Investigations Into BATFE Accelerate (A Crude Chronology Since late March 2011)

[Ed Jewett]

Grassley puts it bluntly: It's a lie'

• By Dave Workman, Seattle Gun Rights Examiner
  

When Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley was told in February that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was not allowing guns to cross the border, it wasn't true and the Justice Department knew it, and he said so in a Monday night interviewwith Fox News' Greta Van Susteren.

"It's a lie."Sen. Charles Grassley

In a typically candid eight minute interview, Grassley told Van Sustern that the Justice Department has been "misleading to me," and that the agency has known all along that Operation Fast and Furious had done exactly what Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich insisted they weren't doing in his Feb. 4, 2011 letter to the senator.

"At the outset, the allegation described in your January 27 letter that ATF "sanctioned" or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico is false."Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general

Grassley, who was interviewed by this column last week, is growing more upset every day. According to congressional sources close to the senator's investigation of Fast and Furious, investigators have interviewed ATF Special Agent David Voth, former supervisor of Group VII in Phoenix, who was discussed by this column on Monday. His name is prominently featured in a new revelation about a separate gun trafficking case involving whistleblower agent John Dodson.
Whether Voth will be asked to appear before Congressman Darrell Issa's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform remains to be seen. Voth now appears to be a central figure in the Fast and Furious fiasco, which critics insist can no longer be referred to as a "botched operation" because it now appears the ATF's plan all along was to let hundreds, if not thousands of guns to flow across the border into Mexico, where they could be recovered at crime scenes.
But why? Some 200 Mexican citizens have apparently been killed as "collateral damage" to this operation, and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry died in December.
Grassley pulled no punches in his assessment of the operation and the apparent cover-up by the Obama administration.

There's something sinister going on...They want to do everything they can to avoid this issue. They want to string us along. They want to stonewall us.Sen. Charles Grassley

The Capitol Hill veteran also told Van Susteren that he is not getting the cooperation from Attorney General Eric Holder that he was promised after agreeing to lift his block of a crucial Justice Department appointment earlier this year.
None of this deters Grassley, however. He "made his bones" on Capitol Hill by sniffing out government waste, fraud and misconduct, and he hasn't been partisan about it, either. Asked by Van Susteren if he plans to stick with the investigation, Grassley replied:

We're going to keep on it until we get to the bottom of it…
We're going to find out who gave the approval for this fast and furious and hopefully get that person fired.'

There are a lot of people rooting for him.






Continue reading on Examiner.com Grassley puts it bluntly: It's a lie' - Seattle gun rights | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-se...z1ZOrEvnd0

[Ed Jewett]

Texas-Mexico border now combat zone say two retired U.S. generals in new report


by Jack Dennis

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[TD="colspan: 2, align: left"]Global Research, September 29, 2011
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[TD="colspan: 2, align: left"]Tired of hearing from Obama White House that the Texas-Mexico border is more secure than ever, the Texas Department of Agriculture, along with the Department of Public Safety, hired two retired U.S. generals to evaluate the true status.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples today released "Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment," an independent study, former generals Barry McCaffrey and Major-General Robert Scales, at the Protect Your Texas Border Summit in Austin.
Among their findings is that "criminality spawned in Mexico is spilling over into the United States."
Mexican drug cartels intend are building a "sanitary zone" about one county deep within the U.S. along the Texas border. They will use this zone to escape Mexican law enforcement and provide an area of safe movement for drug smugglers and human traffickers.
Texas is the "tactical close combat zone and frontline in this conflict. Texans have been assaulted by cross-border gangs and narco-terrorist activities."
"Washington keeps telling us our border is more secure than ever, but this detailed military assessment, by two of America's top generals, offers proof to the contrary," Commissioner Staples said. "It's time to shed the cloak of denial and protect our citizens and national security."
"It's time for Washington to uphold its constitutional duty to protect Americans on their home soil," Staples added.
The report offers a military perspective on how to best use "strategic, operational and tactical measures to secure the increasingly hostile border regions" on the border.
Texas landowners and officials have been witnessing and pleading with the Obama Administration for increased federal support to defend the U.S. border.
"During the past two years, the southwestern United States has become increasingly threatened by the spread of Latin American and Mexican cartel organized crime," said Gen. Barry McCaffrey (Ret.).
"The violence and ongoing threat to our security reflect a change in the strategic intent of the cartels to move their operations into the United States," said Maj. Gen. Robert Scales (Ret.). "American cities and rural areas now have Latin American drug, gun and human smuggling cartels operating inside our borders."
Their findings indicating citizens living and working in a Texas border county is equivalent to living in a warzone. Law enforcement agencies, civil authorities, journalists and citizens are in continuous and growing danger of attack.
There is disparity between reported and actual cartel activity because the 17,000 local and state law enforcement agencies that provide data to the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) are not required to categorize these crimes as "drug related."
More "boots on the ground" to the fight for border security is required.
Texas is the frontline in this escalating war, and the potential consequences of our responses will affect our

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=26846

[Ed Jewett]

New Fast and Furious docs released by White House

BySharyl AttkissonTopicsLaw and Order

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WASHINGTON - Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF "Fast and Furious" gunwalking scandal.The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell - who led Fast and Furious - and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O'Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O'Reilly are long time friends.ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.[url=http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20083772-10391695.html]ATF Manager says he shared Fast and Furious with the White HouseThe email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF's gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O'Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office's gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as "letting guns walk."A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: "none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to 'walk.'"ATF Fast and Furious: Who at the White House knew?Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF's Newell sent the White House's O'Reilly an "arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up." The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.In response, O'Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 "The arrow chart is really interesting - and - no surprise - implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year's TX effort develop a similar graphic?"The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of "significant confidentiality interests."Also included are email photographs including images of a .50 caliber rifle that Newell tells O'Reilly "was purchased in Tucson, Arizona (part of another OCDTF case)." OCDTF is a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice and includes the US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS. Fast and Furious was an OCDTF case. An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF's Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called "Wide Receiver." Sources claim ATF allowed guns to "walk" in that operation, much like Fast and Furious.Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O'Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O'Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.One administration source says White House national security staffers were "briefed on the toplines of ongoing federal efforts, but nobody in White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20...91695.html

[Bernice Moore]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20...91695.html

WHITE HOUSE RELEASES NEW FAST AND FURIOUS DOCUMENTS..

[Bernice Moore]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/ope...z1Zp30lCL3

Fast & Furious revelation...

[Ed Jewett]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/ope...z1Zp30lCL3

Fast & Furious revelation...

Thank you, Bernice... time to dig up some old Iran-Contra files.

[Ed Jewett]

White House Hires Communications Hand To Handle Issa Oversight

First Posted: 05/11/11 11:37 AM ET Updated: 05/11/11 12:07 PM ET

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is staffing up in preparation for expanded oversight and inquiries from a Republican-run House of Representatives.
Eric Schultz, the former communications director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, officially joined the White House on Monday. While his portfolio will include issues primarily dealing with the Department of Justice, another key function will be to handle matters relating to and resulting from investigations launched by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
"Eric Schultz started Monday. He will be one of three associate communications directors, alongside Kate Bedingfield and Sandra Abrevaya," said a top administration official. "Eric's portfolio of issues will focus mainly on DOJ and other oversight-related topics."
Issa's investigatory arm has thus far been a bit more subdued than early reports suggested it might be. But that doesn't mean the California Republican lacks bite. Issa's committee has held hearings on everything from environmental regulations to the Presidential Records Act, from freedom of information standards at the Department of Homeland Security to the underlying causes of the foreclosure crisis.
Currently, Issa's office is entangled in an effort to uproot information on firearms being transferred via Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents to straw purchasers in Mexico. On Tuesday, the Oversight Committee announced it would hold hearings on a draft executive order requiring federal contractors to reveal their campaign donations. An Obama administration official will testify at those hearings.
Much of the administration's pushback to these inquiries or hearings has been done by the agencies themselves rather than by the White House's own press team.
Schultz steps into a position that the president's communications shop has been attempting to fill for some time. The original candidate for the role was former press aide Ben LaBolt, but he left the administration to head communications for Rahm Emanuel's mayoral run in Chicago. Rather than returning to the White House upon Emanuel's win, he signed on as press secretary for President Barack Obama's reelection campaign....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/11...60528.html


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Don't forget to check the date on the above, and fait vos jeux as to when we will see some coached testimony from a 15-year-old relative of someone closely intermingled with the events underway. -- EJ

[Ed Jewett]

US Government Accused of Seeking to Conceal Deal Cut With Sinaloa "Cartel"

Posted by Bill Conroy - October 1, 2011 at 5:52 pmLawyers for Alleged Narco-Boss Zambada Niebla Claim Prosecutors Suppressing Evidence By Invoking National Security
The criminal case against accused Mexican narco-trafficker Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla now appears to be threatening to unravel the U.S. government's ugly national-security interests in the drug war.
Zambada Niebla, son of one of the leaders of the Sinaloa "Cartel," arguably the most powerful international narco-trafficking organization on the planet, argues in his criminal case, now pending in federal court in Chicago, that he and the leadership of Mexico's Sinaloa drug-trafficking organization, were, in effect, working for the U.S. government for years by providing US agents with intelligence about rival drug organizations.
In exchange for that cooperation, Zambada Niebla contends, the US government granted the leadership of the Sinaloa "Cartel" immunity from prosecution for their criminal activities including the narco-trafficking charges he now faces in Chicago.
The government, in court pleadings filed last month, denies that claim but at the same time has filed a motion in the case seeking to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), a measure designed to assure national security information does not become public during court proceedings.
To date, the US mainstream media has been completely silent on the US government's effort to invoke CIPA in the Zambada Niebla case; so, kind readers, Narco News is the only authentic news publication providing you with the scoop.
In a motion filed with the court earier this week, on Sept. 29, Zambada Niebla's attorneys argue that the government, in essence, is trying to suppress evidence critical to their client's defense by seeking to invoke CIPA at a critical point in the court proceedings.
Zambada Niebla's lawyers claim that the prosecution has, at this point, withheld evidence it is required to provide to the defense and is now attempting to cover its tracks and assure that evidence remains cloaked by arguing that it affects US national security.
Zambada Niebla's attorneys, as part of their recent pleadings, are now asking the court for additional time to prepare their rebuttal to the government's contention that Zambada Niebla was not operating under US-sanctioned immunity. The attorneys are asking the judge to delay the rebuttal deadline, now set for Oct. 17, until after the CIPA procedures are in place so that their client has access to the classified evidence necessary to prepare his defense.
CIPA, enacted some 30 years ago, is designed to keep a lid on the public disclosure in criminal cases of classified materials, such as details associated with clandestine FBI or CIA operations. The rule requires that notice be given to the judge in advance of any move to introduce classified evidence in a case so that the judge can determine if it is admissible, or if another suitable substitution can be arranged that preserves the defendants right to a fair trial.
From Zambada Niebla's court pleadings filed on Sept. 29:

The defense cannot adequately respond to the government's oppositions and support its motions without first understanding the nature, scope, and substance of the classified information in the possession of the government. The government's obligation to produce documents is not limited to those in the possession of the DOJ [Department of Justice] and FBI, but includes documents in the possession, custody, and control other agencies, including the CIA, DEA, ATF, ICE, IRS, NSA [National Security Agency], and the Department of Justice OCDETF [Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force].
... These agencies alone have relevant and material information to establish that they had knowledge that the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel were allowed to engage in drug trafficking activity but did nothing to prevent the trafficking or to arrest those leaders.
The defense here will be disadvantaged if required to file replies before the CIPA process has been initiated, much less completed, because it will not have the benefit of the very information that supports its motions.

Colombia Redux?

At the heart of Zambada Niebla's defense is a Mexican attorney named Humberto Loya Castro, who, both the US government and Zambada Niebla agree, has worked as a contracted cooperating source, an informant, for the US government since at least 2005.
Loya Castro, according to Zambada Niebla's court pleadings, served as an intermediary between US government agents (including the DEA and FBI) and the leadership of the Sinaloa organization which includes Zambada Niebla; his father Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia; and the top capo of the Sinaloa drug organization, Joaquin Guzman Loera (Chapo).
"The central contention of all of [Zambada Niebla's] motions is that Humberto Loya Castro, a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel, entered into an agreement on behalf of the Cartel lincluding the defendant Zambada Niebla] with several agencies of the United States Government to serve as an informant against rival Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations," Zambada Niebla's recently filed court pleadings allege. "In return for the information he [Zambada Niebla] and others provided, the government agreed it would not share any of the information that it had about the Sinaloa Cartel and/or the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel with the Mexican government in order to ensure that the Cartel's operations would not be disrupted and its leaders would not be apprehended.
"In addition, the government extended [Zambada Niebla and the leadership of the Sinaloa organization] immunity for [their] activities on behalf of the Cartel as a result of his cooperation. [As a result,] information related to the government's use of sources, the methods implemented to combat international drug conspiracies, and inter-governmental cooperation regarding those efforts inevitably raises national security issues."
In this case, Zambada Niebla seems to have some history on his side that shows there is precedent for US law enforcement and intelligence agencies making use of an intermediary (the role allegedly played by Loya Castro) to negotiate quid-pro-quo deals with foreign narco-traffickers.
Baruch Vega is a colorful Colombian who has worked as an asset for the FBI, DEA and CIA, among other agencies, over the years.
Vega was very involved with a series of U.S. law enforcement operations carried out by the DEA and FBI between 1997 and 2000. Those operations, Vega claims, involved serving as an intermediary in brokering deals with Colombian narco-traffickers by offering them the bait of U.S.-government sanctioned sweetheart plea deals in return for their surrender or cooperation.
The following is from a lawsuit Vega filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in which he alleges the government failed to pay him for his high-risk services, to the tune of some $28.5 million:

Once Mr. Vega introduced … American lawyers to the Colombian targets [the narco-traffickers], the lawyers would then get retained and then take over as legal representatives for the Colombian targets and further deal with a group of United States law enforcement agents and prosecutors, hand-picked to work out deals for the Colombian targets. A particular United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida became the coordinator of this "recruiting effort."

According to Vega, who has spoken with Narco News numerous times over the past several years, between late 1997 and 2000, he traveled between South Florida and South America via a private jet for a total of some 25 to 30 confidential-source "recruiting" trips some with FBI agents on board, some with DEA agents on board, and some transporting Colombian narco-traffickers who were being brought back to the United States to negotiate deals.
Vega adds that the FBI and DEA were each running their own separate operations at the time, so the FBI also was involved in some of the confidential source recruiting trips to South America as well, and he says the Bureau "even paid for the [leased] plane a few times."
Narco News obtained an internal DEA PowerPoint presentation outlining one variation of Vega's narco-trafficker recruiting scheme, which played out in the late 1980s but, according to law enforcement sources, was likely still in use as late as 2000. The DEA PowerPoint described the operation, called Gambit, as follows:

In an effort to gather intelligence in 1987, a FBI Special Agent was introduced as a corrupt FBI agent to Colombian Cartel traffickers by FBI confidential source Baruch Vega. The intent was to convince Cartel leadership that the "corrupt" agent could effect the early release of key Cartel members [light sentences] who would be incarcerated in the U.S.
Vega was allowed by FBI agents to keep "corruption scheme" fees that were collected from the traffickers. An important feature of this operation was that Vega's expenses were funded by the traffickers, which defrayed the FBI's investigative expenses. According to Vega, the element of substantial bribes enhanced the credibility of the "corruption scheme."

A judge's ruling in another legal case that is related to Vega's lawsuit also confirms his role as a foreign counterintelligence source involved in high-level deal-making with narco-traffickers on behalf of multiple US agencies. It describes the CIA's involvement in one flight in 1999 that departed from Panama for Florida that involved Vega, federal agents and an indicted, fugitive Colombian narco-trafficker:

Indeed, the appellant [a DEA supervisor] used the CIA to bring [Colombian narco-trafficker] Mr. Cristancho to the chartered aircraft surreptitiously, without going through Panamanian airport security or customs. … And, an Assistant U.S. Attorney and various DEA agents … were at the Fort Lauderdale airport to greet the plane.
… Both the DEA and FBI used Vega as a confidential source. The FBI specified that Vega would be a "non-testifier." That is, he would never be used to testify in criminal trials. This status was necessary because Vega was called a "FCI-CI" or Foreign Counterintelligence Service Confidential Informant, who had been brought in by the CIA. As the appellant [a DEA supervisor] put it, "I'm having my agents cut him out every chance they can. I don't want him documented. I don't want him in our Case File any more than we have to."
The trips to Panama at issue here were confidential source recruiting trips. The plan was for Mr. Vega to "introduce" [a DEA agent working under the DEA supervisor] to drug traffickers and then to get out of there, so he would be in no position to have to testify regarding what conversations, if any, took place.

Vega's lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims was ultimately dismissed on a technicality, with the judge ruling that the statute he invoked in his case "does not authorize compensation for information provided to the DEA or FBI concerning the drug or narcotics investigation alleged in the complaint."
Still, it seems clear that Vega's participation in the Colombian operations, essentially a government-sanction extortion scheme, is evidence that the US agencies have cut deals with narco-traffickers in the past similar to the pact Zambada Niebla now alleges exists between the US government and Sinaloa "Cartel" leadership.

Fast and Furious

But Vega's extortion scheme is not the only point of nexus between Zambada Niebla's claims and other government operations.
Zamada Niebla's case also intersects with the recently imploded ATF operation dubbed Fast and Furious in which the federal agency is accused of allowing gun-traffickers, primarily associated with the Sinaloa criminal organization, to smuggle some 2,000 high-power weapons into Mexico unimpeded. Multiple law enforcers who spoke with Narco News says there is no sane, what's more justifiable, law-enforcement purpose for allowing thousands of deadly illegally-purchased weapons to freely move across the border into Mexico where they can no longer be tracked by US agents.
Zambada Niebla, who has been incarcerated in Chicago's Metropolitan Correctional Center since being extradited from Mexico in February 2010, raises the Fast and Furious debacle in his court pleadings, arguing, essentially, that the operation is proof of the US government's cooperation deal with the Sinaloa "Cartel" leadership.
As a result of Operation Fast and Furious, Zambada Niebla's pleadings assert, about "three thousand people" in Mexico were killed, "including law enforcement officers in the sate of Sinaloa, Mexico, headquarters of the Sinaloa Cartel."
Among those receiving weapons through the botched ATF operation, the pleadings continue, were DEA and FBI informants working for drug organizations, including the leadership of those groups.
"The evidence seems to indicate that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons, but that tax payers' dollars in the form of informant payments, may have financed those engaging in such activities," the pleadings allege. "… It is clear that some of the weapons were deliberately allowed by the FBI and other government representatives to end up in the hands of the Sinaloa Cartel and that among the people killed by those weapons were law enforcement officers.
"… Mr. Zambada Niebla believes that the documentation that he requests [from the US government] will confirm that the weapons received by Sinaloa Cartel members and its leaders in Operation Fast & Furious' were provided under the agreement entered into between the United States government and [Sinaloa organization lawyer] Mr. Loya Castro on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel…."
Earlier this week, information surfaced as part of an ongoing Congressional probe into Fast and Furious that indicates agents with the FBI's Las Cruces, NM, office and with DEA's office in Juarez, Mexico, were aware that an individual, now an FBI informant, was actually financing the purchase of many of the Fast and Furious weapons allowed to "walk," or move freely, into Mexico by the ATF. However, those FBI and DEA agents, and their supervisors, allegedly failed to inform ATF of the informant's role in the gun purchases many of which involved the Sinaloa "Cartel."
From a Sept. 27 letter drafted by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa and U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley and directed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.:

The main target of Operation Fast and Furious from its inception … was Manuel Celis-Acosta.
… FBI personnel in its Las Cruces, New Mexico, office apparently knew that the subject of a separate DEA investigation was ordering weapons from Acosta in January 2010. Yet around the same time, the subject of that [DEA] investigation received more than $3,500 in official law enforcement funds as payment for illegal narcotics. That subject apparently the financier for Acosta's firearms trafficking ring later began cooperating with the FBI and may have received additional payments as a confidential informant (CI#1).
… According to confidential sources, over a two-year period CI#1 had contacted several DEA agents, including Juarez, Mexico Resident Agent in Charge Jim Roberts, and passed information to these agents about Mexican drug cartels. If the information we have obtained is accurate, DEA had knowledge of CI#1's activities going back to at least early 2009 [some six months before the launch of Fast and Furious]. … [Due to] the apparent failure to share information about the source (CI#1), ATF was allegedly unaware that DEA and FBI knew CI#1 was ordering weapons from Acosta, the target of Operation Fast and Furious.
This failure to share vital information may have extended the use of gun walking [allowing weapons to flow into Mexico, resulting in as yet not tallied bloodshed] during Operation Fast and Furious, which sought to identify the higher-ups, like CI#1, who were paying for the weapons.…"

It is important to note again that most of the weapons allowed to cross from the US unimpeded into Mexico by ATF's Fast and Furious were going to the Sinaloa "Cartel," according to a report issued in July by Issa and Grassley.
So, given Zambada Niebla's claim ithat "some of the [Fast and Furious] weapons were deliberately allowed by the FBI and other government representatives to end up in the hands of the Sinaloa "Cartel," it seems his attorneys may want to pose some serious questions to witnesses suspected of having knowledge of that alleged act, including DEA's Roberts, as well as the special agent in charge of the FBI's New Mexico operations, Carol K.O. Lee and the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, Kenneth J. Gonzales.
Such a prospect can't be very uplifting for the prosecution in Zambada Niebla's case and might explain, in part, why there is an effort afoot by the US law-enforcement and intelligence officials to cloak the revelations, the evidence, that might surface in the case under the seal of national security.
The future of the for-profit prohibition industry and the drug-war pretense that props it up could well depend on assuring that the public remains in the dark.
Stay tuned…..

Narco News past coverage of the Zambada Niebla case can be found at these links:
US Prosecutors Fear Jailbreak Plot by Sinaloa "Cartel" Leader Zambada Niebla
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

[Ed Jewett]

Severed heads found near Mexican defense ministry

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Posted 2011/10/03 at 1:03 pm EDT

MEXICO CITY, Oct. 3, 2011 (Reuters) The severed heads of two men were found near the Defense Ministry in Mexico City on Monday in one of the most brazen drug-linked killings in the capital, which so far has been spared the worst of gang violence.

Members of a forensic team and police officers stand at a crime scene where two decapitated body were found inside a car in Mexico City October 3, 2011. REUTERS/Stringer

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More at link:
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre7924...ico-drugs/

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[Ed Jewett]

THolder's Hollywood manqué: About Death

The Examiner
William Heuisler

Tucson's "Wide Receiver" is the latest government gun-smuggling code.

Hollywood could have invented cute names for ATF agents smuggling guns to criminals. Maybe even introduced a plot twist where a brave Border agent is murdered because of gun smuggling. But even Hollywood would realize Eric Holder's Project Gunrunner - and all its foul brood - is about Death.

The American people are slowly learning about a sinister scheme, concocted in the US Government's Executive Branch, that was then enabled by Chiefs of nearly every Federal Law enforcement Agency. Gunrunner, Fast and Furious and Wide Receiver are all stylized, trivialized names for government agents who helped smuggle American guns to Mexican drug cartels.

Playful names mask deadly crimes and deep corruption too serious to invent. ATF agent whistleblowers say that ATF's Operation Fast and Furious (with Justice Department direction) enabled thousands of weapons to be smuggled into Mexico and sold to drug cartels.

The smuggling, gun-walking project called Gunrunner (proudly announced in 2009 by Attorney General, Eric Holder in Cuernavaca, Mexico) has cost the lives of Tucson Sector Border Agent, Brian Terry and ICE Agent, Jaime Zapata, along with hundreds of Mexican military and law enforcement.

We learn more about this bizarre Hollywood manqué disaster through e-mails and phone calls between ATF's Phoenix Chief, Bill Newell, and a White House National Security Staff member, Kevin O'Reilly.

Newell email (09.03.10)(pdf)
Arizona Gunrunner Impact Team
chart(pdf)
O'Reilly email (09.03.10)(pdf)

(Attkisson, 2011)

ATF Chief Agent (Phoenix) and National Security Staff member (White House) talked and wrote about Fast and Furious, always avoiding names. But they slipped. They carelessly mentioned a group called "OCDTF". Newell sent O'Reilly e-mail photographs including a .50 caliber rifle that Newell says, "Was purchased in Tucson as part of an OCDTF case."

This is a significant admission. OCDTF means "Organized Crime Drug Task Force" - a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice, and includes US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS.

Newell admits OCDTF smuggled guns in Tucson as part of Fast and Furious.

And then a little plot twist: Congressional investigators Issa and Grassley asked to interview O'Reilly by September 30. But the Administration said O'Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq. (Attkisson, 2011)

Convenient. This script would be laughable if reality were not so deadly.

No matter what these cuff-linked, capitol-city heroes dream up for politics, a wide receiver plays in a game.

Holder's schemes are not games. Gunrunner has always been about Death. Gunrunner means gun smuggler; Fast and Furious means car chases. And Americans should never forget the common denominator - the ultimate moment, the final play is desert death, a spray of bullets, or a spike of black-tar heroin in a ruined arm.

Attkisson, C. (2011). CBS News. Investigation. New Fast and Furious Docs released by White House. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20...91695.html

http://weeklyintercept.blogspot.com/2011...death.html