Annals of gov't outsourcing: Hey, big spenders, wanna catch a drug trafficker for Uncle Sammy? Watch out, kids, it's a trick question!

We really want to curb the Afghan drug trade. Uh, don't we?

"From the perspective of the CIA and Defense Department, Noorzai could be a useful intelligence asset. But law enforcement officials continued to consider him a notorious criminal whose drug proceeds supported militants battling U.S. forces. Rosetta's interest seemed purely commercial: to pump him for information that could be reported back to its clients, the Rosetta documents indicate. . . .

"Whatever else it was, the sting operation was a unique blending of public and private sector efforts that appears to have taken the outsourcing of federal law enforcement to new levels, according to interviews and internal Rosetta documents reviewed by The Washington Post."

-- from Richard Leiby's "careful examination" of the curious case of Haji Bashir Noorzai in today's Washington Post (see link below)

by Ken

Maybe somebody can tell me whether the appropriate response to this story is to laugh, cry, or throw up.

It seems, according to Richard Leiby's account in today's Washington Post ("Tangled U.S. Objectives Bring Down Spy Firm"), that our very own Drug Enforcement Agency was so hot to get its mitts on "a major Afghan heroin trafficker and Taliban supporter," one Haji Bashir Noorzai, that it turned the job over to "an unusual three-man private intelligence firm called Rosetta Research and Consulting." And Rosetta delivered, literally:

At the instigation of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Rosetta agents lured Noorzai to America and delivered him right into the feds' hands. He spent 11 days in an Embassy Suites Hotel in Manhattan in 2005, enjoying room service and considering himself a guest of the U.S. government -- until he was arrested. He was imprisoned for three years awaiting his trial, which concluded in September.

Noorzai ("a hulking, 6-foot-4 bearded Afghan in his early 40s who lived in Quetta, Pakistan, with three wives," and who was "chief of a million-member familial tribe in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan") was "swiftly convicted" by a federal jury in New York, and now "faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced in January." The government issued a quick press release "thanking the men and women of the DEA and FBI for their 'countless sacrifices' in making the case," with no mention of Rosetta, which actually did the job, and would wind up making the ultimate sacrifice. You see, unbeknownst to out stalwart federal anti-drug warriors, Noorzai was considered an "asset" by our very own Dept. of Defense and some of our super-intelligent intelligence folk:

Noorzai's capture should have been Rosetta's finest hour. Instead, it led to the company's downfall. A close examination of the case reveals how a spy firm trafficking in sensitive intelligence for profit got sandwiched between conflicting government goals: Noorzai, one of the company's best sources, was considered an asset by the intelligence side of the government, even as the law enforcement side considered him a criminal.

Now there's one big oops! It turns out that not getting credit was the least of Rosetta's problems:

The company that thought it might get a $2 million reward was dragged into an internal Justice Department investigation. The FBI employees who helped the firm ended up in trouble with their own agency.

Rosetta, which spent lavishly in its pursuit of Noorzai, got nothing for arranging his capture and ended up going broke. Investors thought their money was going toward building an anti-terrorism database, not to helping the government snare a drug kingpin.

"I certainly -- my partner and I -- had no idea," said Paul Hanly, a New York lawyer who joined with four others to invest $1 million in Rosetta Research. >

Well, oops again! Reporter Leiby really does seem to have done a remarkable job piecing this curious story together, especially with hardly anybody willing to talk on the record. Needless to say, the Rosetta principals had the predictable network of links to people on the inside, on up to an aide to Defense Sec'y Donald Rumsfeld, and of course one hand had no idea what the other -- make that any of the others -- was up to.

The story even includes a characteristically blundering appearance by our very own Chimpy the Prez: "In hindsight, Rosetta's future took a major turn when an opium grower it was tracking was designated by President Bush in June 2004 as one of the world's most wanted drug kingpins." In fairness, who would expect Chimpy to know what was going on inside his government when nobody else did?

Now if Leiby hasn't gotten the story right, I'm sure officials from a host of gov't agencies will be only too quick to set the record straight! (Ha ha ha!)

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