CIA Coke Cartel

[Albert Doyle]

DEA struck a deal with the Mexican cartels to look the other way. All part of a bigger CIA drug smuggling plan for covert funding:




http://rt.com/usa/sinaloa-drug-cartel-deal-dea-551/

[Magda Hassan]

Where would they be with out it? ::cokesniff::

[David Guyatt]

I'm going to post below the whole article that Albert linked, because often, in the future, links get broken and the article sometimes disappears too.

I also have my doubts that this story is true?

Might it instead be a limited hang out designed to limit the damage of the increasing number of revelatory stories, I wonder? So much has, by now, come out about the Mexican drug cartels story, from sources like Tosh - but others too - that I can see loads of Americans gasping in shock when they read this story, but at the same time saying to themselves, well, at least the DEA were trying to collect intelligence on the other cartels ---- they were trying to do the right thing...

But there are a few questions to pose about this angle. Firstly, have any - or all - the other cartels really suffered any restrictions on their trade because of this agreement? If not, and I suspect nothing has actually happened, then what's the point of collecting intel but doing nothing about it? Under these circumstances it is simply an exercise in futility So no real changes in the drugs flow across the Mexican-US border would suggest a limited hang out to me - a PR campaign no less.

Secondly (and I realise this is a counter-argument to the question I just posed), if it transpires there has been a real lock down on other cartels, was it the real aim of this agreement simply to eradicate other competition and place control of the one remaining cartel in the hands of the US shadow powers so that they could effectively corner the market?

My bottom line is that I don't trust the DEA and other agencies, including the Pentagon, to try to stop the drugs business. It's far too profitable for all concerned to want to bring it to an end.

US govt struck deal with Mexican drug cartel in exchange for info - report

Published time: January 14, 2014 01:20Get short URL



Reuters / Susana Vera




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Arms, Crime, Drugs, Mexico, USA,Violence

Between 2000 and 2012, the US government had a deal with Mexican drug cartel Sinaloa that allowed the group to smuggle billion of dollars of drugs in return for information on its rival cartels, according to court documents published by El Universal.
Written statements made by a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and a US Department of Justice official in US District Court of Chicago following the 2009 arrest of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla - son of a Sinaloa leader Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and the organization's alleged "logistics coordinator" - indicate that DEA agents met with top Sinaloa officials over 50 times beginning in 2000.
"The DEA agents met with members of the cartel in Mexico to obtain information about their rivals and simultaneously built a network of informants who sign drug cooperation agreements, subject to results, to enable them to obtain future benefits, including cancellation of charges in the US," El Universal reported.
DEA agent Manuel Castanon told the court, "On March 17, 2009, I met for approximately 30 minutes in a hotel room in Mexico City with Vincente Zambada-Niebla and two other individuals DEA agent David Herrod and a cooperating source [Sinaloa lawyer Loya Castro] with whom I had worked since 2005. ... I did all of the talking on behalf of [the] DEA."
Hours later, Mexican Marines arrested Zambada-Niebla - known as "El Vicentillo" - for trafficking billions of dollars of cocaine and heroin. Castanon and other DEA agents later visited Zambada-Niebla in prison, where he "reiterated his desire to cooperate."
Patrick Hearn, a Justice Department prosecutor at the time, told the US District Court that, according to DEA special agent Steve Fraga, Sinaloa lawyer Castro offered information leading to a 23-ton cocaine seizure, other seizures related to "various drug trafficking organizations," and that "El Mayo"Zambada requested his son cooperate with US officials.
Zambada-Niebla's attorney told the court that Castro negotiated a deal with US agents in the late 1990s that ensured Sinaloa would filter information on rival drug trafficking operations if the US would dismiss its case against the Sinaloa lawyer and withhold interference in Sinaloa's trafficking actions or stop actively prosecuting Sinaloa's top officials.
"The agents stated that this arrangement had been approved by high-ranking officials and federal prosecutors," Zambada-Niebla lawyer wrote to the court.
Upon extradition to Chicago in early 2010, Zambada-Niebla claimed he was "immune from arrest or prosecution" given his cooperation with US federal law enforcement.
El Universal, of Mexico, is the first news outlet to publish the documents. Its investigation included interviews with over 100 active and retired police officers, in addition to prisoners and experts. The DEA did not comment for the story.
The news daily reported that the US-Sinaloa relationship peaked between 2006 and 2012, as multiple cartels tightened their grip in Mexico. El Universal says it is unclear if any similar deals exist today.
The revelations follow years of allegations that Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, leader of Sinaloa and considered one of the world's most powerful drug traffickers, had coordinated with US authorities.
Sinaloa has a formidable presence in the US. For example, the DEA has said the cartel supplies 80 percent of the heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine - worth US$3 billion - that enters the Chicago area per year.
Zambada-Niebla has also alleged that Operation Fast and Furious was an agreement with the US to finance and arm Sinaloa in return for information on rivals. The gun-walking scandal, dubbed Operation Fast and Furious, involved the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives deliberately allowing licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal buyers. The ATF allegedly planned to track the guns to Mexican drug cartels for later arrest.

[Peter Lemkin]

I got an email from Tosh today about this very matter. He pointed to an article on almost the same exact thing on Narco News - but from 2011! [see below]

Zambada Niebla Case Exposes US Drug War Quid Pro Quo

Posted by Bill Conroy - December 10, 2011 at 3:16 pmProsecutor, DEA Agent Confirm Intel From Sinaloa Mafia Used to Undermine Juarez, Beltran Leyva Drug Organizations
U.S. government officials have long presented the drug war through the media as a type of "Dirty Harry" movie, in which hardscrabble cops are engaged in a pitched battle with hardened street criminals who threaten the very social fabric of life behind America's gated communities.
Of course it's a big pretense, with the truth being closer to what really goes on in the marketplace of the US everyday. The drug war is, in reality, a drug business in which backroom deals are cut to advance the profit motives of the business entities involved, whether they be narco-trafficking organizations, or weapons manufacturers or government bureaucracies and the aspiring, greedy careerists who inhabit their leadership ranks.
But even the US government makes mistakes, and in this case it's the government's own agents and prosecutors who have that egg on their face via affidavits filed in early December in a controversial criminal case now pending in the Windy City. The pleadings supposedly advance the government's case against a major Mexican narco-trafficker, Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla. In reality, though for any person of a critical mind reading them the court documents demonstrate the insidious nature of the cooperation that exists between the US government and Mexico's Sinaloa mafia organization.
Nowhere has the peel on that sour fruit been stripped back more cleanly with the paring knife of truth, revealing the bloody pulp inside, than in the ongoing narco-trafficking case against the rising Mexican Sinaloa Cartel capo Zambada Niebla son of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, who, together with business associate Joaquin Guzman Loera (El Chapo), serves as a godfather of the Sinaloa organization.
Mexican soldiers arrested Zambada Niebla in late March 2009 after he met with DEA agents in a posh Mexico City hotel, a meeting arranged by a US government informant who also is a close confident of Ismael Zambada and Chapo Guzman. That informant, Mexican attorney Humberto Loya Castro, by the US government's own admission in court pleadings in the Zambada Niebla case, serves as an intermediary between the Sinaloa Cartel leadership and US government agencies seeking to obtain information on rival narco-trafficking organizations.
"Toward that end, on June 3, 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."
According to Zambada Niebla, he and the rest of the Sinaloa leadership, through the informant Loya Castro, negotiated a quid-pro-quo immunity deal with the US government in which they were guaranteed protection from prosecution in exchange for providing US law enforcers and intelligence agencies with information that could be used to compromise rival Mexican cartels and their operations.
From U.S. government pleadings filed in the case earlier this month, and so far ignored by the US mainstream media:

[Zambada Niebla's] theory to support his affirmative defense of public authority [acting with US government sanction] and his motion to dismiss on an alleged grant of immunity rests on the premise that, as part of his cooperation with the US government, the CS [informant Loya Castro] obtained information from the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel "about rival cartel leaders and their associates" and supplied that information to the US government "in return for carte blanche for the Sinaloa Cartel to continue their narcotics business in the United States and Mexico without interference and in return for immunity and protection from arrest from the United States and Mexican authorities."

The alleged deal assured protection for the Sinaloa Cartel's business operations while also undermining its competition such as the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization out of Juarez, Mexico, the murder capital of the world.
At the same time, the information provided by the Sinaloa Cartel to US agencies against its rivals assures a steady flow of drug busts and media victory headlines for US agencies and for the Mexican government. That propaganda is necessary for hoodwinking their citizens into believing that progress is being made in the drug war and thereby assuring the continued funding of bloated drug-war budgets and support for failed policies that have cost the lives of some 50,000 Mexican citizens since late 2006 and ended any hope of a productive life for hundreds of thousands of US citizens most wasting away in US prisons and not a small number the victims of street homicides linked to drug deals gone bad.
This is the true picture of the drug war in America and across the border in Mexico. It's a bloody business that throws off a lot of money, power and privilege for those pulling the strings both the "good" guys and the "bad" guys. In the case of Zambada Niebla, however, he, in his view, got the short end of the stick, betrayed due to some combination of bad timing and inner-circle power struggles that led to his arrest and ultimate extradition to the United States in February 2010, and he now faces the possibility of life behind bars pending the outcome of his trial in federal court in Chicago.
So it makes perfect sense that Zambada Niebla would have an incentive to spill the beans on the sham that is the drug war and reveal the pretense for what it is by outlining the special relationship that exists between the US government and the Sinaloa drug organization.
US prosecutors, of course, deny that any such immunity/cooperation arrangement is in place between US agencies and Zambada Niebla, or the broader leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel. And they claim Zambada Niebla has no evidence to prove the existence of such a pact.
At the same time US prosecutors have invoked national security via the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) in his trial in an attempt to assure certain sensitive and/or embarrassing evidence is not made available to Zambada Niebla's attorneys.
Lawyers for the accused Mexican narco-trafficker last month filed a motion asking the court to block U.S. prosecutors' efforts to use CIPA as a means of excluding the defense from discussions with the judge over the treatment of evidence deemed classified material. Zambada Niebla's attorneys contend they must be part of those discussions since the supposed classified material goes to the heart of their client's claims in the case.
From the motion filed in October by Zambada Niebla's attorneys:

Mr. Zambada Niebla is alleged in the indictment to be a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel. We believe that the information [the US government is seeking to cloak under national security] is material to the defense in that it may … contain information pertaining to agreements between agents of the United States government and the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel as well as policy arrangements between the United States government and the Mexican government pertaining to special treatment that was to be afforded to high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel. Thus, Mr. Zambada Niebla's counsel should be granted high-level security clearances to review the sensitive information.

However, the judge in the case recently went along with US prosecutors on that front, issuing an orderthat allows the government to introduce that supposedly classified evidence "ex parte" [to the judge alone] so that a determination can be made by the judge as to whether the evidence should be made off limits for discovery by Zambada Niebla's attorneys.

Common Sense

So the stage is set for Zambada Niebla's trial. He must now prove his narco-trafficking activities, and those of the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel, had sanction from the US government absent a host of "classified information" that the US government seeks to keep hidden from his defense attorneys and the public at large.
However, some key questions arise with respect to the nature of the relationship between the US government, the Sinaloa Cartel leadership (in particular Chapo Guzman and Ismael Zambada) and the informant Loya Castro. Both the government and Zambada Niebla, through their court pleadings, concede that Loya Castro was close enough to both Chapo Guzman and Ismael Zambada that information could be easily passed back and fort between the Sinaloa leadership and US government law enforcers.
If the relationship was that close, then why would US law enforcers not choose to use Loya Castro to set up a sting on Chapo Guzman and Ismael Zambada, thereby taking down the top leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel? And if those Sinaloa godfathers had any inkling that Loya Castro, who they knew to be cooperating with US law enforcers, might betray them, then why has he been allowed to live and continue serving as a US informant?
The mere fact that the top leaders of the Sinaloa criminal organization knew Loya Castro was a US informant should have been enough to guarantee him an ugly death unless Chapo Guzman and Ismael Zambada believed there was some sort of arrangement in place that made Loya Castro more useful to them alive than dead. That's simple common sense in the drug world.
In addition, the fact that the US government, in its own court pleadings, verifies that Loya Castro served as a go-between for them in communicating with the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel is a type of implicit verification that some type of deal was in place that worked to the satisfaction of both parties.
Whether a formal legal pact existed assuring immunity specifically for Zambada Niebla, though, is another question, and such an official bargain may not, in fact, have been struck. But it seems clear, based on the prosecutors' own pleadings, that there was a working arrangement between the US government and the top dogs of the Sinaloa organization.
More from DEA agent Castanon's affidavit:

The CS [Loya Castro] told me that he had been instructed to meet with Zambada Niebla by Joaquin Guzman-Loera [Chapo]. The CS [again, who was known by the Sinaloa leadership to be a US informant] had been told by Guzman-Lorea that Ismael Zambada-Garcia was interested in having his son, Zambada Niebla, cooperate with the DEA in order to work off his pending charges in the United States. The CS told me that he had then met with Zambada Niebla to discuss the possibility of Zambada Neibla approaching DEA to cooperate.

All the King's Men

Perhaps any deal that might exist between the Sinaloa leadership is limited to Chapo Guzman and Ismael Zambada, perhaps it was put in place by a US intelligence agency under the guise of law enforcement, or through some secret pact cobbled together by the US State Department that does not have to be honored by the Justice Department because it applies only in Mexico. In this case, the devil is in the details, and in all those scenarios, the cloak of national security could easily be invoked to prevent evidence of the pact surfacing in a court of law.
None of this can be ruled out, but nor can it be verified so long as the US government can play by two sets of rules, one for its citizens and those accused in its courts, and another for government agents acting in an "official" capacity under the protection of national security.
And Zambada Niebla, in such a case, easily becomes a pawn in such a king's game. It is no stretch to assume that as a rising leader in the Sinaloa Cartel, with a powerful father presently at the helm of the mafia organization, that he had many enemies who saw him as a future threat, possibly even Chapo Guzman himself sees it that way.
In any event, it is clear that the informant Loya Castro moved between both worlds freely, with his identity as a double agent well-known in both worlds, yet he was not skinned alive by the Sinaloa organization nor was he locked up by US law enforcement, nor used by US agencies to set up Chapo Guzman or Ismael Zambada for capture or assassination.
Why is that?
Well, one US prosecutor, Patrick Hearn, who was involved in prosecuting another case against Zambada Niebla still pending in federal court in Washington, D.C., goes a long way in answering that question.
From an affidavit provided by Hearn and filed in the Zambada Niebla case currently pending in Chicago:

… I was the lead trial attorney in the matter of United States v. Vicente Zambada Niebla … currently pending in the United States District Court for the District of Colombia. That case arose out of an investigation into a conspiracy to manufacture, import, and distribute thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the United States between approximately 1992 and January 28, 2003.
… On about March 4, 2009, I received an email from Steve Fraga, my [DEA] case agent in the District of Columbia case. He informed me of an apparent opportunity to interview Zambada Niebla in Mexico. He informed me that DEA agents in Mexico were working with a cooperating source [Loya Castro] who had been indicted by the US Attorney's Office in San Diego. According to Agent Fraga's email, the cooperating source had apparently been very effective, and the indictment against the cooperating source had been dismissed.
Agent Fraga told me that the cooperating source [again, Loya Castro] had provided information [likely obtained from the Sinaloa Cartel leadership] leading to a 23-ton cocaine seizure, other seizures related to the Vicente Carrillo-Fuentes drug trafficking organization [based in Juarez, Mexico] and information relating to Arturo Beltran Leyva's drug trafficking organization.

[Beltran Leyva was a former associate of Chapo Guzman who later became a bitter rival and was eventually assassinated in December 2009 by Mexican Navy special forces assisted by US agents and intelligence. What are the odds of that being unrelated to the special arrangement that exists between the Sinaloa Cartel and the US government?]
Well, kind readers, that's the scoop so far, down to the pulp of it all. It seems that theargument advanced by Zambada Niebla's attorneys early on in his case may not be that far from the truth of it all.

The United States government considered the arrangements with the Sinaloa Cartel an acceptable price to pay, because the principal objective was the destruction and dismantling of rival cartels by using the assistance of the Sinaloa Cartel without regard for the fact that tons of illicit drugs continued to be smuggled into Chicago and other parts of the United States and consumption continued virtually unabated.
Essentially, the theory of the United States government in waging its "war on drugs" has been and continues to be that the "end justifies the means" and that it is more important to receive information about rival drug cartels' activities from the Sinaloa Cartel in return for being allowed to continue their criminal activities, including and not limited to their smuggling of tons of illegal narcotics into the United States. This is confirmed by recent disclosures by the Congressional Committee's investigation of the latest Department of Justice, DEA, FBI, and ATF's "war on drugs" operation known as "Fast & Furious"[an ATF operation in which thousands of weapons purchased at US gun stores by criminal groups were allowed to move across the border into Mexico unimpeded, many going into the hands of Sinaloa Cartel mercenaries.]

This drug war isn't about Dirty Harry taking on the street thugs for the benefit of family values.
No, this drug war is far more a tale of monarchs and powerful feudal lords maneuvering on a chess board as they divide up the kingdom at the expense of the peasants, who for too long have believed what goes on behind the castle walls does not affect them until it's too late, until the king's horsemen come for you and disappear your life for the benefit of securing their kingdom.
Stay tuned….

Narco News past coverage of the Zambada Niebla case can be found at these links:
Mexican Narco-Trafficker's Revelation Exposes Drug War's Duplicity
ATF's Fast and Furious Seems Colored With Shades of Iran/Contra Scandal
US Court Documents Claim Sinaloa "Cartel" Is Protected by US Government
US Government Informant Helped Sinaloa Narcos Stay Out of Jail
Court Pleadings Point to CIA Role in Alleged "Cartel" Immunity Deal
US Prosecutors Fear Jailbreak Plot by Sinaloa "Cartel" Leader Zambada Niebla
US Government Accused of Seeking to Conceal Deal Cut With Sinaloa "Cartel"
US Prosecutors Confirm Classified Information Colors Zambada Niebla's Case
US Prosecutors Seeking to Prevent Dirty Secrets of Drug War From Surfacing in Cartel Leader's Case

[Magda Hassan]

Snowden Releases Show NSA Infiltration in Computers of "Mexican Police and Cartels"

By Laura Carlsen

January 17, 2014 "Information Clearing House - Today President Obama will announce his position on the NSA spy scandal. The New York Times published another article Jan. 14, 2014 based on NSA internal information provided by former security consultant and whistleblower Edward Snowden and once again Mexico features prominently as a target for massive U.S. espionage. The article begins by noting the characteristics and extent of this program:

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.

While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.

Mexico is among only a handful of nations mentioned specifically in the new York Times story.

Among the most frequent targets of the N.S.A. and its Pentagon partner, United States Cyber Command, have been units of the Chinese Army, which the United States has accused of launching regular digital probes and attacks on American industrial and military targets, usually to steal secrets or intellectual property. But the program, code-named Quantum, has also been successful in inserting software into Russian military networks and systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, according to officials and an N.S.A. map that indicates sites of what the agency calls "computer network exploitation."

In the article where the Dutch publication nrc.nl reported the story two months earlier, a map of "Computer Network Exploitation" shows heavy concentrations of operations in Brazil and Venezuela, as well as Mexico.

The most recent revelations complicate even more the Obama administration's task of explaining its spy programs. The world awaits that explanation, scheduled for today. Obama is between a rock and a hard place on this one. If he defends the entire program, he is setting an international norm that violates basic principles of individual right to privacy, diplomatic respect, and rules of international trade and investment regarding inside information on bidding and other negotiations. The U.S. government would no longer have a leg to stand on in criticizing precisely these same kind of operations coming from other countries, particularly China.

On the other hand, if he rolls back parts of the program, it would be an admission of excess and a setback for Pentagon hawks who equate security with a system where the U.S. government micromanages the world. It would also be an implicit vindication of Snowden, who the Obama has portrayed as a common criminal.

The surveillance review panel assigned to review NSA operations testified before the Senate this week, questioning current practices. Its December report sharply criticized many of the practices and urged curbs. Obama is likely to support some of those limits. Congress, under the leadership of Patrick Leahy, has called for curbs and will be responsible for any new regulations regarding limits.

It may end up being pressure from the private sector, rather than principles, that imposes limits though. Silicon Valley has demanded curbs due to fears that its products and services are losing market after leaks showing that U.S. companies are working with the NSA and like a global Trojan horse deliver hidden espionage equipment.

From my perspective as a researcher, human rights activist and international analyst, this is the only principled position and restraining NSA programs is a political, diplomatic and ethical necessity. Snowden has given us an opportunity to confront a threat to our rights and democracy we did not know existed before his bold decision to make it public. Now it is up to us to pressure for changes and express our indignation at the secret decision of the government to invade our lives through the computers and telephones that form an indispensable part of our daily lives.

While we expect some concession in terms of limits on domestic information harvesting, we will probably see very little change on the international front. The political cost for Obama and members of Congress comes from constituents and businesses affected by the leaks.

These also affect foreign citizens and governments, which seems to already have implications for U.S. exporters. Brazil's decision in December to give an estimated $4.5 billion jet fighter contract to Saab after Boeing had wrangled for it for years, was seen as influenced by that nation's indignation over U.S. spying on hits government and specifically President Dilma Rousseff.

Presumably, today's statements from Obama on the future of the NSA program will not be a substitute for the specific explanation that President Peña Nieto has said Obama promised Mexico. Leaks regarding spying on Peña Nieto when he was presidential candidate and former president Felipe Calderon caused a splash here.

My opinion is that the demand for an explanation from the Obama administration is nothing more than a face-saving move by Peña Nieto. Obama has already not only admitted to the programs revealed by Snowden, but defended them.

Mexico does not need an explanation from President Obama. It needs a president who defends the dignity and independence of Mexico by drawing a diplomatic line that distinguishes between cooperation and intervention.

Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City, holds a B.A. in Social Thought and Institutions from Stanford University and a Masters degree in Latin American Studies, also from Stanford. In 1986 she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study the impact of the Mexican economic crisis on women and has lived in Mexico City since then.

This article was originally published at The MexicoBlog