Drug trafficking organizations must be treated the way foreign terrorist organizations were treated after the September 11, 2001, attacks, FBI Director Kash Patel said on Tuesday, pledging that the campaign against them will be a years-long mission.
"We must treat them like the al Qaedas of the world," Patel said at a senate hearing, a day after President Donald Trump said the US military carried out a strike on a second Venezuelan boat in international waters.
Trump said three men were killed in the strike and that the boat was carrying drugs, although he provided no evidence for that assertion.
"The manhunt after 9/11 took some years and this is going to be a years-long mission," Patel said.
Patel's comments echoed recent remarks from US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as the administration makes major deployments to the southern Caribbean for an anti-narcotics mission.
"A foreign terrorist organization poisoning your people with drugs coming from a drug cartel is no different than al Qaeda, and they will be treated as such," Hegseth said earlier this month.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; additional reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; writing by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Alistair Bell)
