http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/02/socrates-rizzo-pri-presidents-oversaw.html posted:

Sócrates Rizzo: PRI Presidents oversaw drug trafficking
Sunday, February 27, 2011

In a conference with students held on Wednesday, February 23, at the Law School of the Autonomous University of Coauhuila in Saltillo, Socrates Rizzo delivered a bombshell that has rocked Mexico as the campaign for the 2012 presidential election approaches.

During an interview session the former PRI Governor admitted that previous PRI presidents held strong control over drug trafficking routes that prevented the attacks on civilians and the violence that Mexico is undergoing today.

Although an open secret in Mexican society and a charge occasionally leveled publicly by the country’s two other major political parties, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), this is the first time in recent history that a former or current PRI politician has admitted publicly that this arrangement existed.

"Somehow the problems with drug trafficking were avoided, there was a strong State control and a strong President and a strong Attorney General and a tight control of the Army.”

"Somehow they (drug traffickers) were told: 'You go through here, you here, you there', but do not touch these other places," he said in his speech.

The former Governor added that this strategy allowed the State to ensure the social peace that has been lost in the war on drugs launched by the PAN administration of Felipe Calderon.

"What the old guard says is that we had control by the Government and the Army. The big problem is consumption, and while consumption exists in the U.S. there will be drug trafficking in that direction.”

"What control by the PRI governments guaranteed was that drug trafficking did not disturb the social peace."

Socrates Rizzo, who was the PRI Governor of Nuevo Leon between 1991 and 1996, said the government control ended with the PAN administrations of Presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, who failed to listen to advice on how things were done in previous years, thus sparking the current violence.

"This dilemma was lost due to problems of professionalism, it is natural that new officials come without experience, they wanted to do things differently and they did not take advice because the last thing they wanted to hear was anything from the PRI, they said that the PRI were the 'snake in the grass’ and with that they refused counsel.”

"Although there was a change of party, you should have had continuity with what the past government was doing, I think not taking advice on past arrangements relaxed discipline and mechanisms of control and now we see the results."

Rizzo denied that the governors were involved in the agreements between the federal government and the drug trade because those were times when the President had broad powers to the extent that the state executives had to obey.

However, the growth that has occurred with drug consumption in Mexico makes it impossible to resume the negotiation schemes between the government and the drug traffickers, said the former governor.

"These are new times, we are in another world. We now have a drug consumption problem and the problem of ‘disorganized’ crime of robberies and extortions.”

"We didn’t have those problems in the past. At that time there was a strong President with an iron grip on the Army that could maintain social peace and with drug trafficking, that demand determined supply."

---

It is believed that the formalized arrangements with drug traffickers began during the PRI administration of Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado from 1982 to 1988 under the direction of his Interior Minister Gobernacion, Manuel Bartlett Diaz, who used the Interior Ministry police force, the Federal Security Directorate (DFS), to coordinate and control the drug trade, which became a protected activity.

During this period DFS positions and posts were sold to members of drug cartels, in effect granting them the power to operate with impunity.

This protection continued during the PRI presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who disbanded the DFS and transferred the coordination and protection of drug traffickers to the Army, Federal Judicial Police and prosecutors such as Enrique Alvarez and Javier Coello Trejo.

The belief remains strong that Luis Donaldo Colosio, Carlos Salinas’ handpicked successor to the presidency of Mexico, was assassinated during the presidential campaign of 1994 because of his refusal to deal with the drug trafficking underworld.

The Salinas administration was so corrupt that even De La Madrid regretted his decision to chose Carlos Salinas as his successor. In interview with journalist Carmen Aristegui, De la Madrid said that Raul Salinas, Carlos’ brother, was the link with drug cartels during the Salinas administration between 1988 and 1994, an administration that De La Madrid denounced as marked by "immorality ".

“Raul Salinas was the one who kept contact with the drug cartels and who got the money to accounts in Switzerland and France, through operations with American banks."

"I am very disappointed that I was wrong, but then I had no evidence about the morality of Salinas.”

Previous classified statements that Sócrates Rizzo made to the Monterrey U.S. Consul General in cable 09MONTERREY31 and revealed by Wikileaks show that pacts between political figures of all parties and drug cartels are possible even now,

Organized Crime and the Elections
-------------------------------------------
3. (SBU) Particularly worrisome, Rizzo observed, was the
prospect of the upcoming gubernatorial, state, and municipal
elections, scheduled to take place in Nuevo Leon on July 5.
While the two principal parties - PRI and PAN - had both taken
steps to guard against the infiltration of narco-money in the
campaigns, in practice it would be practically impossible to
prevent organized crime from bankrolling candidates. One way
the cartels could impact the race would be to just bribe
television anchorpersons and the commentators, thereby ensuring
that their particular candidate received favorable coverage.
Alternatively, he said, organized crime could provide a
candidate's staff with walking around money to distribute to
voters. Meanwhile, another contact pointed out that the
applicable campaign finance regulations only cover the
candidate, so that it would be easy to simply funnel the narco
money to a family member.

---

Damage Control

Hours after Rizzo’s statements were covered in the media, a firestorm of dissent from the PRI establishment rained on the ex-Governor.

Manlio Fabio Beltrones, former governor of the border state of Sonora and current PRI Senator and president of the Senate, labeled the statements by the former governor that the past PRI governments controlled and distributed drug trafficking routes as extremely irresponsible.

"Statements of this nature and superficiality do little to make a true diagnosis of the serious problem we have today, of crime and drug trafficking," said the chairman of the Senate. “We are all accountable for our statements and need to back them up with evidence.”

(In an investigative article on corruption in Mexico published in 1997, the New York Times printed the following: The Governor of the Mexican state that borders Arizona is collaborating with one of the world's most powerful drug traffickers, creating a haven for smugglers who transport vast quantities of narcotics into the United States, according to American officials and intelligence.

Officials said this conclusion was based on a wealth of evidence, including ''highly reliable'' informers' reports that the Governor, Manlio Fabio Beltrones Rivera, took part in meetings in which leading traffickers paid high-level politicians who were protecting their operations.

According to the accounts, Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother of the former President, received suitcases full of cash and was responsible for distributing the money to those attending.

Present and former officials said the evidence of Mr. Beltrones's role was so detailed and compelling that the United States had included his name on a confidential document provided to the transition team of President Ernesto Zedillo listing more than a dozen officials suspected of corruption. Another Mexican Governor, Jorge Carrillo Olea, was also included on the American blacklist because of reported entanglements with major drug dealers.

While Mr. Zedillo did not name either man to a federal post, both continue to wield considerable power in their states and nationally through their prominence in Mexico's governing party. Both seem to enjoy a tacit immunity from concerted criminal investigation in Mexico and the United States.

Manlio Fabio Beltrones is still in line for the PRI nomination for the presidency of Mexico if the party’s “golden boy”, Enrique Peña Nieto, loses his certain grip on the candidacy)

Fernando Baeza Melendez, PRI Senator from the state of Chihuahua, also demanded that Rizzo show evidence to validate his statements.

"There were never direct or indirect dealings with drug traffickers to give them any support. Domestic consumption has grown in recent years, in the past there were no conflicts because there was no struggle for the domestic market.”

(Baeza Melendez was the Governor of Chihuaua from 1986 to 1992, during the rise to power of Amado Carrillo Fuentes “the Lord of the Skys”. During his term in office the former Governor, Elias Ramirez Ruiz, his director of the state judicial police, and Elias Ramirez jr., the director’s son and representative of the PGR in the state of Chihuahua, were rumored to be the protectors of the then head of the Juarez cartel, Rafael Aguilar Guajardo and his criminal operation.

Amado Carrillo had the backing of the then Secretary of National Defense Juan José Arévalo Gardoqui.

Soon after Baeza Melendez ended his term as Governor, Rafael Aguilar Guajardo was murdered in Cancun and Amado Carrillo assumed control of the Juarez cartel.)

In an interview with Univision news anchorman Jorge Ramos, Enrique Pena Nieto, the former Governor of the state of Mexico (Edomex) and current frontrunner for the PRI candidacy for President of the Republic in 2012, gave a cryptic anwser to the question of whether the PRI had negotiated with drug cartels while in power.

"When the PRI held political hegemony in this country we were not living what we have today, it was another scenario, another reality. But today we are living in a completely different world, not only in Mexico but throught the globe.”

Peña Nieto continued: "these statements are an attempt to discredit the PRI, it seems really absurd and only suitable for some in the mood to disqualify the PRI. There are no negotiations with drug traffickers, there can not be a deal with organized crime, only the law applies. That is final."

(This is not the first occasion that Peña Nieto and the PRI uses the ‘election ploy’ tactic to cloud an issue. In January of this year Edomex state prosecutors downplayed calls to investigate the over 900 femicides that have taken place in the state since Peña Nieto took office in 2006 and the failure of Edomex law enforcement to address the gravity of these crimes.

The Edomex municipalities of Toluca (the state capitol), Naucalpan and Chimahualcán, along with Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua now constitute Mexico’s epicenter for these hate crimes against women.

The proposal to convene a special investigation was blocked by the PRI and the party dismissed the demand for an investigation as an ‘election ploy’.

This action by the PRI was meant to protect the image of Peña Nieto if he is indeed chosed as the party’s standard bearer in the presidential elections of 2012.)

The National President of the PRI party and former Governor of Coahuila, Humberto Moreira, added his voice to those rejecting the statements of Socrates Rizzo.

Moreira denied that the PRI had ever negotiated with the drug cartels to maintain stability within the borders of Mexico.

“When the PRI was in power we arrested El Chapo Guzman, when the PAN took over he escaped”

(It should be noted that while Moreira was Governor of Coahuila the state became a Los Zetas bastion. His political opponents in the state often referred to him as the Zeta Governor.

At one time Ruben Moreira, Humberto’s brother and candidate for Governor of Coahuila in this year’s elections, was the next door neighbor to “el Canicon”, or Sigifredo Najera Talamantes, a senior member of Los Zetas living in Saltillo who was behind the Zeta takeover of Nuevo Leon and was the head of the Zeta plaza of Monterrey.

El Canicon claimed responsibility for the grenade attack on the U.S. consulate in Monterrey on October 12, 2008 and was responsible for the torture, mutilation and murder of nine Army troops in Monterrey from October 17 to the 22nd, 2008. He is supposed to have co-opted up to 60 percent of all police officers in Nuevo Leon. El Canicon was arrested in Saltillo in March 2009 by the army in a top secret operation designed to prevent any warning by Coahuila’s law enforcement apparatus.

Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, El Z 40, who is one of the top leaders of Los Zetas is reported to own ranches in Coahuila and in a letter sent by a citizen’s group to President Calderon in November of last year, the residents of the border city of Piedras Negras complained of the regular presence of El Z 40 in their city and his protection by local and state police officials. Even the presence of Heriberto Lazcano, the head of Los Zetas, was reported on the letter.

Coahuila is the fourth ranked state in Mexico in the number of kidnappings reported to authorities, and it should be noted that in Mexico the vast majority of kidnappings for ransom are never reported.

A cable released released by Wikileaks, 09Monterry251, even mentions that Moreira was willing to sacrifice the lives of his citizens due to his hatred of the PAN party

(Armed gangs roamed the city of Torreon and its suburbs, with the situation even worse across the river in Gomez Palacios, Durango. The state/local police forces in the Laguna region were of little use as organized crime had either corrupted or intimidated officers there. Note: Moreira is the Governor of a decidedly PRI state; Torreon is the one major municipality governed by the PAN and its leaders continually complain that the state government starves them in terms of security resources).

The security situation in Torreon is so severe due to Moreira’s criminal negligence that the current PRI mayor remains unable to impose control. Recently Torreon was ranked the 19th most dangerous city in the world)

Under the immense pressure unleashed by the PRI hierarchy, Socrates Rizzo recanted his earlier statements in a radio interview the next day, stating that his words had been taken out of context. His new position was that the other parties the PRI negotiated with to maintain stability were other sectors of Mexican society and not the drug cartels.

Of course, politicians and leaders of the PAN and PRD political parties held Rizzo’s statements up as proof of the charges of collusion with organized crime that have circulated for decades.

In the words of one PAN national leader, Gustavo Madero Munoz, “A strong president is not one who strikes a deal with criminals that damage Mexican society, but one that faces them head on.”

“PAN presidents assumed their responsibility and the path of law, combating drug trafficking and organized crime head-on with the all the power of the law.”

Madero Munoz said that the statistics of deaths are higher in states governed by the PRI.

"There is a disturbing correlation between crime rates and PRI governed states. These states have the highest number of killings and the worst problems with their prisons”

This is the legacy of PRI rule in Mexico.

(The other two main political parties would be dishonest in claiming the moral high ground with regards to negotiating pacts with organized crime. There are allegations of links between the Sinaloa Cartel and Felipe Calderon and the PAN, and of La Familia Michoacana’s infiltration of the PRD state and municipal governments in Michoacan.)

Sources:
Rechazan Priistas habe negociado…….
http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/rechazanpriistashabernegociadoconelnarcotrafico-660031.html
Presidentes Priistas controlaban al narco…..
http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/presidentespriistascontrolabanalnarcoexgobernadordenl-659559.html
Drug ties taint 2 Mexican Governors
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/23/world/drug-ties-taint-2-mexican-governors.html?src=pm
En la gestion del huevo de la serpiente…..
http://www.estrategiaeditorial.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4802:en-la-gestacion-del-huevo-de-la-serpiente-nadie-es-inocente-gustavo-cortes-campa-&catid=168:gustavo-cortes-campa&Itemid=942
El PRI no negocio con el narco
http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/elprinonegocioconelnarcoafirmapenanieto-659809.html
Feminicidio, los Expedientes Ocultos tras la Guerra contra el Narco y la Publicidad de Peña Nieto
http://jenarovillamil.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/feminicidio-los-expedientes-ocultos-tras-la-guerra-contra-el-narco-y-la-publicidad-de-pena-nieto/
Recula Sócrates Rizzo: priistas nunca pactaron con el narco
http://www.milenio.com/node/656504
Tamaulipas encabeza secuestros……
http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/tamaulipasencabezasecuestros;coahuilaelcuartolugar-660802.html
PRI sigue negiciando…..
http://www.milenio.com/node/655816
State Dept cable 09Monterrey251
http://dazzlepod.com/cable/09MONTERREY251/1/
Carta dirigada a Felipe Calderon
http://www.mundonarco.com/2010/11/carta-dirigida-felipe-calderon-fuerzas.html
State Dept cable 09MONTERREY31
http://dazzlepod.com/cable/09MONTERREY31/1/?hl=09MONTERREY31

Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A.
By DEXTER FILKINS, MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISENOCT. 27, 2009

ABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Wali Karzai said in an interview that he cooperated with American civilian and military officials, but did not engage in the drug trade and did not receive payments from the C.I.A.

The relationship between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging, several American officials said. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government, the officials said.

Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city — the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s founder. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. “He’s our landlord,” a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Karzai also helps the C.I.A. communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban. Mr. Karzai’s role as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban is now regarded as valuable by those who support working with Mr. Karzai, as the Obama administration is placing a greater focus on encouraging Taliban leaders to change sides.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment for this article.

“No intelligence organization worth the name would ever entertain these kind of allegations,” said Paul Gimigliano, the spokesman.

Some American officials said that the allegations of Mr. Karzai’s role in the drug trade were not conclusive.

“There’s no proof of Ahmed Wali Karzai’s involvement in drug trafficking, certainly nothing that would stand up in court,” said one American official familiar with the intelligence. “And you can’t ignore what the Afghan government has done for American counterterrorism efforts.”

At the start of the Afghan war, just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, American officials paid warlords with questionable backgrounds to help topple the Taliban and maintain order with relatively few American troops committed to fight in the country. But as the Taliban has become resurgent and the war has intensified, Americans have increasingly viewed a strong and credible central government as crucial to turning back the Taliban’s advances.

Now, with more American lives on the line, the relationship with Mr. Karzai is setting off anger and frustration among American military officers and other officials in the Obama administration. They say that Mr. Karzai’s suspected role in the drug trade, as well as what they describe as the mafialike way that he lords over southern Afghanistan, makes him a malevolent force.

These military and political officials say the evidence, though largely circumstantial, suggests strongly that Mr. Karzai has enriched himself by helping the illegal trade in poppy and opium to flourish. The assessment of these military and senior officials in the Obama administration dovetails with that of senior officials in the Bush administration.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money are flowing through the southern region, and nothing happens in southern Afghanistan without the regional leadership knowing about it,” a senior American military officer in Kabul said. Like most of the officials in this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the information.

“If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” the American officer said of Mr. Karzai. “Our assumption is that he’s benefiting from the drug trade.”

American officials say that Afghanistan’s opium trade, the largest in the world, directly threatens the stability of the Afghan state, by providing a large percentage of the money the Taliban needs for its operations, and also by corrupting Afghan public officials to help the trade flourish.

The Obama administration has repeatedly vowed to crack down on the drug lords who are believed to permeate the highest levels of President Karzai’s administration. They have pressed him to move his brother out of southern Afghanistan, but he has so far refused to do so.

Other Western officials pointed to evidence that Ahmed Wali Karzai orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots for his brother’s re-election effort in August. He is also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots.

“The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone,” General Flynn said.

In the interview in which he denied a role in the drug trade or taking money from the C.I.A., Ahmed Wali Karzai said he received regular payments from his brother, the president, for “expenses,” but said he did not know where the money came from. He has, among other things, introduced Americans to insurgents considering changing sides. And he has given the Americans intelligence, he said. But he said he was not compensated for that assistance.

“I don’t know anyone under the name of the C.I.A.,” Mr. Karzai said. “I have never received any money from any organization. I help, definitely. I help other Americans wherever I can. This is my duty as an Afghan.”

Mr. Karzai acknowledged that the C.I.A. and Special Operations troops stayed at Mullah Omar’s old compound. And he acknowledged that the Kandahar Strike Force was based there. But he said he had no involvement with them.

A former C.I.A. officer with experience in Afghanistan said the agency relied heavily on Ahmed Wali Karzai, and often based covert operatives at compounds he owned. Any connections Mr. Karzai might have had to the drug trade mattered little to C.I.A. officers focused on counterterrorism missions, the officer said.

“Virtually every significant Afghan figure has had brushes with the drug trade,” he said. “If you are looking for Mother Teresa, she doesn’t live in Afghanistan.”

The debate over Ahmed Wali Karzai, which began when President Obama took office in January, intensified in June, when the C.I.A.’s local paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, shot and killed Kandahar’s provincial police chief, Matiullah Qati, in a still-unexplained shootout at the office of a local prosecutor.

The circumstances surrounding Mr. Qati’s death remain shrouded in mystery. It is unclear, for instance, if any agency operatives were present — but officials say the firefight broke out when Mr. Qati tried to block the strike force from freeing the brother of a task force member who was being held in custody.

“Matiullah was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mr. Karzai said in the interview.

Counternarcotics officials have repeatedly expressed frustration over the unwillingness of senior policy makers in Washington to take action against Mr. Karzai — or even begin a serious investigation of the allegations against him. In fact, they say that while other Afghans accused of drug involvement are investigated and singled out for raids or even rendition to the United States, Mr. Karzai has seemed immune from similar scrutiny.

For years, first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration have said that the Taliban benefits from the drug trade, and the United States military has recently expanded its target list to include drug traffickers with ties to the insurgency. The military has generated a list of 50 top drug traffickers tied to the Taliban who can now be killed or captured.

Senior Afghan investigators say they know plenty about Mr. Karzai’s involvement in the drug business. In an interview in Kabul this year, a top former Afghan Interior Ministry official familiar with Afghan counternarcotics operations said that a major source of Mr. Karzai’s influence over the drug trade was his control over key bridges crossing the Helmand River on the route between the opium growing regions of Helmand Province and Kandahar.

The former Interior Ministry official said that Mr. Karzai was able to charge huge fees to drug traffickers to allow their drug-laden trucks to cross the bridges.

But the former officials said it was impossible for Afghan counternarcotics officials to investigate Mr. Karzai. “This government has become a factory for the production of Talibs because of corruption and injustice,” the former official said.

Some American counternarcotics officials have said they believe that Mr. Karzai has expanded his influence over the drug trade, thanks in part to American efforts to single out other drug lords.

In debriefing notes from Drug Enforcement Administration interviews in 2006 of Afghan informants obtained by The New York Times, one key informant said that Ahmed Wali Karzai had benefited from the American operation that lured Hajji Bashir Noorzai, a major Afghan drug lord during the time that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, to New York in 2005. Mr. Noorzai was convicted on drug and conspiracy charges in New York in 2008, and was sentenced to life in prison this year.

Habibullah Jan, a local military commander and later a member of Parliament from Kandahar, told the D.E.A. in 2006 that Mr. Karzai had teamed with Haji Juma Khan to take over a portion of the Noorzai drug business after Mr. Noorzai’s arrest.

Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul, and Mark Mazzetti and James Risen from Washington. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2009, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A.

http://www.theblaze.com/news/2012/08/09/high-ranking-mexican-drug-cartel-member-makes-explosive-allegation-fast-and-furious-is-not-what-you-think-it-is/ posted:

High-Ranking Mexican Drug Cartel Member Makes Explosive Allegation: ‘Fast and Furious’ Is Not What You Think It Is
Aug 9, 2012 8:00 am
Jason Howerton

A high-ranking Mexican drug cartel operative currently in U.S. custody is making startling allegations that the failed federal gun-walking operation known as “Fast and Furious” isn’t what you think it is.

It wasn’t about tracking guns, it was about supplying them — all part of an elaborate agreement between the U.S. government and Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel to take down rival cartels.

The explosive allegations are being made by Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, known as the Sinaloa Cartel’s “logistics coordinator.” He was extradited to the Chicago last year to face federal drug charges.

Zambada-Niebla claims that under a “divide and conquer” strategy, the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa Cartel through Operation Fast and Furious in exchange for information that allowed the DEA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies to take down rival drug cartels. The Sinaloa Cartel was allegedly permitted to traffic massive amounts of drugs across the U.S. border from 2004 to 2009 — during both Fast and Furious and Bush-era gunrunning operations — as long as the intel kept coming.

This pending court case against Zambada-Niebla is being closely monitored by some members of Congress, who expect potential legal ramifications if any of his claims are substantiated. The trial was delayed but is now scheduled to begin on Oct. 9.

Zambada-Niebla is reportedly a close associate of Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and the son of Ismael “Mayo” Zambada-Garcia, both of which remain fugitives, likely because of the deal made with the DEA, federal court documents allege.

Based on the alleged agreement “the Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of defendant’s father, Ismael Zambada-Niebla and ‘Chapo’ Guzman, were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States and were also protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels which helped Mexican and United States authorities capture or kill thousands of rival cartel members,” states a motion for discovery filed in U.S. District Court by Zambada-Niebla’s attorney in July 2011.

A source in Congress, who spoke to TheBlaze on the condition of anonymity, said that some top congressional investigators have been keeping “one eye on the case.” Another two members of Congress, both lead Fast and Furious Congressional investigators, told TheBlaze they had never even heard of the case.

One of the Congressmen, who also spoke to TheBlaze on the condition of anonymity because criminal proceedings are still ongoing, called the allegations “disturbing.” He said Congress will likely get involved once Zambada-Niebla’s trial has concluded if any compelling information surfaces.

“Congress won’t get involved in really any criminal case until the trial is over and the smoke has cleared,” he added. “If the allegations prove to hold any truth, there will be some serious legal ramifications.”

Earlier this month, two men in Texas were sentenced to 70 and 80 months in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to export 147 assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition to Mexico’s Los Zetas cartel. Compare that to the roughly 2,000 firearms reportedly “walked” in Fast and Furious, which were used in the murders of hundreds of Mexican citizens and U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry, and some U.S. officials could potentially face jail time if they knowingly armed the Sinaloa Cartel and allowed guns to cross into Mexico.

If proven in court, such an agreement between U.S. law enforcement agencies and a Mexican cartel could potentially mar both the Bush and Obama administrations. The federal government is denying all of Zambada-Niebla’s allegations and contend that no official immunity deal was agreed upon.

To be sure, Zambada-Niebla is a member of one of the most ruthless drug gangs in all of Mexico, so there is a chance that he is saying whatever it takes to reduce his sentence, which will likely be hefty. However, Congress and the media have a duty to prove without a reasonable doubt that there is no truth in his allegations. So far, that has not been achieved.

Zambada-Niebla was reportedly responsible for coordinating all of the Sinaloa Cartel’s multi-ton drug shipments from Central and South American countries, through Mexico, and into the United States. To accomplish this, he used every tool at his disposal: Boeing 747 cargo planes, narco-submarines, container ships, speed boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers and automobiles. But Guzman and Zambada-Niebla’s overwhelming success within the Sinaloa Cartel was largely due to the arrests and dismantling of many of their competitors and their booming businesses in the U.S. from 2004 to 2009 — around the same time ATF’s gun-walking operations were in full swing. Fast and Furious reportedly began in 2009 and continued into early 2011.

According Zambada-Niebla, that was a product of the collusion between the U.S. government and the Sinaloa Cartel.

The claims seem to fall in line with statements made last month by Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico who said U.S. agencies “don’t fight drug traffickers,” instead “they try to manage the drug trade.”

Also, U.S. officials have previously acknowledged working with the Sinaloa Cartel through another informant, Humberto Loya-Castro. He is also allegedly a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel as well as a close confidant and lawyer of “El Chapo” Guzman.

Loya-Castro was indicted along with Chapo and Mayo in 1995 in the Southern District of California in a massive narcotics trafficking conspiracy (Case no. 95CR0973). The case was dismissed in 2008 at the request of prosecutors after Loya became an informant for the United States government and subsequently provided information for years.

In 2005, “the CS (informant Loya-Castro) signed a cooperation agreement with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California,” states an affidavit filed in the Zambada-Niebla case by Loya-Castro’s handler, DEA agent Manuel Castanon.

“Thereafter, I began to work with the CS. Over the years, the CS’ cooperation resulted in the seizure of several significant loads of narcotics and precursor chemicals. The CS’ cooperation also resulted in other real-time intelligence that was very useful to the United States government.”

Under the alleged agreement with U.S. agencies, “the Sinaloa Cartel, through Loya-Castro, was to provide information accumulated by Mayo, Chapo, and others, against rival Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations to the United States government,” a motion for discovery states.

In return, the United States government allegedly agreed to dismiss the charges in the pending case against Loya-Castro (which they did), not to interfere with his drug trafficking activities and those of the Sinaloa Cartel and not actively prosecute him or the Sinaloa Cartel leadership.

Taken directly from the motion filed in federal court:

“This strategy, which he calls ‘Divide & Conquer,’ using one drug organization to help against others, is exactly what the Justice Department and its various agencies have implemented in Mexico. In this case, they entered into an agreement with the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel through, among others, Humberto Loya-Castro, to receive their help in the United States government’s efforts to destroy other cartels.”

“Indeed, United States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.”

The government has denied this and says the deal did not go past Loya-Castro.

Zambada-Niebla was arrested by Mexican soldiers in late March of 2009 after he met with DEA agents at a Mexico City hotel in a meeting arranged by Loya-Castro, though the U.S. government was not involved in his arrest. He was extradited to Chicago to face federal drug charges on Feb. 18, 2010. He is now being held in a Michigan prison after requesting to be moved from Chicago.


“Classified Materials”
During his initial court proceedings, Zambada-Niebla continually stated that he was granted full immunity by the DEA in exchange for his cooperation. The agency, however, argues that an “official” immunity deal was never established though they admit he may have acted as an informant.

Zambada-Niebla and his legal council also requested records about Operation Fast and Furious, which permitted weapons purchased in the United States to be illegally smuggled into Mexico, sometimes by paid U.S. informants and cartel leaders. Their request was denied. From the defense motion:

“It is estimated that approximately 3,000 people were killed in Mexico as a result of ‘Operation Fast and Furious,’ including law enforcement officers in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, the headquarters of the Sinaloa cartel. The Department of Justice’s leadership apparently saw this as an ingenious way of combating drug cartel activities.”

“It has recently been disclosed that in addition to the above-referenced problems with ‘Operation Fast & Furious,’ the DOJ, DEA, and the FBI knew that some of the people who were receiving the weapons that were being allowed to be transported to Mexico, were in fact informants working for those organizations and included some of the leaders of the cartels.”

Zambada’s attorney has filed several motions for discovery to that effect in Illinois Federal District Court, which were summarily denied by the presiding judge who claimed the defendant failed to make the case that he was actually a DEA informant.

In April, 2012, a federal judge refused to dismiss charges against him.

From a Chicago Sun Times report: “According to the government, {Zambada-Niebla} conveyed his interest and willingness to cooperate with the U.S. government, but the DEA agents told him they ‘were not authorized to meet with him, much less have substantive discussions with him,'” the judge wrote.

In their official response to Zambada-Niebla’s motion for discovery, the federal government confirmed the existence of “classified materials” regarding the case but argued they “do not support the defendant’s claim that he was promised immunity or public authority for his actions.”

Experts have expressed doubts that Zambada-Niebla had an official agreement with the U.S. government, however, agree Loya Castro probably did. Either way, the defense still wants to obtain DEA reports that detail the agency’s relationship with the Sinaloa Cartel and put the agents on the stand, under oath to testify.

The documents that detail the relationship between the federal government and the Sinaloa Cartel have still not been released or subjected to review — citing matters of national security.

(Editor’s note: The impetus for this article came from author Reed A. Williams, whose upcoming book “The Weed That Just Won’t Die” delves deeply into the Zambada-Niebla court case. Get more details on the book here.)

i love this shit *crushing up and snorting a giant pill stamped "deep state finest oxycodone"*

http://www.narconews.com/Issue40/article1543.html posted:

Leaked Memo: Corrupt DEA Agents in Colombia Help Narcos and Paramilitaries
Internal Justice Dept. Document Alleges Drug Trafficking Links, Money Laundering and Conspiracy to Murder

By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

January 9, 2006

The drug war is supposed to follow a very clear script: According to the official screenwriters, the U.S. justice system is pitted against corrupt players in foreign countries who are trying to flood American streets with illicit drugs. The narco-traffickers, crooked cops, and thieving politicians in the drug war are always over there, in Latin America, and elsewhere, and U.S. law enforcers and government officials are always the good guys battling these forces of evil.

But what happens when evidence surfaces that turns that script on its ear? What happens if proof emerges that it is the U.S. justice system that is corrupt? A document obtained recently by Narco News makes those questions more than hypothetical queries. In this document, Department of Justice attorney Thomas M. Kent claims that federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Bogotá, Colombia, are the corrupt players in the war on drugs. (The DEA is part of the larger Justice Department.)

The information in that document is also corroborated by a number of other sources that spoke directly to Narco News, including former government officials who are familiar with the DEA’s Bogotá operations

Kent’s memorandum contains some of the most serious allegations ever raised against U.S. antinarcotics officers: that DEA agents on the front lines of the drug war in Colombia are on drug traffickers’ payrolls, complicit in the murders of informants who knew too much, and, most startlingly, directly involved in helping Colombia’s infamous rightwing paramilitary death squads to launder drug money.

The memo further claims that, rather than being simply a few “bad apples” who need to be reported to their superiors, these allegedly dirty agents are being protected by an ongoing cover-up orchestrated by “watchdog” agencies within the Justice Department.

These charges blow away the smoke concealing the pretense of the war on drugs. If they are true, there will be no brushing them aside at pre-scripted press conferences; everyone who becomes aware of these allegations will be forced to consider where we go from here in that so-called war.

The Kent Memo
On Dec. 19, 2004, Thomas M. Kent, an attorney in the wiretap unit of the Justice Department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs Section (NDDS), sent off a memo to his section chief. Law enforcement sources tell Narco News that a number of other high-level officials within Justice and the DEA soon received copies of the same memo. In it, Kent raised a series of corruption allegations centering on the DEA’s office in Bogotá.

Kent says his claims are supported by a number of DEA agents in Florida who the agency muzzled and retaliated against after they tried to expose the corruption. Specifically, Kent contends that the DEA’s Office of Professional Responsibility (or OPR, essentially the agency’s Internal Affairs department) and elements of DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) have worked to keep a lid on the corruption charges. According to Kent, these offices – which are supposed to serve as watchdog agencies that investigate corruption – sabotaged investigations being carried out by the Florida DEA agents and by one of the OIG’s own agents.

From Kent’s memo:

As discussed in my (prior) memorandum dated December 13, 2004, several unrelated investigations, including Operation Snowplow, identified corrupt agents within DEA. As further discussed in my memorandum, OPR’s handling of the investigations into those allegations has come into question and the OIG investigator who was actively looking into the allegations has been removed from the investigation. As discussed in my email, dated December 17, 2004, I want to speak directly with the (DOJ) Public Integrity Section because I want to ensure that the allegations are fully investigated and acted upon if true.

As promised, I am providing you with further information on the allegations and evidence that is already in files at OPR and OIG. Agents I know were able to vouch for my credibility and several individuals close to the prior investigations that uncovered corruption agreed to speak with me. I had a limited time frame in which to speak with them and ask questions. They were able to provide me with some of the highlights, but certainly not all of the information that is sitting at OPR and OIG. Such a debriefing, based on what I learned in a few hours, would take days.

Having been failed by so many before and facing tremendous risks to their careers and their safety and the safety of their families, they were understandably hesitant to reveal the information I requested, including the names of those directly involved in criminal activity in Bogotá and the United States. They agreed to reveal the names to me on the condition that I not further disseminate these for the time being. They are prepared to provide the Public Integrity Section with those names and everything in the files at OPR and OIG, and then some, if called upon to do so.

Why is an attorney within Justice afraid to reveal the names of the DEA whistleblowers out of fear that it might jeopardize their law enforcement careers and the lives of their families? And why, as Kent contends, is it all being covered up?

What do Glenn Fine, the head of the DOJ’s OIG, and Rogelio E. Guevara, who currently oversees the DEA’s OPR, know about Kent’s charges, which were brought forth in his memo more than a year ago?

A look at the nature of the alleged corruption may give us some clues.

(Remember that all of these allegations come strictly from the Kent memo, though law enforcement sources have corroborated much of this information on condition of anonymity.)

Money Laundering and Paramilitaries
Kent alleges that one of the corrupt agents from Bogotá was caught on a wiretap some time in 2004 discussing criminal activity related to the huge right-wing paramilitary group known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC in its Spanish initials). The group is widely recognized to be involved in narco-trafficking and arms dealing at the highest levels. Working closely with various sectors of the Colombian military, it has fielded death squads responsible for murdering thousands of Colombians.

The following is from a 2004 report prepared for Congress by the Congressional Research Service:

The AUC targets real and perceived supporters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN), as well as political activists, police officials and judges. The group is known for its brutality and has killed more civilians than the leftist insurgencies have killed: in 2001, the AUC killed at least 1,015 civilians, compared to the 197 civilians killed by the FARC. The AUC also committed over 100 massacres in 2001, a tactic it used to displace large portions of the peasant population in order maintain firmer control over the major coca-growing lands.

Kent contends, in the memorandum, that during the wiretap, the corrupt Bogotá DEA agent “discusses his involvement in laundering money for the AUC.” But despite being caught on tape admitting to helping the most murderous political force in the hemisphere today to launder the money from their extensive drug trafficking operations, the agent faced no punishment. In fact, says Kent, the agent was essentially promoted: “That call has been documented by the DEA and that agent is now in charge of numerous narcotics and money laundering investigations.”

Kent, in the memorandum, also alleges that DOJ officials shut down a money laundering investigation because they discovered that it was linked to the alleged DEA corruption in Bogotá. He claims that the nail in that coffin was driven in by OPR after it discovered that an OIG agent was investigating the Bogotá corruption and related money laundering operation

“In June 2004, OPR and DEA, the two agencies embarrassed by the prior allegations (involving the Bogotá agents) and likely to come under tremendous scrutiny for their own actions in response, demanded that my case agent turn all of the (investigation) information … over to OPR,” Kent states in the memorandum. “One week after submitting the (information) to OPR, the money laundering investigation was shut down.”

Kent details three further cases of extreme corruption in his memo, all involving Bogotá DEA agents persecuting or conspiring to kill Colombian informants who threatened to bring down their activities. Sources told Narco News that these corruption allegations involve cases launched in 1999 or 2000, but which resulted in investigations that carried on for months or years.

(Kent wrote his memo in late 2004 only after he became aware of the alleged corruption and then had exhausted other internal channels within DOJ for addressing the problems.)

Allegation One:
Corrupt DEA Agents In Bogotá Conspired to Murder Informants Who Betrayed Them

During the course of an investigation into a Colombian narco-trafficking operation, a group of DEA agents in Florida had zeroed in on several targets, with the help of several Colombian informants. Once the targets were identified as being part of the drug ring, they began to cooperate with the Florida-based agents.

“… They made startling revelations concerning DEA agents in Bogotá,” Kent writes. “They alleged that they were assisted in their narcotics activities by the agents. Specifically, they alleged that the agents provided them with information on investigations and other law enforcement activities in Colombia.”

The traffickers eventually gave the Florida agents copies of confidential DEA reports, which the Bogotá agents allegedly had handed over to the traffickers. After the Florida agents turned these documents over to the OPR and OIG, one of them was put on “administrative leave” — the first sign that a cover-up was underway.

While the Florida agent was out on leave, the Bogotá agents set up a meeting with one of the informants.

“As the informant left that meeting, he was murdered,” Kent states. “Other informants … who also worked with the DEA group in Florida were also murdered. Each murder was preceded by a request for their identity by an agent in Bogotá.”

Allegation Two:
Bogotá DEA Agents Imprison and Possibly Conspire to Murder Informants to Prevent Their Travel to U.S.

A separate DEA group, also based in Florida, ran into trouble with the same DEA office in Bogotá while investigating another Colombian narco-trafficking operation. Informants tipped off the Florida agents that that this drug ring had developed an ingenious method for smuggling cocaine into the United States, a method that seems to have been lifted right out of the script of the drug-war movie Traffic.

“Specifically, the narcotics traffickers in Colombia were infusing acrylic with cocaine and shaping it into any number of commercial goods,” Kent states. “The acrylic was then shipped to the United States and Europe where, during processing, the cocaine was extracted from the acrylic.”

Informants working for the Florida agents sent samples of the cocaine-laced acrylic to the DEA, but the agency’s chemists couldn’t figure out how to extract the cocaine. As a result, the Florida agents decided to have the informants come to the United States with a sample of the acrylic, so they could walk DEA’s chemists through the extraction process.

“Agents contacted the Bogotá Country Office to discuss the informants’ planned travel and their bringing cocaine out of Colombia infused in acrylic,” writes Kent. “They were advised that the best tact was for the informants to carry it out themselves.”

But when the informants got to the airport to leave for the U.S., they were arrested. A DEA agent in Bogotá, it turns out, had told Colombian officials to “lock them (the informants) up and throw away the key,” according to Kent. The Bogotá agent then claimed that he had no idea the Florida agents had given the informants permission to transport the cocaine.

“His misrepresentations were backed by another agent in Bogotá,” Kent states. “The informants were imprisoned for nine months while the accusations flew back and forth. Once it was determined that the agents in Bogotá were lying, the informants were released. One of the informants was kidnapped and murdered in Bogotá where he had gone into hiding.”

Allegation Three:
Informant Outed by Traffickers with Ties to Bogotá Agents

In yet another case outlined in Kent’s memorandum, the second Florida DEA group was working with an informant in Colombia who claimed to have made contact with a FARC guerilla while in prison. Sources told Narco News that the informant is a wealthy Colombian businessman with investments in high-tech firms and ties to narco-trafficking. The FARC (Spanish initials for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the largest leftist insurgent group in that country’s civil war, accused by U.S. officials of drug and arms trafficking) was supposedly interested in buying communications equipment from him.

While this investigation eventually ended up in the hands of the National Security Agency, from the beginning it appeared to be related to drug trafficking and the Florida DEA agents decided to investigate. Agents from the Bogotá office promised to help, one of them assuring the Florida agents that the informant’s release from prison could be arranged. But when the Florida agents arrived in Colombia, another Bogotá DEA agent told them that the informant was going to stay in prison.

The Bogotá agents seemed obsessed with stopping the informant from working with the Florida agents, and began doing everything in their power to prevent the investigation from moving forward. “As the two sides argued back and forth, the informant was challenged by the Bogotá agents to prove his allegations,” the memorandum states. “He did so by making a videotape of a conversation he then had with a member of the FARC in jail in which they discussed their desire for him to provide them with communications equipment. When confronted with the actual tape that confirmed the informant’s story, the agents in Bogotá complained that what the informant and DEA group from Florida had done was illegal and they would be unable to obtain the informant’s release (from prison).”

The Florida agents kept trying to revive the investigation, but Bogotá agents continued to thwart it one way or another. Eventually, the informant was released from prison and tried to start working with the Florida agents again, but an agent from the Bogotá office traveled to Washington, D.C., and managed to convince DEA brass to derail the investigation.

When the informant approached the DEA once again with information, writes Kent, “the Bogotá agent that traveled to Washington, D.C., now claimed that the informant was a pedophile. The investigation was halted. The Bogotá agent was called on his claim and could not provide any evidence.” The agent then switched tactics, arguing that the DEA could not work with the informant because the FARC might end up with the communications equipment. He also claimed that one of the targets of the FARC-related investigation was not involved in narco-trafficking — even though the Bogotá office had previously identified that individual as a narco-trafficker.

“The (Bogotá) agent was unable to dissuade those involved in the investigation, and it finally took off with the assistance of the NSA,” the memo states. “The investigation continued until the informant was faxed a document that identified him as a DEA informant on the FARC. The document mirrored information the DEA group in Florida provided the corrupt agents in Bogotá previously.”

In other words, someone outed the Florida group’s informant, making him into a target for many dangerous people including the FARC guerrillas, and the tool used to expose him was proprietary DEA information that appeared to have come out of the Bogotá DEA office. The DEA agents in Florida looked further into the source of that information and followed the trail to several other DEA informants. The Florida agents then set up a wiretap and recorded conversations between their own informants and the other DEA informants who were tied to the leaked DEA information. The recordings revealed that a narco-trafficker had indeed obtained the internal DEA information that was used to expose the Florida group’s informant.

“That person (the narco-trafficker) is also a DEA informant,” the memorandum states, “and is believed to have been controlled by the Bogotá Country Office. Among other things, it was alleged that the informant (the narco-trafficker) had several agents on his payroll who provided him with classified information. The agents were believed to work in Colombia and Washington, D.C.”

The tape recordings that revealed this damning information were turned over to both the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Office of the Inspector General, Kent states in the memorandum. The agents in the Florida DEA office also tried to set up a sting targeting the allegedly corrupt agents from Bogotá and Washington, D.C.

“The meeting (the sting) was called off when it was learned the agents likely knew of the trap,” the memorandum states. “… The informant who was identified … as the narcotics trafficker with several agents on his payroll was eventually brought to Florida to take a polygraph test on the allegations that he was obtaining classified documents from agents in Bogotá and elsewhere.”

Kent says that the narco-trafficker passed the lie detector test in Florida, at which he was asked whether agents had passed him classified documents and he claimed that they hadn’t. But the OPR mysteriously ordered the polygrapher not to report on the test: “He was instructed (to say) that the test never took place.”



The Deluge

The corruption allegations raised in Kent’s memorandum are startling, but agents in the Bogotá DEA office are not the first to have been accused of participating in a narco-trafficking conspiracy. Similar tales of corruption involving overseas DEA agents have surfaced in the past. And although the charges raised by Kent in his 2004 memorandum have now passed before many eyes, they have still not been addressed in the light of day. Instead, as in similar past cases, they have been buried in the contorted layers of the Justice Department bureaucracy.

Kent is no longer with the Washington, D.C.-based wiretap unit of NDDS. He has been transferred to Nashville, according to sources familiar with the memorandum. Ironically, the NDDS chief to whom Kent addressed the memorandum, Jodi L. Avergun, is now the chief of staff for DEA.

In addition, Kent’s request to send the Bogotá corruption allegations to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section was denied, and his memorandum deep-sixed — until now.

A full investigation of his allegations may well prove that the DEA’s Bogotá office is clean as a whistle. But if that is indeed the case, then why has Justice chosen to silence and punish the whistleblowers in this case rather than look into their claims?

From Kent’s memorandum:

If we are unable to arrange for a sit-down between the reporting agents and those attorneys within the Department of Justice who are tasked with ensuring that corrupted agents and officials are held accountable, then I firmly believe that we will watch from the sidelines as the allegations play out in a courtroom, on the news, and/or on Capital Hill. The reporting agents have placed their trust in me. … I have assured them that I will lay the issue before you with a much more detailed accounting of the allegations and how the DEA and OPR, and now seemingly OIG, have failed to fully investigate the allegations and hold those responsible accountable.

If we can put them together with the Public Integrity Section, they assured me that other agents who have to this point remained silent for fear of retaliation will come forward. Those agents have additional evidence not in the files maintained by OPR and OIG. I believe, based on their representations, that that new evidence alone would put the corrupt agents in prison.

Given the pretense that defines the war on drugs, Kent’s memorandum (which basically rewrites the script of that war) is not likely to be a hot seller in Washington, D.C., anytime soon—absent pressure from a major media blitz.

And what of the mainstream-media guardians of our liberty? Will they step up to the plate on this story, given their penchant for adhering to the standard drug-war script? The fact that Narco News is breaking this story first may tell us all we need to know on that front.

But the truth, like water, always brings the scum to the surface. And in this case, the dam holding back the truth in the so-called war on drugs may be close to breaking. For how much longer will nations in Latin America and around the world accept U.S. drug warriors’ imposing presence in their lands, when those same agents and bureaucrats get neck-deep in the very drug trade they are supposedly trying to wipe out, with complete impunity and protection from their superiors back home?

“The agents who reported the … allegations (of corruption) did so to correct wrongs committed by other members of the DEA and OPR,” Kent states in the memorandum. “Their attempts to do so led to retaliation. … The cracks in the lid DEA and OPR has attempted to place on this problem are getting bigger.

“It is only a matter of time before this thing explodes. …”

copy of memo: http://www.narconews.com/docs/ThomasKentMemo.pdf

https://mondediplo.com/2000/04/05debrie#nb4 posted:

The annual profits from drug trafficking (cannabis, cocaine, heroin) are estimated at $300-500bn (not to mention the rapidly mushrooming synthetic drugs), that is 8% to 10% of world trade (4). Computer piracy has a turnover in excess of $200bn, counterfeit goods $100bn, European Community budget fraud $10-15bn, animal smuggling $20bn, etc. In all, and counting only activities with a transnational dimension, including the white slave trade, the world’s gross criminal product totals far above $1,000bn a year, nearly 20% of world trade.

Even allowing for overheads (production and suppliers, intermediaries and corruption, investment expenditure, management costs, losses from seizures and crackdowns) amounting to roughly 50% of turnover, that still leaves annual profits of $500bn. Over ten years that makes $5,000bn, more than three times the foreign currency reserves of all the central banks (5), one quarter of the capitalisation of the world’s top five stock markets and ten times that of Paris (6).

All that remains is for this fantastic wealth to be managed, impossible as it is to dispose of in small denomination notes (7). It is enough to set the world’s financial brains spinning. But these are the people whose help the criminal organisations need if they are to launder all this money and recycle it through legal channels. They are willing to pay the price, and they do. The cost is about one third, $150bn shared between banking networks and intermediaries: lawyers, brokers and trust managers. The upshot is that over $350bn are laundered and reinvested annually, that is $1bn a day.

No sector of activity comes anywhere near these figures and none can match that capacity, representing as it does between one half and two thirds of direct foreign investment (DFI) (8). Close watchers of the markets and of globalisation which they understand perfectly, the multinational criminal organisations have no time for savings banks. They go for the highest gains: hedge funds, inflating the bubble of financial speculation, emerging markets, property, new technologies. At the same time, they secure for themselves a solid return from the finest of industry and commerce. In permanent partnership with the transnationals in which they invest and the banks that manage their investments, they are the oil in the wheels of the extraordinary expansion of modern capitalism. And they still have enough money left over to maintain their lifestyle and help to fund and corrupt the political parties and leaders that are best placed to preserve the system that serves them so well.

That is precisely the service that the third partner, political power and bureaucracy, renders in exchange for the financial assistance that allows it to stay in place, to recover from every setback and to get richer in the process. It gives the illusion of a permanent struggle, constantly stepped up and internationally coordinated, by governments, police and judiciary against financial crime (bribery, trafficking, laundering) while not affecting the system’s operation. Changing everything so that everything stays the same.

mediumpig posted:

http://www.austrac.gov.au/media/media-releases/austrac-seeks-civil-penalty-orders-against-cbahttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-03/cba-money-laundering-law-breach-claim-how-men-got-away-with-it/8771652

Australian bank charged with failing to report $77m of suspicious transactions. What was broken was an "Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act", and so far it just seems like money laundering from drug trade in Australia/SEA but I'm hoping ISIS was funded somehow from this.

theres some good stuff from this, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-03/cba-risks-massive-fines-over-law-breaches/8770992

Extracts from Fedral COurt of Australia Filling, NSD1305/2017, chief executive officer of the australian transaction reports and analysis centre v. commonwealth bank of australia limited ACN 123 123 124

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11372789.htm posted:

Brook Forest Voices (BFV), audiobook producer and publisher, has just completed “Stories from the Secret War: CIA Special Ops in Laos” written by Terrence M. Burke, a former CIA intelligence operations officer, recipient of the Agency’s Intelligence Star for Valor and former Deputy Director and Acting Director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Narrated by Michael Pearl, “Stories from the Secret War” provides a riveting account of the events in the mountains of Laos before the actual start of the Vietnam War. In the early 1960s, Terrence Burke, along with a handful of fellow CIA paramilitary officers, led a secret war in the mountains of Laos against North Vietnamese and Lao Communist forces. Burke’s recollections include deadly hit and run missions against the North Vietnamese (who were purportedly not even in Laos), attempted rescues of downed pilots and the challenge of daily survival while far from American support.

Regarding his survival instincts Terry points out, “I had slept, as usual, in my fatigue jacket and trousers with my jungle boots on and laced. I pulled several bandoleers of ammunition over my shoulder, shoved grenades in my jacket pocket, and checked the .38 caliber Smith & Wesson that rested in the shoulder holster I had also worn while sleeping. There is something to be said for being paranoid when you are the lone CIA paramilitary officer behind enemy lines within a few miles of both the Chinese and North Vietnamese borders.” In fact,Terry proved such a nuisance that he was actually the target of a North Vietnamese kidnapping attempt.

When he reported back to the CIA headquarters at Langley, he was awarded the CIA Intelligence Star for Valor presented by then Agency Director Admiral Raborn and Deputy Richard Helms. At that time only 16 medals had been given out since the Agency’s inception in 1948 and the previous medal had been awarded to U-2 spy plane pilot, Gary Frances Powers, after his return from captivity in the Soviet Union. Terry currently resides in Durango, Colorado.

Interlude

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/03/opinion/03iht-edlarry.html posted:

During the Vietnam War, operations in Laos were largely a CIA responsibility. The agency's surrogate there was a Laotian general, Vang Pao, who commanded Military Region 2 in northern Laos. He enlisted 30,000 Hmong tribesmen in the service of the CIA.

These tribesmen continued to grow, as they had for generations, the opium poppy. Before long, someone - there were unproven allegations that it was a Mafia family from Florida - had established a heroin refining lab in Region Two. The lab's production was soon being ferried out on the planes of the CIA's front airline, Air America. A pair of BNDD agents tried to seize an Air America.

Act 2.

(Timothy Leary: A Biography By Robert Greenfield)