Elliott Abrams Quotes

In the domain of cops and robbers, an interdiction serves to structure a black market and a shadow economy.

Simply that we are mirroring the trends in society, at any given time smuggling was an issue in the seventies, corruption is an issue today, and we faithfully reflect those issues.

Drug smugglers often use juveniles to carry their shipments into the U.S. because they know the juveniles will not be prosecuted if caught.

There is no doubt that cross border crime and illicit trade harm individuals and communities and pose challenges to governments, including the United States. But the panicked discourse and frenzied law enforcement policies that define Washington’s current approach are an alarmist reaction.

We cannot just be a corridor to smuggle minerals out.

Illicit trade corrupts corporations and governments alike, allows dictators to survive, and obscures oppression, including modern day slavery.

What Brighton's got is a major sea port on either side, good for importing drugs, great for exporting cash, stolen cars, stolen antiques. It's got the largest number of antique shops in the UK, so it's a great place to fence stolen goods. It's got tremendous communication: you've got the sea ports, you've got the channel tunnel, you've got Gatwick Airport 25 minutes away, and London's 50 minutes away by train. So all these escape routes... Which is what villains like.

It's a losing proposition, but one you can't refuse. It's the politics of contraband, it's the smuggler's blues.

To make crime unprofitable, let the government run it.

It's interesting that these themes of crime and political corruption are always relevant.

You know, I used to live in Russia where you had officers in the military opening up the warehouses at night and taking weapons out and putting them into a truck and selling them to foreign powers. That type of stuff doesn't happen in the United States. We still have a very functioning and relatively civil society.

And the people who live in the southern part of my state do not have a secure environment. To wit, there are signs that the government put up that say, 'Warning. You are in a drug smuggling area and a human smuggling area.'

Evidence points out that if you raise tariffs too much it will increase smuggling.

The country is being flooded with illegal liquor and that either Congress will need to modify the law or spend incalculable sums to enforce it [Prohibition].

Drug traffickers have more and more haystacks in which to hide their contraband needles.

Once the state becomes the ultimate beneficiary of crime proceeds, how different is it, really, from being simply the most powerful gang in a battlefield of gangs?

The hydra of corruption is only scotched, not dead. An investigation kills and it and its supporters dead. Let this be had.

It’s a giant criminal enterprise, but at least it’s a state.

People have to cooperate. Many people and traders here try to evade tax. They don’t want to pay tax so they smuggle goods and services into this country to make more money—as much as possible. The also manipulate the foreign currency market.

Drug money, such as booze money during Prohibition, has corrupted countless police, Drug Enforcement Administration agents, border patrol agents, prosecutors and judges... Because illegal drugs are unregulated, their purity is unknowable -- accounting for thousands of overdose deaths and injuries... Let's stipulate that some unknown number of Americans will become addicts after legalization, who otherwise would not have. We must ask whether the terrible price we are now paying -- in police costs, international drug control efforts, border security, foregone tax revenue, overdose deaths, corruption and violence -- is worth it.

I believe I've always been so successful on the black market for a lot of different reasons.

Theft and corruption in the private sector is as bad as that in government and must be dealt with decisively by law enforcement agencies.

One of the best magistrates as minister, and a good sharp thief-taker for [foreign] secretary

Why should persons in authority wish to keep the dope peddler in business and the illicit drug racket in possession of its billion-dollar income? It will be obvious, I think, that this is the really significant question at issue.... If we, the representatives of the people, are to continue to let our narcotics authorities conduct themselves in a manner tantamount to upholding and in effect supporting the billion-dollar drug racket, we should at least be able to explain to our constituents why we do so

Every new law enforcement measure in recent years has been met with increasingly sophisticated evasive techniques on the part of organized crime.