America's Mexican Border Wars

[Peter Lemkin]

Mexican Diplomat Traded Secrets with Private Intel Firm Stratfor, WikiLeaks Documents Reveal
Exchange of Sensitive Information Focused on the US/Mexican Operations in the Drug War

By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin http://narconews.com/Issue67/article4620.html

August 9, 2012

US soldiers are operating inside Mexico as part of the drug war and the Mexican government provided critical intelligence to US agents in the now-discredited Fast and Furious gun-running operation, a Mexican diplomat claims in email correspondence with a Texas-based private intelligence firm.

The emails, obtained and made public by the nonprofit media organization WikiLeaks, also disclose details of a secret meeting between US and Mexican officials held in 2010 at Fort Bliss, a US Army installation located near El Paso, Texas. The meeting was part of an effort to create better communications between US undercover operatives in Mexico and the Mexican federal police, the Mexican diplomat reveals.

However, the diplomat expresses concern that the Fort Bliss meeting was infiltrated by the "cartels," whom he contends have "penetrated both US and Mexican law enforcement."

The Mexican diplomat is referred to as "MX1" in the some of the emails obtained by WikiLeaks but also identified by name in others.

The description of MX1 in the emails matches the publicly available information on Fernando de la Mora Salcedo, a Mexican foreign service officer who studied law at the University of New Mexico, served in the Mexican Consulate in El Paso, Texas, and is currently stationed in the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix.

The disclosures made in the emails obtained by WikiLeaks seem to show that a high-level Mexican official was dealing his country's national secrets to US entities. Whether that act was by design, as part of a Mexican intelligence operation, or a case of treachery is not clear, but the fact that these emails are now public, available on the Internet, likely means that question will have to be addressed at some level within the Mexican and US governments.

The emails between the Mexican diplomat, aka MX1, and the Austin, Texas-based private intelligence firm, called Stratfor, were drafted between 2008 and 2011.

Stratfor, which describes itself as a privately owned "subscription-based provider of geopolitical analysis," has been billed in the media as a "shadow CIA." The firm serves both corporate and government clients, including US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and also has cultivated a vast source network, in both the corporate and government world, that crosses international borders and Stratfor also shares information with those sources.

Stratfor did not provide any comment on the emails disclosed by WikiLeaks when contacted recently via email by Narco News. However, the firm issued a public statement earlier this year addressing the leaked emails dubbed the Global Intelligence Files by WikiLeaks:

"Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic," states the press release issued by Stratfor. "We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them."

Behind the Masks

Readers will have to judge for themselves whether the Stratfor emails obtained by WikiLeaks are the genuine deal.


The Mexican diplomat Fernando de la Mora
However, in researching the Stratfor email trail made public by WikiLeaks, it is clear the correspondence between the Mexican diplomat and Stratfor analysts was carried out for the purpose of intelligence gathering. In addition, the content of the emails correlates in intricate detail, both among the emails and with outside sources, over the course of several years, beginning in 2008.

The Mexican diplomat is described in one of the Stratfor emails as "being molded to be the Mexican tip of the spear' in the US."

From the Stratfor email, drafted on Dec. 16, 2010:

He is the youngest FSO [foreign service officer] in recent Mexican history … and has been appointed the GOM [government of Mexico] point man on SB1070 in Arizona [the anti-immigration legislation adopted by that state], which is essentially like being the U.S. FSO in charge of Afghanistan in Kabul.

The GOM paid for his law school stint at UNM [the University of New Mexico] to prepare him for more interactions with U.S. law enforcement and legislators. He is also being given a free hand to speak to US law enforcement and I think he doubles duty with CISEN [Mexico's equivalent of the CIA], but he won't tell me which I understand. But his contacts in Mexican intelligence and law enforcement are too great for someone who at that age should be stamping passports.

As evidence of the connections the Mexican diplomat, MX1, allegedly had with Mexico's intelligence agency, CISEN, another Stratfor email, penned on April 2, 2008, offers this insight about him:

He [MX1] thought it would be useful if he got us in touch with the Mexican Intel Bureau Chief in El Paso (they have one, a new development I think I reported this a few months ago when it happened in one of my reports). Fernando [MX1] says that if you want to go to El Paso and meet with them he can arrange a meeting. That would be the CISEN Bureau Chief in El Paso.

And in yet another Stratfor email, with the subject line "Fwd: Another question for MX1" a question from Stratfor analysts is directed to MX1, and his real name is revealed as Fernando de la Mora.

A 2012 directory published by the US Department of State, which lists all foreign consular offices in the US and their lead officials, shows that Fernando de la Mora Salcedo serves as "consul" in the Phoenix office of the Mexican Consulate in Arizona. A 2010 story on the website of the University of New Mexico School of Law also indicates that Fernando de la Mora, "a Mexican Foreign Service Officer, received a certificate for completing a year-long program in U.S. legal studies as a visiting scholar at the University of New Mexico School of Law."


Fred Burton
In a separate series of Stratfor emails obtained by WikiLeaks, planning is discussed for a March 2009 meeting between Fred Burton, the firm's vice president of intelligence and a former State Department special agent, and Agustin Maciel, who is listed in the State Department directory of foreign consular offices as a "consul" in the Mexican Consulate in El Paso.

Maciel, based on the email trail, was introduced to Stratfor analysts originally by "Fernando."

Here's how one Stratfor email describes Maciel:

Short version of this guy's bio is that he is in charge of Political Affairs at the El Paso Consulate-General. That means he outranks Fernando. He is very smart. His specialty is the U.S. He was involved in the drafting of the Merida Initiative from the Mexican side. Is an academic, had a stint at Georgetown I think, but was teaching in some small college in Mexico when the government asked him to help out. He is definitely CISEN.

We of course don't know ANYTHING of the above. We just know that he is Political Affairs at the Consulate [in El Paso] and that he knows Fernando and that he had drinks with me in Fernando's apartment until late one night (I sent insight about this long time ago).

By the way, Fernando says that Augusto may have an interesting proposal for Stratfor. He is not sure of the details and will let August say it … but it could be good for us. Also, Fernando will tell you on Thursday if Augusto will want any meetings added to the list when he is in Austin between 2-4 March [2009].

Narco News contacted and left a message with the Mexican Consulate in El Paso in an attempted to get a comment from Maciel, but he did not return the call.

Narco News also contacted Socorro Cordoba, the press spokesperson for the Mexican Consulate network in Arizona, seeking a comment from de la Mora in relation to the Stratfor emails. Cordoba told Narco News that she would pass the message along to the "Consul General," but no one from the Mexican Consulate has yet gotten back to Narco News.

Inside the Beast

The revelations contained in the Stratfor emails offer some important insights into the inner-workings of the drug war with respect to US/Mexican operations and also confirm past reporting by Narco News about US special-forces operations inside Mexico.

In June 2010, Narco News reported that "a special operations task force under the command of the Pentagon is currently in place south of the border providing advice and training to the Mexican Army in gathering intelligence, infiltrating and, as needed, taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations."

A follow-up to that report, published by Narco News on June 5, 2011, reported that "a Pentagon document has come to light that confirms the U.S. has put special operations troops on the ground in Mexico as the drug war there continues to escalate."

Those reports were met with deafening silence from the US mainstream media and outright denials by the Mexican government.

However, the Stratfor emails obtained by WikiLeaks seem to confirm the Narco News reports of US troop operations inside Mexico.

Here is what the Mexican diplomat MX1 (also identified as Fernando de la Mora in the Stratfor emails) has to say on the subject of US troops operating in Mexico, according to one Stratfor email obtained by WikiLeaks:

Information about US military involvement in Mexico is provided only as a need to know basis. The Americans have been adamant about this, and we agree even more. Therefore, I can confirm that there is Marine presence, but I don't know if it is MFR [Marine Force Recon]. [Emphasis added.]

…Furthermore, operational coordination and indeed joint exercises have been conducted, and there are more in the planning stages. We do indeed have US military presence in Mexico as part of the MI [Merida Initiative] coordination office (even though they are sometimes under official cover as DOS [Department of State], etc…) There are advisors and intelligence operatives that work on the tactical level with their Mexican counterparts…

Another major disclosure by Stratfor's Mexican diplomatic source is that the Mexican government appears to have been involved at some level, at least in terms of intelligence sharing, with ATF's failed Fast and Furious operation. To date, the Mexican government has claimed it had no knowledge of the operation.

Narco News has covered the fallout from Fast and Furious extensively and in one report examined the intelligence agency fingerprints on the Fast and Furious operation.

In early February 2011, MX1 provided an analysis via email to Stratfor about Fast and Furious an ATF operation that allowed dozens of "straw purchasers" to buy guns in the US illegally and deliver them across the border to narco-trafficking organizations, with the supposed goal of identifying and building cases against higher-up players in those "cartels." As a result of Fast and Furious, thousands of guns were put into the hands of violent criminals in Mexico, resulting in the deaths of hundreds, of not thousands of individuals, many of them innocent victims.

The Stratfor email seems to confirm that the primary focus of Fast and Furious, at least from the Mexican diplomat's perspective, was intelligence gathering and not law enforcement.

An example of how sophisticated and widespread a [gun-smuggling] network can be can be gleaned from recent operation "Fast & Furious", executed on January 25th [the date of the indictment against the straw purchasers]. 20 people arrested and 34 total indictments. A big deal.

The investigation started thanks to intel that we shared with ATF. The raw data from 195 seizures in Mexico and 372 in Arizona were shared with ATF. Over the course of many, many months, it became clear that [a] gun store in Phoenix could be tied to an unusual number of crime gun traces in Mexico. Anyway, the cool stuff is not that many of these people were arrested. In fact, it will matter little, given that these crimes in the US are not only nearly impossible to prosecute, but extremely difficult to convict… The really cool thing about F&F is the M.O. of the ring that ATF was chasing… [Emphasis added.]

Narco News' past coverage of the drug war has hit often and hard on the prevalence of callous corruption within both US and Mexican law enforcement and intelligence agencies. For example, in the House of Death series, Narco News documented the use of a US informant inside Mexico who was allowed to participate in multiple murders while under the watch of US law enforcers and prosecutors.

The twisted nature of the drug-war pretense is illuminated in yet another email exchange on March 1, 2010, involving the Mexican diplomat, MX1, and Stratfor analysts, which has now been made public by WikiLeaks.

The email discusses the counter-narco-trafficking and information-sharing objectives of a clandestine meeting between US and Mexican officials, which was held in the spring of 2010 at a military base in Texas. The email also notes concerns by Stratfor "source" MX1 that the gathering at Fort Bliss itself had been penetrated by "cartel" operatives.

Subject: More from MX1: Big meet in Fort Bliss

NOT FOR PUBLICATION (he sounded serious about it too)

Big meeting just went down in Fort Bliss [near El Paso, Texas] ... (source [MX1] did not say he was part of it, but I know his movements and he was in El Paso over the weekend) first of its kind.

It involved U.S. and Mexican government working on formalizing a process by which U.S. undercover operatives in Mexico … operating south of the border can talk to the Mexican federal police.

…Source says that U.S. undercover agents will now be able to communicate to Mexican federal police. Furthermore, Mexican federal police will be able to count on U.S. undercover agents for more intelligence sharing.

Source says that the problem thus far for Mexican intelligence operatives has been adapting to hunting down cartels. They simply have no institutional experience with that. Source says that a lot of Mexican intel has come up to him telling him how they were trained to hunt down political dissidents and that they need help from DEA and FBI on how to deal with drug cartels.

Therefore, there is a new spirit of interoperability between the two on the border when it comes to U.S. undercover agents.

The problem is, MX1 indicates, that he is not sure the Fort Bliss meeting was secure. He fears that cartels are everywhere and that they have penetrated both U.S. and Mexican law enforcement…

In June 2010, when Narco News first reported on the presence of a US special operations task force deployed inside Mexico, one source for that information, former CIA asset Tosh Plumlee, indicated that task force members feared their mission had been compromised because of leaks and corruption within the Mexican government.

"Since the task force operations have already been exposed, at least to the extent that narco-trafficking organizations are surely aware of their presence in Mexico, Plumlee says making known in the U.S. the information about Task Force 7 may actually help to protect its members, via that public sunshine, despite the diplomatic embarrassment it might prompt [for the US and Mexican governments]," Narco News reported at the time.

Narco News was provided access to the Stratfor emails through an investigative partnership organized by WikiLeaks that includes journalists, academics and human rights organizations.

[Jan Klimkowski]

…Source says that U.S. undercover agents will now be able to communicate to Mexican federal police. Furthermore, Mexican federal police will be able to count on U.S. undercover agents for more intelligence sharing.

1) that would be a complete breach of tradecraft;

2) it would lead to the near immediate blowing of cover for all assets.

I call BullShit on that part of the claims.

[Peter Lemkin]

Mexico Apologizes for Shooting of CIA Operatives

The Mexican government has apologized for a shooting by federal police officers that wounded two CIA operatives last week. The operatives were driving a U.S. embassy vehicle with diplomatic license plates near Mexico City when they came under fire. Twelve Mexican officers have been detained so far. It is unclear if the operatives were deliberately targeted or whether it was a case of mistaken identity. On Tuesday, Mexican President Felipe Calderón apologized to the U.S. government.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón: "I am deeply sorry for the events that took place a couple of days ago in Morelos state. As you know, these events, are being deeply investigated with full rigor and severity on behalf of the Attorney General's Office in order to separate responsibility in this matter and act in consequence because we can't allow these things to happen, whether it is because of negligence, lack of training, lack of trust or complicity, they can't happen and they are being completely investigated with full rigor."

The United States says the wounded CIA operatives were in Mexico to assist in the fight against drug traffickers. On Tuesday, several Mexican politicians called for an investigation of the CIA's role in Mexico.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The United States says the wounded CIA operatives were in Mexico to assist in the fight against drug traffickers. .

:mexican: :plane: :unclesam: nort:

[Lauren Johnson]

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Daniel Hopsicker

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In a violent incident whose explanation daily grows more murky the two "U.S. embassy officials" wounded by Mexican Federal Police officers in an attack outside Cuernavaca were revealed to be CIA agents by major Mexican news organizations earlier this week.

What has remained undisclosed until now is ths: one of the agents is linked to the drug trafficking operation out of St Petersburg Florida in which two CIA-connected airplanes were seizedin separate incidents in 2006 and 2007on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula carrying a total of ten tons of cocaine.
The wounded agents connection to earlier CIA operations was first discovered by Mexico City newspaper La Jornada, which noted that one of the agents, after being taken to a hospital for treatment of his wounds, listed his home address as a Post Office Box in Dunn Loring, Virginia.

In a major embarrassment for the CIA, that same address, incredibly, had earlier been used in a CIA operation that received maximum worldwide public exposure: the extraordinary rendition of Al Qaeda prisoners to secret prisons around the world, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, on a fleet of secretly-owned CIA airplanes.

"Sloppy tradecraft" a continuing problem

In the Mexican press, where the words "CIA" and "drug smuggling" occur together almost as often as "cookies" and "milk,' the CIA's failure to invest in a new P.O. Box as part of the two wounded agents 'cover' was viewed with some surprise.
In fact, however, the gaffe, while extraordinary, was hardly unique.
What intelligence circles call "sloppy tradecraft" was one of the hallmarks of the rendition-linked drug trafficking operation, which escaped becoming a major scandal in the US only through the efforts (or non-efforts, or collusion) of America's major media.

For example, one of the CIA planes frequently used in the rendition operation, a Gulfstream II (registration number N987SA) did double duty running drugs. It crashed with maximum publicity in the Yucatan in September of 2007, splitting apart and spilling 3.7 tons of cocaine across a rural area 30 miles from Merida, the Yucatan State capital.

Even worse, the downed CIA drug plane shared interlocking ownership with a second American-registered plane from St Petersburg, FL, a DC-9, that had also made headlines in Mexico when it too was busted on the Yucatan Peninsula carrying a massive 5.5 tons of cocaine.
Occuring almost back-to-back, the two well-publicized incidents proved to be a major turning point, and an investigation by the Mexican Attorrney General's Office led to the discovery of a massive money laundering effort by major US banks.

One result was the collapse and forced sale in 2008 of Wachovia Bank, then America's 4th largest.

Another has been playing out currently, as federal prosecutors contemplate unprecedented criminal sanctions against the world's fifth largest bank, Great Britian's HBSC, for its massive involvement in money laundering for Mexican drug cartels.

Having two of everything can usually solve the problem

The coup de grace (of sorts) occurred when Mexican newspapers attempted to refresh their readers' recollections about the extraordinary rendition program to which they had just connected one of the two CIA agents wounded in the ambush near Cuernavaca by linking to a 2005 story in the New York Times explainng the scandal, headlined "C.I.A. Expanding Terror Battle Under Guise of Charter Flights."

Beneath the headline in the story is a picture of a CIA rendition plane sitting on a runway, bearing the caption "A Casa 235 about to take off from Ruzyne Airport in Prague on a flight to Afghanistan operated by the C.I.A.-connected Aero Contractors."
Clearly visible in the photograph is the registration number of the plane, N168D. What makes this registration number significant?

This: while the CIA-sponsored rendition airplane in the photo was ferrying Al Queda operatives to secret prisons around the world, a plane bearing the exact same registration number was flying tons of cocaine between Colombia and the United States, a fact discovered when it was abandoned by drug traffickers in a field in Nicaragua after they had unloaded what authorities said was more than two tons of cocaine.

The current situation in Mexico also clears up another mystery concerning the St Petersburg drug trafficking operation, and will be covered in a story this Sunday. But before delving further into the officially-sanctioned drug trafficking by the CIA (and others) that operated there, here are a few rapidly-evolving developments in the story of the ambush.

Beltran-Leyva discover meaning of "cartel du jour"

Contrary to initial assertions that it was an accident, last Friday's attack on the American agents on a mountain road between Mexico City and Cuernavca was a well-planned ambush by a squad of as many as two dozen men from the Mexican Federal Police (PFP), in which they blocked the American's SUV before unleashing a barrage of point-blank rounds directly into the vehicle.

The two Americans, as well as a Captain in the Mexican Marines, the only force trusted by American officials, were traveling in a heavily-armored SUV, which saved their lives during the attack as the vehicle took hundreds of rounds fired at close range.
A plausible reason for the attack, cited first by Mexico City newspaper Proceso, is that the men were hunting fugitive Mexican drug cartel kingpin Hector Beltran-Leyva, thought by security experts to be at large somewhere nearby.

Adding credibility to this account are the recent American moves in the "drug war" which directly targeted the Beltran-Leyva cartel, including the extradition to the US of Mexican drug queen Sandra Sandra Avila Beltran, where she has rock star status and is known as the "Queen of the Pacific;" as well as the sensational charges recently brought against four Mexican Generals accused of protecting Beltran-Leyva drug trafficking operations, primarily in Cancun and the Yucatan.
Moreover, the American CIA agents were ambushed near Cuernavaca, once known only as a popular weekend retreat for Mexico City residents, but now seen as a stronghold of the Beltran-Leyva cartel. Cuernavava was the site of the famous shootout in 2009 between Mexican Marines and the bodyguards of Beltran-Leyva kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva, who died in the assasult.

"The police here have been heavily infiltrated by organized crime," one local man told an American reporter. His statment was no more surprising than a prediction that the sun will rise tomorrow morning in the east, but he still declined to be identified.

The Beltran-Leyva cartel became priority targets of Mexican anti-drug efforts since they broke several years ago with Mexico's capo de capo's' Shorty "El Chapo" Guzman, who many Mexican journalists see as receiving official protection, with his Sinaloa Cartel, seen as the current cartel du jour.'

While the Beltran-Leyva Cartel may be about to become yesterday's news, the savage attack seemed to indicate that it would not be without serious "collateral damage."

And there has already been a far-too-serious amount of that.

http://www.madcowprod.com/2012/08/31/ame...ug-planes/

[Peter Lemkin]

They must have had someone else's 'stash'...or cash...or both. I posted a shorter version of this on the Plumlee Mexico - US Drug thread.

[Magda Hassan]

America's Secret Deal with Mexican Drug Cartels

By Tom Burghardt
Global Research, September 03, 2012
Antifascist Calling...

Region: Latin America & Caribbean
Theme: Intelligence

In a story which should have made front page headlines, Narco Newsinvestigative journalist Bill Conroy revealed that "A high-ranking Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization member's claim that US officials have struck a deal with the leadership of the Mexican cartel' appears to be corroborated in large part by the statements of a Mexican diplomat in email correspondence made public recently by the nonprofit media group WikiLeaks."
A series of some five million emails, The Global Intelligence Files, were obtained by the secret-spilling organization as a result of last year's hack by Anonymous of the Texas-based "global intelligence" firm Stratfor.
Bad tradecraft aside, the Stratfor dump offer readers insight into a shadowy world where information is sold to the highest bidder through a "a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world."
One of those informants was a Mexican intelligence officer with the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, or CISEN, Mexico's equivalent to the CIA. Dubbed "MX1″ by Stratfor, he operates under diplomatic cover at the Mexican consulate in Phoenix, Arizona after a similar posting at the consulate in El Paso, Texas.
His cover was blown by the intelligence grifters when they identified him in their correspondence as Fernando de la Mora, described by Stratfor as "being molded to be the Mexican tip of the spear' in the U.S."
In an earlier Narco News story, Conroy revealed that "US soldiers are operating inside Mexico as part of the drug war and the Mexican government provided critical intelligence to US agents in the now-discredited Fast and Furious gun-running operation," the Mexican diplomat claimed in email correspondence.
Those emails disclosed "details of a secret meeting between US and Mexican officials held in 2010 at Fort Bliss, a US Army installation located near El Paso, Texas. The meeting was part of an effort to create better communications between US undercover operatives in Mexico and the Mexican federal police, the Mexican diplomat reveals."
"However," Conroy wrote, "the diplomat expresses concern that the Fort Bliss meeting was infiltrated by the cartels,' whom he contends have penetrated both US and Mexican law enforcement'."
Such misgivings are thoroughly justified given the fact, as Antifascist Calling reported last spring, that the Mexican government had arrested three high-ranking Army generals over their links to narcotrafficking organizations.
In Conroy's latest piece the journalist disclosed that the "Mexican diplomat's assessment of the US and Mexican strategy in the war on drugs, as revealed by the email trail, paints a picture of a simulated war' in which the Mexican and US governments are willing to show favor to a dominant narco-trafficking organization in order to minimize the violence and business disruption in the major drug plazas, or markets."
A "simulated war"? Where have we heard that before? Like the bogus "War on Terror" which arms and unleashes throat-slitting terrorists from the CIA's favorite all-purpose zombie army of "Islamist extremists," Al Qaeda, similarly, America's fraudulent "War on Drugs" has been a splendid means ofmanaging the global drug trade in the interest of securing geopolitical advantage over their rivals.
That major financial powerhouses in Europe and the U.S. (can you say Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, HSBC, ING and Wachovia) have been accused of reaping the lions' share of profits derived from the grim trade, now a veritable Narco-Industrial Complex, the public continues to be regaled with tales that this ersatz war is being "won."
While the Mexican body count continues to rise (nearly 120,000 dead since 2006 according to the latest estimates published by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, or INEGI, as reported by the Paris daily Le Monde in a recent editorial) the United States is escalating its not-so-covert military involvement in Mexico and putting proverbial boots on the ground as part of the $1.6 billion U.S.-financed Mérida Initiative.
But have such "initiatives" (in actuality, taxpayer-funded boondoggles for giant military contractors), turned the corner in the drug war? Not if estimates published the United Nations are accurate.
According to the 2011 World Drug Report, published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC): "US authorities have estimated for the last couple of years that some 90% of the cocaine consumed in North America comes from Colombia, supplemented by some cocaine from Peru and limited amounts from the Plurinational State of Bolivia. For the year 2009, results of the US Cocaine Signature Program, based on an analysis of approximately 3,000 cocaine HCl samples, revealed that 95.5% originated in Colombia (down from 99% in 2002) and 1.7% in Peru; for the rest (2.8%), the origin could not be determined. The trafficking of cocaine into the United States is nowadays largely controlled by various Mexican drug cartels, while until the mid-1990s, large Colombian cartels dominated these operations."
Despite more than $8 billion lavished on programs such as Plan Colombia, and despite evidence that leading Colombian politicians, including former President Álvaro Uribe and his entourage haddocumented links to major drug trafficking organizations that go back decades, the myth persists that pouring money into the drug war sinkhole will somehow turn the tide.
But drug seizures by U.S. agencies only partially tell the tale.
As UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov pointed out in the introduction to the agency's 2011 report, Estimating Illicit Financial Flows Resulting from Drug Trafficking and Other Transnational Crimes, "all criminal proceeds are likely to have amounted to some 3.6 per cent of GDP (2.3-5.5 per cent) or around US$2.1 trillion in 2009."
UNODC analysts disclosed that illicit money flows related to "transnational organized crime, represent the equivalent of some 1.5 percent of global GDP, 70 percent of which would have been available for laundering through the financial system. The largest income for transnational organized crime seems to come from illicit drugs, accounting for a fifth of all crime proceeds."
"If only flows related to drug trafficking and other transnational organized crime activities were considered," UNODC asserted, "related proceeds would have been equivalent to around US$650 billion per year in the first decade of the new millennium, equivalent to 1.5% of global GDP or US$870 billion in 2009 assuming that the proportions remained unchanged. The funds available for laundering through the financial system would have been equivalent to some 1% of global GDP or US$580 billion in 2009."
"The results," according to UNODC, "also suggest that the interception rate' for anti-money-laundering efforts at the global level remains low. Globally, it appears that much less than 1% (probably around 0.2%) of the proceeds of crime laundered via the financial system are seized and frozen."
Commenting on the nexus between global drug mafias and our capitalist overlords, former UNODC director Antonio Maria Costa told The Observer in 2009, "that the proceeds of organised crime were the only liquid investment capital' available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result."
Would there be an incentive then, for U.S. officials to dismantle a global business that benefits their real constituents, the blood-sucking gangsters at the apex of the capitalist financial pyramid? Hardly.
Nor would there be any incentive for American drug warriors to target organizations that inflate the balance sheets of the big banks. Wouldn't they be more likely then, given the enormous flows of illicit cash flooding the system, to negotiate an "arrangement" with the biggest players, particularly the Sinaloa Cartel run by fugitive billionaire Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán?
In fact, as Narco News disclosed last December, a "quid-pro-quo arrangement is precisely what indicted narco-trafficker Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, who is slated to stand trial in Chicago this fall, alleges was agreed to by the US government and the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel'the dominant narco-trafficking organization in Mexico. The US government, however, denies that any such arrangement exists."
Narco News reported that according to "Zambada Niebla, he and the rest of the Sinaloa leadership, through the US informant Loya Castro, negotiated an 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."
In court pleadings, Zambada Niebla's attorneys argued that "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 Cartelwithout 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."
Those assertions seem to be borne out by emails released by WikiLeaks. Conroy disclosed: "In a Stratfor email dated April 19, 2010, MX1 lays out the Mexican government's negotiating, or signaling,' strategy with respect to the major narco-trafficking organizations as follows:
The Mexican strategy is not to negotiate directly.
In any event, "negotiations" would take place as follows:
Assuming a non-disputed plaza [a major drug market, such as Ciudad Juarez]:
[If] they [a big narco-trafficking group] bring [in] some drugs, transport some drugs, [and] they are discrete, they don't bother anyone, [then] no one gets hurt;
[And the] government turns the other way.

[If] they [the narco-traffickers] kill someone or do something violent, [then the] government responds by taking down [the] drug network or making arrests.
(Now, assuming a disputed plaza
[A narco-trafficking] group comes [into a plaza], [then the] government waits to see how dominant cartel responds.
If [the] dominant cartel fights them [the new narco-trafficking group], [then the] government takes them down.
If [the] dominant cartel is allied [with the new group], no problem.
If [a new] group comes in and start[s] committing violence, they get taken down: first by the government letting the dominant cartel do their thing, then [by] punishing both cartels.
"MX1," Narco News revealed, "then goes on to describe what he interprets as the US strategy in negotiating with the major narco-trafficking players in Ciudad Juareza major Mexican narco-trafficking plaza' located across the border from El Paso, Texas:"
… This is how "negotiations" take place with cartels, through signals. There are no meetings, etc. …

So, the MX [Mexican] strategy is not to negotiate. However, I think the US [recently] sent a signal that could be construed as follows:

"To the VCF [the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes] and Sinaloa cartels: Thank you for providing our market with drugs over the years. We are now concerned about your perpetration of violence, and would like to see you stop that. In this regard, please know that Sinaloa is bigger and better than [the] VCF. Also note that CDJ [Juarez] is very important to us, as is the whole border. In this light, please talk amongst yourselves and lets all get back to business. Again, we recognize that Sinaloa is bigger and better, so either VCF gets in line or we will mess you up."
I don't know what the US strategy is, but I can tell you that if the message was understood by Sinaloa and VCF as I described above, the Mexican government would not be opposed at all.
In sum, I have a gut feeling that the US agencies tried to send a signal telling the cartels to negotiate themselves. They unilaterally declared a winner [the Sinaloa Cartel], and this is unprecedented, and deserves analysis. If there was no strategy behind this, and it was simply a leaked report, then I will be interested to see how it plays out in the coming months.
Keep in mind that this "analysis" is from a senior CISEN officer describing U.S. "strategy" formanaging, not putting a stop to the flood of narcotics crossing the border.
"In a separate Stratfor email dated April 15, 2010," Conroy wrote, "MX1′s views on the US strategy with respect to the drug organizations in Juarez, essentially favoring the Sinaloa Cartel,' is referenced yet again:"
We believe that when the US made an announcement that was corroborated by several federal spokespersons simultaneously (that Sinaloa controlled CDJ [Juarez]), it was a message that the DEA wanted to send to Sinaloa. The message was that the US recognized Sinaloa's dominance in the area [Juarez], although it was not absolute. It was meant to be read by the cartels as a sort of ultimatum: negotiate and put your house in order once and for all.
One dissenting analyst thinks that the message is the opposite, telling Sinaloa to take what it had and to leave what remains of VCF. Regardless, the reports are saying that the US message to the cartels was to negotiate and stop the violence. It says that the US has never before pronounced that a cartel controls a particular plaza, so it is an unusual event.
"Unusual" perhaps, but not surprising given the secret state's documented history of close collaboration with major drug trafficking networks that serve as unofficial, though highly-effective instruments, for advancing U.S. imperial strategies.
In a recent piece published by Global Research, analyst Peter Dale Scott observed that America's two "self-generating wars" on "terror" and "drugs" have "in effect become one."
"By launching a War on Drugs in Colombia and Mexico," Scott wrote, "America has contributed to a parastate of organized terror in Colombia (the so-called AUC, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) and an even bloodier reign of terror in Mexico (with 50,000 killed in the last six years)."
And by "launching a War on Terror in Afghanistan in 2001, America has contributed to a doubling of opium production there, making Afghanistan now the source of 90 percent of the world's heroin and most of the world's hashish."
"Americans should be aware of the overall pattern that drug production repeatedly rises where America intervenes militarilySoutheast Asia in the 1950s and 60s, Colombia and Afghanistan since then," Scott noted. "(Opium cultivation also increased in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion.) And the opposite is also true: where America ceases to intervene militarily, notably in Southeast Asia since the 1970s, drug production declines."
"Both of America's self-generating wars are lucrative to the private interests that lobby for their continuance," Scott averred. "At the same time, both of these self-generating wars contribute to increasing insecurity and destabilization in America and in the world."
In this light, Narco News revelations make perfect sense. As the global financial crisis deepens, brought on in no small part by the massive frauds perpetrated by leading capitalist institutions, they have inflated their balance sheets with a veritable tsunami of hot cash generated by the Narco-Industrial Complex.
In turn, the American secret state, working to recapitalize financial markets beset by a seemingly insolvable liquidity crisis resulting from massive bank frauds, turn a blind eye as these same institutions become major centers of organized crime, monopoly enterprises which could not survive without the trillions of dollars of illicit funds parked in offshore accounts.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/managing-th...g-cartels/

[Peter Lemkin]

Mexican Drug Cartel Likely Responsible For Assassinating Texas Prosecutor

Last Thursday Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was gunned down outside the local courthouse by two men in tactical gear who remain at large as reported by Frank Heinz for NBC in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Hasse prosecuted organized crime cases, and was likely targeted for retribution. Investigators are looking at, among other potential suspects, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas which is a major methamphetamine distributor for the Gulf cartel as reported by Dave Gibson for the Examiner.

The drug cartels freelance their retail distribution and enforcement work to local street and prison gangs across the United States, and have recently been targeting both Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials for assassination.

[Peter Lemkin]

Reprint from November 2007:
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>An investigative reporter from from CBS recently asked me the following question:
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>Q "... Has there been a, 'spill over' of violence and crime from Mexico's Los Zetas cartel, as well as other internationally known drug cartels or their gangs, into the United States?"
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>A "In my opinion, yes... Washington's politicians and the current administration's DoJ and the State Department and their political appointees, in a strong united but scripted voice say, "No," while federal law enforcement agencies-- their field personal and operatives, on both sides of the border, scream, "Hell Yes!", and they have the stats to back it up.
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>However, politics, lobbyist, arms merchants, and international special interest, always seem to win favors and special secret concessions from various government personal and other unknown, 'international sources', in reference to the so called, "drug war" . Year after year, decade after decade, these secret unknown concessions are always at the expense of the American tax payer. These cartel wars and their high impact weapons obtained from programs like the US State Departments Direct Commercial Sales have become a cash cow for international arms merchants, as well as weapons manufactures here in the United States and elsewhere.
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>Someday soon our troops will face these weapons "face to face". Its only a matter of time before some of our troops, front line border patrol, and other law enforcement personal, come back from Mexico and the American border in body bags, while others are openly gun down in hostile fire fights on American streets. afire fights are occurring almost nightly along our southern border with Mexico. Only time will tell before one or two of our federal agents come home in body bags courtesy of Mexico's Sinaloa or Zeta cartel.
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>There is a major war developing in northern Mexico and along our southern border. It is only a matter of time before we Americans in our major cities, will be forced to face this threat and their weapons. Regardless, of what we believe in reference to this so called threat, the reality is; this drug cartel movie will soon be played out in hundreds of American cities as the Zeta and Sinaloa move their product onto our streets and into our cities.
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>The United States and Mexico's drug war has already destroyed thousands of lives and cost billions of dollars. Our elected officials are so out of touch with reality they can not comprehend the severity of the developing situation nor understand the complexity of how we got to this point.
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>Well today it appears there is no end in sight to the money spending, the weapons being smuggled, the drugs, the killings and the mass graves. If Mexico becomes a failed State, then the United States will be next in line..., and then the drug war will be over. ...
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>Tosh Plumlee ". Columbus New Mexico Nov. 25, 2007
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>(note; the murders of US agents Jammie Zapata and Brian Terry, came to pass in, 2010)
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>references:
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/d...ng-2001-wp.php
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http://www.salem-news.com/articles/m...teeters-tk.php