The Drug Enforcement Administration has paid more than $3.3 million to informants in an investigation that led to the arrest of a man prosecutors called an international arms dealer.

President Evo Morales accused the United States Drug Enforcement Administration of espionage and of financing “criminal groups” trying to undermine his government.

Five officials in the attorney general’s elite organized crime unit, receiving as much as $450,000 a month to feed secrets to a major cartel, were arrested.

The suspects were rounded up throughout the U.S. as part of a crackdown on one of Mexico’s largest drug cartels’ routes and distribution network.

The Taliban are not the only ones benefiting from the opium trade. Drug-related corruption pervades the Afghan government. A former Bush administration counternarcotics official explains the war within the war.

Haji Bashir Noorzai, a Taliban commander, says he was duped into coming to the U.S. to help authorities fight the Taliban and was arrested for drug trafficking instead.

Law enforcement experts wonder if the lessons learned fighting the Sicilian Mafia in Italy and the United States can be applied to the escalating crisis in Mexico.

Not many investigations are as intricate as the Drug Enforcement Administration?s three-year pursuit of two arms dealers, who are being prosecuted in federal court in Manhattan.