CIA Arms Dealer Was Actually DEA Target

The Intercept Briefing

The Intercept

Politics, Unknown, Daily News, History, News

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2016, Flaviu Georgescu was found guilty and sentenced of attempting to traffic weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, an insurgent group on the U.S. terror list. But when he was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, he told the officials he was working for the CIA. This week on Intercepted, Trevor Aaronson, contributing writer with The Intercept, joins host Murtaza Hussain to discuss Georgescu’s case. In the second season of Aaronson’s podcast, "Alphabet Boys," Aaronson tells the story of the DEA operation against Georgescu and how he was targeted by a paid DEA informant. Georgescu, however, had reported the attempted arms trafficking to the CIA and believed he was collecting intelligence for the agency. Aaronson and Hussain discuss their reporting on the case and how the U.S. government may be manufacturing the very crimes they claim to stop. The second season of "Alphabet Boys" is out now.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is intercepted.
0:30.0	Welcome to Intercepted. I'm Martazo Hussein.
0:42.0	At the height of the war on terror, law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, move their attention
0:47.5	towards targeting possible terrorists in the United States. The intercepts trial and
0:52.5	terror database documented nearly a thousand terrorism cases prosecuted by the U.S. Department
0:57.5	of Justice since the 9-11 attacks. The real story of many of these cases bears little
1:03.8	relation to the sensational headlines that often accompanied the arrests and prosecutions
1:08.2	of these individuals. The majority of defendants in post-9-11 terrorist cases had no actual
1:14.7	ties to terrorism or to terrorist organizations. Many were caught in FBI stings where
1:20.5	informants pose as terrorists, often crossing the line into encouraging and even facilitating
1:25.9	crimes that would otherwise not have occurred. As the war on terror has waned, the DOJ has
1:32.1	shifted its focus, with its agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA,
1:38.7	now targeting people for similar string operations on allegations of involvement in so-called
1:43.7	narcoterrorism. A few years ago, I worked on a story with my colleague Trevor Erinzen,
1:49.6	a contributing writer for the intercept. We reported on a messy alleged narcoterrorism case
1:55.3	involving the CIA, the DEA, and the FBI. Flavio Giorgescu, a dual U.S. Romanian citizen,
2:03.8	was arrested in a DEA sting operation using an undercover informant. He was accused of
2:09.5	attempting to traffic weapons to Colombia for the FARC, a group that was then on the U.S.
2:14.8	terrorism list. But the Colombian man Flavio was communicating with was working for the DEA
2:21.0	entire time. And what makes this story stranger is that Flavio had contacted the CIA about the
2:27.0	supposed arms deal and believed that he himself was working with the CIA. A new 10 episode
2:33.7	podcast hosted by Trevor explores this entire case. Here's a clip.
	...

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