Fairfax Station native and Lake Braddock Secondary School graduate Candace P. Sharkey received the Richard J. Kerr Government Award from the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) at its annual Achievement Awards ceremony on Tuesday, Feb. 9.
Candace P. Sharkey, Intelligence Research Specialist (IRS), Drug Enforcement Administration, currently stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria, is recognized by her peers and DEA regional management as a subject matter expert in Balkan and Italian transnational criminal organizations, including their areas of influence, trafficking routes, and organizational structure. IRS Sharkey has developed an outstanding competence in collecting and analyzing large amounts of information, producing written intelligence products, disseminating that intelligence throughout the agency, and coordinating overlaps to ensure the greatest disruptive impact on drug trafficking organizations. Over the past year, IRS Sharkey has played a key role in the multilateral investigation of the cocaine trafficking and money laundering activities of the Italian transnational criminal organization, ‘Ndrángheta, culminating in numerous arrests. The detriment to this criminal organization’s infrastructure, top-tier management, and contacts with corrupt port workers has left them without a command-and-control element, severely disrupting their ability to distribute narcotics throughout Europe. Most significantly, her intelligence support during this operation led to multiple spin-off investigations being conducted in the United States, resulting in the identification and targeting of significant sources in South America that are sending multi-ton loads of cocaine to the U.S. and are therefore a threat to national security.