Parallel Construction Get-Out-of-Jail-Free-Card
By Chriss Street
Just as the newest bombshell that the National Security
Agency has been leaking information to the Drug Enforcement Agency (NSA)
through a secret program called Parallel Construction was about to break
on Monday, the Obama Administration tried to divert attention by announcing
early Sunday morning that “chatter” had been intercepted by the NSA that the al
Qaeda terrorist network was plotting to attack on a U.S. embassy and a transportation
asset this week.
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But the uncovering of Parallel Construction’s strategy
of consciously lying to defense attorneys, prosecutors and judges is sure to
result in a get-out-of-jail-free-card for some of America’s worst drug lords
and criminals.
Islamic militants have always used Ramadan, the 30
day worldwide Muslim observance of prayers and fasting, as a period to
rest and retrofit their warriors. The U.S. and other Jihadist targets
were already going on high alert as Ramadan holidays this year end on Wednesday,
August 7th. Making a Sunday emergency public alert seemed like
over-kill.
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But the Administration knew that the next day, Reuter’s News
Agency was releasing a report that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA) has been relying on NSA domestic intelligence intercepts through an
inter-agency agreement called Parallel Construction as a basis to launch
criminal investigations of Americans. As fugitive whistleblower Edward
Snowden outed, there is everything illegal about the NSA sharing of warrantless
information with third parties not involved in national security issues.
Documents reviewed by Reuters News Agency demonstrate that
law enforcement agents who have used Parallel Construction to make arrests,
were directed by the NSA to conceal from defense lawyers, and sometimes
prosecutors and judges, how the information was obtained. Federal agents
were trained on how to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover
up where the surveillance information originated. Such fraudulent actions
are a clear violation of the Fourth and Sixth Amendment to the United States
Constitution and a valid basis for convicts to be freed through appeal.
The American system of “Jurisprudence” is based on the right
to confront witnesses and access to discovery of “exculpatory evidence” that
would reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
The intentional or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, or destroying
of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding is referred to as spoliation.
There are two possible consequences for spoliation under
law. In jurisdictions where the intentional act of spoliation is a
criminal offence by statute, it may result in fines
and incarceration for the parties who engaged in the
spoliation. In jurisdictions where relevant case law precedent
has been established, proceedings possibly altered by spoliation may be
interpreted under a “spoliation inference.” The spoliation
inference is a negative evidentiary inference that a “finder of
fact” can draw from a party’s destruction of a document or thing that is
relevant to an ongoing or reasonably foreseeable civil or
criminal proceeding that the destroyed evidence creates a “consciousness
of guilt” or other motivation to avoid the disclosing the evidence.
Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as
a federal judge from 1994 to 2011 responded to Reuters questions on the
legality of Parallel Construction data sharing: “I have never heard of
anything like this at all“. She had assumed that the National
Security Agency had limited its collecting of international phone records and
computer activities to stop terrorists, not nab domestic criminals. “It
is one thing to create special rules for national security, ordinary crime is
entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations.”
The DEA in 1994 set a secret unit named “Special Operations
Division” (SOD) that includes the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service,
Department of Homeland Security and a dozen other agencies to combat Columbian
and Mexican drug cartel activities. But as the NSA began collecting
metadata on all Americans in the last few years without court search warrants,
SOD grew from a few to hundreds of agents in a secret location in Virginia that
now are data mining domestic electronic communications.
SOD agents contact state police who are told to find an
excuse to pull over a certain vehicle at a certain time, and then have a drug
dog search it. After an arrest was made, police and federal agents were
instructed by DEA to engage in the “parallel construction” lying to conceal the
source of the tip-off. Former DEA agent, Finn Selander described parallel
construction as: “you work it backwards to make it clean.”
Now that Parallel Construction lawlessness has been exposed,
defense attorneys will soon be appealing to the courts for a
“get-out-of-jail-free-card for many of America’s worst drug lords and
criminals. Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey defense lawyer, said any
systematic government effort to conceal the circumstances under which cases
begin “would not only be alarming but pretty blatantly unconstitutional.”
As former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. added: “You can’t game
the system.”
CHRISS STREET & PAUL PRESTON
Present On the Republic Radio Network in the USA and Canada
“The Agenda 21 Radio Talk Show”
Streaming Live Monday through Friday at 7-10 PM
http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/shoutcast/shoutcast.html
Present On the Republic Radio Network in the USA and Canada
“The Agenda 21 Radio Talk Show”
Streaming Live Monday through Friday at 7-10 PM
http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/shoutcast/shoutcast.html
Visit Our Blogs: www.chrissstreetandcompany.com
& www.agenda21radio.com
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