HEZBOLLAH INC. A Global Drug Trafficking Empire? (Part I)

By 2008, the US Drug Enforcement Administration had gathered enough evidence to prove that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a military and political organization into an international crime syndicate earning up to $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities. ‘Project Cassandra’ was the ambitious, top-secret project to stop them. This three-part series tells the story of ‘Project Cassandra’, through the testimonies of DEA agents and other people involved. It’s a tale that helps explain the history and rise of Hezbollah, making a complex geopolitical story accessible to a larger audience.
On August 4, 2020, the city of Beirut was devastated by the explosion of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate, stored in the port. All eyes turned to Hezbollah, an Islamist movement linked to Iran, which controls a large part of Lebanon. Despite pressure from the street and the international community, the “Party of God” refused any independent investigation into the causes of the explosion. For 40 years, its militants have infiltrated all the workings of the Lebanese state and have defied the law. However, in the mid-2000s, a handful of police officers from the D.E.A., the American anti-drug agency, tried in the greatest secrecy to bring down Hezbollah. The code name of their operation: Cassandra. Their investigation begins in the United States on the still-smoldering ruins of the World Trade Centre….