Operation Smokescreen: An interagency counter-terrorism operation
Cody Ferguson, CJ231, Core Assessment Essay
Park University
Operation smokescreen was an interagency operation to include, The Iredell County Sheriff’s Office (North Carolina), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and The U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS).
Operation Smokescreen: An interagency counter-terrorism operation
Hezbollah
In 1992, Mohamad Youssef Hammoud came to New York City by obtaining a fake passport after being denied in Syria. Over time, the FBI determined that Hammoud and several of his relatives were members of, affiliated with, or sympathetic toward Hezbollah. They participated in an ongoing pattern of relatively low-level criminal activity that ranged from fraud to money laundering. The information ascertained by the FBI augmented and mirrored that from the criminal investigation of cigarette-smuggling activities conducted by Detective Fromme and the ATF. “An example of the type of open criminality practiced by the North Carolina Hezbollah cell exists in the blatant manner in which the group engaged in cigarette smuggling. In early 1995, while off duty working at a tobacco shop as a
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There was a long time standing rivalry between agencies of turf wars and not wanting to give up vital information because they didn’t want to be stepped on and have their case stolen, or, things as petty as funding built off of cases. I feel and Marcelli reaffirms, that operation smokescreen was unprecedented in terms of interagency operations and goes to show how much more can be accomplished when agencies coincide to put all hands together and accomplish the take down of such terrorist organizations in Operation