Cigarette Smuggling Case News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Attorney, i said i think i'll take this one. >> ken bell was the chief of prosecutor criminal investigations in the western district north carolina. >> i met with the atf agents. said we have to slow down indictments in this case. and i can't tell you why right now. but they were unaware the people they were investigating were hezbollah. >> ken as the leading prosecutor immediately established liaison with the department of justice. >> we established in d.c. an investigation and i think someone said to me the canadian security intelligence service has an investigation related to this and they ...

One night i was finishing up some work. very late in the office. probably everyone was gone. i went outside my office and saw an agent there doing some paperwork. i introduced myself and we started speaking. >> bob caught me at a good time. i had spent the first 11 years of my fbi career working criminal cases, despite the fact i had been an intelligence officer in the army, had travelled extensively throughout the middle east, had arabic language training, the bureau put me to work on criminal squads. >> rich had just come off a very successful cycle gang prosecution. this is exactly how i vi...

So when you look at this case, in its pieces, it's cigarette smuggling. so what? the credit card fraud and identity fraud, yawn. and that's by design. it allows this organization to fly below the radar. but when you realize that you are dealing with terrorists. that they're going to export this innocuous criminal activity with lethal effectiveness, it changes the entire perspective of this. >> they're taking the proceeds of these crimes and sending it to a terrorist organization that prior to 9/11 killed more americans than any terrorist organization. >> we continued to watch them for a long p...

All different agencies, state, local, and federal, gathered together at the command post to get their briefing, to fan out and conduct searches and arrests across charlotte. >> this is a massive operation. >> it all had to happen at exactly the same time or would would get around and you'd lose everyday or people. evidence. >> i'm talking to them giving them a complete view and chris taps me on the shoulder and says this has been put on hold, i have to go up to washington. >> there was a huge backlash from the justice department starting with janet reno so the operation was halted in its track...

>> and they see me come in the door. right away, here comes the fbi swooping in to take our case. say stop, before you say more, everyone in this room will sign a non-disclosure agreement. they're like, what? >> i think that's the first time in my then 15 years as a prosecutor i had to do that. >> it was very dramatic. bob had to sign non-disclosure agreements. we were going to brief him on the intelligence case and ties to hezbollah. >> so they started walking us through essentially the case the atf had been working on with the cigarette smuggling. several slides and surveillance gathered and...