations, provide persuasive testimony in...