The Drug Enforcement Administration repeatedly lied to Congress about fatal shooting incidents in Honduras, including the killing of four civilians during a DEA-led operation, according to a devastating 424-page report released today by the inspectors general for the State and Justice departments. The report depicts how the DEA withheld information from the U.S. ambassador in Honduras, passed incorrect information up the chain of command, repeatedly misrepresented the U.S. role as an adviser in what was actually a U.S.-led operation, recruited an informant to back up the DEA’s version of events and then stuck by the informant’s story despite its “inconsistent and contradictory accounts.” The DEA told Congress that its informant had passed a polygraph test, but the report concludes that test was undocumented and “largely useless.”

Most importantly, the report states that the DEA falsely characterized the deaths of four Hondurans as a shootout with drug traffickers despite proof on video that DEA-led forces fired on unarmed civilians. The dead were traveling on a passenger boat to a town called Ahuas, on the remote Mosquito Coast. Almost immediately, the mayor of Ahuas and other Honduran officials protested that the dead were innocent; the DEA maintained that its forces had been fired upon by drug traffickers. Today, more than five years later, the report confirms that the people of Ahuas were telling the truth. There was no crossfire. It was a DEA agent who ordered a helicopter gunner to open fire on the passenger boat. The four dead Hondurans — Emerson Martínez, Candelaria Trapp, Hasked Brooks Wood, and Juana Jackson — posed no threat. The DEA gave a grossly inaccurate depiction of its own operations to Congress and let that account stand uncorrected.

It is unclear whether the DEA personnel involved in the Ahuas shootings and the subsequent misrepresentations will face any sanction for their behavior. The inspectors general did not recommend charging any of the agency’s personnel with obstruction of justice or other criminal violations. Instead, they recommended that the DEA improve its internal procedures around reviewing shootings.

“The victims of this crime still await justice,” said Karen Spring, of the Honduras Solidarity Network, in a statement. “There have been no remedies for the victims’ physical and emotional injuries, or for the resulting social and economic hardships sustained by the victims and their families.”

Many elements of the report suggest the DEA doctored its post-shooting reports and applied aggressive and sometimes fatal counterterrorism tactics to a law enforcement operation. At best, the agency had a severe case of confirmation bias. “Even as information became available to DEA that conflicted with its initial reporting,” the report states, “including that a passenger boat may have been a water taxi carrying passengers on an overnight trip, DEA officials remained steadfast — with little credible corroborating evidence — that any individuals shot by the Hondurans were drug traffickers who were attempting to retrieve the cocaine. … This failure to consider the relevant evidence had several negative consequences.”