"The Obama administration shielded one of the world's most notorious Islamic terror groups from prosecution, derailing a years-long investigation of the group in an effort to curry favor with Tehran in an effort to secure a nuclear deal with the rogue regime, a new investigative report claims.
In 2008, the Drug Enforcement Administration launched what was dubbed 'Project Cassandra', a secret criminal investigation into the Lebanon-based Shi'ite terror group Hezbollah.
According to an investigative report published by Politico Monday, a team of DEA agents aided by dozens of US and foreign security and law enforcement agencies spent eight years mapping out Hezbollah's intricate web of organized crime operations and other money-making schemes around the globe aimed at funding the terror group's operations in the Middle East...
DEA officials monitored Hezbollah involvement in the cocaine trade, including shipments from South America to Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the United States. Some of the money was laundered by purchasing used cars in the US in bulk, then selling them in West Africa.
Yet when the DEA pushed for the prosecution of suspects tied to Hezbollah, the Obama Justice Department repeatedly rebuffed its requests.
'This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,' said David Asher, an analyst involved in Project Cassandra.
'They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.'
At the same time, the Obama administration was pursuing a rapprochement with Hezbollah's patron, Iran, with the goal of reaching a comprehensive deal regarding the rogue regime's nuclear program.
In 2010, then-CIA Director John Brennan signaled the Obama administration's willingness to compromise with Iran's Lebanese ally, stating publicly that the administration was interested in working with 'moderate elements' in Hezbollah.
'Hezbollah is a very interesting organization,' Brennan said, saying that it had evolved from being "purely a terrorist organization" into a political party.
In pursuing a deal with Iran, the Justice Department under President Obama refused to prosecute a Hezbollah operative popularly known as 'Ghost', Politico reported, and hampered efforts by Project Cassandra against the Hezbollah official suspected of being one of the world's biggest cocaine traffickers and a supplier of chemical weapons to the Assad regime in Syria..."