DOJ Intel Report Downplays Terror Threat at Border

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
By Terence P. Jeffrey

A recent report by the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), a division of the U.S. Justice Department, downplays the threat of terrorists crossing the U.S.-Mexico border even as it paints a picture of a border wide open to the smuggling activities of Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), whose poisons and criminal co-conspirators are now found in every region of the United States.

The NDIC’s National Drug Threat Assessment for 2010, released on March 25, twice appears to assert that there have been no documented cases of terrorists illegally entering the United States across the Mexican border, an assertion contradicted by a 2009 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, a 2007 statement to the El Paso Times by then-Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and 2005 testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by FBI Director Robert Mueller.

“Of some concern to law enforcement officials is the potential for using drug smuggling routes to move terrorists or transport weapons of mass destruction into the United States,â€