The US Drug Enforcement Administration has grown into a global intelligence organisation whose reach extends far beyond international drug trafficking, according to new US government cables.
Citing documents from the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, The New York Times reported in its Sunday edition that the DEA's operations had become so expansive the agency has had to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies.
One August 2009 cable reported Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli as having sent an urgent BlackBerry message to the US ambassador asking the DEA go after his political enemies.
"I need help with tapping phones," the paper quoted the president as saying.
The request was denied, which sparked new tensions between the two countries.
Martinelli, who, according to the cables, "made no distinction between legitimate security targets and political enemies," retaliated by proposing a law that would have ended the DEA's work with specially vetted Panamanian police units.
Then he tried to subvert the drug agency's control over the programme by assigning non-vetted officers to the counternarcotics unit, The Times said.
At the beginning of the year, the United States faced a similar situation in Paraguay. Diplomatic dispatches sent from that South American country described the DEA fighting requests from that country's government to help spy on an insurgent group, known as the Paraguayan People's Army (EPP).
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