EDITORIAL: DEA’s money train

There’s waste, and then there’s downright stupidity. The Drug Enforcement Administration might have set a new government standard for the latter.

The Associated Press reports the DEA paid an Amtrak secretary more than $850,000 over nearly 20 years for confidential passenger information. The secretary was selling passenger data long before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, long before the birth of the Homeland Security bureaucracy and the widespread domestic snooping by intelligence agencies.

The public paid big bucks for a big breach of public trust — when the DEA could have violated Americans’ privacy at no extra charge.

Amtrak’s inspector general reports that the DEA could have obtained the passenger information for free through a drug enforcement task force. But if the DEA had done that, it would have had to share seized assets with Amtrak police. So the DEA paid an Amtrak employee close to $1 million to avoid sharing drug money with Amtrak. Genius.

If you thought taxpayers couldn’t be stripped of any more dignity, guess again. Heavily subsidized Amtrak allowed the informant to retire rather than face administrative discipline, AP reports. You’d be able to retire early, too, if you had betrayed your employer’s customers for $850,000 under the table. No restitution here, folks. Move along.

Perhaps the DEA might find good cause to terminate, or at least discipline, the employees who wasted your money? Something tells us that train will never arrive at the station.

Remember this the next time the president or a member of Congress says Washington doesn’t have enough of your money.