MIAMI (AP) \u2014 A secret memo obtained by The Associated Press details a yearslong covert operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that sent undercover operatives into Venezuela to surreptitiously record and build drug-trafficking cases against the country\u2019s leadership \u2013 a plan the U.S. acknowledged from the start was arguably a violation of international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is necessary to conduct this operation unilaterally and without notifying Venezuelan officials,\u201d reads the 15-page 2018 memo expanding \u201cOperation Money Badger,\u201d an investigation that authorities say targeted dozens of people, including Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While there\u2019s no clear mechanism to hold the United States accountable legally, the revelation threatens to roil already fraught relations with Maduro\u2019s socialist government and could deepen resentment of the U.S. across Latin America over perceived meddling. It also offers a rare window into the lengths the DEA was willing to go to fight the drug war in a country that banned U.S. drug agents nearly two decades ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of Maduro\u2019s closest allies were ensnared in the investigation, including Alex Saab, the businessman recently freed in a prisoner swap<\/u><\/a> for 10 Americans and a fugitive defense contractor. But until now, it was not clear that U.S. probes targeting Venezuela involved legally questionable tactics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe don\u2019t like to say it publicly but we are, in fact, the police of the world,\u201d said Wes Tabor, a former DEA official who served as the agency\u2019s country attach\u00e9 in Venezuela well before the investigation described in the memo was launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Tabor, who would not confirm the existence of any such operations, said unilateral, covert actions can be an effective tool when conducted with proper limits and accountability, particularly in a country like Venezuela, where the blurred lines between the state and criminal underworld have made it an ideal transit point for up to 15% of the world\u2019s cocaine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re not in the business of abiding by other countries\u2019 laws when these countries are rogue regimes and the lives of American children are at stake,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd in the case of Venezuela, where they\u2019re flooding us with dope, it\u2019s worth the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The DEA and Justice Department declined to answer questions from the AP about the memo, how frequently the U.S. conducts unilateral activities and the makeup of the panel that approves such operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Venezuela\u2019s communications ministry did not respond to requests for comment. But in recent days Maduro accused the DEA and the CIA \u2014 a regular target he uses to rally supporters \u2014 of undertaking efforts to destabilize the country. The CIA declined to comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t think President Biden is involved,\u201d Maduro said in a televised appearance this month. \u201cBut the CIA and the DEA operate independently as imperialist criminal organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The never-before-seen document was authored at the cusp of Republican President Donald Trump\u2019s \u201c maximum pressure<\/u><\/a> \u201d campaign to remove the Venezuelan president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maduro had just taken an authoritarian turn, prevailing in what the Trump administration decried as a sham re-election in 2018. Within weeks, senior DEA officials plotted to deploy at least three undercover informants to surreptitiously record top officials suspected of converting Venezuela into a narco state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But because the plan appeared to run roughshod over Venezuelan and international law, it required the approval of what is known as the Sensitive Activity Review Committee, or SARC, a secretive panel of senior State and Justice Department officials that is reserved for the most sensitive DEA cases involving tricky ethical, legal or foreign policy considerations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It marked an aggressive expansion of \u201cMoney Badger,\u201d which the DEA and prosecutors in Miami created in 2013 and would go on to investigate around 100 Venezuelan insiders, according to two people familiar with the operation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss law enforcement details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>By authorizing otherwise illicit wire transfers through U.S.-based front companies and bank accounts, the DEA aimed to unmask the Colombian drug traffickers and corrupt officials leveraging Venezuela\u2019s tightly controlled foreign currency exchange system to launder ill-gotten gains. But it expanded over time, homing in on Maduro\u2019s family and top allies, although the president would end up being indicted elsewhere<\/u><\/a>, by the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Manhattan, on drug trafficking charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of the indictments of Venezuelans either before or after the 2018 memo made any mention of U.S. spying. And \u201cto limit or mitigate the exposure of the unilateral activities,\u201d the document advised DEA officials to protect their informants and curtail in-person meetings with targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not clear if \u201dMoney Badger\u201d is still ongoing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since Democratic President Joe Biden took office in 2021, his administration has rolled back sanctions and brought few new prosecutions of Maduro insiders as the Justice Department\u2019s attention has turned to Russia, China and the Middle East. The Biden administration has also sought to lure Maduro back into negotiations with the U.S.-backed opposition, threatening to re-impose crippling oil sanctions if the OPEC nation doesn\u2019t abide by an agreement to hold fair and free elections<\/u><\/a> this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The operation targeting Maduro\u2019s inner circle is not the first time the United States has conducted law enforcement operations overseas without notifying a host country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1998, Mexico castigated the United States for keeping it in the dark about a three-year money laundering sting<\/u><\/a> known as \u201cOperation Casablanca\u201d \u2014 partly conducted on Mexican soil \u2014 that implicated some 160 people, including several bank executives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notably, legal experts say no international court or tribunal has jurisdiction to hold the United States or its agents accountable for covert law enforcement actions in other countries, and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld arrests and evidence collected on such missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Evan Criddle, a law professor at William & Mary in Virginia, said international law forbids undercover operations such as those described in the memo that take place in another country\u2019s territory without consent. He expects the release of the memo to \u201ccause some embarrassment to the United States, prompt Venezuelan diplomats to register their objections and potentially inhibit future cooperation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several current and former DEA officials who examined the memo told the AP they were surprised less by the brazenness of the plan than the agency\u2019s acknowledgement of it in internal documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s very rarely done simply because there\u2019s always that potential of it blowing up in the U.S. government\u2019s face,\u201d said Mike Vigil, the DEA\u2019s former chief of international operations. \u201cBut Venezuela had already become a rogue state. I think they figured they had nothing to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Operation Money Badger memo was never intended to be made public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was inadvertently uploaded among dozens of government exhibits to a file share website by the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Manhattan during the bribery conspiracy trial late last year of two former DEA supervisors who helped spearhead the agency\u2019s offensive against the Maduro government. It would be removed hours after an AP reporter started asking about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few days later, over the AP\u2019s objections, the federal judge presiding over the bribery trial took the highly unusual step of sealing the courtroom while the document was discussed, saying that doing so in open court would have \u201cserious diplomatic repercussions.\u201d Neither he nor prosecutors explained what those might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Former DEA supervisors Manny Recio and John Costanzo Jr. were eventually convicted<\/u><\/a> of leaking sensitive law enforcement information to Miami defense attorneys as part of a bribery conspiracy. One case<\/u><\/a> they discussed was that of Saab, a Colombian-born businessman who himself would be targeted by \u201cMoney Badger\u201d for the alleged siphoning of $350 million from state contracts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recio, who later worked as a private investigator recruiting new clients for the defense attorneys, emailed the Venezuelan plans to his personal email account days before his 2018 retirement. He approved the plans as an assistant special agent in charge, while Costanzo, an expert on Venezuela, oversaw the covert sting. Both men are expected to serve federal prison time, joining a growing list<\/u><\/a> of DEA agents behind bars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cInformation like this should never leave government servers,\u201d Michael Nadler, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who also helped coordinate the overseas sting, testified behind closed doors, according to a redacted transcript. \u201cIt contains information that provides identifying information regarding people who have agreed to cooperate with the United States in pretty dangerous situations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The AP is not publishing the actual memo or identifying the informants to avoid putting them in danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The memo harkens back to an earlier era of rising hostilities between the U.S. and Venezuela when ambitious federal investigators in several districts \u2013 New York, Miami, Houston and Washington \u2013 were competing to see who could penetrate deepest into Venezuela\u2019s criminal underworld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As part of that undeclared race, the DEA Miami Field Division\u2019s Group 10 recruited a dream informant: a professional money launderer accused of fleecing $800 million from Venezuela\u2019s foreign currency system through a fraudulent import scheme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The informant\u2019s illicit activity in Venezuela positioned him to help the DEA collect evidence against the chief target of the unilateral operation: Jose Vielma, an early acolyte of the late Hugo Ch\u00e1vez who in two decades of service to the Bolivarian revolution cycled through a number of top jobs, including trade minister and the head of Venezuela\u2019s IRS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vielma\u2019s alleged partner in crime, according to the DEA document, was another former military officer: Luis Motta, then electricity minister. The DEA memo authorized three informants to secretly record undercover meetings with the targets.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n FILE – Luis Alfredo Motta Dominguez, right, attends a pro-government rally in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 6, 2019. A secret memo obtained by The Associated Press details a covert operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that sent undercover operatives into Venezuela to record and build drug-trafficking cases against the country\u2019s leadership including Dominguez. (AP Photo\/Ariana Cubillos, File)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is a special risk that the (confidential sources) would be in danger if their cooperation with the DEA is exposed to host country officials,\u201d the memo states. \u201cPotential penalties include imprisonment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether the risks were worth it remains an open question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vielma and Motta were indicted on money laundering charges tied to bribery \u2014 not drug trafficking. Both remain in Venezuela and loyal to Maduro, with Vielma serving as a senior lawmaker and Motta\u2019s wife the governor of a major state. But like dozens of Maduro insiders wanted in the U.S., neither is likely to be brought to justice \u2013 despite a $5 million reward for Motta\u2019s arrest \u2014 unless they travel outside Venezuela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zach Margulis-Ohnuma, an attorney for retired Gen. Hugo Carvajal, a former Venezuelan spy chief awaiting trial in the U.S. on narco-terrorism charges<\/u><\/a> in a separate investigation, said \u201cthe DEA\u2019s reputation for lawlessness is well-earned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA program that institutionalizes lawbreaking by authorizing DEA agents and informants to violate foreign laws,\u201d he said, \u201cdoes little to stop drugs from coming into the U.S. while undermining the integrity of the DEA and the reputation of America abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n