DEA SAYS DRUG CASH AIDED MIDEAST TERROR

Agency Claims First Real Evidence of the Money Having Been Sent Abroad

WASHINGTON - Federal authorities have amassed evidence for the first
time that an illegal drug operation in the United States was funneling
proceeds to Middle East terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.

Evidence gathered by the Drug Enforcement Administration since a
series of raids in January indicates a methamphetamine drug operation
in the Midwest involving men of Middle Eastern descent has been
shipping money to terrorist groups, officials said.

"There is increasing intelligence information from the investigation
that for the first time alleged drug sales in the United States are
going in part to support terrorist organizations in the Middle East,"
DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson said Friday.

DEA officials said the men, most of whom were indicted on drug charges
after their January arrests, were smuggling large quantities of the
chemical pseudoephedrine from Canada into the Midwest.

Officials said the smuggling went through two primary Midwest
locations, Chicago and Detroit, and involved several men with ties to
Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon and other Middle East countries. There is no
evidence that any of the money was connected to the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, officials said.

Pseudoephedrine is used in some popular cold and allergy medications.
It is an essential ingredient in the creation of methamphetamine, a
powerful and increasingly popular drug known on the streets as ice,
poor man's cocaine or crystal meth.

Users generally inject or smoke meth. The powdery substance is
produced by heating about a dozen chemicals.

The U.S. drug ring was reselling pseudoephedrine to Mexican-based drug
operations in the Western United States that used the substance to
produce methamphetamine, authorities said.

The Middle Eastern men then diverted proceeds from the pseudoephedrine
sales back to the Middle East to accounts authorities have begun to
connect to terrorist groups, DEA officials said. Some of the
connections involved the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah, and
some of the money has been traced to accounts in Lebanon and Yemen,
officials said.

DEA officials said U.S. authorities don't know yet how much money was
funneled from the drug sales to the terrorist groups, but said the
pseudoephedrine sales alone amounted to millions of dollars.

"A significant portion of some of the sales are sent to the Middle
East to benefit terrorist organizations," Hutchinson said.

The drug ring was broken up Jan. 10 as part of a massive DEA
investigation called Operation Mountain Express, which has smashed
several major methamphetamine operations in the last two years.

Arrests were made in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Phoenix and in
California cities.

Hutchinson has been warning for months that illegal drug money
provides a compelling opportunity for terror groups to siphon support
from the United States, but the DEA investigation provided the first
evidence of a direct flow of money.

The evidence of the terror ties emerged after the arrests. U.S.
authorities said it is possible some defendants charged with drug
violations could face additional charges.

Federal agents believe they have uncovered a broad effort by American
residents, many of them legal immigrants or visitors, to use credit
card thefts, illegal cigarette sales, diverted charitable funds and
cash smuggled in airline luggage to enrich anti-American and
anti-Israeli terror groups, officials said.

In June, a federal jury in Charlotte convicted Lebanese brothers
Mohamad and Chawki Hammoud of conspiring to aid Middle Eastern terrorists.

Authorities said the Charlotte support cell of Hezbollah smuggled
millions of dollars worth of cigarettes from North Carolina to
Michigan and sent some of the illegal proceeds from sales to Lebanon
to help finance Hezbollah's military operations.