A Dark Narco-Alliance Reborn: The DEA-Sinola Connection

[David Guyatt]

The below catalogues and documents what has been known for ages - but which needs restating.

From BoilingFrogsPost:

A Dark Narco-Alliance Reborn: The DEA-Sinaloa Connection

GUILLERMO JIMENEZ | FEBRUARY 9, 20145 COMMENTS
US Involvement Affirms Economic Dependence on Drug Trade and "War"In 1996, investigative reporter Gary Webb shocked readers of the San Jose Mercury News with a series of articles he titled, "Dark Alliance." In it, he chronicled the relationship between the CIA, Nicaraguan Contras, and crack cocaine dealers in Los Angeles during the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s.
As would be expected with a story of this magnitude, the Dark Alliance series was received with a great deal of skepticism and resentment, as corporate media staples like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post swooped in to abscond the CIA's sins.
With the passage of time, however, Webb's claims based on documented evidence and testimony from credible sources have stood up to scrutiny. In many ways his courageous reporting and reputation as a journalist have been posthumously vindicated.
Still, almost 20 years after the series was published, the drug war rages on. Further, new evidence continues to surface, affirming an ongoing role for sections of the US government in the management of the drug trade through covert action.
Even the title of this column may not be entirely accurate in a technical sense. This alliance between narcotrafficking cartels and agencies like the CIA or DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) may not have been "reborn" so much as it has matured, or evolved.
The latest revelations in this enduring saga originate from statements given to the US District Court in Chicago relating to the case of Jesus Vincente Zambada-Niebla, son of Sinaloa Cartel capo "El Mayo." Documents obtained by Mexican news outlet El Universal prove a reciprocal relationship between the DEA and the Sinaloa Cartel, further strengthening claims made by Zambada, and others, of an explicit agreement in place to consolidate the drug trade in Mexico in the hands of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and the Cartel de Sinaloa (CDS).
Skeptics have been quick to point out that while the statements provided by DEA agent Manuel Castañon and former Department of Justice prosecutor Patrick Hearn do establish Zambaba-Niebla's role as a cooperative "informant," they do not prove the broader conspiratorial designs of CDS as a government-sponsored cartel.
While accurate, it cannot be denied that the statements entered into the public record by the DEA in this case not only corroborate Zambada-Niebla's "I am protected by the US government" defense, they add credence to a long-standing understanding of drug war reality in Mexico, and do absolutely nothing to weaken it.
As noted previously, world renowned Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández recently spent five years investigating the narcotics trade in Mexico, only to conclude that the collusion between the cartels and her government went all the way to the top. With regard to CDS and El Chapo Guzman specifically, Hernández contends they would be nothing if not for the concerted efforts of Mexico's federal government and large business interests.
Those who caution against the "alarmism" raised by this DEA-Sinaloa alliance argue that these quid pro quo agreements between the two parties indicate nothing more than standard operating procedure and run-of-the-mill police work. After all, the use of confidential informants is a tactic that is routinely used; police cut deals with the bad guys all the time to target the "bigger and badder." As Charles Parkinson of InSight Crime writes, if the "US operational focus has at times favored one cartel over another, it can quickly shift, making former collaborators the new priority."
Indeed, within the black world of the narcotics trade, alliances can shift with the wind, and there may in fact not be anything at all inherently "special" about the current bond between the DEA and the Sinaloa cartel. Even the timing of the agreement, from 2000 to 2012 correlating precisely to the government assisted prison escape of El Chapo and the growth in size and strength of his operation, may be entirely coincidental. To say that the "Sinaloa Cartel is aided and funded by the US government" is admittedly problematic on its face, as the mess created by the "war on drugs" pits the DEA and CIA almost perpetually at odds with each other.
Yet despite all the smoke and mirrors, shifting alliances, and questionable motives, the involvement of the US government in the drug trade through its many competing agencies assures a few constants: a destabilized, weakened, and dependent Latin America; increases in drug warrior budgets; and the sustained health of a nearly US$400 billion industry, without which banking systems and economies would falter severely. It is by exploring and understanding these relationships that the true dark alliance is revealed.
# # # #Guillermo Jimenez- BFP Partner Producer & Analyst
Guillermo Jimenez is the owner and editor of Traces of Reality, host of TOR Radio and the De-Manufacturing Consent podcast on Boiling Frogs Post, and a regular columnist for the PanAmerican Post. He is based in South Texas, deep within the DHS "constitution-free zone." Follow @tracesofreality

- See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/02/...AuZ4v.dpuf

Evidence from El Universal.com.mx is well worth reading...

[Magda Hassan]

Looks like El Chapo might be surplus to needs. What's the bet he doesn't make it to trial?

Drug Lord 'El Chapo' Guzman Captured In Mexico

The world's most notorious and powerful drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, has reportedly been captured in Mexico.
According to the Associated Press, Chapo or "Shorty," the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, was captured last night at a hotel in the resort town of Mazatlan. The operation to grab the kingpin was a joint operation between U.S. and Mexican authorities. According to reports, Guzman was attending a party when he was apprehended, and there were no shots fired during the operation. A picture of a shirtless, mustachioed man, his hands behind his back, has been circulating today that bears resemblance to the well known pictures of a younger Guzman.
There was a $5 million bounty on Guzman's head.


Guzman, 56, has escaped from custody before, getting rolled out of prison in a laundry cart in 2001, reportedly with the help of guards. If the authorities manage to hold on to him this time, it could spell the end of the most powerful drug runner in history.
Forbes ranked Guzman 67 out of 72 on our most recent list of the World's Most Powerful People. His Sinaloa cartel is easily the most powerful in Mexico, responsible for an estimated 25% of all illegal drugs that enter the U.S. via Mexico. Drug enforcement experts estimate, conservatively, that the cartel's annual revenues may exceed $3 billion.
In 2011, Forbes writer Nathan Vardi reported on how the kingpin had surpassed Pablo Escobar to become the biggest ever. "Chapo has a vast criminal enterprise and he has become the leading drug trafficker of all time," a senior U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official told Forbes. "He is the godfather of the drug world.
Last February the city of Chicago branded him the first "Public Enemy No. 1″ since Al Capone. Last year Forbes also removed Guzman from our annual list of the World's Billionaires. Although it is highly likely that Guzman and his family have socked away at least a billion in narco-profits over the years, proving it is simply impossible. He first appeared on the billionaires list in 2009. Also in 2013, Guzman was falsely declared dead, rumored to have suffered a heart attack while in hiding in Honduras.
Presaging his capture, Forbes contributor Dolia Estevez wrote this piece in January, making the case for why 2014 was shaping up to be the year of Guzman's demise. Conspiracy buffs surmise that the authorities have always known where Chapo was, and that the only reason for his ultimate apprehension is because his usefulness had run its course. Last month Mexico's El Universal newspaper revealed that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency had allowed Guzman's cartel to operate unimpeded from 2000 to 2012 in exchange for information on competing cartels.
Will another stint in prison really bring the end of El Chapo? It didn't before. During his previous eight years in the clink Guzman continued to manage his cartel via cell phone, while enjoying access to booze, women and a home entertainment system. It was in January 2001, when facing extradition to the U.S., that he slipped into a laundry cart and was rolled out to freedom.
Some biographical info from Forbes' 2009 profile of Guzman:

Guzmán grew up in the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa in a rural region that has produced big drug traffickers. The farm boy was likely exposed to the trade at a young age. Officials say he honed his drug-running skills working for different gangs, most notably as an airplane logistics expert for Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, "El Padrino," or the Godfather, the country's leading trafficker at the time. Gallardo was arrested in 1989.
By the early 1990s Guzmán had started his own international firm. Business didn't always run smoothly. In 1993, at the northern border, Mexican authorities seized a 7-ton shipment of cocaine, believed to be his, that was hidden in chili pepper cans. The same year rival gang members, apparently trying to kill Guzmán at the Guadalajara airport, bumped off a Catholic cardinal instead. Also that year he was captured and convicted for homicide and drug trafficking.
A 1995 U.S. indictment alleges he directed a vast network of employees and assets, including warehouses in California, New Jersey and Chicago; a tunnel, running 65 feet deep and 1,416 feet long, between Mexico and Otay Mesa, Calif.; an executive jet rental business; and railcars carrying cooking oil. At least one of his employees was in charge of paying off Mexican prosecutors and police, allegedly dropping $1 million in cash in 1991 for the release of Guzmán's brother, "El Pollo," from a Mexico City prison. (El Pollo was murdered in 2004.)

Since his escape in 2001 Guzman consolidated his power and continued to operate brazenly, even digging massive tunnels under the U.S. border to move cocaine. In 2011 he even sent his beauty queen wife Emma Coronel (an American citizen) to a hospital north of Los Angeles to deliver twin girls. U.S. law enforcement could only watch as she returned to Mexico with her babies. (You can expect that episode to be dramatized in a new TV series based on Guzman's exploits.)
Mexico's drug war has claimed more than 70,000 lives in recent years. We can only hope that the capture of Guzman helps bring it to and end rather than ignite a battle among the second tier of bosses over who gets to step into los zapatos de Chapo's.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherh...in-mexico/

[David Guyatt]

Another Pablo Escobar perhaps?

[Magda Hassan]

Mexican drug kingpin's capture leads to speculation about US pressure

Joaquin Guzmán's arrest suggested to be in response to release of Rafael Caro Quintero, jailed for killing of DEA agent

• Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
  
  
• theguardian.com, Tuesday 25 February 2014 08.50 AEST
  

Mexican marines escort Joaquin Guzman, the world's most wanted drug trafficker, after his arrest. Photograph: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft Media

After Osama Bin Laden was captured in 2011, speculation flowered in Mexico that Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán the world's most wanted drug trafficker could be the next target for a similar special US-led operation.
But while US involvement in taking down the head of the Sinaloa Cartel on Saturday seems clear, there was no sign of the helicopter swoops through his mountain strongholds that some had imagined, or even the kind of desperate final shootout that has felled other Mexican capos in the past. Instead, the 56-year-old was taken without a shot being fired as he slept in a nondescript beachside condominium in the resort city of Mazatlán.
New details emerging suggest a step-by-step operation based on phone taps and key arrests, helped by a stroke of luck at the last minute.
"It was really drug investigations 101," a US federal official told the Washington Post.
The Mexican authorities have yet to officially reveal more than that the final strike followed a near miss last week when the authorities stormed a safe house in the state capital, Culiacán. The house was connected to others by tunnels interlinked by the city's drainage system, and accessed by trap doors hidden under bathtubs.
According to a senior US government official cited by the Associated Press, Mexican marines chased the capo into the tunnels but lost him in the maze. Dramatic as this must have been, it was more The Third Man than Scarface.
The official said the houses were located by US monitoring of key phones that led to arrests that provided more information. The near miss in Culiacán was followed by the detention of a cartel operative who revealed he had helped Guzmán and a woman escape the increasing heat in Culiacán for Mazatlán, though by that time the capo and his associates had stopped using the phones they knew were vulnerable.
That was, he said, until one of them popped up again on a network being monitored by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement that located Guzmán in the Miramar block of holiday and retirement apartments in Mazatlán.
"It just all came together and we got the right people to flip and we were up on good wire," the official said. "The ICE wire was the last one standing. That got him inside that hotel."
The Mexican newspaper Reforma published a contrasting version of events, citing Mexican security sources, identifying the big break as an arrest in the central city of Puebla on 12 February that led to the identification of a satellite phone used by Chapo to organise his escape from Culiacán. The same phone was reportedly activated again later in Mazatlán on Sunday night.
By dawn, marines were storming apartment 401 to pick up a bleary-eyed and shirtless Chapo before he had time to react.
Hours later he was being filmed handcuffed and wearing a light shirt and black jeans as he was walked to the helicopter about to take him back to jail.
The extent of US involvement remains unclear and controversial, particularly given reports in the New York Times that Drug Enforcement Agency and US Marshall Services agents had taken part in the operations on the ground, as well as by passing intelligence.
Mexican officials are traditionally sensitive to suggestions that they are not in control, while US agencies have an interest in stressing their role at a time of growing disquiet over US-backed drug crackdowns that have failed to stem the flow of drugs and are blamed for increasing violence.
The former Mexican drug tsar Samuel González said he had no doubt the DEA had been involved in the raid, citing the leaking of a photograph of Chapo to the US press Saturday morning, hours before the Mexican authorities confirmed the events. "It's like saying two plus two equals four" he said.
González added that the determination to get Chapo stemmed from US pressure after the notorious Sinaloa cartel kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero was released from jail last year. Caro Quintero was serving a long sentence for the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, but was freed by a judge on a technicality.
"For the last 12 years the Sinaloa cartel was tolerated by the Mexican and US governments," he said. "But the US saw Caro Quintero's release as a slap in the face and the winds changed."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/fe...s-pressure

[David Guyatt]

It seems Guzman IS another Pablo Escobar scenario - except he is not going to be killed. Yet, anyway.

From Narcosphere:

Narco-Villain "El Chapo's" Arrest Packaged for Media Consumption

Posted by Bill Conroy - March 1, 2014 at 4:25 pmFormer DEA Supervisor Contends Guzman's Capture Was An "Arranged" Event
The recent capture of the notorious Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, longtime leader of Mexico's Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization, was not what it appeared to be, according to a former DEA supervisory agent who still has a deep network of contacts in Mexico.
Guzman's takedown, despite the media script portraying it as a daring predawn raid, was, in fact, an "arranged thing," claims the retired DEA agent, Hector Berrellez, wholed the investigation into the 1985 torture and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena. That cross-border investigation ran for several years and eventually led to the capture and conviction in Mexico of Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo considered the leaders of Mexico's then-dominate drug organization, The Guadalajara Cartel.
"Chapo [Guzman] was protected by Mexican federal agents and military, by the Mexican government," Berrellez told Narco News. "He was making [Mexican President Enrique] Peña Nieto look bad, and so the government decided to withdraw his security detail. Chapo was told he could either surrender, or he would be killed."
Berrellez, who retired from the DEA in 1996, stresses that he is not speaking on behalf of the US government, but rather as an individual who has decades of law enforcement experience, including serving as DEA's lead investigator in Mexico.
"This information comes from my sources, that I am still in contact with," Berrellez adds. "I developed a large informant network in Mexico, including sources in the Mexican Attorney General's office, Mexican generals and others. These people are still in contact with me."
Berrellez says his version of what happened is further evidenced by the fact that Guzman was apprehended early Saturday morning, Feb. 22, in an unremarkable condominium tower in the Pacific resort town of Mazatlan, Mexico, without a shot being fired and no security detail present to offer a fight.
"This guy [Guzman] was bigger than Pablo Escobar [the infamous Colombian narco-trafficker whom law enforcers killed in 1993 in a rooftop shootout in Medellin]," Berrellez says. "He [Guzman] ran around with a several-hundred man security detail that included Mexican military and federal agents, yet, in the end, he is arrested like a rat in a hole. My sources are telling me it was an arranged thing."

Finding Chapo

As remarkable as Berrellez claims may sound to some, there is evidence indicating that law enforcement authorities have known for years where to find Guzman, who has led the Sinaloa organization since at least 2001, when he "escaped" from prison. Still, law enforcers mysteriously failed to capture him until last week.
Among the reasons for Guzman's long run from the law, several law enforcers and intelligence sources told Narco News, was not due to the fact that he could not be found, but rather because Guzman's security team was formidable and any move against him would have led to a bloodbath not an attractive political or law-enforcement option.
An email penned by the head of the Texas-based private intelligence firm Strafor, obtained and made public in 2012 by WikiLeaks, echoes that analysis:

Chapo commands the support of a large network of informers and has security circles of up to 300 men that make launching capture operations difficult.

Once the security-detail obstacle was removed, Guzman became a sitting duck. One law enforcer with experience working in Latin America put it this way:

It seems Chapo put his life in the hands of the people he paid off [the Mexican government, if Berrellez is right, and the military and federal cops attached to his security detail]. But whenever the government wants to get you, they can get you. Look at Escobar, Fonseca, Gallardo, Quintero. They were all considered untouchable. Then, one day, it was in the interest of the government to get them.

Retired DEA agent Phil Jordan, who once led DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center, told Narco News that he was surprised that Guzman was captured under a PRI government. (President Peña Nieto is part of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI in its Spanish initials.)
"Chapo contributed a lot of money to the PRI," Jordan says. "The PRI historically has been an ally of the cartels, and Chapo Guzman has contributed millions to their campaigns. All of that is documented [in intelligence reports] I have seen."
After Jordan made similar comments to the Spanish-language TV station Univisionrecently, the DEA issued the following statement to the media.

Remarks made by retired Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Phil Jordan and those of other retired DEA agents do not reflect the views of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera was a significant achievement for Mexico and a major step forward in our shared fight against transnational organized crime, violence, and drug trafficking. …

The fact that DEA felt compelled to issue such a statement indicates that Jordan's comments about the PRI's complicity with narco-trafficking organizations must have hit a nerve in Washington, one DEA source told Narco News. Jordan's allegations, if on the mark, also support Berrellez' contention and those of his sources that Guzman was receiving protection from the Mexican government including under the administration of President Peña Nieto. If we accept that, the question then becomes: Why was that support withdrawn?
Berrellez says his sources indicated to him that Guzman had become more of a liability than an asset for the Mexican government. The reform agenda being pursued by the Peña Nieto regime hinges, in part, on creating a perception that Mexico is winning the drug war and reducing the violence, so that it appears a safer bet for the billions of dollars in foreign investment (particularly in the oil-and-gas and tourism sectors) that Mexico is seeking to attract.
A free Guzman was deemed a bigger threat to that agenda than a defanged Guzman, and his capture, conversely, would provide the Peña Nieto administration with a big image boost, and so Guzman had to go.
"It was political," Berrellez says.
And it's clear the arrest of Guzman did give Peña Nieto's administration a major image bounce on the global stage given the avalanche of positive press that followed "El Chapo's" capture. And it comes at a time when Peña Nieto is seeking to promote reforms that position Mexico as a land of enchantment for speculators, investors and tourists.
A 14-page advertorial section that ran in TIME magazine in late December of last year, about two months prior to Guzman's capture which was paid for, in part, by the Mexican government spells out the Peña Nieto plan for "progress."

Osorio Chong says the series of market reforms means 2014 is the ideal time to invest in Mexico and that foreign investors are welcome to bring their money, knowledge and skills to any of the nation's industrial, commercial and manufacturing sectors. [Miguel Angel Osorio Chong is Peña Nieto's Interior Minister, the top post in his administration.]
… A former energy minister, Luis Téllez-Kuenzler, who is now president of one of the country's most important financial institutions, the Mexican Stock Exchange, adds:
"Mexico is very investor-friendly. Anyone wishing to invest from any other country just needs to go to their bank or stock brokerage house and invest. It's transparent, efficient and very easy to do."

Berrellez is not the lone veteran law enforcer who does not buy into the conventional-media script manufactured for Guzman's capture. Another former DEA agent, Mike Levine, a veteran of deep undercover missions, such as Operation Trifecta which played out in Mexico in the late 1980s when the PRI Party also was in power in Mexico describes the arrest of Sinaloa organization top-capo Guzman as "yet another drug war rip-off."
Levine relayed to Narco News the following via email:

Here's why it [Guzman's arrest] perpetuates the drug-war shill game run by media: Two decades ago, I was part of an international undercover operation [called] "Operation Trifecta."
On hidden video, our undercover "Mafia" [a ruse organization set up to sting Mexican narco-traffickers and corrupt government officials] was able to arrange a 15-ton cocaine deal directly with the Mexican military and representatives of the Mexican government, at least one of whom was tied directly to the incoming president of Mexico. As I detailed in NY Times Best Seller "Deep Cover," CIA, State and the Department of Justice immediately moved to destroy "Operation Trifecta." As is revealed in the book, the then-Attorney General of the United States actually blew the cover of our undercover team.
Due to a couple of hard-headed DEA and Customs agents, they were not entirely successful. Point is, what gave Chapo Guzman and ALL like him the power to become billionaire drug kingpins was the covert involvement of his own government in maintaining the flow of money and drugs through Mexico into the US.
… Understand that NOTHING has changed since this was shown and that while the covert involvement and support of the drug economy by the Mexican government and those elements of the US government lending covert support to same continues, there will be a continued flow of CHAPO GUZMANS ….
This link to a Youtube [video] actually captures the undercover deal [that was carried out as part of Operation Trifecta]. The video was sent by overnight courier to the Attorney General of the US, who then blew our cover by warning the AG of Mexico of the impending arrests.…

Stay tuned….