CIA assessing its powers to kill drug smugglers abroad: report

WASHINGTON — The CIA is assessing its authority to kill drug smugglers who bring deadly fentanyl and other narcotics into the United States as the Trump administration grapples with the opioid epidemic.The review — which does not indicate that President Trump has ordered the CIA to kill drug smugglers — is designed to “help the agency understand what kinds of activities it could legally undertake and what the potential risks would be across the suite of options,” CNN reported Monday, citing an anonymous official and three people briefed on the matter.The assessment comes just weeks after the Trump administration formally listed eight Latin American cartels — including six from Mexico — as Foreign Terrorist Organizations in February for their involvement in drug and human trafficking.That designation opened a trove of new options the White House can use to target the cartels, granting the administration access to “enhanced counterterrorism authorities” — including the ability for Trump to launch covert operations.

The CIA declined to comment for this story.Talk of taking lethal action against drug cartels has heated up among Republicans in recent weeks after Trump declared, “It’s time for America to wage war on the cartels” in his State of the Union-like address on March 4.Last week, Rep.

Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) left two top military commanders stunned when he asked why the US is not “just killing” Chinese drug traffickers bringing fentanyl precursors into the Western Hemisphere.“In your professional military opinion — put aside everything, policy — as an admiral, if we just started killing these people that are killing Americans (through drug overdoses) — 250,000, 300,000 Americans; about the amount of people that died in World War II — why aren’t we just killing these people?”The answer was simple: the US has not given the military authority to open fire on drug smugglers.But authorities can be changed — and ot...