The following email arrived on March 26, 2025, in response to “Anti-MAGA State Department urgently needs DOGE treatment” by Editor-at-Large Steve Hecht.
Hi Mr. Hecht,
We saw your piece in BizPacReview. While we respect your position on previous 2024 INL assistance, we do want to flag the following op-ed that our Senior Bureau Official F. Cart Weiland authored earlier this week. We hope it sheds some light on what the Administration is doing and how they’re approaching the current assistance review.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/youve-heard-us-scrapped-its-drug-fighting-programs-heres-truth
Thanks for your interest in our work!
Regards,
INL PAPD
To the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL):
Thank you for your message to me through the Impunity Observer. I am glad to hear of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s review, including of the State Department’s INL bureau.
You correctly note in your Fox News op-ed that “certain programs are virtually worthless.” Unfortunately, the State Department’s problems go well beyond efficiency.
I know of brazen State Department criminality in Guatemala. Yet I have not heard of any meddling reversed or program scrapped.
Your 2024 “International Narcotics Control Strategy Report,” released this month, falsely portrays the Guatemalan administration as a counter-narcotics ally. The best law-enforcement US ally in Guatemala is not the executive but Attorney General Consuelo Porras.
Porras has repeatedly and publicly shown that she faithfully enforces the law. Despite this, your report states she was sanctioned by the State Department as corrupt. Senator Mike Lee’s (R-UT) letter and that of three US representatives to the secretary of state characterize Porras as a US ally and question the sanctions against her.
Former INL boss and Ambassador to Guatemala Todd Robinson involved himself in politics and almost surely committed crimes that have harmed Guatemala, the United States, and other places. Concentrating on efficiency and ignoring such behavior will not bring the State Department into line with President Donald Trump’s make-America-great-again agenda.
The State Department has for many years conducted its own foreign policy regardless of the president’s policy. Trump campaigned on making the bureaucracy conform to its constitutional role. I try to contribute to this goal by informing the public.
You will not be able to fix INL without overhauling the State Department.
