Squads train local authorities, but sometimes things get ugly
(NEWSER) - The war on drugs meets the war on terror: In 2008, George W. Bush started a DEA program called FAST (Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team), meant to investigate Afghanistan drug traffickers linked to the Taliban. The program continued under President Obama, and now includes five military-trained squads of special agents that fight drug cartels in far more places throughout the Western Hemisphere, including Haiti and Honduras. While the US agents can’t make arrests overseas—and some missions are solely focused on training—they can go out on missions with local authorities and may even open fire in certain circumstances, like they reportedly did during a Honduras bust last March that left a Honduran officer wounded and two drug traffickers dead. More»