“DEA officials in a highly secret office called the Special Operations Division are assigned to handle these incoming tips. Tips from the NSA are added to a DEA database that includes ‘intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records.’ Because the SOD’s work is classified, DEA cases that began as NSA leads can’t be seen to have originated from a NSA source. So what does the DEA do? It makes up the story of how the agency really came to the case in a process known as ‘parallel construction.’”
