DEA's Astounding Internal Security Problem

A new IG report highlights vaste polygraph testing holes

In February 2021, Wolf Entertainment, the company behind the wildly successful Law and Order: SVU franchise on NBC, announced it was bringing aboard veteran prosecutor Anne Milgram as a legal advisor.  Her favorite episodes, she said in the company’s promo piece, involved human trafficking cases in Mexico, where “there’s an enormous amount of trafficking” involving cartels.

DEA Administrator Anne Milgram at a news conference in Washington on, April 14, 2023, where the DOJ announced its indictment of 28 members of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Today Milgram runs the Drug Enforcement Administration, a major mission of which, of course, is doing battle with Mexican cartels responsible for the tsunami of fentanyl, coke, heroin and, of course, illegal migrants flowing into the United States.

"Every single day we're looking at where are the vulnerabilities for those cartels, for their networks, how can we target and attack them to dismantle them and defeat them," Milgram told 60 Minutes on Sunday. "And we are working tirelessly to stop this threat, and we're making progress. But there's so much more that needs to be done.”

That’s for sure, judging by an astonishing report released Thursday by the Justice Department’s inspector general. According to the OIG, the DEA has hired hundreds of special agents and intelligence analysts who did not pass or complete their polygraph entrance examinations, but “who were nonetheless hired and/or allowed to operate on DEA-led task forces and foreign vetted units, in violation of DEA policies.”