Feds Open New Door to Forfeiture Abuse from High Times, December 1993 If you've ever lied on a loan application, you can lose your ass. Precedent was recently set regarding a little-known section of the 1989 Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), allowing for the forfeiture of any property derived from loans secured by those who knowingly made false statements on their applications. The civil forfeiture section of FIRREA applies specifically to institutions protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The precedent was set in the case of the United States v. 403 1/2 Skyline Drive, La Habra Heights, CA, a house which was seized by federal authorities after it was determined that the owner, Anthony Paul Feher, had misrepresented his employment at the Action Garage Door company in his mortgage application with Great Western Savings. Feher had claimed he worked at Action for a period of two years prior to his mortgage application. Great Western had given him the loan based on that information. Though he never missed a mortgage payment, forfeiture was initiated when it was discovered that Feher had, in fact, never worked for the Action Garage Door company. While the intent of the civil forfeiture section of FIRREA was to protect lending institutions from the type of large-scale fraud which led to the savings-and-loan-crisis, the fact that precedent was set in such a small-scale case carries ominous implications for those familiar with the widespread abuse of forfeiture law. According to a report published recently in the Los Angeles Times, fraudulent loan applications may account for as many as 10% of all loan applications nationwide. Those prosecutors and agencies looking to profit from civil forfeiture may well see FIRREA as an open invitation to begin looking into banking transactions. Once a single fraudulent application is discovered, turning that applicant into an informant may not be difficult; in addition to having their own cases voided, informants stand to make up to 25% of any profits they generate in civil forfeiture cases - a difficult deal to turn down. There is no statute of limitations on fraudulent loan applications, and the civil forfeiture statutes of FIRREA apply retroactively. Other Items, Same Issue (HT, Dec '93) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Item: The *Boston Globe* reported last November 1 on Colombian officials' complaints that the US is violating US-Colombia treaties and Colombian sovereignty in anti-drug efforts. US Drug Enforcement Administration agents routinely pick up 1,000-pound loads of cocaine in Colombia without the knowledge or consent of Colombian officials. This violates treaties on airspace and shoreline rights, as well as Colombian law. Colombian officials also protested the US Supreme Court ruling okaying the DEA's abduction in Mexico of Dr. Humberto Machain, a suspect in the torture death of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. Colombia has its own "Machain" case. In 1991, Jorge Restrepo, son of a former Colombian interior minister, was abducted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in neighboring Venezuela. He was lured across the border by undercover FBI agents with the promise of a lucrative money-laundering deal and private cruise. Since the FBI has no jurisdiction to arrest in a foreign country, the Restrepo family calls this a kidnapping. But the Machain decision bodes poorly for their chance to win redress in the US courts. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Item: The Washington Post reported on February 10 that the Central Intelligence Agency is proposing a broadening of its powers to include a wide role in law enforcement. Ironically, the fact that US intelligence agencies slept through the Iraqgate scandal is the rationale for this expansion of prowess: if the CIA had "strong and direct working relationships" with law enforcement agencies, money launderers and their ilk would be more readily apprehended. Or so the argument goes. CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz made clear that this would go beyond the CIA's long-standing data exchanges with the FBI and DEA. As a model, Hitz cited the CIA role in the abduction and prosecution of former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, of course, was ousted by the US Christmas invasion of 1989 and subsequently arrested on drug-smuggling charges by US forces in Panama. The CIA's founding legislation, the 1947 National Security Act, states that "the agency shall have no police, subpoena, law enforcement powers, or internal security functions." Other Items, Same Issue (HT, Dec '93) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Item: On May 9, the *New York Times* ran an op-ed piece by Federal Judge Whitman Knapp calling the Drug War a failure and calling on Congress to repeal *all* federal drug legislation. Judge Knapp subsequently announced that he would refuse to hear any drug cases involving the "mandatory minimum" laws, which he considers draconian and discriminatory. Good news, no? Get ready for the backlash. On May 18, *Times* columnist Abe Rosenthal launched his attack on Knapp. Without mentioning the veteran justice by name, Rosenthal wrote that judges who refuse mandatory minimum cases "should resign...or be asked to leave by Congress." Demanding beefed-up enforcement and interdiction budgets, Rosenthal echoed the lurid rhetoric of paranoid American anti-Communism. "Before it is too late, Americans should realize that the war against drugs is in danger of being dismantled and the result will be creeping legalization." Does this sound familiar? The next to respond was then DEA chief Robert Bonner in a May 24 letter to the *Times*. Bonner warned that Colombia's Cali Cartel is "more powerful than ever," manipulating Colombian politics through "corruption, intimidation and murder," maintaining "the most effective clandestine distribution system in America for contraband and weapons." Bonner warns that "a global drug cartel like Cali can only be weakened and incapacitated by global law-enforcement." Otherwise, the Cartel "will export death and violence to America." Therefore, "an isolationist counter-narcotics strategy would be a tragic mistake." For those who recall the rhetoric hurled against those who opposed US military adventures in the Cold War era, this is deja vu all over again. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Item: On July 18, the *New York Times* reported that US Air Force brass at North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD), the nation's most elaborate and sophisticated command-and-control bunker, have found a "new mission" since the decline of the Soviet threat. Computer screens which once tracked Soviet missiles are now tracking "pesky Cessnas ferrying cocaine from Latin America." Air Force generals "are trying to preserve their shrinking budgets by training some of their formidable weapons against new villains: drug smugglers." Filling the interior of Mount Cheyenne in the Colorado Rockies, and actually built on springs to withstand nuclear attack, the ultra-elite NORAD is in danger of becoming an anachronism. Despite the fact that many smuggler planes fly too low to be detected by the massive NORAD air surveillance system, Congress voted to approve the complex's new anti-drug role four years ago. Fifty percent of NORAD's mission now is tracking drug traffickers.