CIA Allegedly Using Drug Money to Overthrow Ecuador President Rafael Correa

Blacklisted News
Matías Rojas

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is using drug money to fund Rafael Correa’s opposition in the coming 2013 Ecuadorian elections, intelligence sources have revealed to Chilean independent media. The accusations do not stand alone. In October, former UK diplomat Craig Murray said that the CIA had tripled its budget to destabilize the government of Ecuador.

The allegations were made public by President Rafael Correa on November 3rd on national television, just days after his official visit to Chile to meet with President Sebastian Piñera.



For translation, click on the CC (captions) widget, choose Spanish, then select Translate and English (or preferred language).

Correa reaffirmed information that appeared in an article written by Chilean independent media outlet Panoramas News, revealing that the CIA and DEA stations in Chile were running a narcotics trafficking network through that country with the full knowledge of Chilean authorities and police.

One of the sources quoted by Chilean media, a former police officer in the Policia de Investigaciones (PDI) by the name of Fernando Ulloa, said that 300 kilograms of cocaine were entering Chile monthly under the escort of members of his own institution, the Carabineros, and the Chilean Army. In May 2011, Fernando Ulloa met with then Chilean Minister of Interior Rodrigo Hinzpeter in La Moneda to inform him about the drug network. After more than one year, the Piñera’s government had done nothing to investigate the case.

The scandal resurfaced again after 10 Chilean cops were detained with links to a minor drug smuggling ring, not connected to the one Ulloa was exposing. Although Chilean television was more open to talk about police corruption, Ulloa was only interviewed by two TV networks, where he accused Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter of covering up the larger narcotics ring he was investigating before being kicked out of his job as PDI inspector.



The links to US intelligence emerged after an anonymous source from the Agencia Nacional de Inteligencia (ANI) told Panoramas News that the smuggling of 300 kilos of cocaine was in fact a highly sensitive CIA/DEA operation that would help to raise money to topple the government of Ecuador. The operation is similar to the one carried out by the Agency in Central America during the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980’s, the source said.

The director of Panoramas News, journalist Patricio Mery Bell, was planning to hand over the information to Rafael Correa while the Ecuadorian President was visiting Chile, but he was strangely accused of beating a woman after she stole his cell-phone. The cell-phone memory contained a video testimony of Mery’s intelligence source, destined to be passed to Correa, but it ended up in the hands of the police after the mysterious incident.

Once he was in Ecuador, President Rafael Correa connected the dots and decided to go public with the information. He quoted Murray’s early warnings about the CIA’s intent to “fund, bribe or blackmail media and officials”, originally written in the former diplomat’s own blog, adding that the Agency was dealing drugs just as Oliver North had done during the Contra support effort.

In an interview with NTN24, journalist Patricio Mery added more details to the case, relating the cover-up of the CIA drug dealing operation to the deaths of two different people in the last seven years: former soldier Fabian Vega, who was found hung in the northern city of Calama in 2005, and young citizen Nestor Madariaga Juantok, found death with two bullets in the port of Valparaiso in 2006. Both were ruled as suicides.



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Mery also gave the name of the alleged CIA liaison with the Chilean Navy, former captain Jesus Saez Luna, who is now being held in a penitentiary after he mysteriously escaped from Navy custody. Saez Luna was described in his arrest as the biggest drug dealer of the coastal city of Viña del Mar, with networks in Santiago de Chile and the Bio-Bio southern region of the country. Known as “El Marino”, the former captain utilized “military intelligence” tactics to avoid detection by police, according to the Chilean newspaper La Segunda.

The case is being depicted as “Chile-Contras”, in reference to the history of CIA narcotics trafficking in Nicaragua. This is just another example of how drug money is used to fund covert operations, such as the ones we have seen in Syria, with whole guerrilla armies and opposition forces being financed to overthrow countries that aren’t part of the Anglo-American establishment and don’t bow to American corporate interests.

Court OKs warrantless use of hidden surveillance cameras

CNET
Declan McCullagh

In latest case to test how technological developments alter Americans' privacy, federal court sides with Justice Department on police use of concealed surveillance cameras on private property.

Police are allowed in some circumstances to install hidden surveillance cameras on private property without obtaining a search warrant, a federal judge said yesterday.

CNET has learned that U.S. District Judge William Griesbach ruled that it was reasonable for Drug Enforcement Administration agents to enter rural property without permission -- and without a warrant -- to install multiple "covert digital surveillance cameras" in hopes of uncovering evidence that 30 to 40 marijuana plants were being grown.

This is the latest case to highlight how advances in technology are causing the legal system to rethink how Americans' privacy rights are protected by law. In January, the Supreme Court rejected warrantless GPS tracking after previously rejecting warrantless thermal imaging, but it has not yet ruled on warrantless cell phone tracking or warrantless use of surveillance cameras placed on private property without permission.

Yesterday Griesbach adopted a recommendation by U.S. Magistrate Judge William Callahan dated October 9. That recommendation said that the DEA's warrantless surveillance did not violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and requires that warrants describe the place that's being searched.

"The Supreme Court has upheld the use of technology as a substitute for ordinary police surveillance," Callahan wrote.

Two defendants in the case, Manuel Mendoza and Marco Magana of Green Bay, Wis., have been charged with federal drug crimes after DEA agent Steven Curran claimed to have discovered more than 1,000 marijuana plants grown on the property, and face possible life imprisonment and fines of up to $10 million. Mendoza and Magana asked Callahan to throw out the video evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds, noting that "No Trespassing" signs were posted throughout the heavily wooded, 22-acre property owned by Magana and that it also had a locked gate.

U.S. Attorney James Santelle, who argued that warrantless surveillance cameras on private property "does not violate the Fourth Amendment."

(Credit: U.S. Department of Justice)

Callahan based his reasoning on a 1984 Supreme Court case called Oliver v. United States, in which a majority of the justices said that "open fields" could be searched without warrants because they're not covered by the Fourth Amendment. What lawyers call "curtilage," on the other hand, meaning the land immediately surrounding a residence, still has greater privacy protections.

"Placing a video camera in a location that allows law enforcement to record activities outside of a home and beyond protected curtilage does not violate the Fourth Amendment," Justice Department prosecutors James Santelle and William Lipscomb told Callahan.

As digital sensors become cheaper and wireless connections become more powerful, the Justice Department's argument would allow police to install cameras on private property without court oversight -- subject only to budgetary limits and political pressure.

About four days after the DEA's warrantless installation of surveillance cameras, a magistrate judge did subsequently grant a warrant. But attorneys for Mendoza and Magana noticed that the surveillance took place before the warrant was granted.

"That one's actions could be recorded on their own property, even if the property is not within the curtilage, is contrary to society's concept of privacy," wrote Brett Reetz, Magana's attorney, in a legal filing last month. "The owner and his guest... had reason to believe that their activities on the property were not subject to video surveillance as it would constitute a violation of privacy."

A jury trial has been scheduled for January 22.

HACKED STRATFOR EMAILS: DEA Told To Back Off From The Brother Of Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

Newly released internal emails from the U.S. private security firm Stratfor state that in 2007 the Bush Administration and CIA ordered the Drug Enforcement Agency to back off a major drug trafficking investigation of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half brother.

Ahmed Wali Karzai was an influential power broker in Afghanistan before he was assassinated in July 2011.

In June 6, 2007 email, titled "RE: Humint - Afghanistan - Karzai (Strictly Protect - Confidential," Stratfor vice president of intelligence Fred Burton wrote: 

The brother of President Karzai of Afghanistan is under investigation by DEA as a major narcotics trafficker. For political reasons, DEA has been told to backoff [sic] by the White House and CIA. DEA is seeing a direct nexus between terrorism and narcotics in Afghanistan with narcotics sales being used to fund jihadist operations.

After a Stratfor analyst asks "how close is karzai to this brother?" Burton replies:

Was described to me as close. Karzai will end up being another Noreiga.
Off the record --

DEA will proceed and take 'em (both?) down anyway, once this White House disappears. 
As I've said before, every country we have touched, turns to shit.

The crackdown on narcotics in Afghanistan has not yet occurred as opium production rose by about 61 percent from 2010 to 2011 and continued to rise in 2012 as U.S. troops have patrolled the poppy fields during this time.

WikiLeaks has published 2,694 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.

UPDATE: As redditor WhoShotJR notes, current and former American officials told the New York Times in 2009 that Ahmed Karzai received regular payments from the CIA since 2001.

Marines vs. Zetas: U.S. Hunts Drug Cartels in Guatemala

Wired
Robert Beckhusen

A U.S. Marine during a jungle patrol exercise in Guatemala on 
Sept. 12, 2010. While the Marines have helped train Guatemalan troops
 to hunt for drug traffickers in the past, the service is now 
expanding into chasing traffickers directly.

The war on drugs just got a whole lot more warlike. Two hundred U.S. Marines have entered Guatemala, on a mission to chase local operatives of the murderous Zeta drug cartel.

The Marines are now encamped after having deployed to Guatemala earlier this month, and have just “kicked off” their share of Operation Martillo, or Hammer. That operation began earlier in January, and is much larger than just the Marine contingent and involves the Navy, Coast Guard, and federal agents working with the Guatemalans to block drug shipment routes.

It’s a big shift for U.S. forces in the region. For years, the Pentagon has sent troops to Guatemala, but these missions have been pretty limited to exercising “soft power” — training local soldiers, building roads and schools. Operation Martillo is something quite different.

The news comes as two U.S. agents wounded in an attack in Mexico last week were discovered to be likely working for the CIA. The attack appears to be a case of mistaken identity after the agents fled from a Federal Police checkpoint, thinking the plain-clothed Mexican cops were cartel members. Police, seeing the agents’ bulletproof SUV flee their checkpoint, presumably thought the same thing, followed them and shot up their car. The agents have now been discovered as likely working for the CIA, as one of the wounded agents’ false identity was linked to a post office box in Virginia previously tied to CIA rendition flights.

The Marines’ share of the operation involves chasing drug traffickers with UH-1N Huey helicopters. The Marine contingent has four of the choppers, and the Marines are carrying weapons. “It’s not every day that you have 200-some Marines going to a country in Central and South America aside from conducting training exercises,” Staff Sgt. Earnest Barnes, the public affairs chief for Marine Corps Forces South, tells Danger Room. Prior to the Marines’ deployment, there were only a “handful” of Marines in the country, Barnes says.

However, the Marines can’t technically use their guns except in self-defense, and Barnes wouldn’t say whether they’re authorized to pursue drug traffickers on the ground. The description of what they’re doing, however, suggests that they probably can’t. Instead, they’ll be looking out for suspicious boats — including crude narco-submarines — and then radio the Guatemalans, who do the work seizing their drugs and arresting cartel members. That could be on rivers, or along Guatemala’s two coastlines, reports the Marine Corps Times.

“Overall the Marines are there to provide aerial detection and monitoring, and aerial surveillance, and so the appropriate authorities can do their job, whether it being Guatemalan military or some other form of law enforcement agency or authority to perform their duties,” Barnes says. Among the force are pilots and communication teams, as well as combat engineers to build landing sites.

On the other hand, just because the Marines may not be officially authorized to stop drug traffickers — instead only spot them — doesn’t mean they won’t be drawn into a conflict. The drug war is messy and involves going after criminal groups that don’t for the most part wear uniforms or identify themselves as cartel members. Nor is it true to say the U.S. isn’t already involved in a shooting war in Guatemala, with potentially ill consequences.

On the night of May 11, Honduran troops along with Drug Enforcement Administration agents allegedly killed two civilians — possibly four according to local accounts — including a pregnant woman. According to a report released this month by the Center for Economic Policy and Research, Honduran troops and U.S. agents seized a boat on a river containing cocaine near the town of Ahuas, when another boat — containing civilians — rammed into the first boat in the darkness. DEA agents and Honduran troops circling in a helicopter then fired on the second boat (.pdf). The U.S. has denied that any of its agents took part.

The DEA isn’t a military organization, but what the Ahuas shootings represented was a military approach to the drug war gone bad. A case of mistaken identity, sure, as the mayor of Ahuas said following the shootings. But it also reflects a danger of stopping drugs at the point of a gun.

The Ahuas shooting “demonstrates the risks of flooding foreign countries with armed representatives of the U.S. government, to fight an enemy that is largely indistinguishable from the civilian population on unknown terrain,” wrote Patrick Corcoran of InSight, a Latin America crime monitor. ”The Ahuas shooting may not have been inevitable, but as Americans take a more hands-on role, such scandals are likely to be repeated,” he wrote.

On the other hand, as Mexico’s drug violence worsened, cartels like the Zetas began spilling over Mexico’s southern border. Guatemala is now a base for the Zetas, who use the country’s remote northern region shipment route for narcotics and weapons. In February, Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina said his country is “not doing what the United States says, we are doing what we have to do” — in other words, decriminalize drugs. But Molina has also emphasized cracking down on the cartels in a mano dura, or “iron fist,” approach to crime.

Now, on the contrary, the U.S. hasn’t gone anywhere close to suggesting drugs be decriminalized. Gen. Douglas Fraser, the head of U.S. forces in South and Central America, said last year to the House Armed Sevices Committee that “the violence continues to increase in Central America, and that’s where and why we are focusing there.”

That’s where the Marines come in. And as far as the Zetas go, the U.S. hasn’t directly confronted them with troops. Mexico City will absolutely not allow it. Guatemala is different, which means the distance between the gun barrels of a militarized cartel, and that of the U.S. military, could start to get much shorter.

Operation Fast and Furious and U.S. Support for Illegal Drugs from Mexico

Mexican official: CIA 'manages' drug trade

Refreshing News

The US Central Intelligence Agency and other international security forces "don't fight drug traffickers", a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico has told , instead "they try to manage the drug trade".

Allegations about official complicity in the drug business are nothing new when they come from activists, professors, campaigners or even former officials. However, an official spokesman for the authorities in one of Mexico's most violent states - one which directly borders Texas - going on the record with such accusations is unique.

"It's like pest control companies, they only control," Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, the Chihuahua spokesman, told last month at his office in Juarez. "If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs."

Accusations are 'baloney'
Villanueva is not a high ranking official and his views do not represent Mexico's foreign policy establishment. Other more senior officials in Chihuahua State, including the mayor of Juarez, dismissed the claims as "baloney".

"I think the CIA and DEA [US Drug Enforcement Agency] are on the same side as us in fighting drug gangs," Hector Murguia, the mayor of Juarez, told during an interview inside his SUV. "We have excellent collaboration with the US."

Under the Merida Initiative, the US Congress has approved more than $1.4bn in drug war aid for Mexico, providing attack helicopters, weapons and training for police and judges.

More than 55,000 people have died in drug related violence in Mexico since December 2006. Privately, residents and officials across Mexico's political spectrum often blame the lethal cocktail of US drug consumption and the flow of high-powered weapons smuggled south of the border for causing much of the carnage.

Drug war 'illusions'

"The CIA wants to control the population; they don't want to stop arms trafficking to Mexico, look at [Operation] Fast and Furious,” he said, referencing a botched US exercise where automatic weapons were sold to criminals in the hope that security forces could trace where the guns ended up."The war on drugs is an illusion," Hugo Almada Mireles,professor at the Autonomous University of Juarez and author of several books, told . "It's a reason to intervene in Latin America."


The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms lost track of 1,700 guns as part of the operation, including an AK-47 used in 2010 the murder of Brian Terry, a Customs and Border Protection Agent.


Blaming the gringos for Mexico's problems has been a popular sport south of the Rio Grande ever since the Mexican-American war of the 1840s, when the US conquered most of present day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico from its southern neighbour. But operations such as Fast and Furious show that reality can be stranger than fiction when it comes to the drug war and relations between the US and Mexico. If the case hadn't been proven, the idea that US agents were actively putting weapons into the hands of Mexican gangsters would sound absurd to many.

'Conspiracy theories'


"I think it's easy to become cynical about American and other countries' involvement in Latin America around drugs," Kevin Sabet, a former senior adviser to the White House on drug control policy, told . "Statements [accusing the CIA of managing the drug trade] should be backed up with evidence… I don’t put much stake in it."

Villanueva's accusations "might be a way to get some attention to his region, which is understandable but not productive or grounded in reality", Sabet said. "We have sort of 'been there done that' with CIA conspiracy theories."

In 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published Dark Alliance, a series of investigative reports linking CIA missions in Nicaragua with the explosion of crack cocaine consumption in America's ghettos.
In order to fund Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua's socialist government, the CIA partnered with Colombian cartels to move drugs into Los Angeles, sending profits back to Central America, the series alleged.

"There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with, or on the payroll of, the CIA were involved in drug trafficking," US Senator John Kerry said at the time, in response to the series.

Other newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, slammedDark Alliance, and the editor of the Mercury News eventually wrote that the paper had over-stated some elements in the story and made mistakes in the journalistic process, but that he stood by many of the key conclusions.


Widespread rumours


Acceptance of these claims within some elements of Mexico's government and security services shows the difficulty in pursuing effective international action against the drug trade."It's true, they want to control it," a mid-level official with theSecretariat Gobernacion in Juarez, Mexico's equivalent to the US Department of Homeland Security, told of the CIA and DEA's policing of the drug trade. The officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he knew the allegations to be correct, based on discussions he had with US officials working in Juarez.

Jesús Zambada Niebla, a leading trafficker from the Sinaloa cartel currently awaiting trial in Chicago, has said he was working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency during his days as a trafficker, and was promised immunity from prosecution.

"Under that agreement, the Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of [Jesus Zambada's] father, Ismael Zambada and 'Chapo' Guzmán were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tonnes of illicit drugs... into... the United States, and were protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels," Zambada's lawyers wrote as part of his defence. "Indeed, the Unites States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel."


The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico's oldest and most powerful trafficking organisation, and some analysts believe security forces in the US and Mexico favour the group over its rivals.

Joaquin "El Chapo", the cartel's billionaire leader and one of the world's most wanted men, escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 by sneaking into a laundry truck - likely with collaboration from guards - further stoking rumours that leading traffickers have complicit friends in high places.

"It would be easy for the Mexican army to capture El Chapo," Mireles said. "But this is not the objective." He thinks the authorities on both sides of the border are happy to have El Chapo on the loose, as his cartel is easier to manage and his drug money is recycled back into the broader economy. Other analysts consider this viewpoint a conspiracy theory and blame ineptitude and low level corruption for El Chapo's escape, rather than a broader plan from government agencies.

Political changes

He wants to open a high-level dialogue with the US about the drug war, but has said legalisation of some drugs is not an option. Some hardliners in the US worry that Nieto will make a deal with some cartels, in order to reduce violence.After an election hit by reported irregularities, Enrique Pena Nieto from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is set to be sworn in as Mexico's president on December 1.

"I am hopeful that he will not return to the PRI party of the past which was corrupt and had a history of turning a blind eye to the drug cartels," said Michael McCaul, a Republican Congressman from Texas.
Regardless of what position a new administration takes in order to calm the violence and restore order, it is likely many Mexicans - including government officials such as Chihuahua spokesman Guillermo Villanueva - will believe outside forces want the drug trade to continue.

The widespread view linking the CIA to the drug trade - whether or not the allegations are true - speaks volumes about officials' mutual mistrust amid ongoing killings and the destruction of civic life in Mexico.
"We have good soldiers and policemen," Villanueva said. "But you won't resolve this problem with bullets. We need education and jobs."

DEA investigates Montana state legislator for medical marijuana views

Yahoo News
Eric Pfeiffer

A member of Montana's state legislature says the Drug Enforcement Agency began investigating her over support for medical marijuana laws.


State House Democrat Diane Sands tells the Missoulian she was contacted by a defense attorney with some unusual news: The attorney had been approached by the DEA who wanted to know whether Sands might be connected to one of the attorney's clients who had been charged with distributing marijuana.

"So now, if you're a state legislator who has been working on medical marijuana laws, you are somehow part of a conspiracy," said Sands. "It's ridiculous, of course, but it's also threatening to think that the federal government is willing to use its influence and try to chill discussion about this subject."

Medical marijuana is legal in Montana, but the practice is still illegal under federal drug laws. The ATF recently stepped into Montana's medical marijuana laws as well, banning firearm sales and ownership from anyone with a medical pot card.

The ACLU has stepped in to defend Sands, though both say they don't expect any actual charges from the DEA. "When you hear this sort of thing, there's a part of you that just gets irritated, but there's a part of you that knows you have to, as an organization, make sure you've dotted the I's and crossed the T's," the ACLU's executive director, Scott Crichton, told the Missoulian.


"It's chilling, and it dredges up darker days from the '50s and '60s," said Crichton.

Neither the DEA nor the U.S. Attorney's Office have said why Sands' name came up in the investigation.

Ex-CIA Analyst Doesn’t Think Iran Govt. Behind Plot to Murder Saudi Envoy

International Business Times

Ex-CIA analyst doesn't think Tehran's central
government is behind plot to Saudi envoy to U.S.

A former analyst for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has told Australian radio that he doesn’t think the Iranian governent is behind the plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S., Adel al-Jubeir.

Senior U.S. officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton have directly tied the conspiracy to kill the Saudi ambassador to the highest levels of the Tehran government and have warned of serious repercussions.

Holder said he will "hold Iran accountable for its actions.”

The Justice Department has alleged that five Iranians with links to the Revolutionary Guards Corps conspired to kill the Saudi envoy in Washington. One of the men, Mansoor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, with a dual Iranian and U.S. passport, is in custody in New York.

Reportedly, the Iranians approached a man they thought was a member of a Mexican drug cartel and paid him money to assassinate al-Jubeir. That man turned out to be an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Meanwhile, Iran has denied the allegations and shrugged them off as more propaganda by Washington.

Robert Baer, who worked for the CIA as a case officer in the Middle East for over two decades, seems to agree with Tehran.

Speaking to radio current affairs host Eleanor Hall of the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Wednesday, Baer said this plot doesn't appear to be driven by the Iranian government and that the Obama Administration should retract its statements and open direct talks with Tehran to avoid a full-scale war.

“I don't think [the notion that senior Tehran officials are behind the plot is] credible, not the central government, there may be a rogue element behind it,” he said.

“This doesn't fit their modus operandi at all. It's completely out of character, they're much better than this. They wouldn't be sending money through an American bank; they wouldn't be going to the cartels in Mexico to do this. It's just not the way they work.”

Baer explained: “I've followed them [the Iranian government] for 30 years and they're much more careful. And they always use a proxy between them and the operation, and in this case they didn't. I mean… either they're shooting themselves in the foot or there [are] pieces of the story; I don't know what they are.”

Baer also said he's uncertain what kind of further penalties Washington can inflict on Iran, given the existing imposition of sanctions.

“Sanctions are not working, they've done all the sanctions they can, are they going to move to some sort of naval blockade, an embargo? I can't tell you,” he said. “But if they [Washington] truly believe the [Iranian] central government was going to launch an attack inside the United States like this, they have to do something now that they're on the record.”

Baer suggested that perhaps an Iranian radical is behind the plot and “framing” the Tehran government for it.

Baer also indicated that Washington officials may step back from their accusations in the coming days as more information becomes available.

“On the other hand, if they increase the rhetoric, we are looking at an escalation which is uncontrollable,” he warned. “It could lead to a conflict in Iran. I mean, if we were to launch an embargo, there's a limited amount of troops in Iraq, would the Iranians retaliate against them? Would they retaliate against us in any number of places? Iran truly is the third rail of American foreign policy and no-one's done anything over the years to ameliorate relations with Iran.”

The “Fast And Furious” Used Car Salesman “Threat” Falls Apart

Aletho

Mansour J. Arbabsiar

The failed used car salesman Mansour J. Arbabsiar, who is accused in the “Iran kills Saudi ambassador” movie plot, is a hapless idiot and petty criminal whose businesses deals always went wrong. He couldn’t even match his socks, smoked marihuana and drank a lot of alcohol, was nonreligious, an opponent of the Iranian regime and only cared about money. A business man who knows him calls him “worthless” and his neighbors believed he was dealing in drugs.

But Arbabsiar had some money through inherited land holdings in Iran. Those holdings may well be the source of the $100,000 wired from Iran to the Drug Enforcement Administration informant. Israel’s Mossad, the MEK cult or some drug dealers in Iran are other possible sources for the money.

The Obama administration insists that it has proof of Iranian government involvement in the assassination plot. Some anonymous officials though are already walking back that claim. It seems that they have no proof at all, just a hunch.

Every Iran expert interviewed thinks the story as presented is nonsense: Alireza Nader from Rand Corp, Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, former CIA agent Robert Baer, Carter era NSC official Gary Sicks, Bush 2 NSC official Hillary Mann Leverett (also here), Muhammad Sahimi of PBS/Tehran Bureau and Iran scholar Hamid Serri.

To me the indictment reads as if a nutty Mansour J. Arbabsiar attempted a drug deal which was then turned into a terrorism entrapment by and through the paid criminal Drug Enforcement Administration informant.

The Obama administration seems to use this case for three purposes:

• Diversion from the subpoena to AG Holder in the Fast and Furious gun running case which was served yesterday, from the #OccupyWallStreet movement and the general economic malaise
  
• To get some momentum for additional international sanctions on Iran
  
• To prop up the connections with the Saudi regime as it had threatened to distance itself from the U.S. over the U.S. veto of a Palestinian state

The administration’s case for the “plot” is now falling apart. Yesterday’s hype in the media has by now been replaced with doubts and mistrust. Given the obvious weakness of the case this was predictable.
But why then did the Obama administration use this case at all? Why come up with such a weak case that was sure to make it a laughing stock?

FBI Account of "Terror Plot" Suggests Sting Operation

IPS
Gareth Porter

When they are not busy supplying drugs to Mexican
drug lords, they're tapping their Mexican contacts
to help create a false flag to implicate Iran.

WASHINGTON, Oct 13, 2011 (IPS) - While the administration of Barack Obama vows to hold the Iranian government "accountable" for the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the legal document describing evidence in the case provides multiple indications that it was mainly the result of an FBI "sting" operation.

Although the legal document, called an amended criminal complaint, implicates Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar and his cousin Ali Gholam Shakuri, an officer in the Iranian Quds Force, in a plan to assassinate Saudi Arabian Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir, it also suggests that the idea originated with and was strongly pushed by a undercover DEA informant, at the direction of the FBI.

On May 24, when Arbabsiar first met with the DEA informant he thought was part of a Mexican drug cartel, it was not to hire a hit squad to kill the ambassador. Rather, there is reason to believe that the main purpose was to arrange a deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan.

In the complaint, the closest to a semblance of evidence that Arbabsiar sought help during that first meeting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is the allegation, attributed to the DEA informant, that Arbabsiar said he was "interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia".

Among the "other things" was almost certainly a deal on heroin controlled by officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a "federal law enforcement official", wrote that Arbabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who "controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium".

Because of opium entering Iran from Afghanistan, Iranian authorities hold 85 percent of the world's opium seizures, according to Iran's Fars News Agency. Iranian security personnel, including those in the IRGC and its Quds Force, then have the opportunity to sell the opium to traffickers in the Middle East, Europe and now Mexico.

Mexican drug cartels have begun connecting with Middle Eastern drug traffickers, in many cases stationing operatives in Middle East locations to facilitate heroin production and sales, according to a report last January in Borderland Beat.

But the FBI account of the contacts between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant does not reference any discussions of drugs.

The criminal complaint refers to an unspecified number of meetings between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant in late June and the first two weeks of July.

What transpired in those meetings remains the central mystery surrounding the case.

No Direct Evidence of Iranian Government Complicity in Plot

Anti-War
John Glaser

The Obama administration continues to claim the Iranian government helped orchestrate the plot, while admitting evidence is lacking

United States officials in the Obama administration and Justice Department have explicitly claimed that Iran’s supreme leader and the Quds Force covert operations unit were likely aware of the so-called terror plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States. But evidence of that is lacking and many officials have admitted there are gaps in their understanding of the plot.

The Obama administration has combatively blamed the highest echelons of the Iranian government and promised impending consequences, despite the fact that there is no solid information about “exactly how high it goes,” as one official put it.

Anonymous government officials speaking to various media outlets have said that their belief that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “more than likely” had prior knowledge of the plot is based on inference. The Quds Force operates, they reason, in accordance and obedience to Iran’s supreme leadership, so a rogue actor is unlikely.

But unlikely describes the plot itself, as even US officials admit it was very out of character. The Quds Force has a history of shrewd covert operations and calculated dealings with proxies. “The Iranian modus operandi is only to trust sensitive plots to their own employees, or to trusted proxies,” wrote Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service on Gulf2000 on Wednesday.

And the accused perpetrator Manssor Arbabsiar and a Mexican drug gang don’t fit the protocol. “Are we to believe that this Texas car seller was a Qods sleeper agent for many years resident in the US? Ridiculous,” said Mr. Katzman. “They never ever use such has-beens or loosely connected people for sensitive plots such as this.”

Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake

AntiWar
Justin Raimondo

Fake, fake, fake – I’m talking about the latest anti-Iranian propaganda coming out of Washington, which claims the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were involved in a “plot” to take out the Saudi ambassador to the US and blow up both the Saudi and Israeli embassies. The narrative reads like a formulaic melodrama: two Iranians, one a naturalized US citizen, purportedly approached someone they thought was a member of a Mexican drug cartel – according to the indictment [.pdf], it was a “sophisticated” drug cartel, not the plebeian sort – and proposed paying him $1.5 million to murder Adel al Jubeir, the Kingdom’s ambassador in Washington – oh, and by the way, the Iranians supposedly said, “Are you guys any good with explosives?”

The key to understanding just how fake this story is can be found in the New York Times report, which informs us:

“For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents, Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District, said in the news conference. ‘So no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere,’ he said, ‘and no one was actually in ever in any danger.’” 
 
Translation: the whole thing is phony from beginning to end.

This is another one of US law enforcement’s manufactured “anti-terrorist” triumphs, where the feds set somebody up, fabricate a “crime” out of thin air, and then proceed to “solve” a case that never really existed to begin with. This has been the general pattern of our “anti-terrorist” operations in the US since the beginning – because finding and catching real terrorists is much too hard, at least for our Keystone Kops. Instead of going out and actually, you know, looking for the Bad Guys, and then apprehending them, they lure some unsuspecting Muslim immigrant into a trap, and spring it when the time is right.

The long narrative spun by the indictment tells us everything but what we really need to know, which is: how is it that these two Iranian “terrorists” just happened to meet up with a Mexican drug cartel assassin who just happened to be a longtime DEA informant? I guess that would be giving too much away: far better to spice up the story with scary details, such as the conversation between one of the alleged plotters and the informant, in the course of which the former says “If you have to blow up the restaurant and kill a hundred Americans, well then f*ck ‘em!”

The credibility rating of this story, taken on its face, is close to zero. Let’s say the Iranians really were plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador on American soil: would they contract it out to the Mexican Mafia, send all kinds of traceable money wires from Iran to the US, and not care if they killed a hundred Americans in the process of achieving their goal? Or would they send some fanatic, who would not only do it for free but also eliminate himself (or herself)? This flimsy cock-eyed tale is so transparently fake that it’s an embarrassment to the United States of America. Can’t our spooks do better than this?

This fabrication marks a new trend in the field of anti-Iranian war propaganda. Previously, the War Party was relying on the same technique they used in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq: the old “weapons of mass destruction” gambit. The big problem with that is it’s old, and tired: no one believes it anymore [.pdf]. Once burned, twice shy, as the saying goes. This latest lie is a fresh angle on a continuing theme, merely substituting Iran for the traditional bogeyman known as al-Qaeda.

That this story involves the Mexican drug cartels, and Attorney General Eric Holder proclaiming that we’re going to “hold the Iranian government accountable,” has got to be some kind of sick joke: after all, here is a man who stood by and watched while US law enforcement agents let guns travel over the US border to arm those very same cartels. Is this “coup” for the Justice Department the pay-off for that harebrained scheme – and when is Holder going to be held accountable?

Adding insult to murder

The Examiner
William Heuisler

Today prosecutors have opposed a request by parents of murdered Tucson District Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry. Terry's parents want to be part the case against the man who bought the two rifles found at their son's murder scene.

But Government lawyers say the events are not connected.

Department of Justice US attorneys actually propose the absurdity that the case against Jaime Avila and 19 others accused of smuggling the murder weapon is different from Terry's because Terry was a victim of murder - not a victim of firearms offenses.

Lawyers for Terry’s parents asked a judge to let them become part of the case so they can stay updated.
But Government lawyers are trying desperately to disconnect Attorney General (AG), Eric Holder’s Project Gunrunner (see Fast and Furious) from the murder of a Border Patrol agent trying to enforce our smuggling laws.

Brian Terry’s mother wants to know who authorized the ATF weapon smuggling that caused the death of her son in the desert south of Tucson. She will find her answer in a 2009 speech in Cuernavaca, Mexico, recorded in the Justice News, where AG Eric Holder announced Project Gunrunner:

"Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner. DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion. DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail." (Holder, 2009)

Project Gunrunner resulted in Arizona’s “Fast and Furious” scheme of illegal gun smuggling.

Project Gunrunner resulted in the deaths of at least two American law enforcement Agents and over 150 Mexican law enforcement officers.

Trying to separate AG Holder’s Project Gunrunner from the murder of Tucson District Border Agent Brian Terry is an insult to Brian Terry’s parents. But it is also an insult to every law abiding American’s intelligence.


Associated Press (2011). Arizona Capitol Times.  Feds oppose agent’s parents becoming part of case.http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2011/08/11/feds-oppose-agents-parents-becoming-part-of-case/?utm_source=Publicaster&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Capitol%20Times%20August%2011%20Morning%20Edition&utm_term=Feds+oppose+agent%e2%80%99s+parents+becoming+part+of+case
Holder, E. (2009). Justice News. United States Department of Justice. Attorney General Eric Holder at the Mexico/ United States Arms Trafficking Conference. http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090402.html

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.

Former mayor pleads guilty to gun smuggling

Santa Fe New Mexican
Jeri Clausing

ALBUQUERQUE — The former mayor of a small New Mexico border town has pleaded guilty to charges that he participated in a gun smuggling ring that federal prosecutors said sent hundreds of guns into Mexico, authorities said Wednesday.

Eddie Espinoza faces 65 years in prison. The 51-year-old was arrested in March along with two other Columbus town officials — police chief Angelo Vega and former trustee Blas Gutierrez. The three were among a dozen people charged in the federal sting.

United States Attorney John E. Murphy of West Texas announced Wednesday afternoon that Espinoza pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, three counts of making false statements in the acquisition of firearms and three counts of smuggling firearms from the United States during a hearing Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge William P. Lynch in Las Cruces.

"I am glad to hear about it," said Rosemary Zamora, who lost her job as a town police officer earlier this week because of the town's dire financial condition, which current officials blame on the indicted men.

"It's affected the whole community. We can't even get any grants because the government doesn't trust Columbus anymore," she said.

Earlier this week, the town's board of trustees shut down Columbus's three-member police department and reduced other employees' hours in an attempt by new Mayor Nicole Lawson to stabilize the budget.

The village will rely on the Luna County Sheriff's Office for law enforcement. Sheriff Raymond Cobos said deputies have always patrolled the area anyway and he'll shift resources to cover the village.

Columbus sits just north of Palomas, Mexico, a town that has seen increasing violence as drug cartels wage war against one another, the Mexican Army and police.

Former Mayor Martha Skinner said she was surprised anyone would plead guilty, and she speculated that Espinoza did so because he has kidney problems and is on dialysis. Skinner said she anticipates it will take the town five to 10 years to recover financially.

Gun-smuggling cartel figures possibly were paid FBI informants

Los Angeles Times
Richard A. Serrano

Probe reveals that the U.S. agency running the 'Fast and Furious' anti-gun-trafficking operation didn't know about the alleged FBI informants. Congressional investigators are looking into the matter.

Reporting from Washington—Congressional investigators probing the controversial "Fast and Furious" anti-gun-trafficking operation on the border with Mexico believe at least six Mexican drug cartel figures involved in gun smuggling also were paid FBI informants, officials said Saturday.

The investigators have asked the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration for details about the alleged informants, as well as why agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which ran the Fast and Furious operation, were not told about them.

Suspected members of the Zeta drug cartel are arrested in Guadalajara.
Weapons also were seized.

 The development raises further doubts about the now-shuttered program, which was created in November 2009 in an effort to track guns across the border and unravel the cartels' gun smuggling networks. The gun tracing largely failed, however, and hundreds of weapons purchased in U.S. shops later were found at crime scenes in Mexico.

The scandal has angered Mexican officials and some members of Congress. Investigators say nearly 2,500 guns were allowed to flow illegally into Mexico under the ATF program, fueling the drug violence ravaging that country and leading to the shooting death of a U.S. border agent.

In a letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, the investigators asked why U.S. taxpayers' money apparently was paid to Mexican cartel members who have terrorized the border region for years in their efforts to smuggle drugs into this country, and to ship U.S. firearms into Mexico.

"We have learned of the possible involvement of paid FBI informants in Operation Fast and Furious," wrote Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The two have been the leading congressional critics of the program.

"At least one individual who is allegedly an FBI informant might have been in communication with, and was perhaps even conspiring with, at least one suspect whom ATF was monitoring," they wrote.

The FBI and DEA did not tell the ATF about the alleged informants. The ATF and congressional investigators learned later that those agencies apparently were paying cartel members whom the ATF wanted to arrest.

"Operation Fast and Furious was conceived to get some of the bigger fish down there," said one official close to the congressional investigation, who asked not to be identified because the probe is ongoing. "Then it turned out that some of the ones they were zeroing in on actually, mostly likely were paid informants."