Court Pleadings Charge U.S. Complicity in Mexico's Drug War

IPS
Emilio Godoy
Kanya D'Almeida

MEXICO CITY/WASHINGTON, Aug 9, 2011 (IPS) - Late last week, the son of a top dog in Mexico's notorious Sinaloa drug cartel filed pleadings in a Chicago federal court accusing the U.S. government and its agencies of giving the cartel "carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States".

The charges, though virtually ignored by the U.S. media, have opened a window on U.S. drug policy south of its border, which many analysts have decried as corrupt and ineffective for years.

In his two-page court pleading, Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla – the son of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, an alleged leader of the Mexico- based Sinaloa drug- and weapons-trafficking organisation - described a collaborative relationship between the cartel and the U.S. Department of Justice and its many arms, including agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In late 2009, Zambada-Niebla was arrested in Mexico City and extradited to the U.S. to stand trial on charges of being the "logistical coordinator" for the cartel, specifically for overseeing an operation that shipped "multi-ton quantities of cocaine" into the U.S. using various transport methods from Boeing 747 cargo aircraft to tractor-trailers.

According to Bill Conroy, a journalist who broke this story and several others for Narco News a full week ahead of other media outlets, Zambada-Niebla also claims to have been an asset for the U.S. government, including being a party to deals struck between DEA agents and hard-hitters of the Sinaloa organisation. These allegedly included promises of protection by the DEA in exchange for information about rival cartels.


Zambada-Niebla's pleadings claim that protection included promises to the cartel leadership to be kept apprised of U.S. and Mexican government investigations occurring close to the "home territories of [Sinaloa's leaders] so that [they] could take appropriate actions to evade investigators," even though the U.S. government had indictments, extradition requests, and rewards for the apprehension of certain members of Sinaloa's leadership.

The pleadings indicate that U.S. officials acted on the assumption that keeping Mexican authorities in the dark about backroom security deals with one of the most powerful cartels in the country was a worthy exchange for information extracted from informants like Zambada Niebla.

Meanwhile, some 40,000 Mexican civilians have perished in the U.S.- sponsored crackdown on the drug trade.

In early May, Conroy crunched the numbers from the U.S. State Department's most recent data on military spending for Fiscal Years 2008-2009 and found that, in addition to 177 million dollars worth of defence hardware funnelled to companies in Mexico via private corporations in the U.S., 204 million dollars in arms were also sent across the border.

A history of corruption

This isn't the first time that U.S. agencies have been enmeshed in drug trafficking activities. Official documents and testimonies from the Iran-contra scandal proved that such activities date back at least to the 1980s.

In 1990, then-DEA agents Wayne Schmidt and Hector Berrelez wrote a secret report that referenced the assassination of Mexican journalist Manuel Buendia in 1984.

A well-known columnist, Buendia possessed information about what was believed to be training camp of "Guatemalan guerrillas" in the southeastern state of Veracruz, which in fact turned out to be a breeding ground for mercenaries of the Nicaraguan Contra.

Between 1981 and 1986, during the first five of its eight years in office, Ronald Reagan's Republican administration waged a clandestine war against the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime, led by Daniel Ortega. That campaign was made possible by the financing and training of the Contras, a guerrilla group that was fuelled by profits from the narco- trade.

"In exchange for getting money for the Contra, the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] created a relationship with the Medellin Cartel and with mid-sized Mexican drug dealers. Thanks to that connection, the Mexicans grew… from being [small-time] sellers, they entered the big cocaine market," Anabel Hernandez, Mexican journalist and author of the recent explosive best-seller 'Los Señores del Narco' (The Drug Lords), told IPS.

In 1977, Miguel Caro, Ernesto Fonseca and Miguel Felix Gallardo, leaders of the Guadalajara Cartel – the seed of the Sinaloa Cartel – were introduced to the Honduran Ramon Mata Ballesteros, the human link with the Colombian drug traffickers.

Together, they began to transport the powder from South America to the U.S., an activity that earned them millions of dollars.

U.S. Austerity Measures: Putting the Cart before the Horse

After discovering the first attempt at an on-location promotion of austerity measures in the U.S., one very important element seems to be missing from the conversation. Liability.

Robert Bixby jerks the microphone from Alison McLeod.
McLeod began speaking after the meeting and QnA session
was finished.  The microphone probably belongs to the house
or Giffords' staff.

Arizona's 8th Congressional District is experiencing a temporary power vacuum since the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords last January. Regardless, guests David Walker, CEO of the Comeback America Initiative and Robert Bixby, Director of the Concord Coalition, were comfortable visiting this remote, ambiguous neck of the woods to begin the promotional push for austerity measures aimed at reducing deficit spending and the national debt. One question noticeably absent from this conversation is, "why are they tapping the public citizenry to pay the bill?"

Criminal Recklessness

After the persistent, behind-the-scenes, unceremonious gutting of the U.S. Treasury these last thirty years, there seems to be an assumption that U.S. taxpayers are going to pay for the party. U.S. taxpayers had nothing to do with the illegal wars in Central America, the Savings and Loan bailouts, NAFTA, GATT, the missing trillions from the Pentagon, 9/11, the oil spills, the trillions of dollars for the Middle East adventures and the bank bailouts to cover the phony housing bubble.

Lame Duck Power Structure

The Walker/Bixby team took great pains to describe how this current bankrupt state diminishes the amount of available capital, requires interest payments, reduces flexible spending for new needs and increases the number of fiscal crises. A fairly mild warning compared to seasoned economists predicting a worldwide economic train wreck. Regardless, that's not our problem. It's a situation that must be dealt with by those who have screwed up the country not by the people who were dragged to this point kicking and screaming.

Going Through the Motions

Perhaps the players like Walter and Bixby don't believe they need a consensus or public support. After all, when you look at the list of targets put together in the 256 page Congressional Budget Office Report, you find every last reference and detail thick with this inherent assumption of citizen sacrifice. Our last article posted an account by SPNOW member Lee Stanfield of the heavy handed tactics designed to build a phony consensus. Stanfield teamed up with others in Tucson to develop a handy worksheet entitled: "COUNTERTACTICS FOR ANTI-ACTIVIST PSEUDO PUBLIC MEETINGS".

Giffords' staff worked very hard in conjunction with the suits from out of town for this illusion of austerity enthusiasm. These heavy handed tactics, however, became so painfully obvious to the disgruntled crowd that Giffords' staff didn't bother picking up or recording the responses from each table.

A Restaurant Analogy by Mike Rivero

Probably the most succinct analogy illustrating why the the people should not be charged with feeding our currently bankrupt system is the restaurant analogy from my favorite web author, Mike Rivero of whatreallyhappened.com.  Here is a portion:

"If the proprietor of the restaurant has miscalculated the cost of meeting his agreed-to obligation to the customer [a hamburger for $10.00], is the customer obligated to cover the shortfall? No. The proprietor of the restaurant is responsible for the error, and if he cannot meet his agreed-to obligations for the agreed-upon price, he should declare bankruptcy, go out of business, and make way for a new restaurant with better fiscal sense.

Simple common sense.

Let us imagine for a moment that you live in a nation, and you request some benefits. The government tells you the cost is $1000 for the benefits, and you pay $1000 in taxes for the benefits. You get your benefits. No problems. Well worth the money you paid for them. No complaints.

Then when you have your benefits, the government shows up at your door, apologizes profusely, explains that it underestimated the real cost of providing you with the benefits it agreed to provide and hands you a bill for an additional sum it had to borrow in order to provide the services, plus interest since the start of your use of the benefits. Do you pay it? Of course not. You, the citizen, entered into a verbal contract with the government to provide you with your benefits at the taxes agreed to by all parties prior to the transaction."

The following list below from that Congressional Budget Office Report may be the blueprint for what austerity measures in the United States will actually look like.  As with the WTO Summits from Seattle and Georgia, expect the shipment of stout, less than empathetic police from remote cities flush with overtime pay, coated in Kevlar and wielding consensus-building billy clubs for your curious noggins.

J.T. Waldron

'Continuity of Government' Planning: War, Terror and the Supplanting of the U.S. Constitution

Japan Focus

In July 1987, during the Iran-Contra Hearings grilling of Oliver North, the American public got a glimpse of "highly sensitive" emergency planning North had been involved in. Ostensibly these were emergency plans to suspend the American constitution in the event of a nuclear attack (a legitimate concern). But press accounts alleged that the planning was for a more generalized suspension of the constitution.

As part of its routine Iran-contra coverage, the following exchange was printed in the New York Times, but without journalistic comment or follow-up:

[Congressman Jack] Brooks: Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C. were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?

Both North's attorney and Sen. Daniel Inouye, the Democratic Chair of the Committee, responded in a way that showed they were aware of the issue:

Brendan Sullivan [North's counsel, agitatedly]: Mr. Chairman?

[Senator Daniel] Inouye: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch upon that?

Brooks: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed, by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was an area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

Inouye: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.¹

But we have never heard if there was or was not an executive session, or if the rest of Congress was ever aware of the matter. According to James Bamford, "The existence of the secret government was so closely held that Congress was completely bypassed."² (Key individuals in Congress were almost certainly aware.)

Brooks was responding to a story by Alfonzo Chardy in the Miami Herald. Chardy's story alleged that Oliver North was involved with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in plans to take over federal, state and local functions during a national emergency. This planning for "Continuity of Government" (COG) called for "suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law."³

To my knowledge no one in the public (including myself) attached enough importance to the Chardy story. Chardy himself suggested that Reagan's Attorney General, William French Smith, had intervened to stop the COG plan from being presented to the President. Seven years later, in 1994, Tim Weiner reported in the New York Times that what he called "The Doomsday Project" -- the search for "ways to keep the Government running after a sustained nuclear attack on Washington" -- had "less than six months to live."⁴

To say that nuclear attack planning was over was correct, But this statement was also very misleading. On the basis of Weiner's report, the first two books on COG planning, by James Bamford and James Mann, books otherwise excellent and well-informed, reported that COG planning had been abandoned.⁵ They were wrong.

Mann and Bamford did report that, from the beginning, two of the key COG planners on the secret committee were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the two men who implemented COG under 9/11.⁶ What they and Weiner did not report was that under Reagan the purpose of COG planning had officially changed: it was no longer for arrangements "after a nuclear war," but for any "national security emergency." This was defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: "any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States."⁷

In other words extraordinary emergency measures, originally designed for an America devastated in a nuclear attack, were now to be applied to anything the White House considered an emergency. Thus Cheney and Rumsfeld continued their secret planning when Clinton was president; both men, both Republicans, were heads of major corporations and not even in the government at that time. Moreover, Andrew Cockburn claims that the Clinton administration, according to a Pentagon source, had "no idea what was going on."⁸ (As I shall explain later, this sweeping claim needs some qualification.)

The expanded application of COG to any emergency was envisaged as early as 1984, when, according to Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan,

Lt. Col. Oliver North was working with officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency . . . to draw up a secret contingency plan to surveil political dissenters and to arrange for the detention of hundreds of thousands of undocumented aliens in case of an unspecified national emergency. The plan, part of which was codenamed Rex 84, called for the suspension of the Constitution under a number of scenarios, including a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua.⁹

Clearly 9/11 met the conditions for the imposition of COG measures, and we know for certain that COG planning was instituted on that day in 2001, before the last plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. The 9/11 Report confirms this twice, on pages 38 and 326.¹⁰ It was under the auspices of COG that Bush stayed out of Washington on that day, and other government leaders like Paul Wolfowitz were swiftly evacuated to Site R, inside a hollowed out mountain near Camp David.¹¹

Site R, Raven Rock Complex

What few have recognized is that, nearly a decade later, some aspects of COG remain in effect. COG plans are still authorized by a proclamation of emergency that has been extended each year by presidential authority, most recently by President Obama in September 2009. COG plans are also the probable source for the 1000-page Patriot Act presented to Congress five days after 9/11, and also for the Department of Homeland Security's Project Endgame -- a ten-year plan, initiated in September 2001, to expand detention camps, at a cost of $400 million in Fiscal Year 2007 alone.¹²

At the same time we have seen the implementation of the plans outlined by Chardy in 1987: the warrantless detentions that Oliver North had planned for in Rex 1984, the warrantless eavesdropping that is their logical counterpart, and the militarization of the domestic United States under a new military command, NORTHCOM.¹³ Through NORTHCOM the U.S. Army now is engaged with local enforcement to control America, in the same way that through CENTCOM it is engaged with local enforcement to control Afghanistan and Iraq.

Northcom. US Northern Command Headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado

We learned that COG planning was still active in 2007, when President Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD 51). This, for the sixth time, extended for one year the emergency proclaimed on September 14, 2001. It empowered the President to personally ensure "continuity of government" in the event of any "catastrophic emergency." He announced that NSPD 51 contains "classified Continuity Annexes" which shall "be protected from unauthorized disclosure." Under pressure from his 911truth constituents, Congressman Peter DeFazio of the Homeland Security Committee twice requested to see these Annexes, the second time in a letter signed by the Chair of his committee. His request was denied.

The National Emergencies Act, one of the post-Watergate reforms that Vice-President Cheney so abhorred, specifies that: "Not later than six months after a national emergency is declared, and not later than the end of each six-month period thereafter that such emergency continues, each House of Congress shall meet to consider a vote on a joint resolution to determine whether that emergency shall be terminated" (50 U.S.C. 1622, 2002). Yet in nine years Congress has not once met to discuss the State of Emergency declared by George W. Bush in response to 9/11, a State of Emergency that remains in effect today. Appeals to the Congress to meet its responsibilities to review COG have fallen on deaf ears.¹⁴

Former Congressman Dan Hamburg and I appealed publicly last year, both to Obama to terminate the emergency, and to Congress to hold the hearings required of them by statute.¹⁵ But Obama, without discussion, extended the 9/11 Emergency again on September 10, 2009;¹⁶ and Congress has continued to ignore its statutory obligations. One Congressman explained to a constituent that the provisions of the National Emergencies Act have now been rendered inoperative by COG. If true, this would seem to justify Chardy's description of COG as suspension of the Constitution.

Continued