The Department of Justice (DOJ) Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has a long history of poor management and oversight of its programs for paying informants. Sen. Chuck Grassley has done oversight on the DEA’s use and overpayment of confidential informants, and according to a new report, many problems still persist. The DOJ Office of Inspector General today issued a report entitled “Audit of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Management and Oversight of its Confidential Source Program.” Grassley made the following comment on the report.
“The report raises some serious questions about the DEA’s policies and management of informant sources and funds. There’s a real problem. The DEA paid four employees, including one Amtrak employee, more than $3.4 million over five years. Maybe the most alarming, the DEA didn’t look at the reliability of the sources and how often they provided useful information. It’s clear the DEA doesn’t have a firm handle on how it spends taxpayer dollars this way and doesn’t know the real return on its investment. The DEA still has a tremendous amount of work left to do to get the most bang for the buck from informant payments. A good start would be ensuring proper oversight of the program and not just relying on self-reporting. When oversight is lacking, it’s not surprising that problems occur like an Amtrak employee’s getting more than $962,000 for information the DEA should have obtained for free.”
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