WikiLeaks: Ghana Pres. Fears Aides Smuggle Drugs

A top British government operative told a U.S. diplomat during the summer of 2009 that the president of Ghana worried about members of his entourage smuggling drugs out of the country.

Ghanaian President John Atta Mills told the British that he wanted to buy portable screening devices to check his aides for drugs, the Guardian newspaper of London reported Tuesday evening.

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The disclosure comes from the trove of secret State Department cables released to a number of news outlets by the document-dumping website WikiLeaks.

Other cables reveal that the U.K. government feels that its operation to crack down on cocaine smuggling into Europe faces hurdles of corruption in Ghana's police and sabotage of expensive equipment, the Guardian reported.

In June 2009, Mills told U.S. Ambassador Donald Teitelbaum that "elements of his government are already compromised and that officials at the airport tipped off drug traffickers about operations there," the Guardian reported.

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