Fast and Furious' scandal grows with revelation that Mexican cartel suspects may be paid U.S. informants

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'Fast and Furious' scandal grows with revelation that Mexican cartel suspects may be paid U.S. informants

July 11, 2011 |  2:55 pm

 

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Are high-profile suspects in Mexican drug cartels also paid informants for U.S. federal investigators? If so, could a brewing scandal in Washington implicate more U.S. agencies in the ongoing drug-related violence in Mexico?
Kenneth Melson, the embattled chief of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), made the earth-shaking revelation in testimony early last week, The Times reports. Melson reportedly told congressional leaders that Mexican cartel suspects tracked by his agents in a controversial gun-tracing program were also operating as paid informants for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the FBI.
The revelation is further complicating an already tangled scandal unfolding in Washington that ties U.S. weapons to the violent drug war in Mexico. The conflict has left about 40,000 dead in 4 1/2 years. In effect, the scandal also points to a deeper involvement of the U.S. government in Mexico's drug war than the public has previously known or suspected.
Times reporters have been actively covering the ATF scandal since it broke earlier this year. Using our stories, La Plaza explains below what is at stake.

Political implications

The ATF, currently led by Melson, is facing sharp criticism from leaders in Congress over its failed gun-tracing operation, code-named "Operation Fast and Furious." In the program, ATF agents watched as assault weapons bought in the U.S. by suspected cartel straw-buyers were "walked" knowingly into Mexico and into the hands of criminals.
The goal of the operation was to track the guns to high-level cartel suspects. As some ATF agents protested, the program continued, with a senior ATF official reportedly justifying the operation with the adage, "If you're going to make an omelet, you've got to scramble some eggs."
Guns were walked across the border, and the program quickly got out of control, whistle-blowers said. Here's an official report quoting ATF agents on the botched operation.
Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Vista) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) are leading investigations into Fast and Furious on Capitol Hill. A prime target of their attacks in hearings is Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder. Holder heads the Justice Department, which oversees the ATF. He's also a confidant of President Obama. (Watch this video of a testy exchange between Holder and Issa on May 3.)
In recent months, both sides of the partisan aisle have sought political gain with the scandal. Republicans appear eager to shame top officials in the Obama administration with their investigations. They also seek to weaken an agency that is harshly disliked by the gun-rights lobby. Democrats, meanwhile, are using the episode to push for tougher gun-control laws.
Holder's Justice Department wanted to position Melson as the "fall guy" over the gun-running program, the lawmakers investigating the program have said, by pressuring him to resign. Melson's attorney, however, said the agency's embattled acting chief wants only to cooperate fully with the congressional probes.
That's the political end of the story. But perhaps more significantly, the revelations are offering a peek into how deeply the U.S. might be involved in the ongoing drug war in Mexico.
Implications in Mexico

The week in Latin America: A smuggler named John

La Plaza

News from Latin America and the Caribbean

Category: drug trade

Internal migration flows below the radar in Mexico

August 2, 2011 | 10:41 am

 

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This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.
A few weeks ago, I took a late Friday night bus from Mexico City to Queretaro to visit friends.
I spent the weekend relaxing at bars, cafes and restaurants. I took a day trip to an officially designated "pueblo magico," Bernal, where an ancient stone monolith is a regional tourist draw. I finished the weekend in a crowded "college-style" bar to watch a big soccer match for Mexico over a BBQ hamburger and a Mexican lager, with U.S. school pennants hanging overhead.
Queretaro is welcoming and clearly prosperous. Over two days, I met Mexicans who had moved there from Chiapas, Veracruz, Guanajuato and elsewhere.
"Why do you live here?" I asked a guy outside a bar one night.
"They pay better than in Veracruz," the fellow replied. "And, well ... it's safe, right?"
The exchange stuck with me. Contradictions abound in Mexico, especially when it comes to the country's current overall stability.
Mexico's economy is growing at a healthier pace than that of the United States and has a lower official unemployment rate (5.3%) than its northern neighbor (9.2%), though the joblessness rate is deceptive because it doesn't include millions of Mexicans who work in the poorly paid informal economy as sidewalk vendors, day laborers and the like.
Yet, at the same time, Mexico is home to more than 52 million people living in poverty, nearly half the national population. That figure is up by 3 million from three years ago, according to an independent government study released Friday and reported in The Times. Overall, Mexico's recovery from the 2009 global recession is among the slowest in Latin America, a disappointing figure after a decade of free-market policies under federal governments led by the National Action Party, or PAN.
In other words, realities on the ground in Mexico are often more complicated and contradictory than the headlines or government propaganda can tell us.

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The week in Latin America: A smuggler named John

July 29, 2011 |  4:40 pm

 

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The Times this week published a four-part series by reporter Richard Marosi on the U.S. face of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, considered one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world. Here are highlights from the series, and other stories that made top headlines in Latin America this week:
Welcome to Calexico

In the first part of the series, Marosi introduces readers to a Drug Enforcement Administration operation tracking Sinaloa cartel distributors in Southern California. The article highlights the exhaustive surveillance strategies that U.S. anti-drug authorities employ to track smugglers, which includes permitting loads of drugs to pass from Mexico in order to gather further intelligence on suspects.

The tactics of psychics

"Mexican psychics have been known to rub white pigeons up and down a person to absorb negative forces before releasing the birds, and any evil, into the sky," reads part two of the series. "They suggest herbal baths and sometimes add hallucinogenic morning glory seeds to teas they serve their clients." Fascinating and creepy stuff.

Meet John, a cartel drug pilot

John Charles Ward made a living out of piloting drugs from Mexico into the United States, as part three of the series describes. Ward, now serving a sentence in a federal prison in California, managed to escape the law for decades. He tells Marosi of his high-flying times: "It wasn't just a smuggling job. It was my career."

The cartel flow continues

The final part of Marosi's series recounts a confrontation between a U.S. cocaine distributor and his boss in Sinaloa, a top cartel lieutenant. While the DEA operation targeting them eventually netted major arrests and seizures of cash and drugs, Marosi writes: "More than four years later, the cartel continues pumping drugs through the Calexico border crossing."

In other news:
'El Ponchis' is sentenced in Mexico

It was another week of horrific incidents in Mexico's drug war. A newspaper reporter was found decapitated in Veracruz. Shootouts in the municipal prison in Ciudad Juarez left 17 dead and fueled a spat between the local police chief and federal forces. And Edgar Jimenez, also known as "El Ponchis," was sentenced in Morelos, a reminder that Mexico's 4-1/2-year conflict is breeding ever-younger victims and perpetrators. 

Humala assumes presidency in Peru

Ollanta Humala, a leftist former military officer, was sworn in as president of an increasingly prosperous Peru on Thursday. Among his first appointments was naming Susana Baca, the celebrated Afro-Peruvian singer who was recently profiled by The Times, as his government's culture minister.

Guatemala election heats up

From Guatemala City, special correspondent Alex Renderos looks at the state of the campaign to replace President Alvaro Colom in elections in September. More than 30 people have been killed in campaign-related violence, a troubling figure, Renderos reports. One of the candidates is Colom's ex-wife; Sandra Torres, the former first lady, had to divorce her husband in order to be eligible to run.

— Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City
Photo: Convicted cartel smuggling pilot John Charles Ward, in federal prison in California in 2009. Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

Drug War in Mexico

The Drug War in Mexico

Tuesday, 15 March 2011 10:18 David A. Shirk, US Council on Foreign Relations

Since the 1970s, the cross-border trade in drugs and guns has brought both immense profits and terrible destruction to the United States and Mexico. Some estimates place the annual profits of Mexico’s drug trade at 3 percent to 4 percent of the country’s GDP—on the order of $30 billion per year—and around half a million people are said to earn a substantial portion of their income through the narcotics business. The business, however, is not without its risks and costs. Since Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, effectively declared war on the drug cartels in 2006, more than 30,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico. Nor is the United States immune from the effects of the drug trade. The ruthlessness of drug trafficking organizations is well-known in this country already, particularly, though not exclusively, in the inner cities, and the violence of Mexico’s drug war is now beginning to spill over the border. Border patrols are already costing the country more than $3 billion per year while obstructing billions more in legitimate trade. Yet the United States is hardly an innocent victim. Nearly half of adult Americans admit to having tried drugs in the past, and the United States remains the world’s largest consumer of illegal drugs. It is also the world’s largest supplier of weapons, which fuel the drug war in a more direct way. Fully 10 percent of America’s gun dealers line the Mexican border, and the country’s permissive gun laws make it an inexpensive and convenient source of powerful guns, ammunition, and explosives.

Mexican Drugs in The Black Community

After cars carrying the families of two U.S. Consulate employees were shot, many are beggining to see the impact of the Mexican drug war on America. America also has a big role in the Mexican drug war. Given that the casualties of the Mexican drug war are mostly Mexicans, the thousands of deaths caused by the war are largely ignored.
Drugs are a serious problem in America but, unfortunately, so is the war on drugs. Drugs mess up peoples’ lives, but not as much as the war on drugs where blacks and Hispanics are scapegoated for America’s problem. Despite the fact that studies show that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate,  blacks are incarcerated for drugs at a rate 6 times that of whites 4.2% vs. 0.7%.
By arresting minorities, America tries to show that it’s fighting the drug problem while whites in the suburbs stay free to use and abuse drugs without solid police interference. In fact, while use of the stereotypical drugs associated with African-Americans (i.e. crack and marijuana) is declining, there are major meth and prescription pill epidemics occurring across poorer rural and more affluent white communities. This problem has gone virtually ignored even though this level of drug addiction has become a silent killer in many of these areas.
One of the biggest problems with the war on drugs is the level of guns and violence involved. By criminalizing drugs, the US puts the distribution and manufacturing of drugs in the hands of violent, competing criminals.  Gangs like the Bloods and the Crips all get their guns from US manufacturers. Often these guns are bought by gun runners who buy or ‘steal’ the firearms from Virginia and then sell them up and down the east coast. Most guns used in drug related gun violence are illegally sold, but there has been no action by the US government to crack down on these illegal sales and, whether legal or illegal, all firearm profits somehow still get into the hands of gun manufacturers.
American gun laws not only fuel the drug war at home but also around the world. Recently on 60 Minutes, Mexican officials complained that most of the guns used in Mexico’s drug wars were bought in the USA. The Mexican drug wars are caused by American need for drugs as the cartels fight over who gets to service American addictions, leaving thousands of Mexicans dead, injured or kidnapped. The high level of money that American drug addiction brings into the United States makes it impossible for the Mexican government not to be corrupted. When the only Third World billionaire is a drug dealer, it’s obvious that drugs have become that part of the world’s major industry.
And, even when it’s about fueling these international or suburban addictions, drug violence often stays isolated in our local black and Latino communities. In the film Traffic, the actor Topher Grace gave an excellent speech to Michael Douglass about this phenomenon.
America’s drug addiction and drug laws have also created narco-states in Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Guyana, which serve as ports for cocaine between South America and the US. All of these countries have large amounts of drug related violence facilitated by American weapons. American drug addiction, drug laws and weapons have fueled the wars in Colombia which have resulted in thousands of deaths and on on-going civil war.  (Europe is no better: European heroin addiction has helped fund the Taliban as well as other Afghani and Pakistani warlords in the middle east. European cocaine addiction has turned African countries like Guinea into narco-states.)
America’s problem is not the availability of drugs. Cocaine is cheap and plentiful in Colombia yet they do not have an addiction problem like ours. Heroin is cheap and plentiful in Afghanistan yet they do not have a heroin problem like ours. The American problem is the desire for drugs. Drugs have become entrenched in American culture.
The correct way to solve these problems is through education and treatment, not incarceration. Incarceration only fuels the drug war. Addicts have no problem finding drugs in jail and drug dealers come out of jail stronger and smarter criminals with better connections for gun and drugs. The Mexican mafia, which controls a good deal of drugs on the west coast has most of their leadership in jail and their progress has been helped not hindered by their centralized leadership.
In order for America to stop the violence it is causing at home and abroad, it must drastically change its drug policies and national and international gun laws. Shouldn’t the gun makers bare some responsibility for the carnage caused by their product? We need more anti-drug messages like those commercials that present other activities and sports as their “anti-drugs.” It is also past due for America to legalize marijuana, a drug that has given proven relief to many long suffering cancer patients in California and elsewhere. This de-criminalization would cut off a significant portion of the drug war and lessen the amount of gang violence and incarceration rates.  By criminalizing drugs, America is putting control of an extremely lucrative business in the hands of criminals and our ineffective drug laws have led to civil wars in the third world and gang violence at home.

Mexico Is Number One Exporter Of Illigal Drugs To America

major drug-producing nation; cultivation of opium poppy in 2007 rose to 6,900 hectares yielding a potential production of 18 metric tons of pure heroin, or 50 metric tons of "black tar" heroin, the dominant form of Mexican heroin in the western United States; marijuana cultivation increased to 8,900 hectares in 2007 and yielded a potential production of 15,800 metric tons; government conducts the largest independent illicit-crop eradication program in the world; continues as the primary transshipment country for US-bound cocaine from South America, with an estimated 90% of annual cocaine movements toward the US stopping in Mexico; major drug syndicates control the majority of drug trafficking throughout the country; producer and distributor of ecstasy; significant money-laundering center; major supplier of heroin and largest foreign supplier of marijuana and methamphetamine to the US market