Crime and Narcotics

Washington, D.C., January 16, 2026 - The Justice Department official who wrote the legal opinion determining that President Donald Trump had the constitutional authority to “unilaterally order” the “extraordinary rendition” of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro relied heavily on secret legal architecture authored 36 years ago by William P. Barr to justify the U.S. invasion of Panama, according to declassified documents uncovered by the National Security Archive.

Washington, D.C., September 26, 2025 - The eleventh anniversary of the enforced disappearance of 43 Mexican students from the Ayotzinapa college brings a grim reckoning. To date, no one has been held accountable for the tragic “night of Iguala” that exploded on September 26, 2014. No mass graves have been located, no remains identified since the bone fragments of two boys found in 2021. Tomás Zerón, the Mexican official accused of orchestrating the cover-up that destroyed the early investigation, remains a fugitive protected by Israel.

Washington, D.C., July 29, 2025 - In a historic decision, Alvaro Uribe Velez yesterday became the first former president of Colombia to be found guilty of a crime, a landmark ruling that could clear the way for him to be prosecuted for more serious violations.

Washington, D.C., September 26, 2024 - On the 10th anniversary of the forced disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in Iguala, Mexico, the National Security Archive posts a keynote speech given by Senior Analyst Kate Doyle at an event organized by University College London to commemorate the tragedy and to spotlight ongoing impunity for state actors involved in the crime and the cover-up.

Washington, D.C., June 21, 2024 – On Wednesday, a Colombian court condemned former Colombian Army Gen. Iván Ramírez Quintero to 31 years in prison for the death of Irma Franco, a member of the M-19 militant group who was tortured and killed by a Colombian Army intelligence unit under his command in the aftermath of the November 1985 Palace of Justice assault.

Washington, D.C., June 10, 2024 – Today, an eight-member jury in West Palm Beach, Florida, found Chiquita Brands International liable for funding a violent Colombian paramilitary organization, the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), that was responsible for major human rights atrocities during the 1990s and 2000s.

Washington, D.C., April 15, 2024 – A highly sensitive blacklist of allegedly corrupt Colombian officials assembled by the U.S. government and presented to Colombian President Alfonso López Michelsen in July 1977 as a way of gaining leverage over Colombian drug policy is the focus of a new Electronic Briefing Book published today by the National Security Archive.

Washington, D.C., September 26, 2023 - Nine years ago today, 43 Mexican college students were violently abducted and disappeared by police and drug traffickers in the town of Iguala, Guerrero. As the families of the missing boys mark another wrenching anniversary and the investigation in Mexico grinds on, the National Security Archive takes a look at the declassified record on Ayotzinapa in the United States and asks, Why has the U.S. government released so little information about this case?

Washington, D.C., April 14, 2023 - Tomás Zerón’s rehabilitation tour has begun.

Washington, D.C., April 18, 2023 – A Colombian taxi driver who last month was handed a 36-month prison sentence for his part in secretly delivering cash payments from Chiquita Brands International to a right-wing “paramilitary” organization played a more extensive role in the scheme than has been reported and was a key intermediary in the 1990s betwe