Report: Fast and Furious a product of DOJ ‘deliberate strategy’ laid out by Eric Holder, other senior Obama officials

Daily Caller
Matthew Boyle

The latest congressional report on Operation Fast and Furious found that the gunwalking-program-turned-scandal was the result of a “deliberate strategy created at the highest levels of the Justice Department aimed at identifying the leaders of a major gun trafficking ring.”

The report is the second installment in a three-part series from Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Sen. Chuck Grassley and House oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa.

That “deliberate strategy,” congressional investigators argue, sprang from “a series of speeches about combating violence along the Southwest border” that Attorney General Eric Holder delivered shortly after taking office.

“Although [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] ATF did not officially open the Fast and Furious investigation until the fall of 2009, the groundwork for the strategy that would guide the operation began shortly after new leadership took control of the Department of Justice nine months earlier,” the report reads. “On February 25, 2009, just one month after Attorney General Eric Holder took office, he gave a speech noting the danger of the Mexican drug cartels, focusing on the Sinaloa cartel in particular.”

On Feb. 25, 2009, Holder said the drug cartels “are lucrative, they are violent, and they are operated with stunning planning and precision” and, under his leadership, he promised “these cartels will be destroyed.”

A little more than a month later, on April 2, 2009 in Cuernavaca, Mexico, congressional investigators say Holder “gave further insight into the department’s new strategy for combating these dangerous cartels.”

“He spoke about the development of a prosecution and enforcement strategy with respect to firearms trafficking, noting that the ‘administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels,’” the report reads. “In particular, the attorney general said that the Justice Department was committed to adding ‘100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest Border’ and that Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) would add ‘16 new positions on the border.’ Most importantly, the attorney general noted that there must be ‘an attack in depth, on both sides of the border, that focuses on the leadership and assets of the cartel.’”

Shortly after that April 2, 2009 speech by Holder, congressional investigators say “a Firearms Trafficking Working Group was formed.” Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, the head of DOJ’s Criminal Division, led the working group. It was tasked with “exploring and recommending proposals to enhance law enforcement efforts to curb firearms trafficking, focusing specifically on investigation, interdiction, training, prosecution, and intelligence-sharing.”

Later, on June 30, 2009, congressional investigators say Deputy Attorney General David Ogden argued that the border between the U.S. and Mexico was the “front line” to fight firearms trafficking. The report lays out how Ogden “also said that ATF and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would sign a new agreement to ‘ensure coordination between the departments on firearms investigations.’”

Then, on Aug. 19, 2009, that working group presented its recommendations to Holder in a memo. “The recommendations section of this August 2009 memo included many of the previous public comments by Attorney General Holder and Deputy Attorney General Ogden,” the congressional report says of that memo.

“The document went on to recommend “intelligence-based, prosecutor-led, multi-agency task forces,’” congressional investigators write. “It suggested that under its new model, ‘we develop priority targets through the extensive use of intelligence,’ which would allow it to ‘build cases, coordinating long-term, extensive investigations to identify all the tentacles of a particular organization.’”

DOJ SEEKS DISMISSAL OF ‘FAST AND FURIOUS’ LAWSUIT THAT COULD FORCE HOLDER TO COUGH UP WITHHELD DOCUMENTS

The Blaze
Jason Howerton

The Justice Department on Monday night sought dismissal of a lawsuit by a Republican-led House committee demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder produce records about the botched law enforcement probe of gun-trafficking called Operation Fast and Furious.

President Barack Obama has invoked executive privilege and the attorney general has been found to be in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents that might explain what led the Justice Department to reverse course after initially denying that federal agents had used a controversial tactic called gun-walking in the failed law enforcement operation. The tactic resulted in hundreds of illegally acquired weapons purchased at Arizona gun shops winding up in Mexico, where many of them were recovered from crime scenes. Two guns in Operation Fast and Furious were found on the U.S. side of the border at the scene of a shooting in which U.S. border agent Brian Terry was killed. In a Feb. 4, 2011 letter to Congress, the Justice Department said that agents made every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico, which turned out to be incorrect. Ten months later, the department withdrew the letter.

In its court papers, the Justice Department says the Constitution does not permit the courts to resolve the political dispute between the executive branch and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that is seeking the records. The political branches have a long history of resolving disputes over congressional requests without judicial intervention, the court filing said.

If the lawsuit is allowed to go forward, “countless other suits by Congress are sure to follow, given the volume of document requests issued by the dozens of congressional committees that perform oversight functions,” the Justice Department’s court filing stated. “This case thus illustrates vividly why the judiciary must defer to the time-tested political process for resolution of such disputes.”

The Justice Department cited a Supreme Court ruling which said the court lacked jurisdiction to decide a challenge brought by several members of Congress to the constitutionality of the line item veto law.

In the current dispute over records from Operation Fast and Furious, the House asked the court to reject a claim by the president asserting executive privilege, a legal position designed to protect certain internal administration communications from disclosure.

The failure of Holder and House Republicans to work out a deal on the documents led to votes in June that held the attorney general in civil and criminal contempt of Congress.

In Fast and Furious, ATF agents abandoned the agency’s usual practice of intercepting all weapons they believed to be illicitly purchased, often as soon as they were taken out of gun shops. Instead, the goal of the tactic known as “gun-walking” was to track such weapons to high-level arms traffickers, who had long eluded prosecution, and to dismantle their networks. Federal agents lost track of many of the guns. The operation identified more than 2,000 illicitly purchased weapons, and some 1,400 of them have yet to be recovered.

Mexican Diplomat Says America Pretty Much Invited The Sinaloa Drug Cartel Across The Border

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

Leaked emails from the private U.S. security firm Stratfor cite a Mexican diplomat who says the U.S. government works with Mexican cartels to traffic drugs into the United States and has sided with the Sinaloa cartel in an attempt to limit the violence in Mexico.

Many people have doubted the quality of Stratfor's intelligence, but the information from MX1—a Mexican foreign service officer who doubled as a confidential source for Stratfor—seems to corroborate recent claims about U.S. involvement in the drug war in Mexico.

Most notably, the reports from MX1 line up with assertions by a Sinaloa cartel insider that cartel boss Joaquin Guzman is a U.S. informant, the Sinaloa cartel was "given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago," and Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the Sinaloa cartel in exchange for information used to take down rival cartels.

An email with the subject "Re: From MX1 -- 2" sent Monday, April 19, 2010, to Stratfor vice president of intelligence Fred Burton says:

I think the US sent a signal that could be construed as follows:

"To the [Juárez] and Sinaloa cartels: Thank you for providing our market with drugs over the years. We are now concerned about your perpetration of violence, and would like to see you stop that. In this regard, please know that Sinaloa is bigger and better than [the Juárez cartel]. Also note that [Ciudad Juárez] is very important to us, as is the whole border. In this light, please talk amongst yourselves and lets all get back to business. Again, we recognize that Sinaloa is bigger and better, so either [the Juárez cartel] gets in line or we will mess you up."

In sum, I have a gut feeling that the US agencies tried to send a signal telling the cartels to negotiate themselves. They unilaterally declared a winner, and this is unprecedented, and deserves analysis.

Bill Conroy of Narco News reports that MX1's description matches the publicly available information on Fernando de la Mora Salcedo — a Mexican foreign service officer who studied law at the University of New Mexico and served at the Mexican Consulates in El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix.

In a June 13, 2010, email with the subject "Re: Get follow up from mx1? Thx," MX1 states that U.S. and Mexican law enforcement sent their "signal" by discretely brokering a deal with cartels in Tijuana, just south of San Diego, Calif., which reduced the violence in the area considerably. 

It is not so much a message for the Mexican government as it is for the Sinaloa cartel and [the Juárez cartel] themselves. Basically, the message they want to send out is that Sinaloa is winning and that the violence is unacceptable. They want the CARTELS to negotiate with EACH OTHER. The idea is that if they can do this, violence will drop and the governments will allow controlled drug trades.

The email went on to say that "the major routes and methods for bulk shipping into the US" from Ciudad Juárez, right across the border from El Paso, Texas, "have already been negotiated with US authorities" and that large shipments of drugs from the Sinaloa cartel "are OK with the Americans."

In July a Mexican state government spokesman told Al Jazeera that the CIA and other international security forces "don't fight drug traffickers" as much as "try to manage the drug trade." A mid-level Mexican official told Al Jazeera that based on discussions he's had with U.S. officials working in Ciudad Juárez, the allegations were true.

WikiLeaks has published 2,878 out of what it says is a cache of 5 million internal Stratfor emails (dated between July 2004 and December 2011) obtained by the hacker collective Anonymous around Christmas.

Reports Of Mexican Special Forces Serving As 'Death Squads' In The Drug War

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

Mexican Army Special Forces

Ciudad Juárez, right across the border from El Paso, Texas, was perhaps the most dangerous place in the world between 2008 and 2011 as a “cartel turf war" led to more than 10,000 murders.

But U.S. and Mexican officials told Stratfor that the surge of killings can be partly attributed to Mexican special forces and hitmen who were acting as U.S. informants.

One email from a Mexican diplomat—identified by Narco News as Fernando de la Mora Salcedo—to Stratfor describes special-operations and intelligence units, embedded within the larger Mexican military force being sent to Ciudad Juárez in 2008 and 2009, that would carry out “surgical strikes” against low-level criminals.

The major groups of killers have left the city, scared shitless, to take refuge elsewhere for an indeterminate amount of time... The military will surgically remove cells that had been previously identified, but for whatever reason were not taken down yet. Periods of adjustment will ensue, but the military will fill any void left in terms of territorial control, ultimately causing the competing [drug trafficking organizations] to wait/give up.

The aim of the special forces, according to the Mexican diplomat, was to "give some breathing room to the [cartel] bosses so that they can issue orders to calm things down" and continue to traffic massive amounts of drugs across the border into the U.S. with less social violence..

Narco News' Bill Conroy notes, in the definitive piece about the units he calls "death squads," that the "military cartel" was present in 2008 based on an analysis of murder cases in Ciudad Juárez.

Conroy noticed that "the murders in Juárez are, in almost all cases, not the result of random violence or shootouts between rival drug gangs. In most cases, they are cold-blooded assassinations, often involving coordinated teams of armed, sometimes masked, men who are making use of intelligence, surveillance and paramilitary-like tactics to take out their victims."

Hitmen from Ciudad Juárez were also given the ability to cross borders and kill due to their relationship with U.S. officials, according an email with the subject "Re: INSIGHT-MEXICO/US-Mishandling of ICE informants-US714."

The email cites a "U.S. Law enforcement Officer with direct oversight of border investigations" who says that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was "handling big hitmen from Juárez and letting them kill in the U.S."

An analyst then notes that Stratfor previously covered the subject of cartel hitmen who were also ICE informants.

Recent Fast & Furious Developments Since Univision Broadcast

Daily Bail

Take a step back in time with Big Sis.

If it's this easy to find evidence (20-second search on Youtube), why doesn't the MSM publish the truth and expose Holder and Obama?  This is blatant.  They are even bragging about it.  Where is the outrage?  Where is the accountability?  Why isn't this a huge story?

Here's the answer from a Democratic pollster.

The White House wants you to believe that Holder and Obama knew nothing about Fast & Furious even though you are watching video of the Deputy Attorney General holding a press conference to announce the bold, new program that was 'directed by the President.'

And the worst part is - they are getting away with it.

ABC: Report connects Fast & Furious to murders of 16 teenagers

On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Ciudad Juarez.  Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers.  Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape.  Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded.

The U.S. government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers.  One source called Univision’s findings the 'holy grail' that Congressional investigators have been seeking.  The guns didn’t stop in Mexico, either:

Additional guns, previously unreported by congressional investigators, found their way into the hands of drug traffickers across Latin America in countries such as, Honduras and Colombia, as well as the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

CBS News reminds us that the Obama administration is still hiding Kevin O’Reilly, a key figure in Operation Fast and Furious:

O’Reilly, then a White House National Security staffer, had phone and email exchanges about Fast and Furious from July 2010 to Feb. 2011 with the lead ATF official on the case: ATF Special Agent in Charge Bill Newell. Just days after Newell testified to Congress on July 26, 2011 that he’d shared information with O’Reilly, whom he described as a long time friend, O’Reilly was transferred to Iraq and not available for questioning. Thereafter, he declined interviews with congressional investigators and the IG.

In a letter sent to O’Reilly’s attorney Thursday, Issa and Grassley state that O’Reilly’s “sudden transfer” to Iraq took him out of pocket in their investigation, and placed him in a position that had already been given to somebody else, raising “serious questions about O’Reilly’s assignment in Baghdad (and) the motivation for his transfer there.” …

“Given that O’Reilly was the link connecting the White House to the scandal, and that the President subsequently asserted executive privilege over the documents pertaining to Fast and Furious, it is imperative that the American people get to the bottom of O’Reilly’s involvement with Fast and Furious,” says the letter to O’Reilly’s attorney.

It goes on to say that if O’Reilly does not agree to an interview within 30 days, congressional Republicans will have no choice but to “use compulsory process” or subpoena power to require his testimony.

Watch More News Videos at ABC | 2012 Presidential Election | Entertainment & Celebrity News

Here's the ABC story that goes with the video.

Univision has aggressively covered Fast and Furious, and its most recent major run-in with the scandal came when network anchor Jorge Ramos grilled Obama in an interview on the scandal, asking him why he hasn’t “fired” Holder. During the interview, Obama made at least one false statement relating to Fast and Furious.

The Untold Story Behind The "Fast and Furious" Scandal

ABC

Watch More News Videos at ABC |

2012 Presidential Election | Entertainment & Celebrity News

Who are the human faces of the U.S. government's botched "Fast and Furious" gun-walking operation?

Often lost amid the rancor in Washington are the stories of dozens of people killed by guns that flowed south as part of the undercover operation, and later slipped out of view from U.S. officials. Univision's Investigative Unit (Univision Investiga) has identified massacres committed using guns from the ATF operation, including the killing of 16 young people attending a party in a residential area of Ciudad Juárez in January of 2010.

Univision Univision's TV Special On The Fast and... View Full Size Additional guns, previously unreported by congressional investigators, found their way into the hands of drug traffickers across Latin America in countries such as, Honduras and Colombia, as well as the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. A person familiar with the recent congressional hearings called Univision's findings "the holy grail" that Congress had been searching for.

Get the full story on "Fast and Furious" on a special edition of Univision's "Aquí y Ahora" (Here and Now) this Sunday, September 30, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT (6 p.m. Central), which will be aired with closed captioning in English.

Democrats “willfully misleading” or “wrong” on Fast and Furious

By ADI News Services

Fast and Furious report reveals inaccurate statements Republicans on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGR) are asking whether the Democrats’ on the OGR who made “false statements on Fast and Furious wiretap applications: willfully misleading the American people” or were they “just plain wrong?

OGR Democrats have said that the wiretaps in the Fast and Furious matter did not show reckless tactics. Cases in point:

“All six of these wiretap applications state explicitly that law enforcement agents on the ground in Arizona did not observe the illegal acts of transferring firearms to unauthorized persons or trafficking firearms across the border to Mexico,” Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, on 6/15/2012.

“The wiretap applications. I read through them yesterday, and I would say without — since we can’t talk about what was in them, that my perception of what they would imply was far different than my friend from South Carolina’s perception,” Rep. John Yarmuth, on 6/20/2012.

“We have to be cautious because of the privileged nature of the wiretaps. So, I can’t talk about the contents of those. But I can say after reading those, nothing — nothing in those wiretaps supports what you’re alleging. Not a — matter of fact, they refute — they refute everything you’re saying,” Rep. Stephen Lynch, on 6/20/2012.

However, Republicans say that the Inspector General’s report released last week, “contradicts their false assurances to the public” He cites cases in point:

The report reads on page 277, “We found that the affidavits described specific incidents that would suggest to a prosecutor who was focused on the question of investigative tactics that ATF was employing a strategy of not interdicting weapons or arresting known straw purchasers.”

On page 279, it reads, “Moreover, a reader of only the 5-page OEO cover memorandum would have learned significant facts [redacted] . . . We concluded that a reader of the OEO cover memorandum would infer from the facts stated that ATF agents did not take enforcement action to interdict the weapons or arrest [redacted].”

According to Jake Tapper of ABC News, President Obama has also made a false claim about Fast and Furious. Tapper writes:

Asked about the Fast and Furious program at the Univision forum on Thursday, President Obama falsely claimed that the program began under President George W. Bush.
“I think it’s important for us to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration,” the president said. “When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned a inspector general to do a thorough report that was just issued, confirming that in fact Eric Holder did not know about this, that he took prompt action and the people who did initiate this were held accountable.” 

In actuality, the Fast and Furious program was started in October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency.

Drug war ensnares big banks for letting Mexico cartels stash cash

Prosecutors in the US and Mexico have banks in their crosshairs for helping drug smugglers and money launderers transfer and hold their illegal earnings.

GlobalPost
Nathaniel Parish Flannery

Fake notes were hung out to dry during a protest in
front of HSBC in Mexico City on July 30. The bank was fined for
failing to apply anti-money laundering rules.

On the facade of the tall HSBC bank headquarters here, there’s a dark reflection of the Angel of Independence monument, one of the most iconic landmarks in this capital city.

The towering bank’s central location at the Plaza of Independence is a metaphor for its importance to Mexico’s financial system.

“It’s in the heart of the capital, in the most emblematic part of [the city],” said Myrna de los Santos, a finance professional who works in one of the neighboring glass office buildings. Looking up at HSBC Tower, she said, “This is the bank that’s been accused of laundering money.”

HSBC and other major banks have been accused of helping launder money for the narco criminals seen waging a brutal war in Mexico largely to win drug markets in the United States.

HSBC officials say they are cooperating with investigators. “What happened in Mexico and the US is shameful, it’s embarrassing, it’s very painful for all of us in the firm,” HSBC’s CEO Stuart Gulliver said in a July 30 conference call.

The accusations come as Mexican and US authorities have ramped up crackdowns on transnational crime rings’ vast earnings. Government prosecutors say they are chasing down drug profits and more aggressively targeting the financial institutions that let those profits amass in their vaults.

A US Senate investigation has accused HSBC of laundering $7 billion, transferring funds for Mexican clients through accounts in the Cayman Islands to accounts in the US.

Bank of America allegedly opened and operated accounts for a US-based money laundering racket run by Los Zetas, Mexico’s most violent criminal organization. The Zetas allegedly used Bank of America accounts to buy $4 million worth of horses, and enter and win races, sometimes collecting nearly $1 million per victory, according to a New York Times report. (Bank of America has not been accused of wrongdoing and is reportedly cooperating with a US Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry into the Zetas activities.)

HSBC, Citi, and Spain’s Banco Santander have all been accused of engaging in business transactions with Mexican money exchange houses that are suspected of money laundering.

HSBC is likely to be the first of these to reach a settlement with US authorities this year. On July 30, the bank announced it had set aside $700 million to cover the possible costs of a settlement of the money laundering investigation.

researches and teaches about organized crime at Mexico City’s ITAM university, told GlobalPost the fact that a respected global bank such as HSBC has been pulled into a money laundering scandal in Mexico “shows that it’s not just a Mexico problem [but rather] an international problem.”

Duncan Wood, who 

The recent investigations build on more than a decade of probes into the global flows of illicit cartel capital. One find, in 2006, was particularly emblematic of how drug trafficking routes and illicit money trails overlap.

In April of that year, Mexican soldiers searched a jet that had landed in a small airport 500 miles east of Mexico City. They found 128 black suitcases stuffed with nearly six tons of cocaine, a quantity with a street value of $100 million, Bloomberg reported. Later, investigators discovered the smugglers had used accounts at Bank of America and Wachovia to buy the plane.

Prosecutors in the US began digging deeper into Wachovia’s other dealings in Mexico. In 2007 securities regulators raided the bank’s headquarters in St. Louis. In 2010, the bank, now a subsidiary of Wells Fargo, agreed to a $160 million settlement with the US Justice Department.

The Wachovia investigation and fine — the largest money laundering settlement ever levied against a US bank — apparently did not serve as a deterrent. As drugs continued to cross into the US, criminal organizations continued to use major banks to transfer and launder their money.

Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former researcher for Mexico's national intelligence agency, told GlobalPost that out of the estimated $65 billion US drug users pay annually for illegal drugs, “6 to 10 billion dollars per year” cross back into Mexico. Other researchers, such as President Bill Clinton’s former anti-drug czar Barry McCaffrey, claim that the annual figure for illicit funds moved back to Mexico could be much higher.

“There are a lot of diverse findings about the quantity of cash from contraband drug sales that annually crosses from the United States to Mexico, some of these estimates go as high as $40 billion,” Ramon Garcia Gibson, an anti-money laundering consultant in Mexico City, told GlobalPost.

Some of this money is stored in cash. For instance, when police raided alleged Chinese methamphetamine producer Zhenli Ye Gon’s Mexican mansion they found $208 million in paper bills.

Apart from copious cash piles, cartels reinvest profits in building up advanced arsenals and sophisticated trafficking methods, from cross-border smuggling tunnels to submarines. But they also send billions of their earnings back north to bank accounts in the US for safekeeping.

Mexico loses an estimated $50 billion per year — almost 5 percent of its gross domestic product — in illicit money outflows of different types, including money laundering, corruption and tax evasion, according to Global Financial Integrity, a nonprofit research and advocacy group in Washington, DC.

In 2007 and 2008, Mexicans used HSBC to process transactions which helped transfer a total of $7 billion to accounts in the United States, according to a report by nonprofit investigative journalism group ProPublica that analyzed a 355-page US Senate document on HSBC’s activities. The Senate’s investigation revealed that, between 2006 and 2009, the bank’s US arm did not engage in any money laundering monitoring regarding transactions with HSBC banks in other countries around the globe.

Now prosecutors on both sides of the border are cracking down on institutions that have served as conduits for massive cash flow with apparently little or no oversight.

On Jan. 22, 2010 a Mexican judge accused the owners of six money changers in Sinaloa and Tijuana, two cartel hotspots, of laundering drug funds through their accounts at the Mexican units of Banco Santander, Citigroup and HSBC. Then, on June 7, 2012, the US Treasury seized assets belonging to relatives of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficker, a man Forbes estimates to be worth $1 billion.

Duncan Wood, of ITAM, explained that the anti-cartel strategy is simple. “Don’t go for the product, there’s always more product. Go for the money,” he said.

In June, the Mexican Finance Department announced it would cap the amount of cash dollar deposits banks can allow. Mexico’s congress is working to pass a new anti-money laundering bill that would place limits on trades in real estate, jewelry, and automobiles, transactions often used by criminals to hide illicit profits.

Hope, the security analyst, told GlobalPost that “the bill in congress could prove significant” by limiting criminals’ ability to make cash purchases.

In July, HSBC agreed to pay Mexico’s financial market regulator a fine of 379 million pesos ($28 million) for failures in detecting and reporting unusual transactions. The bank could now face hundreds of millions of dollars in money laundering fines and settlements in the US.

In the near future, drugs will continue to cross north into the US and money will be sent south into Mexico. The big banks, though, are likely to try harder to detect and prevent money laundering. HSBC in particular will need to burnish its reputation.

Looking up at the massive logo on Mexico City’s HSBC Tower, de los Santos, the finance professional, said, “they’re going to clean up their name and change their policies, but I wouldn’t put my money there.” 

America’s Secret Deal with Mexican Drug Cartels

Global Research
Tom Burghardt

In a story which should have made front page headlines, Narco News investigative journalist Bill Conroy revealed that “A high-ranking Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization member’s claim that US officials have struck a deal with the leadership of the Mexican ‘cartel’ appears to be corroborated in large part by the statements of a Mexican diplomat in email correspondence made public recently by the nonprofit media group WikiLeaks.”

A series of some five million emails, The Global Intelligence Files, were obtained by the secret-spilling organization as a result of last year’s hack by Anonymous of the Texas-based “global intelligence” firm Stratfor.

Bad tradecraft aside, the Stratfor dump offer readers insight into a shadowy world where information is sold to the highest bidder through a “a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.”

One of those informants was a Mexican intelligence officer with the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, or CISEN, Mexico’s equivalent to the CIA. Dubbed “MX1? by Stratfor, he operates under diplomatic cover at the Mexican consulate in Phoenix, Arizona after a similar posting at the consulate in El Paso, Texas.

His cover was blown by the intelligence grifters when they identified him in their correspondence as Fernando de la Mora, described by Stratfor as “being molded to be the Mexican ‘tip of the spear’ in the U.S.”

In an earlier Narco News story, Conroy revealed that “US soldiers are operating inside Mexico as part of the drug war and the Mexican government provided critical intelligence to US agents in the now-discredited Fast and Furious gun-running operation,” the Mexican diplomat claimed in email correspondence.

Those emails disclosed “details of a secret meeting between US and Mexican officials held in 2010 at Fort Bliss, a US Army installation located near El Paso, Texas. The meeting was part of an effort to create better communications between US undercover operatives in Mexico and the Mexican federal police, the Mexican diplomat reveals.”

“However,” Conroy wrote, “the diplomat expresses concern that the Fort Bliss meeting was infiltrated by the ‘cartels,’ whom he contends have ‘penetrated both US and Mexican law enforcement’.”

Such misgivings are thoroughly justified given the fact, as Antifascist Calling reported last spring, that the Mexican government had arrested three high-ranking Army generals over their links to narcotrafficking organizations.

In Conroy’s latest piece the journalist disclosed that the “Mexican diplomat’s assessment of the US and Mexican strategy in the war on drugs, as revealed by the email trail, paints a picture of a ‘simulated war’ in which the Mexican and US governments are willing to show favor to a dominant narco-trafficking organization in order to minimize the violence and business disruption in the major drug plazas, or markets.”

A “simulated war”? Where have we heard that before? Like the bogus “War on Terror” which arms and unleashes throat-slitting terrorists from the CIA’s favorite all-purpose zombie army of “Islamist extremists,” Al Qaeda, similarly, America’s fraudulent “War on Drugs” has been a splendid means of managing the global drug trade in the interest of securing geopolitical advantage over their rivals.

Big cash seizure puts light on Nicaragua drug role

The Guardian
Adriana Gomez Licon

Most days the only vehicles on Highway 15 are battered trucks shuttling grain, coffee beans and cooking oil through the lush, mountainous highlands on the Honduras-Nicaragua border.

Then one recent morning, a convoy of six vans cruised down the two-lane road. All were emblazoned with the logo of the world's largest Spanish-language television network, Televisa, and inside were 18 Mexicans with press badges, high-definition video cameras, microphones and a satellite dish.

Nicaraguan police were waiting. Acting on an anonymous tip from Honduras, officers pulled over the vans and after two days of investigation determined the occupants were falsely posing as employees of Televisa's news division. Hidden beneath the sound boards and screens in three of the vans, officers found black gym bags stuffed with $9.2 million in cash.

The Aug. 20 seizure has pulled back the curtain on Nicaragua's role as a conduit between South American cocaine producers and the Mexican drug cartels that move their product into the United States. It also shows how the gangs are resorting to ever-more inventive ways to move their profits out of the U.S. as authorities crack down harder on suspicious bank transfers and other relatively easy ways of moving money.

"It's been a case that has drawn our attention. We are studying the way organized crime is operating," said Nicaragua's National Police spokesman, Commander Fernando Borge. "Organized crime is powerful and has many resources and it will try in every different way to get across our country."

Nicaraguan police say the cash was destined for Costa Rica, where the fake journalists planned to pay for a load of drugs that had been smuggled into the United States.

Authorities here aren't saying which cartel employed the woman and 17 men arrested — most of them in their 20s or 30s and most with addresses in Mexico City or its suburbs. Testimony in a high-profile trial in progress in Nicaragua has alleged, however, that Nicaragua and Costa Rica are being used as transfer points in the trade between Colombian drug traffickers and the Sinaloa drug cartel, which is one of Mexico's two most powerful criminal organizations.

Costa Rican authorities say the woman arrested, 30-year-old Raquel Alatorre, who is believed to be the leader of the group, had crossed from Nicaragua into their country at least 15 times since 2006, though it was unclear if she had traveled in similar convoys previously.

"We were not investigating them," said Costa Rica's vice minister of security, Celso Gamboa. "We were not very shrewd."

Nicaragua's Institute of Strategic Studies and Public Policy, which tracks how much money is seized from suspected criminals in the country, says a total of $40 million in cash has been confiscated by police over the past seven years, including $7 million last year alone.

"Normally drug dealers don't function like this. This isn't the usual way they operate," said Roberto Orozco, a researcher with the group. "However, it is possible that we're seeing new techniques emerge, with drug dealers disguising themselves as journalists."

The seized 2011 Chevy Express vans, five white and one yellow-and-blue, bore custom-made stickers with Televisa's orange sun logo. The logo was also embroidered in the neck lanyards of the suspects' supposed press badges and stamped on their microphones.

Nicaraguan prosecutors say police had received an anonymous call the previous day from a man in Honduras who said he had overheard the group talking suspiciously about crossing into Nicaragua.

So 13 officers waited south of the border checkpoint and stopped the convoy inside Nicaragua.

The people in the vans gave inconsistent accounts about what stories they were planned to cover in Nicaragua, with some saying they going to produce a piece on tourism, and others saying the topic was crime.

Local media have cited unidentified Nicaraguan authorities as saying the fake journalists claimed they were going to cover the current trial of a Nicaraguan who allegedly helped the Sinaloa cartel smuggle drugs and money through his country to Costa Rica and Colombia. The defendant, Henry Farinas, was charged after a 2011 attack apparently aimed at him killed Argentine folk singer Facundo Cabral, who was being driven by Farinas to a Guatemala airport.

The indictment against the 18 people, obtained by The Associated Press, says they had no way to show authorities that Televisa sent the large contingent on assignment. So police escorted the suspects to the capital city of Managua and kept them at the Holiday Inn for two days while investigators contacted the Mexican Embassy to find out more information about them.

Embassy officials reported that the 18 people were not employees of Televisa, and that justified a thorough search of the vans, the indictment says.

Nicaragua's courts and treasury are now fighting over who gets to keep the money. The archbishop of Managua has also put in a bid, saying the Roman Catholic Church could use the money to help the poor of Nicaragua, the second-poorest nation in the hemisphere. In previous cash seizures, the money was held by the courts until trials were finished and then distributed among law enforcement agencies.

Last Friday, police showed off 16 of the 18 suspects to the news media.

Sirens blaring, ski-masked police officers dressed in black drove the five white vans with the orange Televisa logo onto the parking lot of Nicaragua's National Police headquarters in Managua. Some officers took wads of cash from gym bags for the cameras. Prosecutor Javier Antonio Morazan said in court documents that at least one wad of cash underwent a narcotic trace detector and tested positive for cocaine.

Alatorre and the 17 men will have their first hearing next week on charges of organized crime and money laundering.

Televisa has said since the arrests that the detainees were not its reporters and the vehicles were never in its car fleet. A statement this week said the company may sue the group for pretending to be its reporters.

---

Associated Press writer Cesar Barrentes in San Jose, Costa Rica, contributed to this report.

Justice Department launches ad campaign

The Examiner

For the first time in the history of the agency, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an ad campaign featuring a sitting attorney general speaking to Americans about the need to protect endangered children.

This reporter saw the ad for the first time last evening.

The series of ads comes at a curious time in American politics. The U.S. presidential election is less than three months away. The DOJ is under intense fire due to the Fast and Furious scandal. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the DOJ issued his first draft report on Fast and Furious this week, and leaks from DOJ indicate that already the report has created a flurry of activity as officials scurry about attempting damage control.

DOJ officials have one month to pour over the OIG report, providing their feedback, prior to its release to Congress, the media, and the public.

Yet as if to get a head start and gain the upper hand in the court of public opinion, Holder launches a massive ad campaign touting the agency's work and focusing on the need to "protect the children."

No one would argue that vulnerable children do not need to be protected. But why is this suddenly the focus of an ad campaign during an election year? Is there some reason that now is the time to step up such efforts? Are there statistics showing that suddenly, out of the blue, multimillions more children are now in harm's way within, say, the last six months?

In all likelihood, children are in no more danger now than they have been at any other time during the Obama presidency.

The thing that has changed, however, is the president's likelihood of being reelected. National opinion polls are skewed toward Democrats and are thus unreliable. Americans in the heartland and in the small towns and cities that dot the landscape all across the nation know in their hearts that this president has failed to deliver on his promises. He did not, as he promised, lower unemployment below 8 percent. He did not, as he promised, fix the economy. He did not, as he promised, make sure that the elderly will be secured in the national safety net for decades to come. Instead, he robbed the Medicare program of nearly 800 billion dollars in order to fund ObamaCare, placing the Medicare program in a highly vulnerable position going forward.

In addition, the president faces a Republican ticket that headed out of Tampa in a very strong position. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan did what they had to do to define themselves and their positions on the issues. Nothing at the Republican Convention gave the impression that this team is not ready on day one to begin to clean up the mess that Obama has made worse.

Thus, the only explanation for the DOJ ads is that they are part of the Obama reelection campaign without identifying themselves as such. And the taxpayers are footing the bill.

ALERT!

A new entry in my regular series Musings After Midnight is now posted at my blog, The Liberty Sphere. It's titled "With All of THIS Going On, It's Enough to Make a Normal Person Become a Conspiracy Theorist." Don't miss it!

Two Americans shot in Mexico CIA operatives: Report

Press TV

Mexican soldiers stand by a US diplomatic vehicle attacked with gunfire
in the Tres Marias-Huitzilac highway in the Morelos state on August 24, 2012.

A report says the two Americans injured in a gun attack on a US Embassy vehicle in Mexico were CIA agents, and had been sent to the Latin American country to bolster Mexican efforts to fight drug traffickers.

The operatives, who were hurt south of Mexico City on August 24, were participating in a training program that involved the Mexican Navy, The New York Times reported.

They were traveling with a Mexican Navy captain in an embassy sport utility vehicle that had diplomatic license plates.

The two were traveling on the Tres Marias-Huitzilac highway, and leading from Mexico City to Cuernavaca -- the capital of the state of Morelos and situated 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of Mexico City -- when their armored vehicle was fired upon by Mexican federal police officers.

The Mexican Navy said in a Tuesday statement that an American was driving the car, and that during the attack the captain, who was handling logistics and translating for the men, remained in the back seat calling for help on his cellphone.

American investigators are working with Mexican authorities to determine what happened and whether the police officers involved were corrupt.

US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said no evidence has emerged so far that the Americans were targeted because of their affiliation to the CIA.

Drug violence has reportedly killed more than 50,000 people since former President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against Mexico's cartels, when he took office in December 2006.

Fast and Furious official MIA in order to avoid testifying

Gather
Robert Flynn

William McMahon supervised the
Phoenix-run Fast and Furious program.

The Fast and Furious Scandal is taking a new, sinister twist as one of those at the center of the botched gun-running scheme has been conveniently given a job by Obama-ally J.P. Morgan, far outside the borders of the United States. William McMahon, former ATF official and one of those responsible for the botched operation that resulted in the death of an American border agent, is not only reportedly collecting $100,000 annually for "security" services to the politically connected banking giant, but is also still receiving his ATF paycheck. With the invoking of Executive privilege by the Obama White House, and now this new shocking revelation of a political protection racket, is it possible that the Obama White House is digging itself into an even deeper hole?

McMahon, who may well be prosecuted for perjuring himself during the recent Congressional hearings into the notorious operation that allowed thousands of assault weapons to cross the border into Mexico, has been given a "job" in the Philippines. Critics claim that this move has been made in order "to prevent him from exposing further criminality among higher-ranking officials." Many other high officials have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during hearings in Congress; however, McMahon made statements that now appear to have been outside the realm of truth.

This obvious attempt to scurry a potentially damaging witness out of the country is a disgusting show of contempt not only for the rule of law, but for the American people as well. The Obama administration, if responsible for this travesty of justice, may have tarnished the office of Presidency forever. And with the incompetent and possibly criminal McMahon getting a fortunate job with J.P. Morgan, the home of many current and former Obama supporters, as well as the largest recipients of taxpayer money gladly doled out by the Obama White House, it gives ammunition to those who cry foul.

In fact, critics will almost certainly claim that the President of the United States appears to have had one of his politically connected banking giants give McMahon a job outside the country so that he could not testify to how much the President was personally involved in the scandal.

Whether or not this is true, the American people deserve better. The Presidency was once a proud and honorable position, one to be admired and dreamed of attaining, but the current occupant has soiled the office with his corruption and immorality. How far has the United States sunk that the President is accused of having witnesses hidden outside the reach of American law?

America cannot survive as the greatest nation on Earth if it continues to elect morally bankrupt socialists who will stop at nothing to destroy this nation's greatness. America must find a way to return the honor to the Presidency, and not have it sullied with plots that seem to come from a film-noir mystery. Both the country and its people deserve better than what they have now, a President that seems to be at the center of the Fast and Furious Scandal and racing toward his own Watergate moment.

'Fast and Furious' ATF Official Granted Paid Leave to Take 6-Figure Job at JP Morgan

CNS News
Susan Jones

The long-awaited inspector general's report on the Justice Department's botched gun-running scheme is finished, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said on Wednesday.

But along with that news comes more questions: Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are demanding to know why a top ATF official involved in Operation Fast and Furious remains on paid leave from ATF -- while simultaneously drawing a six-figure salary from J.P. Morgan, a major investment bank.

In a letter to the acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Issa and Grassley asked why the Justice Department would approve such a special arrangement for Bill McMahon.

(Pardon the goofy player)

“Under any reading of the relevant personnel regulations, it appears that ATF management was under no obligation to approve this sort of arrangement,” wrote Issa and Grassley. “Given McMahon’s outsized role in the Fast and Furious scandal, the decision to approve an extended annual leave arrangement in order to attain pension eligibility and facilitate full-time, outside employment while still collecting a full-time salary at ATF raises a host of questions about both the propriety of the arrangement and the judgment of ATF management.” Issa and Grassley say the ATF has made it possible for McMahon to "double dip for nearly half a year by receiving two full-time paychecks -- one from the taxpayer and one from the private sector."  They noted that the treatment of McMahon is "in sharp contrast" to how the ATF has treated whistleblowers such as Special Agent John Dodson, "who is told he must wait until the Inspector General’s report is complete before the agency will even consider his simple request for a statement retracting the false statements made about him by agency leadership.” Issa and Grassley noted that ATF approved the arrangement for McMahom before the Justice Department inspector general finished his report on the failed gun tracking scheme.

 As for the IG report examining Fast and Furious, as well as the Justice Department's knowledge of and response to it, Issa said the report is done: "We know that the IG report is finished, we know that it's at Justice, and we know that we can't see it. We're hoping, though, that they will release it," Issa told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren on Wednesday. Issa said he's "positive" that the IG's report "is going to say the same thing our report has said, which is -- this is somebody (Bill McMahon) who is responsible for and signed documents that he told our committee he didn't see, didn't know about. Now, the only question is -- did he not read them and sign them?" "We're dealing with somebody who should have been fired from ATF," Issa added. According to the final congressional report on Fast and Furious, William McMahon was a supervisor at ATF headquarters who served as a "crucial link" between ATF headquarters and the Phoenix Field Division. "He received a wealth of information about Fast and Furious” -- including the fact that straw purchasers had bought over 900 firearms, many of which ended up in Mexico -- "but did not view it as his role as supervisor to ask questions about events in the field. He has publicly admitted to having failed in his duty to read information presented to him about the case."

The report says McMahon rubber stamped critical documents that came across his desk without reading them. McMahon also "gave false testimony to Congress about signing applications for wiretap intercepts in Fast and Furious," the report says.  Operation Fast and Furious began in the fall of 2009 as part of a plan to track guns illegally purchased in the U.S. to Mexican drug cartels. The ATF lost track of most of the 2,000 weapons that were allowed to "walk" into Mexico, and two of the straw-purchased guns ended up at the scene of a U.S. border agent's murder. (Issa told Fox News that news of McMahon's double-dipping will produce "more outrage for the family of fallen Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.) According to the final congressional report, "From the outset, the case was marred by missteps, poor judgments, and an inherently reckless strategy." Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has accused Attorney General Eric Holder and other Justice Department officials of undermining his investigation into Fast and Furious.

Supreme Court Clerk Accused of Selling Info to Sinaloa Cartel

In Sight
Elyssa Pachico

The arrest of a former employee of Mexico's Supreme Court and Attorney General’s Office suspected of working with the Sinaloa Cartel raises the question of how much -- and what kind -- of intelligence he may have fed to the criminal group.

Supreme Court clerk Juan Carlos de la Barrera Vite was arrested in June and transferred to a maximum security prison in Jalisco state on August 14.

He is accused of selling the testimony of former Sinaloa Cartel and Beltran Leyva Organization operatives, who became protected witnesses for the government, for up to $60,000. De la Barrera reportedly sold the information to Felipe Cabrera Sarabia, alias “El Inge,” considered one of the top operatives for Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. El Inge was arrested in December and is currently in custody.

De la Barrera primarily worked in the office of Supreme Court Justice Sergio Valls Hernandez, reports Reforma. Between June and November 2010 he worked briefly for the PGR’s organized crime division, and then returned to the division's anti-narcotics unit between June and November 2011. He also worked for the Attorney General’s Office (known by its Spanish initials the PGR) at one point in his nearly 10-year career.

Both the PGR and the Supreme Court have denied that any information from their offices was “compromised” by de la Barrera’s alleged actions. The Supreme Court has emphasized that de la Barrera primarily carried out “administrative” work for the body.

InSight Crime Analysis

De la Barrera is accused of passing along the testimony of Sergio Enrique Villarreal, alias “El Grande,” a former police officer who became a lieutenant for the Beltran Leyva Organization. He was arrested in Mexico in September 2010, and extradited to the US in May 2012. If he became a witness during that time, it would have coincided with de la Barrera working at the PGR’s organized crime division.

De la Barrera was also working at the PRG when authorities arrested another Sinaloa Cartel operative, Hector Adan Ruvalcaba Rivera, alias “La Calentura," in September 2011. De la Barrera is charged of selling La Calentura’s testimony to the Sinaloa Cartel.

It makes sense that the Sinaloa Cartel would be willing to pay significant money for the testimony of protected witnesses, as this would allow them to better gauge what kind of intelligence was accessible to the government. This helps to explain why different judicial functionaries -- from clerks like de la Barrera to magistrates and judges -- come under pressure from organized crime.