Narcotics arm of U.S. State Department is buying Clearview AI licenses for Colombian National Police
An active notice of intent from the U.S. State Department names the Colombian National Police as an end-user of a planned sale of controversial Clearview AI licenses through U.S. Embassy Bogota.
A controversial Manhattan-based facial recognition tool banned by Canada and several European nations is in the process of being purchased for the Directorate of Protection and Special Services (DIPRO) of the Colombian National Police, according to an active notice of intent published by the international law enforcement arm of the U.S. State Department. A partial statement of work included within the procurement notice disclosed the title of “Clearview for DIPRO units.”
The controversial facial recognition firm Clearview AI is currently led by chief executive Amos Kyler, who served as the company’s head of engineering and then chief technology officer until a few months after the resignation of the company’s co-founder and long-time figurehead Hoan Ton-That in early 2025. Though the Republican-aligned executives Hal Lambert and Richard Schwartz were reported to have initially jointly replaced Ton-That as co-CEOs, Kyler was publicly advertising his role as CEO of Clearview AI by November 2025.
Clearview AI’s nascent launch into Colombia and other Latin American countries was documented within a leaked December 2021 pitch deck whose contents were first reported by The Washington Post. Though the initial rollout emphasized the Reston-based airport biometrics company Securiport as the primary channel partner for deployment in Latin America, TIME magazine reported in mid-2024 on what it described as, “a recent trial of a facial-recognition tool given to a group of Latin American law-enforcement officials, investigators, and prosecutors by the American company Clearview AI.”
The U.S. State Department could not be immediately reached for comment through the official point of contact, a contracting specialist with the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) based at U.S. Embassy Bogota.
An organizational chart published by DIPRO details several branches with highly varied focuses for protection, ranging from children and adolescents to diplomats and a broader focus on counter-intelligence.
The U.S. State Department’s INL branch is one of the least publicly understood arms of U.S. statecraft. In addition to serving as the interface between the U.S. president and foreign law enforcement agencies, INL operates a narcotics reward program which has hosted bounties on U.S. targets such as former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who was captured alongside his wife Cilia Flores in a raid executed by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Delta Force in January.
Last month INL further signed an ongoing $230,000 contract to provide night-vision goggles to “Mexico’s elite Navy Special Forces Unit (UNOPES).” (The Jerusalem branch of INL also funded the Jordan-based and Delta Force-affiliated King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center (KASOTC) during the Obama administration.)
INL is also nearing the end of a more than eight-year contract supplying the Colombian National Police with aviation services in support of a “fleet of fixed wing [aircraft] and helicopter[s]” which has so far obligated more than $62 million to the intermediary company, Amentum Services. Though Amentum is not a household name, the company has recruited senior officials into middle-tier positions, including by hiring former CIA operations chief Dave Marlowe in late 2023 as a liaison with customers.
The predecessor to INL, the Cabinet Committee on International Narcotics Control (CCINC), was a close partner of both the DEA and the CIA in the 1970s, including in chartering the CIA-affiliated airline Evergreen International as part of opium eradication efforts in Mexico.
The Bureau of International Narcotics Matters (INM) was established by the U.S. State Department in 1978 with a focus on reducing drug trafficking into the United States from Latin America. During the height of Colombia’s Cali Cartel in 1995, the bureau expanded its focus to combating narco-terrorism and extended its name to the unwieldy Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL).
One of Clearview AI’s longest-standing advisors, the former U.S. counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke, happens to have been a participant in his capacity as a senior director on the U.S. National Security Council in an October 1995 press conference on operations against the Cali Cartel led by the bureau’s then-director, Ambassador Robert S. Gelbard.
INL subsequently expanded its remit beyond combating narco-terrorism into funding anti-corruption investigative journalism, with perhaps its most impactful action being the allocation of the $1.7 million founding grant for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in mid-2008, routed through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The D.C.-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) has also disclosed receiving more than $2 million from Biden’s INL, while Trump’s INL provided the Brazilian branch of Transparency International with $800,000 to combat illegal gold-trafficking in the Amazon.
The Biden administration’s INL likewise provided a $3 million grant to the main secretariat of Transparency International in 2022 to host the International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC), with U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan serving as a flagship speaker.
Much of INL’s funding for investigative journalism has been bipartisan. After the first Trump administration’s INL allocated $1.5 million to the Republican Party’s branch of the U.S. Congress-controlled National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to “increase the capacity of investigative journalists to uncover corruption and illicit finance,” $88,000 of the funding was directed to the investigative outlet Connectas during the first two years of the Biden administration to support work in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, particularly in Panama.
Updated on June 10, 2026.