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Obama quietly eliminated the NATIONAL DRUG INTELLIGENCE CENTER, that was monitoring terrorist activity on the border. Mexican cartel violence is at an all-time high along the increasingly porous southern border yet the Obama Administration has shut down a critical intelligence agency dedicated to identifying, tracking and severing the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism. It’s a senseless move, which is why it was done very quietly. The only real way to discover that the Justice Department’s 19-year-old National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) has been closed is by trying to visit its website. It simply says that on June 15, 2012,...

WASHINGTON – When Sen. John McCain spoke during an Armed Services Committee hearing last year on security issues in the Western Hemisphere, he relayed a stark warning about the spread of Mexican drug cartels in the United States. “The cartels,” the Arizona Republican said, “now maintain a presence in over 1,000 cities.” McCain based his remarks on a report by a now-defunct division of the Justice Department, the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), which had concluded in 2011 that Mexican criminal organizations, including seven major drug cartels, were operating in more than 1,000 U.S. cities. But the number, widely reported...

While he was alive, Rep. John P. Murtha was a prince of pork, directing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars back to his southwestern Pennsylvania district. But Wednesday, the House took the first step to turn off the spigot, voting overwhelmingly to defund the National Drug Intelligence Center that Murtha had the government build in his hometown. And that was just the beginning. In the first freewheeling spending debate the House has held in years, Democrats and Republicans teamed up to take on entrenched defense interests and to rewrite a GOP 2011 spending bill to cut about $800 million from...

The Obama administration has been delaying the release of a Justice Department report that ties the growing availability of methamphetamine in the U.S. to large-scale production of the drug in Mexico.The delay, according to The New York Times, is partly a response to the increasingly delicate politics of the U.S.-Mexico border and drugs. The report, by the department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, was to be handed out at a law enforcement conference in San Diego last month, but the White House officials raised concerns because that same week President Felipe Calderón of Mexico was coming to Washington for a state visit.The Mexican...

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is pressing for new answers about funding for a counter-narcotics center that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) has supported for more than two decades. Coburn sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder late last week reiterating charges that the center in Johnstown, Pa., previously known as the National Defense Intelligence Center (NDIC) is a duplicative boondoggle and asking for the explanation behind a recently proposed name change. “I am concerned about both the costs and the motivation of this proposed name change,” Coburn wrote. A spokesman for the Department of Justice (DoJ) said only that Holder’s...

The Johnstown based National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) began with the blessing of President George HW Bush. Its mission: to collect and coordinate intelligence from often-feuding law enforcement agencies in order to provide a strategic look at the war on drugs (it was still called that at the time). But the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), worried that its pre-eminent role in the drug war was slipping away, fought the idea "tooth and nail". So did many on Capitol Hill, arguing that the new center would duplicate the efforts of existing intelligence centers, notably the El Paso Intelligence Center, operated by...

The Johnstown based National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) began with the blessing of President George HW Bush. Its mission: to collect and coordinate intelligence from often-feuding law enforcement agencies in order to provide a strategic look at the war on drugs (it was still called that at the time). But the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), worried that its pre-eminent role in the drug war was slipping away, fought the idea "tooth and nail". So did many on Capitol Hill, arguing that the new center would duplicate the efforts of existing intelligence centers, notably the El Paso Intelligence Center, operated by...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress09/mueller032509.htm Congressional Testimony Robert S. Mueller, III Director Federal Bureau of Investigation Statement Before the Senate Judiciary Committee March 25, 2009 Good morning Chairman Leahy, Senator Specter, and Members of the Committee. I am pleased to be here today. As you know, we in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have undergone unprecedented transformation in recent years, from developing the intelligence capabilities necessary to address emerging terrorist and criminal threats, to creating the administrative and technological structure necessary to meet our new mission as a national security service. Today, the FBI is a...

President Bush again has proposed closing Johnstown’s National Drug Intelligence Center, continuing a tug-of-war that for three years has jeopardized hundreds of local jobs.Bush’s budget for fiscal 2008 allocates $16 million to eliminate the center.U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, has for the past two years secured enough money to keep the facility open.Murtha, who could not be reached for comment Monday, presumably will take up the flag for NDIC again this year.The center coordinates the nation’s fight against illegal drugs and employs about 300 people at the former Penn Traffic building along Washington Street.But a long-standing debate has been aired...