Update on DEA / Blackwater story

Medical Cannabis: Voices from the Frontlines » Blog Archive » DEA claims agent is not Blackwater employee
I was able to speak today with Tami Abdollah, the Los Angeles Times (LAT) reporter who wrote the article associated with the photo of the agent wearing a Blackwater t-shirt. First, Abdollah explained that at the time of the raid (when the photo was taken) she had asked about whether the agent in question was a Blackwater employee, but was not given a straight answer. After the raid, and after the story had been published by the LAT, Abdollah was contacted by Sarah Pullen, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles office of the DEA. Pullen requested that the face of the agent wearing the Blackwater t-shirt be blurred because he was an undercover agent and the photo might jeopardize his apparent anonymity. At the same time, Pullen assured Abdollah that the “undercover” agent was in fact an employee of the Drug Enforcement Administration and has never been an employee of Blackwater. Pullen also felt it necessary to explain to Abdollah that the request to blur the agent’s face and the fact that he was wearing a Blackwater t-shirt was completely coincidental. In a subsequent conversation with the DEA, Abdollah was told that the agent was not undercover for the raid, but does routinely engage in undercover operations.

According to Abdollah, the Photo Desk at the LAT has a policy of not altering photos, so their response was simply to pull the photo from circulation. After I expressed concern that the sequence of events still seemed suspect, Abdollah assured me that she would continue to follow up on the matter.

In the meantime, certain questions that come to mind are: why would an undercover agent, concerned about maintaining anonymity, conduct a circus-like, paramilitary-style raid in broad daylight with media swarming around? Doesn’t the DEA realize that by censoring a controversial photo, it is ensuring greater exposure of it, thereby creating a greater identity risk for the agent? Is it not careless, to say the least, when police are supposed to be explicitly identified during such enforcement actions, to have one of the agents conducting the raid be identified as Blackwater?

And these guys tend to be sticklers for details.  Look at all the time it would take them to get dressed alone – the body armor, the guns, the grenades, shields, batons, tasers, gas masks, thermal vision goggles, and all the other vehicles and equipment… and you’re telling me that Agent Steven Seagal here was allowed to show up to the pre-raid drill in a non-regulation uniform?