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Collusion

Obama admin. derailed efforts to stop Hezbollah drug, weapon, and money laundering schemes - in order to get Iran deal



Obama admin. derailed efforts to stop Hezbollah drug, weapon, and money laundering schemes - in order to get Iran deal It's a rare day when I get to direct your attention to truly exceptional reporting over at The Politico. However, today is that day. The Politico has put together a damning indictment of the Obama Administration's handling of terrorist nations, terrorist organizations, criminal nations, and global arms and drug dealers - all of which were given free passes in service of the infamous "Iran nuclear deal." It seems that, at one point, we had a team of investigators who were closing in a planet-wide network of money laundering and drug smuggling that was being directed by neutered.
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.
These networks involved moving drugs from Columbia to West Africa and into Europe, as well as through Mexico into the United States. They also tracked mountains of cash that were laundered through complex - and global - systems of used car purchases and sales. The vast organization eventually led agents back to Hezbollah, and those holding Hezbollah’s leash. ...Namely, Iran:
They followed cocaine shipments, tracked a river of dirty cash, and traced what they believed to be the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration wasn't interested in bringing the guilty parties to justice. You'll recall that when President Obama took office he was determined to make the Middle East great again. He went on his apology tour, bent over backwards to treat terrorist nations as wronged parties, and did everything he could to appease those who consider our country 'the great Satan.' In a strategic change as embarrassing as it was shameful, Obama and his surrogates envisioned a kinder, gentler, more modern Hezbollah. It looks like that - coupled with a desperate desire to secure the Iranian nuclear "deal" - was the reason Project Cassandra was eventually gutted.

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the administration’s willingness to envision a new role for Hezbollah in the Middle East, combined with its desire for a negotiated settlement to Iran’s nuclear program, translated into a reluctance to move aggressively against the top Hezbollah operatives... 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.
According to the Politico, an array of arms dealers, bankers, Iranian criminal envoys, and high-level Hezbollah operatives all caught a break as the Obama administration refused to prosecute them or pressure for their extradition despite longstanding warrants. One of these guys, known as "The Ghost," is not only one of the planet's biggest cocaine dealers, he's also a supplier of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's chemical weapons. These are the very weapons he eventually used on his own citizens, an incident which represented a mealy-mouthed, unenforced, 'red line' for the Obama administration.
The administration also rejected repeated efforts by Project Cassandra members to charge Hezbollah’s military wing as an ongoing criminal enterprise under a federal Mafia-style racketeering statute, task force members say. And they allege that administration officials declined to designate Hezbollah a “significant transnational criminal organization” and blocked other strategic initiatives that would have given the task force additional legal tools, money and manpower to fight it.

Former Obama administration members claim there's nothing to see here. For virtually every example a former Project Cassandra member offers, they have an alternate explanation and, eventually, they suggest that those claiming political motivations are imagining things. However, David Asher - one of the men who helped create and moniter Project Cassandra - disagrees. According to him, the reasons were clear.
“The closer we got to the [Iran deal], the more these activities went away,” Asher said. “So much of the capability, whether it was special operations, whether it was law enforcement, whether it was [Treasury] designations — even the capacity, the personnel assigned to this mission — it was assiduously drained, almost to the last drop, by the end of the Obama administration.”
But hey, Barack Obama and John Kerry got to claim a win. Isn't that what really matters? We don't say this often, but: Do yourself a favor and head on over to The Politico to read the entire piece. There is waaaay more to it than fair use will let us share here. It's excellent reporting, and it's well worth your time.


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