NCIS filmed "narco-terrorists" and national security threats

By Marcus Boone · August 17, 2026

Suspects of drug abuse and terrorism were captured on film by Naval investigators, creating a visual archive of surveillance that remains listed in government catalogs.

Someone was being watched, and a camera was rolling. They were tagged as a threat to national security or a narco-terrorist, their movements and faces turned into a government asset designed to "inform viewers."

We do not have the films themselves. What we have is the archival scope-and-content description from the US National Archives Catalog, a sterile map of a visual library titled "Moving Images Relating to Intelligence and Law Enforcement." The catalogue entry records a series of films that cover a wide and unsettling range of subjects: terrorism, narco-terrorism, drug abuse, and the deployment of the National Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). These are not merely evidence files stored in a vault; they are pedagogical tools, curated to explain the government's version of "threats" to an unnamed audience.

"Informing Viewers"

The phrasing in the catalog is telling. The series does not simply exist to document crimes for the purpose of prosecution. Instead, the description states that these moving images "inform viewers about law enforcement, terrorism, narco-terrorism, drug abuse... as well as threats to U.S. national security." When the state transforms a human being into a visual aid for "viewers," the individual ceases to be a citizen with rights and becomes a specimen of deviance.

This visual record captures the operational reach of the NCIS, the primary investigative arm of the Department of the Navy. According to the public record, the NCIS is the successor to the Naval Investigative Service (NIS), an entity born out of the Office of Naval Intelligence following World War II. The mandate of the NCIS is staggering in its breadth, encompassing everything from major criminal activities within the Navy and Marine Corps to counterintelligence and cyberwarfare. With a presence in more than 41 countries and a workforce comprised of both civilians and 1811 series special agents, the NCIS operates a global net. The "deployment" mentioned in the archival description suggests that these films may serve as a record of how that net was cast.

Japan, 1946

The scope of this visual surveillance does not exist in a vacuum. The National Archives lists related series that place these moving images within a larger tradition of monitoring dissent. Among these are "Spot Intelligence Reports," which the catalog describes as dealing with "meetings and demonstrations in Japan between September 1946 and July 1948." These reports were produced by the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), a unit whose activities were documented in monthly and weekly reports containing "investigation summaries; liaison, informant, and administrative updates."

In post-war Japan, the CIC wasn't just looking for remnants of the Imperial army; they were monitoring the pulse of the street. The "meetings and demonstrations" mentioned in the records were the sites of political friction, and the CIC's response was a systematic collection of intelligence. When we see the NCIS films listed alongside these CIC reports, the pattern becomes clear: the government's instinct is to film and file any gathering or individual that deviates from the prescribed order. The move from the written "spot report" of the 1940s to the "moving images" of the NCIS represents a technological evolution in the art of the watch.

Who is a narco-terrorist?

The catalogue entry groups "drug abuse" and "narco-terrorism" in the same breath as "threats to U.S. national security." This is where the labels do the heavy lifting. By blending public health issues like drug abuse with the high-stakes rhetoric of terrorism, the government justifies a level of surveillance that would be unthinkable in a standard criminal investigation.

We do not know who appears in these films. We do not know if the people labeled as "narco-terrorists" were ever afforded a trial or if their likenesses were used in training videos to teach other agents how to identify a "threat." The records mention "intelligence and counter-intelligence activities," but the specifics remain hidden behind the summary. We see the categories—terrorism, drug abuse, deployment—but the human faces are absent, replaced by the bureaucratic shorthand of a catalog entry.

The broader intelligence apparatus is mirrored in other holdings. The NSArchive notes the existence of files from the Northern District of Illinois and briefing materials from the Environmental Protection Agency, while the UK National Archives holds records on the employment of short service officers in the Criminal Investigation Department. The scale of the documentation is vast, but the transparency is narrow. We are told that the films exist; we are told what they are about; but we are not shown the footage.

The NCIS continues to operate with a mandate that spans the globe, supported by experts in surveillance countermeasures and polygraph examinations. The moving images described in the archive are the ghosts of past operations, preserved in a catalog but kept away from the public eye. The question that remains is how many of the people captured on those reels ever knew they were being filmed, or what happened to them after the camera stopped rolling.