The latest nauseating discovery of how the surveillance state operates:
Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans (Reuters)
A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
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The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
The most disturbing aspect of this is that the very existence of this "Special Operations Division" (SOD), whereby the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, and DHS pass information on to the DEA, is supposed to be secret. Agents are instructed to refrain from mentioning it in any reports, affidavits, or testimony, and to pretend that the information originated from other sources.
Finn Selander, a former DEA agent who saw the light and is now a Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, compares the process to a well-known criminal activity: "It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean."