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Congressman Glenn Grothman (R-Glenbeulah) today questioned officials from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) about the agency’s Confidential Source (CS) program at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz and DEA Chief of Inspections Rob Patterson provided testimony about the mismanagement of the DEA’s network of 18,000 confidential sources from 2010 to 2015.

Excerpts of Grothman’s remarks:

“Mr. Horowitz, you reported that the relationships created by the DEA with limited use confidential sources went beyond that of a person who provides tips. But rather that people were acting almost on behalf of, or in partnership with, the DEA – giving them real-time information. In some cases, the DEA compensation was greater than what they were getting in their regular job. What privacy concerns [are there] with the DEA essentially treating these sources as independent contractors, and asking them to perform specific tasks?

“I will give you a more specific example: it appears the DEA had one confidential source working in the parcel industry. They were opening up packages and if they found cash, they were alerting the DEA. Now, I assume if you were a DEA employee, you couldn’t sit there without a warrant or something and just open up packages. Furthermore, in this specific instance, they’d call if they found cash, but they never happened to find drugs – which seems suspicious. So, I wanted your comment on that.

“It seems a practical matter there – [the DEA is] giving payment, sometimes payments that are more than a person’s salary, to do something that would be unconstitutional if their own employees did it.

“Your September 2016 audit highlighted widespread issues with the DEA’s tracking and oversight of payments. A lot of these issues have been going back and are similar to those that are happening in a report that was issued in 2005. So, we’ve had an 11-year period here and we’re still finding the same issues. Could you comment on that?”

Click here to watch Grothman’s full line of questioning.

Background:

The DEA CS program pays employees from various government entities like the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), private bus companies and parcel delivery services to provide information about possible drug violations.

A recent Department of Justice Office of Inspector General audit of the DEA CS program found that there is limited oversight into this vast network of informants, and that more than 9,000 confidential sources received exorbitant payments of approximately $237 million from the DEA from 2010 to 2015.

The 2016 audit also found that many of the issues in CS program were discovered during a 2005 audit of the same program, and that nothing or very little has been done to fix these problems.

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