USA - Blackwater now working with DEA on Medical Marijuana raids?

[MrG]

“We heard some noise outside, and then the door literally burst in, and the DEA came in in full combat gear, told everybody to get on the floor and put their hands behind their heads,” Carey said. “It was like, literally, an episode of “24,” when they bust in on a terrorist cell.”

That’s the description of the Culver City DEA dispensary raid I blogged about last Friday. Who knew that the “terrorist cell” description would have another frightening parallel.

That agent unloading DEA evidence is wearing a Blackwater t-shirt.

Blackwater is the private “security firm” with millions of dollars in no-bid US government contracts in Iraq.

This is a photo published by the LA Times as part of its photo slideshow online accompanying the news story about the raid.
Or, it was published. If you click that photo slideshow link above, you’ll find that the seven picture slideshow has now been reduced to six. The Blackwater man is no longer there.

As of this writing, the photo is still online at the Times, but it’s an orphan (you won’t find links to it), along with the caption:

DEA agents remove evidence from Organica Collective after the business was raided by federal agents. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Now, maybe the LA Times took the photo down because the caption was inaccurate. If he’s working for Blackwater, he’s not part of “DEA agents”. But then why not just fix the caption?

Maybe he is a DEA agent and he just got the Blackwater shirt as swag at some convention, and the LA Times took the picture down to protect the identity of the hip young pony-tailed goatee-sportin’ undercover narc with a Robocop-sized gun on his hip.

It would be nice to know whether or not our federal Drug Employment Administration is outsourcing federal police duties to private mercenary armies like Blackwater. After all, they’ve done such a bang-up job with domestic policing in Iraq, like shooting up 17 unarmed civilians without provocation. The Iraqi government revoked their license and kicked Blackwater out of the country, but, of course, they’re still there.
The Iraqi government has learned what the California government has learned - when it is engaged in a war on nouns like “drugs” or “terror”, the US government will do whatever it damn well pleases.

http://stash.norml.org/2008/08/04/th...-the-la-times/

Reputation Comments on this post:

Interesting news. I've never been worried about the DEA though. The FBI always has my attention.