By Washington Staff Reporter

A “legendary” counter-narcotics agent who helped capture some of the world’s most dangerous criminals has been appointed to lead the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

President Donald Trump has appointed Derek Maltz as the Acting Administrator of the DEA as part of the new administration’s War on Drugs.

Maltz, who spent 28 years in the DEA, previously served as the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Department of Justice’s Special Operations Division (SOD).

The SOD is a multi-agency body that targets the most dangerous global and domestic drug trafficking and money laundering organisations.

Under Maltz’s leadership, some of the world’s most dangerous criminals—who were involved in assassinations, drug smuggling, and illegal arms sales—were arrested and imprisoned.

During his tenure, SAC Maltz grew the SOD from nine to 30 participating agencies, including the New York City Police Department and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance between the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Maltz also expanded the SOD’s proactive global investigations teams from one to five to bring some of the most dangerous criminals in the world to justice in the US.

The SOD’s global investigations teams conducted undercover operations on a worldwide scale, leading to an almost 100 per cent conviction rate in the US for the unit’s cases.

The SOD also investigated criminals around the world and brought them to justice in the US, where they were prosecuted and convicted successfully.

One Washington insider said: “Derek Maltz’s reputation is legendary. The DEA couldn’t be in better hands. His appointment will be a real boost to the War on Drugs.”

Commenting on his appointment, Acting Administrator Maltz said: “This appointment is the honour of my lifetime. I promise to lead the men and women of the DEA with integrity and grit.

“DEA will continue to be relentless in our pursuit of the cartels who threaten this great nation.

“DEA is positioned to lead the nation’s drug enforcement and intelligence efforts, working closely with federal, state, and local partners to seize record amounts of illicit drugs; bring the world’s most ruthless narco-terrorists to justice; and save American lives by creating a vast network of community partners to help spread critical awareness. We want every American to understand the threat we face and know exactly how the DEA is working to protect you.”

Maltz left the federal government to work in the private sector, where he helped to pioneer new technologies for law enforcement.

Under Maltz’s leadership, the DEA’s SOD brought the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to justice in America after he was caught selling weapons to the Colombian rebel group, the FARC.

Between November 2007 and March 2008, Bout agreed to sell the FARC millions of dollars’ worth of weaponry, including 800 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), 30,000 AK-47 rifles with 10 million rounds of ammunition, five tons of C-4 plastic explosives, and dozens of armed drones.

Bout, who was also known as “Putin’s Merchant of Death,” was accused of selling weapons to the Taliban and al-Qaeda while working closely with Russian military intelligence (the GRU). He was handed back to Russia by President Biden in December 2022 in a prisoner swap for Brittney Griner, the American basketball player detained in Russia for drug smuggling.

The SOD arrested and prosecuted Monzer Al Kassar, the Syrian arms dealer who masterminded the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, which led to the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Jewish American confined to a wheelchair after a stroke. Klinghoffer’s body was thrown overboard by the terrorists with his wheelchair. Al Kassar, like Bout, was a prolific arms dealer supplying terrorist and rebel groups around the world, including in Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Nicaragua, Iran, and Iraq. The DEA brought his criminal career to an end by arresting him in an undercover operation.

Under SAC Maltz’s leadership, the SOD took down the lethal multinational team of assassins working for the global transnational criminal Paul Le Roux. Le Roux employed mercenaries as assassins for hire for some of the world’s most dangerous drug syndicates. During his trial, he described his employees as “trained persons with military experience and an aggressive posture who will beat, shoot, intimidate, or kill anyone on instruction.” Le Roux recruited hitmen through a front company called Echelon Associates and ruthlessly targeted anyone considered an opponent. He also worked closely with some of the world’s most notorious drug cartels.

A modus operandi of the group was the use of synthetic masks to change identities during operations in a bid to avoid identification. The DEA arrested Le Roux in Liberia, Africa, and secretly brought him to the US, where he was prosecuted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He later became a DEA informant. His accomplices were lured to Thailand with Le Roux’s cooperation and arrested in a sting operation by the SOD.

SAC Maltz formally established the Counter-Narco Terrorism Operations Center (CNTOC) to prosecute the intersection of terrorism and drug smuggling for the first time. CNTOC led the first initiative to target Hezbollah’s drug smuggling and money laundering operations, which financed the group’s terrorist attacks around the world. This ultimately led to the seizure of $150 million of Hezbollah drug money.

During his private sector career, SAC Maltz continued the fight for justice, calling for Mexican drug cartels to be treated as terrorist organisations due to the threat their violence and fentanyl operations pose to Americans. SAC Maltz also exposed the multi-billion-dollar trade in chemicals and precursors between the Chinese Communist Party and Mexican drug cartels.

His return to the DEA as the agency’s leader comes at a critical time. In 2023, 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. The Sinaloa and Jalisco Mexican cartels dictate the flow of nearly all illicit drugs into the United States. The ease and low cost of producing these drugs in Mexico—and their transportation and distribution in the US—make this multi-billion-dollar trade highly profitable at the cost of American lives.