SFR and Michael Braun On the Continuing Drug War

FRANK GAFFNEY: Welcome back, it is a privilege to welcome, once again, Michael Braun, a man who has served with great distinction in the senior ranks of the Drug Enforcement Agency for many years and now retired. He is a fellow who is hard experienced in the business of intercepting and interrupting the drug trafficking flows into this country; now working with the SGI Global LLC as a managing partner. He’s also on the board of advisors on the Center of Sanctions and Illicit Finance at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Michael Braun, welcome back, good to have you with us, Sir, as always.

MICHAEL BRAUN: Thanks for having me, Frank. Good morning.

FRANK GAFFNEY: You know I wanted to chat with you, Michael, because there were a series of stories recently about significant developments in the drug trafficking business and the effort to shut it down, or at least interrupt it’s flow coming into this country. Maybe we could start with the report that the coast guard has intercepted record breaking amounts of cocaine and yet feel fairly confident that that’s just a small fraction of what’s actually coming in. And they seem to be less and less able, simply in terms of the necessary capabilities, to do a bigger dent in that drug trafficking. Give us a sense of where we are as you see it at the moment.

MICHAEL BRAUN: Well sadly, the topic of drugs, Frank, seldom surfaces to the top these days, you know, right where it fully belongs. But, suffice it to say, 60 percent of our military’s detection and monitoring assets throughout Southern Command’s area of responsibility—basically just, think of everything south of Mexico including the Western Caribbean, Eastern Pacific, all of Central America, South America; the production and transit zones—60 percent of our military’s detection and monitoring assets went away within just a few weeks after 9/11 and they were moved to other parts of the world. And, that was the right thing to do at the right time, but you know, what’s troubling and you don’t have to take my words for this, Frank, and your audience doesn’t either, but if you go back and look at testimony by the current four-star Genera, the Combatant Commander, if you will, for SouthCom, and three or four of his predecessors, they’re all saying the same thing, that those assets have never come back to theatre. And consequently, our Department of Defense’s ability to contribute to the fight against drug trafficking has been significantly diminished. So, for the most part, it’s been left up to the Coast Guard, and the US Customs and Border protection, and I can assure you, they don’t have the assets that even come close to what our military had in theatre, you know, twelve, fifteen years ago.

FRANK GAFFNEY: And what does that translate into, Michael Braun, in terms of greater crime in this country, greater deaths, as a result of the drug lords putting their toxic product on the streets of America?

MICHAEL BRAUN: Well, Frank, what it means is, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of cocaine and heroin transiting and you know, making it’s way into Mexico and ultimately across our shared border with Mexico and into the United States. Last year, Frank, we experienced 47,000 drug related deaths – overdoses—and I’m not talking about deaths related to violent crime, I’m talking about overdoses in our country. We haven’t seen those numbers in, my goodness, probably three decades, if my memory serves me correctly. That’s 129 Americans every day of the week. I heard the DEA administrator mention last week at a conference, that—and, you know, he made up, he just used a perfect analogy. We lost two Americans to Ebola a few years ago, and it was on the front page of every newspaper of the country for weeks at a time and certainly we were bombarded by the reporting from our, you know, cable and TV networks, you know, it’s, again, just a very striking analogy.

FRANK GAFFNEY: What is your sense, and again our guest is Michael Braun, he formerly served as an Assistant Administrator and Chief of Operations in the US Drug Enforcement Administration, of the criminality that accompanies this kind of drug, well, trafficking and distribution inside the United States, Michael Braun?

MICHAEL BRAUN: Well, listen, I mean there’s, you know, drug trafficking is a violent crime. And not everyone involved in the upstream and downstream, kind of, processes, if you will, for, you know, the distribution and marketing of drugs, are violent people. But suffice it to say, it is a very violent crime. Fortunately for the United States, the level of violence that’s taking place, as one example, across the border in Mexico, that level of violence has not bleed over, no pun intended, but if you look at what’s been playing out in Mexico for the last eight, you know, eight to ten years, you know, over 75,000 drug related deaths – I mean, beheadings, dismemberments, that, you know, that are just absolutely shocking but yet America doesn’t, I believe, for the most part, even know it’s taking place. It is an extremely violent crime.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Two things come to mind here, Michael Braun, if I may, very quickly. One is, you’re of course aware, that the President has apparently had a memo circulated to immigration enforcement personnel, essentially, we’re told, to stand down on enforcing the immigration laws, which I imagine will cause further difficulties for those trying to stand the lonely watch on these kinds of drug traffickers coming through. The other is, in terms of violent criminal behavior, we’re hearing a lot lately about prison reform, criminal justice reform, that will result in a lot of the people that I suspect you had a hand in putting away, getting back on the streets. Are you concerned about both of those issues?

MICHAEL BRAUN: Well, listen, Frank, I’m not an immigration expert, but as a taxpayer I’m concerned about some of the policy changes that are taking place, not all of them, but some of them. But, you know, with respect to the release of 6,000 drug traffickers from our federal prisons, you know, that concerns me, especially, when we have 47,000 drug related overdose deaths in the United States last year. Again, 129 a day, twenty-four-seven last year, and the answer is, let’s release 6,000 hardened drug traffickers from our federal prisons? Let me tell you something, and tell your audience, those guys and gals, you know, weren’t convicted and incarcerated in federal prisons for flipping bags of marijuana on the street corner.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Or just possessing a few grams themselves, needless to say.

MICHAEL BRAUN: Absolutely not, it’s just—look at the federal bureau of prisons reports over the past years that clearly show what kind of defendants were being locked up for drug related charges in our federal system, and the truth is in the details.

FRANK GAFFNEY: To put a fine point on this, Michael Braun, if you hear people say, ‘Well, maybe they dealt more drugs than just flipping a few bags, as you say, but they weren’t violent criminals.’ What’s your response as a professional Drug Enforcement Agency officer?

MICHAEL BRAUN: Well, I mean look, here’s my response, Frank. You know, if you’re driving the getaway car in a bank robbery and your two buddies go in the bank and they kill a teller in the process of robbing that bank, the driver of the car is just as guilty of homicide as the two guys that actually pulled the guns out and robbed the bank inside and killed the teller. Why we can’t look at drug trafficking in our country the same way, I’ll never know. But we, you know, we need to change. Because I’m telling you Frank, that not all of those folks that were locked up or defendants that were locked up in federal prisons were violent, but they certainly contributed to, simply by, their drug trafficking activity, contributed significantly to not only overdose deaths, but drug related murders, assaults, home invasions, and a long laundry list of other crimes.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Michael Braun, keep up the good work you are engaged in at SGI LLC and come back to us often if you would, Sir. Next up, we’ll be speaking with Michael Baca about the current state of Boko Haram, right after this.