Derek Maltz, a former senior official from the Drug Enforcement Administration, sat down with Fox News’ Shannon Bream Thursday night to discuss the Obama administration’s quashing of a drug probe involving Hezbollah while it was negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. Maltz is the DEA whistleblower Politico investigative reporter Josh Meyer quoted extensively in his bombshell report about the scandal last month.
Maltz said he “found it very, very odd” that used cars from all over the United States were being exported to West Africa and that profits from those sales and drug trafficking were going to Hezbollah to the tune of $200 million per month.
“So I found it kind of odd that we didn’t have a unity of effort to actually shut [the operation] down,” Maltz told Bream.
“I found it odd that we didn’t have leadership in the administration that would actually enforce and hold people accountable to bring the agencies together to ensure that we can protect the American public. It was very strange,” he added.
Maltz talked about a sit-down he had with then-Attorney General Eric Holder who seemed at the time to be “alarmed” by his findings, and yet there wasn’t any follow-up.
“It was very strange for me sitting there listening to the attorney general of the United States directing his people to have a meeting to get more information from the DEA and our interagency partners about this global trade-based money laundering scheme and they weren’t interested,” Maltz continued. “It never happened. I can’t explain it.”
He said there are still hundreds of these drug money-laundering businesses still operating today.
“Today, in this country there are cars moving — going to West Africa — the car parks are lined up and they’re booming!” he exclaimed. “The money is being laundered, it’s supporting Hezbollah, they’re buying weapons, they’re coming up with their logistics …”
Maltz explained that terrorists have to turn to these types of “criminal networks” for their funding because “state sponsorship is down.”
Bream played a video of former Obama State Department spokeswoman (and current Fox News contributor) Marie Harf, dismissing the allegations from “low-level, ideological sources who clearly don’t like the Iran deal.”
“I was the head of the Special Operations Division for over ten years. Thirty different agencies, three countries, the NYPD, to protect this country,” the annoyed Maltz shot back. “That lady didn’t work on the operations. She worked as a bureaucrat in Washington talking about — you know, policy and stuff, but she wasn’t involved day to day in the operations. She didn’t see what we saw every day on the streets of America, in Europe, in West Africa… so I have a problem with her referring to the ‘low-level sources.’ The folks that spoke about the story actually were intricately involved in every aspect of this case.”
As the segment was ending, Maltz displayed a photo that he said illustrated why his team was trying to shut the narco-terrorists down.
The photo, which he said came from Admiral James Stavridis, showed a huge fireball that was covered up by a Fox News visual promo of an upcoming segment.
Bream later posted the picture onto Twitter:
This is the image Derek Maltz tried to show tonight. Tough to see on air. Says it's what motivates him to stop terrorists' narco trade. https://t.co/8ciF5lZXQh
— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) January 5, 2018
Maltz testified about the photo before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in June of 2017:
“I was the head of SOD when we started this initiative back in 2006, 2007 looking at global trade-based money laundering very, very alarming to me,” he said.
I was fortunate to meet Admiral James. Stavridis, the commander of SOUTHCOM, and he showed me a very disturbing visual that remains in my iPhone today, a fireball when narco terrorists and Islamic terrorists are joined; that is what I saw in my observations working on Project Cassandra, Operation Titan for almost 10 years. It was alarming that this decorated admiral had the vision back in those days to see what was evolving in South America with the drug traffickers. Unfortunately, based on what I observed, this is what I see everyday
in my mind, that fireball. Hezbollah, one of the worst terrorist organizations—killing all these Americans around the world—was laundering proceeds of cocaine through the Lebanese Canadian Bank. They were operating like a major drug cartel.
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