Bunkum.

US Drug Agents Launder Profits for Mexican Cartels isn’t true or fair or even journalism.

What it is, instead, is public relations, a business that, unlike old-fashioned reporting, is safe, simple, and sure to enhance the bottomline for all concerned–corporate owners, editors, and reporters. PR is the new news, the art of pitching client-friendly narratives by pinning them to the general assumptions and limited fact set of the audience. The New York Times is not the first to go, nor will it be the last.

The point is–it’s working.

DEA operations are small change

Thompson’s ‘revelations’ are reverberating through mediaville–even Fox News is dancing to her tune–and Congress, the House Oversight Committee, no less (which has done a reasonable job so far of keeping its eye on the ball) is tapping its toes as well, its spokespeople rushing to substantiate the NYT report via a pledge to include DEA’s money laundering tactics as a corollary to the investigation of Fast and Furious.

Mr. Chairman, please tell me it isn’t so.

Facts one might want to consider: Carlos Slim Helu, the Mexican billionaire seemingly bent on acquiring every media outlet Warren Buffet misses, has increased his share holdings in the New York Times three times in the last two months. His most recent purchase of NYT Company shares took place less than a week before Thompson’s front-page article hit the stands.

A staunch Calderon/PRI supporter and Forbes’ ‘richest man in the world,’ Slim, I’m guessing, is not displeased: not only does Thompson’s article reinforce the welcome (to DOJ) notion that Fast and Furious was a ‘botched operation’ (translation–inept and intrusive attempts by US law enforcement to wage ‘the war on drugs’ succeeded only in arming cartel militias), the piece also posits a direct correspondence between the tactics used by ATF in the ‘implementation’ of Fast and Furious and the tactics used by US enforcement agencies engaged in undercover money laundering investigations. Mistake.

Message from Mexico

Note to USA–lay off those Bozo ploys to make Mexico look bad and admit, already, that the drug violence, the corruption, the decapitations, mass graves, the muzzling, mutilation and murders of Mexican journalists, the 40,000 citizens gunned down (including US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry slain on US soil) on both sides of the border–all of it is your fault.

Absolutely.

What Thompson has served up is an easy and false comparison, an apology for policies Mexico continues to endorse as alternatives to what it likes to call an ‘unsuccessful war on drugs,’ a slick argument that engages a lot of well-meaning citizens in this country, and that, thanks to reports like Thompson’s and the endorsement of such eminent vehicles as the New York Times, seem to be gaining purchase.

But superficial claims and specious comparisons deserve closer reading than Ginger Thompson provides, because the NYT article that ran December 4th, its subtext and its aim, is not to explain, but to persuade, to sell us—lock, stock and barrel—on a policy shift of someone else’s making that works to someone else’s advantage.

There is, you see, another view, a close-hold perspective that mostly belongs to the men and women who work in law enforcement—that it is not the law that’s failing the citizens of this country and of many others, but the people who determine the ways and extent to which our laws are enforced: politicians, political appointees and bureaucrats whose take on who’s right and who’s wrong–who should be investigated and who should not–is in too many instances determined by political expedience and self-interest.

Let’s call it a case of conflicting priorities–not a new problem, right?

Politics versus the law

So, Ginger Thompson and the New York Times do us a disservice, not just because they play to our concern for the 40,000 men, women and children already lost to political corruption and criminal greed, but because they portray the commitment of the American people to the rule of law as naïve, misplaced, and unattainable.

Indeed, what the reporter suggests (Is this her aim or just bad research?) is that US law enforcement has proved it is unable to make a difference, that federal agents are bunglers or miscreants, and that, if we aren’t careful, the ‘good guys’ sent in to solve the problem may instead become the worst part of it.

Back up, Ginger.

Let’s consider the parallel drawn between DEA’s money laundering tactics and Fast and Furious: the latter, a ‘secret’ ATF operation under investigation by two House Committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee belongs to Eric Holder’s Department of Justice—Holder will be back testifying before Issa-Grassley investigators again this week about ATF’s ‘withdrawal’ of a February 4th letter his office sent to Congress disavowing any ‘gun walking’ on the part of ATF, a letter Holder now says contained ‘inaccuracies.’

Fast and Furious not a by-the-book operation

ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious facilitated the illegal sale and cross-border trafficking of more than 2000 lethal, military-grade weapons to Mexican cartels—an AK-47 used to gun down Brian Terry, a US Border Patrol Agent, on US soil has been identified as one of the weapons ATF allowed ‘to walk.’

The existence of Operation Fast and Furious only came to light via the testimony of ATF Agent John Dodson, a whistleblower who questioned the seeming lack of an operational rationale for the undertaking, and for whom Terry’s death was the final straw—as Dodson told Congress, ‘We were killing our own guys.”

Dodson testified that, contrary to prior ATF protocol, in the case of Fast and Furious, there was no plan in place at any time to trace the weapons ATF agents pressured US gun dealers to sell to ‘straw buyers,’ nor were there plans in place to interdict the weapons before they went missing in Mexico.

The weapons, whose serial numbers ATF did record in its eTrace database (imagine), would only be recovered after they had been used to commit a crime (generally a homicide), and Mexican authorities returned them to ATF for short ‘time to crime’ identification as weapons purchased illegally in the US.

ATF’s part in the sale and smuggling of these weapons would never be mentioned—that part of the plan was, in fact, in place from the beginning.

The Department of Justice and administration spokespeople continue to characterize Fast and Furious as a ‘botched operation,’—a description the NYT reiterates and for which Eric Holder is most grateful.

Whether Fast and Furious was, in fact, a ‘botched operation’ (whoops, just an ‘accident’), or a deliberate attempt (inspired by anti-gun ideologues) to use a federal law enforcement agency to supply evidence in support of Mexico’s allegation that the violence in its streets has been fueled by the criminal actions of US arms dealers is, of course, the question that could set the Department of Justice and the administration on its ear.

While this kind of upset might be exactly what justice demands, beating the administration bushes for bigger game could boomerang, throwing a wrench into the best-laid plans of both parties to beat the opposition in 2012.

Don’t think this kind of conversation isn’t happening on Capitol Hill.

Politics versus the law

Again.

As a result, we have right now a bi-partisan chorus bleating for Eric Holder’s resignation, a move that might offer consolation (some hope) to the family of Brian Terry while at the same time preempting the need for a genuine investigation into a federal law enforcement operation in which administration actors, according to Representative Connie Mack (R-Fla), have almost certainly violated US law (the Arms Export Control Act) and made themselves vulnerable to criminal indictments and serious prison sentences—think Iran Contra.

Let me tell you what the New York Times doesn’t explain—the difference between a legitimate, ground-up, approved, supervised and outcome-driven undercover money laundering investigation and a top-down, unapproved, unsupervised and aimless ‘gun tracking’ investigation (linked to the murder of a US agent) no one in Washington, DC seems to have known existed before they heard about it ‘in the press.’

A legitimate undercover investigation belonging to any enforcement agency doesn’t just happen: its proponents typically jump through a series of hoops designed to guarantee that the ‘good guys’ remain at all times on the right side of the law. If they don’t, they go to jail. No passing go.

DEA and US Customs, formerly an agency belonging to the US Department of the Treasury, have been in the money laundering investigation business for a long time: today, DEA, under the aegis of Justice, and ICE, now a part of DHS, retain jurisdiction for money laundering investigations.

Here’s now it generally works, regardless of which agency is involved: an idea is born, usually out of real-time and real-world encounters with a criminal enterprise in a certain district or region (money laundering—LA, Miami, Houston, etc).

The enforcement architects of a counter-plan, an investigation designed to eliminate the criminal threat, take a proposal to a district or regional director (the Special-Agent-in-Charge, for example).

If they get a green light, the plan goes to the next level—to Headquarters. Again, the plan’s supporters lobby for sign-off, and if HQ approves the plan, the request goes to the Bureau, to Homeland Security, or to Justice, for example, where it is scrutinized, criticized, and torn apart by an assembly of bureaucrats and high-ups—department directors, assistant secretaries, and the heads of relevant organizations (Holder, Napolitano, and such).

If the plan makes it through this obstacle course, it proceeds to a Joint Undercover Investigation Committee in DC, a panel of representatives from each and every agency that might have a dog in the fight. If ATF had brought the plans for Fast and Furious, for example, to this committee, DOJ and ATF officials would no doubt have been grilled by reps from ICE/DHS, the FBI, State, deputy US attorneys from relevant districts, and perhaps DOD. The list of players is flexible.

Armed with a detailed presentation, the architects of Fast and Furious would have had to reassure departments and agencies with shared interests and overlapping jurisdictions that the plan was legal, workable, well-planned, well-managed, and larded with deadline-driven, concrete objectives and measurable outcomes.

If the Joint Committee gives the plan a go, the team of agents who ‘own’ the operation begin implementation, but that’s not the end. Every few months, the team has to go back to the oversight committee for subsequent reviews and authorization.

There is a rigorous uniform structure, a recertification process rooted in codified law and statutory authority, which makes it impossible for any agency or group of agents to abandon the reservation or to act without the knowledge of their superiors and the approval of agency, bureau and department heads.

Big questions

We know, from congressional testimony, that this isn’t the way Fast and Furious evolved. So how is it that an undertaking which never passed through Committee review, and whose executors never applied for recertification, managed to stay up-and-running long enough to send thousands of weapons, illegally, across the US border?

How could this happen without top-down guidance and support?

But that’s not all. Trafficking weapons across the US-Mexico border, even as part of a federal undercover investigation, requires exemptions to the Arms Export Control Act, waivers which would most logically be requested by ICE (the agency with jurisdiction for this type of investigation) or by DOJ from State (which issues the waivers).

But both Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, have told Congress they were never briefed in regard to the existence or operational status of Fast and Furious.

What does this suggest? DHS knows nothing. State knows nothing. Congress, which the law says must be informed of any operational decision to traffic weapons valued in excess of $1 million, knows nothing.

But ATF agents in the field were told by superiors that orders to ‘stand down’–not to interdict–came from ‘the top.’

Think about it.

Then consider the DEA operations that Thompson attempts to explain in her NYT article.

DEA–sheep, not wolves

DEA undercover money laundering investigations are by-the-book stings duly authorized to trace narco-dollars back to their ultimate beneficiaries–or, in the case of ‘system-based’ money laundering investigations (which, given their efficacy, DOJ presently does not permit DEA to implement)–to identify and dismantle the infrastructure on which the criminal enterprise depends.

DEA agents jump through all the hoops, and believe me, Justice knows how to crack the whip.

Unlike Fast and Furious, which critics suggest was triggered, as opposed to impeded, by politics, money laundering and other undercover investigations can be aborted on short notice when they run counter to political or trade agendas too ‘strategically vital’ to disturb.

In other words,the political ‘overseers’ for undercover money laundering investigations (in the case of DEA, that’s the Attorney General of the United States, who take his counsel from the President) can pull the plug if an investigation ‘gets too hot’ politically and threatens the relationship between the US or the current US administration and a geopolitical ally.

The US is in the business of protecting its relationships with allies, especially Mexico, our 2nd largest trading partner, not jeopardizing those relationships.

If DEA’s money laundering operations are on the up-and-up (and the strings DOJ imposes on the DEA ops, the $10 million limit on money laundered, the $500k limit on individual pickups, the six-month time limit, guarantee Holder’s office never drops the operational or political reins, so you can trust me on this) then Thompson’s theory about US agents laundering narco-dollars for cartel thugs is a so-what revelation.

The truth is that DOJ policy (and DEA is part of Justice) regarding the implementation of undercover money laundering investigations is so stringent that DEA’s efforts in this area are virtually meaningless, ‘baby operations’ capable of generating occasional headlines about US efforts to curb cartel money laundering (similar to the empty ‘drug tunnel’ stories that periodically surface).

Thompson’s article references a DEA agent who describes the dilemma when he asks what an agent is supposed to do when a trafficker approaches an undercover agent with a request to launder more money than the agent is authorized to handle.

“You have to do it,” says the DEA spokesperson.”Or they kill you.”

It sounds dramatic, but such are the (rare, given DOJ’s orchestration) operational conundrums faced by DEA agents tasked with ‘laundering’ criminal money. Sure, there may be unappreciated exceptions to the cap on funds if an agent is staring death in the face, but DEA, given its current rules and regulations, runs money laundering ops deliberately designed to net mid-level traffickers, relatively small fish that ensure continuing congressional appropriations at budget time and decent press. Nothing more.

Ginger’s molehill-into-a-mountain narrative misses the mark.

Interestingly enough, the NYT reporter does allude to a Customs money laundering operation in play from 1995 to 1998, suggesting it was a watershed event in the history of federal money laundering investigations, and, in this case, she’s got it right.

But not for the reasons she thinks.

The laundering operations that the United States conducts elsewhere — about 50 so-called Attorney General Exempt Operations are under way around the world — had been forbidden in Mexico after American customs agents conducted a cross-border sting without notifying Mexican authorities in 1998, which was how most American undercover work was conducted there up to that point.

What Thompson doesn’t seem to understand is that this particular Customs (not DEA) investigation, tagged Operation Casablanca, stands to this day as a perfect example of the way politics has and continues to undermine the effective enforcement of US law, and the ways in which the advocates of realpolitik try to shield the public from this fact.

Casablanca was a huge success (which insiders say accounted for its early demise), and one reason was that money laundering policies within Treasury did not limit the amount agents could accept or launder to $10 million or less. Customs agents running Casablanca could accept up to $100 million, with long and renewable timelines, policies to which DOJ objected from the beginning.

Unanticipated victory ends effective undercover ops into cartel money laundering

Here’s some background: Customs’ Operation Casablanca was a response to the misuse of Mexican bank drafts. Money launderers linked to the Juarez cartel were using Mexico’s banking system to clean up their drug dollars. The operation itself represented five years of work, two years of bureaucratic infighting (with DOJ trying to impose its own restrictive policies, $10 million limits, etc. on Treasury/Customs), and three years devoted to actual implementation.

Undercover agents first ingratiated themselves to black-market brokers based in Cali; these were guys who worked for roughly 20 percent of the 60 percent the Colombians retrieved after the laundering process was over (40 percent stays with the Mexicans). The brokers, who tried to move at least $1 million per day, managed smuggling and laundering for the Cali and Medellin cartels, using organized crime syndicates in Mexico to do the heavy lifting.

At this point, in the mid-90s, the Mexicans were still only intermediary players, but they were moving up fast, building powerful infrastructure in LA, Chicago, Houston, Miami and NYC, alliances still going strong today.

Here’s how the Mexican bank draft worked, a process Thompson alludes to in her NYT article: before Customs penetrated the operation via Operation Casablanca, traffickers were smuggling bags of dirty money across the SW border any way they could, and smuggling bulk cash is a bad proposition—the weakest point in the process.

Once the drug money reached Mexico, eager Mexican bankers stood willing and able to take millions in narco-dollars (as US bankers do today) and deposit them into any kind of account, shell company, corporation or devise any kind of financial construct that might hide the origin of these criminal deposits.

What the Cali and Medellin cartels didn’t know was that the new best friends of the brokers they employed in Colombia were really undercover agents working for US Customs, and that when these agents volunteered to collect the drug dollars right off the streets in LA and other US cities, deposit it into their own ‘special’ accounts in the US (eliminating the need for smuggling bulk cash), and then transfer the funds electronically to bankers in Mexico, it was the beginning of the end.

After US agents wired cartel funds to banks to Mexico, bank drafts drawn on the US accounts of those Mexican banks were delivered back to the same undercover agents in the United States, who made copies of the drafts as evidence before sending the funds out across the world again.

When the money traveled, during this final laundering cycle, to accounts in Colombia, it was available to the cartels in pesos. When it went to the Caribbean, to Europe, to Asia, it materialized in any form and in any currency the cartels and their brokers specified.

When Operation Casablanca concluded in 1998, Customs had evidence that every bank in Mexico and several financial institutions in Venezuela were actively competing for cartel business, for billions in drug dollars.

Agents had over 3000 hours of videotape documenting criminal activity in LA, Miami, New York, Chicago, Italy, Venezuela and Mexico. All that was left was to make the arrests and seize the money, simultaneously if possible, to prevent the suspects from fleeing and the evidence from disappearing.

The take-down plan was implemented over a three-day period in LA, Chicago, New York, San Diego, Las Vegas, Milan, Aruba and Bogota. More than 200 agents from Customs and partner agencies were in place on four different continents, waiting to make the arrests and seize the cash. In every location, meetings were scheduled between undercover agents and the bankers, brokers and traffickers who had engineered the Mexican bank draft scheme.

In the end, Customs agents running the operation had evidence implicating every Mexican bank operating in that country at that time, 16 total, in the money laundering scheme. 193 suspects were under arrest for money laundering, conspiracy and other criminal violations. Agents seized more than $100 million in cash during its ‘seize and freeze’ campaign; the Federal Reserve issued cease and desist orders for 6 Mexican banks, and three of these banks were indicted and convicted.

Why only three?

Yes, there is a backstory here. Pay attention, NYT.

Six months into this particular undercover operation, the team running the investigation out of LA started to feel pushback from Washington, especially from the Department of Justice, which had battled to take control of the operation or at least to persuade Treasury to impose restrictions similar to its own on the Customs money laundering investigation.

As the evidence started piling up, as the list of suspects grew, and the number of Mexican banks possibly involved in the criminal scheme increased, so did the ‘noise’ coming down Pennsylvania Avenue.

During periodic reviews–those rigorous recertification reviews that ATF’s Fast and Furious somehow circumvented–the joint undercover team challenged the ability of the Casablanca team to acquire enough evidence to indict more than a few Mexican banks.

There was also concern about the amount the team was laundering (note: the cartels were paying the undercover team a 12 percent commission on the dollars laundered which went back onto the US government’s books).

And then, of course, there were questions about whether the undercover team had fully briefed our Mexican counterparts.

The answer, despite a NYT report by Tim Golden published (again, the New York Times)soon after the operation shut down, was ‘yes.’

Customs insiders confirm that an agent leading the operation traveled to Mexico City to brief the US Ambassador, and he also visited, per the instruction of the US Ambassador, Mexico’s Hacienda to brief the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General for Enforcement.

The Mexican official, according to law enforcement sources, had only one question: How can we help?

The Customs undercover team told the Attorney General of Mexico that they would let them know as the operation drew to a close.

At one point in the operation, during the summer of 1996, the pressure to close the effort down (administration appointees continued to dog the investigation) led to a meeting with Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury.

Rubin, who had been advised to join in the call to terminate Casablanca, listened to the team leader outline the operational successes to date, and suddenly he was onboard. Enthusiastic. And determined to protect the operation from outside and inside interference.

According to the agent tasked with briefing the Treasury Secretary about the operation, Rubin asked how many Mexican banks appeared to be implicated in the money laundering scheme. When the reply was “All of them,” the Treasury Secretary’s response was “We’ll end this when we put the last Mexican involved in the paddy wagon!”

More telling, says the Customs operation leader, was Rubin’s follow-up orders to the people in his office that day: “I don’t want anything said here today shared with anyone outside the group in this office now. Not with the White House, not with the National Security advisor, not with the Drug Czar’s office and not with State.”

Now, I may be wrong, but it sounds a lot like Rubin was concerned about avoiding political ambushes. What do you think?

As Casablanca drew to a close, however, in 1998, word of its operational details were in fact leaked to the White House, as was the startling information that undercover agents running the op from LA had been approached by a Mexican banker and a Juarez cartel representative who told the agents he needed $1.15 billion dollars belonging to a high-place Mexican official laundered as well.

That official, said the cartel’s man, was Enrique Cervantes, Mexico’s Minister of Defense.

When undercover agents sent that information back to higher-ups in Washington, the game was over.

While the evidence implicating all 16 Mexican banks was identical to the evidence that resulted in the indictment of the three targeted by the US Attorney’s office (Bancomer, which was shortly thereafter acquired by Citicorp for 12.5b; Banomex, and Banco Serfin), the US Attorney and Department of Justice officials declined to prosecute the remaining 13 banks.

The undercover team was told to step away from any request to launder funds belonging to a member of the Mexican Cabinet, and the allegation that a cartel rep had even made such a request was soon discounted, pushed into the background, and forgotten.

One senior law enforcement official told reporters that the cartel rep had probably been ‘puffing,’ or exaggerating. The fact is, say skeptics, that the administration never tried, or wanted to test that theory: Casablanca was shut down before agents had a chance to transform an allegation into concrete evidence.

President Zedillo, tipped off to the allegations implicating his Cabinet, claimed the Mexican government had never been briefed on Casablanca, that Customs agents had violated Mexico’s sovereignty, and demanded that the agent in charge of the operation be extradited to Mexico for prosecution (an eventuality prevented only by a special act of the US Congress).

The Clinton administration, in an effort to placate our Nafta-partner, sent Attorney General Janet Reno to Texas where she met with her Mexican counterpart to sign what has become known as ‘the Brownsville Agreement,’ a document that prohibits the US from opening an undercover investigation into any enterprise involving Mexico without fully briefing the Mexican government in advance.

The upshot, of course, is that advance briefings offer Mexican officials who may be involved in any criminal or corrupt enterprise the opportunity to elude investigators when the operation finally gets underway.

There are a number of principals who were close to Casablanca and the blowback it provoked who will tell you that the Customs operation was one of the last real opportunities this country had, not just to follow the money to its headwaters in Mexico, but also to dismantle the global infrastructure used by organized crime in Mexico and elsewhere to launder billions in criminal proceeds from every kind of underworld enterprise.

Unlike current DEA money laundering investigations, which simply attempt to follow dirty money backwards to its source, Casablanca was ‘system-based,’ meaning it targeted the Colombian brokers who acted as trafficking/laundering ’roundabouts’ or hubs for the Cali cartel, and who, as a result, could lead agents deep into the complex infrastructure that made the process possible.The idea is that destroying actors without dissembling the infrastructure is ineffective.

Enforcement insiders will tell you as well that it was politics that trumped law enforcement in the case of Casablanca, that neither the US administration nor the Department of Justice (which critics claim was then, as now, a political handmaiden to the Executive) was ever willing ‘to go the distance’ with this particular money laundering investigation.

They will also tell you that after the transfer of Customs from Treasury to Homeland Security, DOJ’s restrictive policies, which replaced the rules governing Casablanca, have rendered money laundering investigations by DEA and other agencies ineffective in the genuine pursuit of high-level targets and infrastructure.

Here’s a tip for the mainstream press: Congress should be asking DOJ why DEA’s money laundering investigations produce so little in the way of outcome. In fact, Issa should be asking DOJ how we can expect US law enforcement to uphold the law when the Attorney General has a chokehold on the agents who want to do it.

So, Ms. Thompson, are we straight on this?

Bad news: US Agents Launder Profits for Mexican Cartels is great PR but not much in the way of investigative journalism. The comparison between the operational tactics used in Fast and Furious and the tactics used today by DEA (not the wolves you warn us about, but sheep…) doesn’t hold up.

Good news: as a diversionary tactic, especially since Holder meets with the Oversight Committee tomorrow about Fast and Furious, it’s working. Good job. We can only hope that investigators (with prodding from Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla) keep their eyes fixed on the real–and the real big–crime underlying Fast and Furious, multiple violations of the Arms Export Control Act.

Breaking news: The New York Times, one of America’s most venerable and respected newspapers, has published a front page article designed to convince readers that US law enforcement is aiding Mexico’s cartels in their drug-driven campaign of corruption and violence.

Why?

Why would a paper as influential as the New York Times blunder into this kind of haphazard reportage?

Let’s get this story straight.

The day DEA becomes “the world’s largest money launderer” is the day the Office of the Attorney General becomes an elective office and the AG answers directly to the people of the United States.

Truth? The facts in Thompson’s report are skewed, the sources selected to support a pro-Mexico (and pro-Mexico is pro-NAFTA), anti-law-enforcement perspective, and the processes outlined by the Times reporter are sketchy and misleading.

The reason DEA’s investigations into cartel money laundering have, as Thompson notes, yielded so little ($1 billion out of a reported $39 billion per year) is because DOJ and the US administration have ordained it–by imposing restrictions on DEA money laundering investigations that make it unlikely any big fish will ever get caught in a US enforcement net again. No more Casablancas.

In spite of this, Thompson’s message is traveling fast, distracting the public and Congress from the hunt for the primary architects of Fast and Furious, a DOJ undercover investigation that more and more members of Congress are saying may have been triggered, like Iran Contra, by the ideological fervor of political appointees at the highest levels of the US government.

Clinton testifying before Congress

Date: October 27, 2011
Place: Washington, DC–Hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, US Congress.
Representative Connie Mack (R-Fla) versus Hon. Hillary R. Clinton, US Secretary of State

If you didn’t have ringside seats, click here for a replay. Smiling, genial and oozing a considerable amount of “Yes, Ma’am” charm, Connie Mack, the Republican representative from Florida, thanks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for taking the time to appear before the Committee, and then hits her with a question about Fast and Furious whose answer, he says, “I think I already know–but I’ll ask it anyway.”

Owwwwww…sharp right to the jaw.

“Under the Arms Export Control Act, the Justice Department was required to receive a written waiver from the State Department to account for their intent to cause arms to be exported to drug cartels in Mexico,” said Mack. “If no such waiver was received, Justice Department officials have violated the law. And you would agree with that, correct?”

Right, left, another right…..

“I cannot offer an opinion,” says Clinton.

Block.

“I don’t know,” she continues. “I mean, this is the first time I’m being asked.”

Dodge.

Of course, Ma’am.

And then, Representative Mack gently asks the lady, a Yale Law School graduate, if she’s had a chance to read the letter he’d sent her the day before, on October 26, a letter, he points out, in which he asked her the same question, the very same one.

“Yes,” says Madam Secretary, “…my birthday.”

Is that the sound of the bell?

“Happy Birthday!” responds Mack.

Round one is over. Fighters retreat to respective corners.

No matter

No one’s expecting any knock-out punches–this is just a warm-up match, theater, the kind of dog-and-pony shows that congressional committees regularly put on for effect or to flush out stubborn quarry.

For the past six months, ever since the ATF operation called Fast and Furious hit the news, the Secretary of State has been laying low, volunteering nothing, and hoping no one would notice the logical and legal ties (State is the agency responsible for issuing licenses to exporters of US firearms) that might link her department to the murders of US Border Patrol Agents Brain Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata.

But on October 27 all that ended, and Clinton was weaving and bobbing in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, assuring Representative Connie Mack (R-Fla) that State has been in no way (that she knows of) connected to the ATF gun walking scandal tagged Fast and Furious: we received “no heads up” says Clinton.

The only real question–which Mack alone has asked any principle with possible ties to Fast and Furious–is if DOJ/ATF at any time requested exemptions or waivers from the Arms Export Control Act, which would have been a necessary prerequisite for moving weapons purchased in the USA over the US-Mexico border.

If DOJ/ATF did not obtain those waivers or exemptions, that department is, as Mack pointed out, in criminal violation of US law.

Did ATF violate AECA?

Clinton avoided answering that question head on, telling Mack she would have to submit a ‘request’ to the ‘department that deals with that issue’ to see if the ‘facts’ were as she was presenting them.

Mack, not to be put off, followed up on Clinton’s offer, telling the Secretary of State that he ‘looked forward’ to getting that information regarding the issuance or non-existence of the waivers.

Mack takes lead on possible criminal violations

Mack’s decision to take the lead on Fast and Furious and to confront the Secretary of State on the most salient part of the investigation–possible violations of the Export Control Act tells us something important about his man–he has guts.

Connie Mack (R-Fla) tells Clinton he looks forward to more information

The Republican congressman from Florida took the opportunity to lay out his argument plainly, explaining to Clinton, the House audience and the public-at-large that DOJ/ATF had indeed committed a felony if Attorney General Eric Holder had failed to obtain a waiver from State’s Arms Export Control Act before implementing Fast and Furious.

Hillary Clinton, in return, got a chance to send some skillful visuals into America’s living rooms, a weary and annoyed expression designed to tell America–”I have REAL work to do and this is a colossal waste of America’s time.”

Let me tell you something about Hillary Clinton, a woman with more sand than the Sahara: this ain’t her first rodeo.

We know Hillary Clinton was an advisor to the House Committee on the Judiciary (the same committee currently chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who is now calling for an independent counsel to investigate Fast and Furious) during the Watergate Scandal.

She was the only First Lady to be subpoenaed by a federal grand jury as part of the investigation into Whitewater in 1996 and several other investigations during her husband’s administration, with no charges of wrong-doing ever leveled.

Hillary Rodham Clinton rode the Lewinsky scandal until Monica disappeared into obscurity and Bill signed the lease on his new un-office in Harlem.

She made room, reluctantly, for an African-American one-term Senator, who, she said, had done nothing more than “give a good speech at the Democratic National Convention,” and now, now, the word is that Hillary may replace Biden as number two on the 2012 Democratic ticket, grabbing the women’s vote like Halloween candy from Mitt “21 percent” Romney, and sailing unstoppably into the Oval Office in 2016.

Clinton and Obama 2012

Wow. Almost home.

Except for Fast and Furious. And the law.

Fast and Furious Recap

In late 2009, ATF launched what it first described as a ‘secret’ tag and bag operation whose aim, supposedly, was to infiltrate criminal networks in Mexico trading in illegally acquired (from US gun dealers) weapons and to shut these networks down. ATF would allow, even encourage, US gun dealers along the US-Mexico border to sell military-grade weapons, including AK-47s and .50 cal sniper rifles, to ‘straw purchasers,’ in some cases ATF ‘informants,’ who would then ‘walk’ the weapons (transport without harassment from law enforcement) across the border into Mexico and sell the guns to bad guys.

Simple, right? Wrong. Investigators have discovered that, from the very beginning, ATF had no plans in place to attach any kind of tracking devices to the weapons or to follow the weapons via human surveillance until the time when US law enforcement might seize or in some way interdict the guns. That means there was never any intent to take the guns away from Mexican gunmen before they had a chance to perpetrate murder and mayhem.

We know from the Grassley-Issa Report that ATF agents in Phoenix were instructed by their superiors to simply let the guns go missing.

Indeed, if the weapons reappeared at all, ATF officials openly admitted that the guns would most likely be returned to them by Mexican authorities only after they’d been used to commit a crime. And that’s when ATF would check the serial numbers and confirm, yes, that these guns had recently been purchased from a US gun dealer and illegally trafficked into Mexico. No mention made of ATF’s role in the affair.

More Fast and Furious guns turn up

And indeed, that is just what happened: an assault rifle linked to the murder of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was returned to ATF, and agents verified that the serial numbers on the weapon matched numbers they had registered in their e-Trace database before they’d sent the guns into Mexico as part of Fast and Furious. Links were also established between the murder of ICE Agent Jaime Avila, an unarmed US agent working in Mexico, and another weapon supplied via the ATF operation.

The fact that the ATF-supplied AK-47 had been used to gun down a US Border Patrol Agent on US soil, however, was a snag DOJ/ATF hadn’t anticipated–but they understood that this link would generate high-beam publicity, possibly revealing the part the agency itself had played in the gun walking operation.

Panicked, senior officials at DOJ (Arizona US Attorney Dennis Burke) and ATF decided this information, the link between the murder weapon and the murder of a US Border Patrol agent, was best kept secret. They agreed that any revelation that the weapon used by Mexican drug thugs to kill Terry had been sent into Mexico by the US government, as part of a ‘secret’ ATF operation, would be a bad idea. A very bad idea. Burke lost his job just last month, along with Kenneth Melson, ATF’s Acting Director.

Of course, the information came out anyway. The Terry murder, in late 2010, was the last straw for an ATF agent named John Dodson, who had argued with his superiors in Phoenix about the absence of any plan to interdict the weapons they were sending into Mexico before they could be used to commit a crime. Dodson, a career agent close to retirement, finally blew the whistle, outlining the operation for Congress and the part it played in arming cartel gangs. Fast and Furious hit the news stands, and that’s when ATF higher-ups began calling it a ‘botched operation.’

‘Botched’ operation?

Skeptics say no. Even ‘botched operations’ start out festooned with the operational bells and whistles planners believe will produce the concrete, measurable outcome that’s supposed to make the effort worthwhile in the first place. Not Fast and Furious. And so, we are left with the old ‘form is function’ guide to figuring it all out, a boomer nod to Marshall McLuhan, who told us so long ago that if we learned nothing else, know this–the medium is the message.

The formal architecture of Fast and Furious seems to leaves us with one unavoidable conclusion: that the enterprise accomplished precisely what it was designed to do. It supplied cartel gangs with military grade weapons experience told US law enforcement would eventually be returned to ATF, where the guns could positively, absolutely be identified as equipment purchased (illegally) from a US gun dealer.

But why?

Stay away from ‘motive’

The question of motive is one place no one in the Department of Justice wants to go–and, indeed, if Fast and Furious passes into history as merely another ATF operation gone awry, motive is irrelevant. Another failing mark for ATF, perhaps, but no one gets expelled.

The problem is the growing claim that anti-gun ideologues within the Obama Administration signed off on Fast and Furious as a means of providing quantifiable evidence (assault rifles with short ‘time-to-crime’ histories) to support the argument, publicly advanced by Clinton, Holder, Napolitano, and other Administration officials, that ’90 percent’ of the guns used by Mexican cartels have been obtained illegally from US gun dealers.

Indeed, the White House has already adjusted that number down to 70 percent, and most of the proponents (except for Senator Diane Feinstein) of the idea that the US is to blame, via illegal gun sales, for the violence in Mexico appear to be soft-pedaling in the wake of the ATF blowup.

If these claims gain purchase, the political fallout, especially in an election year, could be significant. It is one thing to admit incompetence on the part of ATF–quite another to admit that an operation that resulted in the deaths of US agents, as well as US and Mexican civilians, may have been constructed to shore up a political or ideological agenda.

But let’s not be naive. We know Watergate and Iran-Contra were ideologically-inspired undertakings. And the blowback, when it came, the cries for the appointment of an independent counsel and criminal indictments were triggered as much by partisan passions as they were by the need to see justice done. Such is life.

The political subtext during the Iran-Contra investigation was vitriolic–I was there, and the left gave no quarter to an administration on fire to counter ‘communist threats’ on the American continent. Of course, then, like now, the road to an Independent Counsel appeared to be paved with the best of intentions: as the cast of characters grew, so did the list of faulty recollections and tentative (pending further review)’dunnos.’

Former Secretary of State Schultz and President Obama

To no avail. In the end, Lawrence E. Walsh, the Independent Counsel investigating Iran-Contra, determined that the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of the CIA, two National Security Advisors, and the President and Vice President of the United States–despite initial claims of ignorance–’had known’ early on that the shipments of weapons to Iran were illegal. Fourteen administration officials were indicted on criminal felony charges.

Scroll forward to Fast and Furious and the possible involvement of Obama appointees. Of particular interest to anyone who watched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony on October 27th should be the following comments, taken from the report of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, in regard to the congressional testimony provided by Secretary of State George Schultz in the early days of Iran-Contra:

In 1990 and 1991, Independent Counsel [Lawrence E. Walsh] received new documentary evidence in the form of handwritten notes suggesting that Secretary Shultz’s congressional testimony painted a misleading and incorrect picture of his knowledge of the Iran arms sales. The subsequent investigation focused on whether Shultz or other Department officials deliberately misled or withheld information from congressional or OIC investigators.

The key notes, taken by M. Charles Hill, Shultz’s executive assistant, were nearly verbatim, contemporaneous accounts of Shultz’s meetings within the department and Shultz’s reports to Hill on meetings the secretary attended elsewhere. The Hill notes and similarly detailed notes by Nicholas Platt, the State Department’s executive secretary, provided the OIC with a detailed account of Shultz’s knowledge of the Iran arms sales. The most revealing of these notes were not provided to any Iran/contra investigation until 1990 and 1991. The notes show that — contrary to his early testimony that he was not aware of details of the 1985 arms transfers — Shultz knew that the shipments were planned and that they were delivered.

Also in conflict with his congressional testimony was evidence that Shultz was aware of the 1986 shipments. Independent Counsel concluded that Shultz’s early testimony was incorrect, if not false, in significant respects, and misleading, if literally true, in others. When questioned about the discrepancies in 1992, Shultz did not dispute the accuracy of the Hill notes. He told OIC that he believed his testimony was accurate at the time and he insisted that if he had been provided with the notes earlier, he would have testified differently. Independent Counsel declined to prosecute because there was a reasonable doubt that Shultz’s testimony was willfully false at the time it was delivered.

My favorite phrase, of course, is that the early testimony provided by Secretary of State “was incorrect, if not false” in some ways, and “misleading, if literally true” in other ways. The Secretary of State, it appears, got off because, in the end, no one could sort it out or prove his testimony was “willfully false at the time it was delivered.”

You know what I’m betting?

That Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a little time between blowing out her candles and unwrapping her gifts to do some checking up and checking in. That she understood, far in advance of her rumble with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that most of this business is about words, words, worrrrrrrds…and that given a slight, but still arms-length distance (sorry) from the epicenter of this scandal, the human, legal, and political walls standing between Clinton and Richter-scale culpability will most probably hold.

If ‘the group responsible for this issue’ within State ‘reports’ back to Clinton that DOJ/ATF never requested exemptions or waivers to the Export Control Act, Eric Holder is on his own, at least legally, with nowhere to point but up.

The worst the White House can lay on Clinton is that she failed in the effort to present a unified front. It happens. Time to keep those eyes on the prize–2012.

If Clinton’s ‘people’ at State cannot escape some bit of evidence that Holder did, in fact, obtain waivers/exemptions to the Arms Export Control Act before he marched 2000 military-grade weapons across the border, then, of course, Clinton faces a far more urgent challenge.

Let’s be serious for a minute. News about Fast and Furious hit the press in last spring–six or seven months ago. It is inconceivable that either the Secretary of State, a Yale lawyer and savvy political operator, or the State Department crew in charge of administering export control licenses missed the headlines (check the State Department’s news clips circulated daily) or that they could have been ignorant of the fact that the legality or illegality of the ATF operation might well hinge on State’s involvement.

Again, the Arms Export Control Act, or AECA, is not a new, a trivial, or an obscure law.

It’s designed to ensure that US arms manufacturers and dealers cannot sell weapons “made in the USA’ to enemies of the state, terrorists, or criminals willing to pay big money to acquire the military-grade weapons they need to shoot back at our own people–at US citizens, at US law enforcement, at our sons and daughters in the US military. It’s meant to counter the greed of the arms industry, as well as the hubris of the Executive Branch in situations where politics and/or ideology may trigger a ‘means justify the ends’ mentality.

So, how do you think it’s going to play out? My money is on the same kind of dense, deconstructionist defense that saved Schultz, a semiotic masterpiece that demonstrates language is indeed the leaky vessel grad students love to diss. What do you think? Better to be incorrect, if not false–or literally true, but misleading?

OK, time to move on to practical speculation–who’s more critical to Election 2012? Holder or Clinton?

Napolitano and Feinstein testify before Judiciary Committee

And then, of course, there’s Janet Napolitano, Director of Homeland Security, and chief witness for the defense last Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Where does she fit in? Napolitano, like Clinton and Holder, has been highly vocal in her support for stronger gun regulation, and like Clinton, her agency is connected to the ATF operation in more tangible ways as well.

You see, DHS/ICE, Napolitano’s outfit, is the only law enforcement agency that has jurisdictional authority to conduct an undercover arms trafficking operation that involves the cross-border shipment of weapons, so in addition to the questions raised about State’s willingness to cooperate with ATF via the issuance of waivers to AECA, investigators have also been asking why Napolitano’s agency, DHS/ICE, would voluntarily hand over the huge chunk of law enforcement ‘turf’ ATF needed to turbocharge its own undercover operation and move all those big guns across the US-Mexico border.

Did Napolitano simple cede her agency’s jurisdictional authority to DOJ/ATF after-the-fact?

No harm, no foul?

US Law enforcement agencies are intensely territorial, and have been known to strike back at competitors who try to move in and take glory that they–the FBI, ICE, ATF, DEA– believe belongs to them. Napolitano said the Judiciary Hearing on Oct 27 felt like a ‘cross-examination.’

But here’s the interesting part: while past accounts have suggested DHS/ICE had one of their field agents on a joint Fast and Furious task force in Phoenix, on Thursday Napolitano told Congress that she too had first learned about the ATF op ‘in the press.’

She went on to assert that she ‘knew nothing about the operation,’ that it belonged solely to ATF, and that she had ‘never spoken to Attorney General Eric Holder about Fast and Furious,’ even after it was discovered that one of the assault rifles ATF sent across the border may have been linked to the death of ICE Agent Jaime Zapata, one of Napolitano’s own.

Indeed, a Washington Times Report goes on to say:

The agent’s death wasn’t the first time Homeland Security was tipped to the ongoing operation. Agents from Ms. Napolitano’s department were asked twice in 2009 to “stand down” by the ATF when they picked up guns involved in the operation.

Napolitano’s response? Nobody told her.

Ms. Napolitano said that after the second incident, agents brought the matter to the attention of the assistant U.S. attorney, who said the ATF operation took precedence. She said she didn’t learn about those incidents until House investigators began looking into the affair.

I’m thinking Napolitano might want to go with the ‘reasonable doubt that her testimony was wilfully false at the time it was delivered.’ Just an idea.

In a bizarre interlude, during the same Senate Judiciary Hearing on Oct 27, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif), who clearly needs to be updated on the political playbook, waxed eloquent with pre-scandal Talking Points that spoke to the need for the US to assume the blame for the illegal sales of thousands of weapons sold by US gun dealers to criminals who then (on their own) trafficked these weapons into the hands of Mexican cartels.

There was no sense that Feinstein had been updated on the ATF scandal or that she had any inkling that her spirited appeal for stronger gun control in the US might have struck some as exactly the kind of smoking gun that might lead investigators back to the ideological motive skeptics claim is the catalyst for Fast and Furious.

Lanny Breuer, Head of the Criminal Division at DOJ during Fast and Furious, was also testifying at the same Hearing, and after admitting he ‘knew about problems with Fast and Furious and should have shared his concerns with others at DOJ,” he still had enough life left in his body to jump on Feinstein’s bandwagon with the now inexplicably diminished 70 percent figure as the share of made-in-the-US guns returned to ATF by Mexican authorities.

Later in the Hearing, Senator Grassley (R-Iowa) entered into the record a report refuting Feinstein’s claims about the percentage of weapons entering Mexico from the US.

As silly as this all sounds, of course, none of it is amusing to the families of Brian Terry or Jaime Zapata, or to the thousands of people damaged in irrevocable ways by Fast and Furious.

Nobody–neither Holder, nor Clinton, nor Napolitano, nor the President of the United States–admits to knowing anything about Fast and Furious ‘except what I learned from the press.’

Right now, there are three House Committees out there, Oversight, Foreign Affairs and the House Judiciary Committee, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee, which seem, finally, to be following up.

But that doesn’t mean truth will out or justice will be done.

That last statement, I know, is certain to draw political fire. But here is what we must remember. We are a nation of laws.

And the law is all that Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata have left.

Brian Terry's family attend funeral of slain Border Patrol Agent

Administration ignores House Judiciary call for special counsel

More than a month ago, House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) sent a letter to President Obama calling for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate whether Attorney General Eric Holder committed perjury during his testimony about Fast and Furious.

Note that the investigation pertains only to perjury, and that Smith is not calling for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor (who took the lead in Watergate) or an Independent Counsel (who took the lead in Iran-Contra and the investigation into Clinton’s Whitewater affair).

That’s because there no longer exists statutory authority for the appointment of either a Special Prosecutor or an Independent Counsel–remember the 1973 ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ when Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the investigator Attorney John Mitchell had appointed to dissect Watergate? Ken Starr, the attorney who investigated the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, which led to the impeachment of the President, was the last man standing with the title Independent Counsel.

The Office of Independent Counsel was terminated in 1999, after the Ken Starr investigation, and was replaced with the Office of Special Counsel.

According to a Fox News report, it works like this:

This office comes under the aegis of the Justice Department and essentially functions as a U.S. attorney. He or she operates within the Department of Justice but does not report to the attorney general or any political appointee (hence, eliminating the problem Cox had with Nixon).

This is how the process occurred under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during the scandal over the firing of several U.S. attorneys. Another example is the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald to look into the release of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The current law allows the attorney general to appoint a special counsel to conduct investigations. In this case, since Holder is the one in the spotlight, Smith is calling on President Obama to request the special counsel.

Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it?

Maybe not

I spoke to an attorney on the House Judiciary Committee, and the information I took away with me quickly turned into that funny tickle that crawls up the back of your neck when things look like they’re going way too well.

If an Office of the US Attorney (there are 96 US Attorneys in the US) can open an investigation into a crime involving government officials at its own discretion, if each US Attorney has ‘prosecutorial independence,’ then why, for example, would the new US Attorney in Arizona (the state/district in which Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down with an AK-47 supplied by ATF’s Fast and Furious) be reluctant to open a criminal investigation into that situation? Why would the people of Arizona, or any citizen with a stake in seeing justice done, not be knocking at the US Attorney’s door, demanding such an investigation?

Consider: the investigation by a Special Counsel, suggested in the letter from Lamar Smith to Obama, only asks for investigation into the charges of perjury. Nothing else. And, here’s something to file in your priority box–the House Judiciary Committee hasn’t heard anything from the White House in response.

You can’t attach deadlines to requests of this kind, apparently.

But, again, here’s the good news: the route chosen by Representative Lamar Smith is not the only way to trigger an investigation.

Question: who wants you to know this?

Answer: No one.

Representative Smith, as a member of Congress, is taking the high road, exhibiting good form and deference for high office by requesting the appointment of a Special Counsel from the White House; ordinarily that request would go to the Attorney General, but since it’s the AG who is under suspicion, it’s his boss, the President (who has already said he has ‘full and complete confidence in his team’) who’s been tagged to select, if he so chooses, a Special Counsel.

What do you think?

What’s that thing they say about ‘justice delayed…..’?

Lamar Smith and his fellow members of Congress are ladies and gentlemen. And they’re following protocol, or as the House Counsel described it, “appropriate channels and procedure.” Fine.

Get investigation moving–contact US Attorney

But there is, yes, this is important enough to repeat, another way of opening an investigation into Fast and Furious. A method that belongs to ordinary people who may not subscribe to the genteel belief that it’s not kosher to investigate a member of the political elite unless an equally ‘special’ and elite prosecutor is appointed to do it.

Remember this: in the USA, no one is above the law. Do you think that if the President, or a Cabinet Member, or any other top dog in DC commits a crime, you can’t go after him or her unless you do it through a ‘designer’ prosecutor? Absolutely not.

You don’t need a Special Prosecutor, or an Independent Counsel, or a Special Counsel to open an investigation into a government official suspected of having committed a crime. Go back and read it again. According to CBS news, ten Arizona Sheriffs are calling vehemently for an independent investigation–well then, guys, this tip is for you….

Any US Attorney, who by definition “operates within DOJ, but does not report to the Attorney General or any political appointee,” can open an investigation into any crime which is alleged to have occurred in his or her jurisdiction/district and into any individual allegedly tied to that crime.

This is from the US Attorneys’ Manual administered by the US Department of Justice:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
9-2.001

Introduction
The United States Attorney, within his/her district, has plenary authority with regard to federal criminal matters. This authority is exercised under the supervision and direction of the Attorney General and his/her delegates.

The statutory duty to prosecute for all offenses against the United States (28 U.S.C. § 547) carries with it the authority necessary to perform this duty. The USA is invested by statute and delegation from the Attorney General with the broadest discretion in the exercise of such authority.

The authority, discretionary power, and responsibilities of the United States Attorney with relation to criminal matters encompass without limitation by enumeration the following:

1. Investigating suspected or alleged offenses against the United States, see USAM 9-2.010;

2. Causing investigations to be conducted by the appropriate federal law enforcement agencies, see USAM 9-2.010;

3. Declining prosecution, see USAM 9-2.020;

4. Authorizing prosecution, see USAM 9-2.030;

5. Determining the manner of prosecuting and deciding trial related questions;

6. Recommending whether to appeal or not to appeal from an adverse ruling or decision, see USAM 9-2.170;

7. Dismissing prosecutions, see USAM 9-2.050; and

8. Handling civil matters related thereto which are under the supervision of the Criminal Division.

9-2.010

Investigations
The United States Attorney, as the chief federal law enforcement officer in his district, is authorized to request the appropriate federal investigative agency to investigate alleged or suspected violations of federal law. The federal investigators operate under the hierarchical supervision of their bureau or agency and consequently are not ordinarily subject to direct supervision by the United States Attorney. If the United States Attorney requests an investigation and does not receive a timely preliminary report, he may wish to consider requesting the assistance of the Criminal Division. In certain matters the United States Attorney may wish to request the formation of a team of agents representing the agencies having investigative jurisdiction of the suspected violations.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In the case of Fast and Furious, of course, the agency having jurisdiction is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, a part of Napolitano’s DHS.

Repeat: any US Attorney in any district (Texas? Arizona? California?) in which Fast and Furious guns were sold, trafficked, or recovered after the commission of a crime can investigate officials within any department with possible ties to criminal violations perpetrated during the course of Fast and Furious.

And the investigation which doesn’t have to stop with perjury–it can target possible violations of the Arms Export Control Act as well.

But here’s the dilemma: it’s not Congress (unless you pressure them) who sends the request to a US Attorney asking that this kind of investigation be opened–that’s your job. That request has to come from the people, from US citizens who believe it’s time for this to happen. You have to be the engine driving this train.

When I spoke to an attorney on the House Judiciary Committee, she was careful to say that it was not Representative Smith’s place to contact a US Attorney in one of the Texas Districts directly to ask that an investigation be opened, but, if I, as a citizen, would like to write to Representative Smith and make that request–or if I thought it might be appropriate to write directly to the US Attorney in the Southern, Eastern, Western or Northern District of Texas, or to Arizona’s US Attorney–Congress would ‘welcome’ that effort on the part of any US citizen.

With this information in hand, I called the Office of the US Attorney in each of the four districts in Texas: the response was unenthusiastic.

Each office had a spokesperson. The first told me that the US Attorney ‘worked for DOJ,” and that she thought it might be a ‘conflict of interest’ for the US Attorney General to open an investigation involving a DOJ official, but I better call public affairs at main Justice since my question (“Could your office, as is indicated in the US Attorneys’ Manual, open an independent investigation without DOJ’s ‘permission’?) was a ‘broad policy question.’

Will Texas US Attorney investigate Fast and Furious?

No response at all from the US Attorneys Offices in San Antonio or Dallas. V-mail from the Office of the US Attorney in Phoenix, advising me to direct questions to public affairs at main Justice in Washington, DC. (Wait, the PAO in Phoenix did have his new intern, a very pleasant young lady, call me back with the name of the US Attorney recently named to replace Dennis Burke–it’s Ann Birmingham Scheel. She also emailed Scheel’s bio to me).

Then I called main Justice. They never called me back.

All of this has left me thinking that these five, newly-confirmed US Attorneys (in Texas, they’re all Republicans, by the way) do not, repeat DO NOT, want to get involved in Fast and Furious, regardless of their political affiliations or their judicial proximity to criminal violations of the the Arms Export Control Act and a plethora, no doubt, of other violations. And there’s a real danger here, of course, given that a US Attorney also has the right, called prosecutorial discretion, to choose NOT to investigate.

Undue Influence from DOJ?

In the case of Fast and Furious, of course, this could put everyone in a bind–the appearance might well be of undue political influence.

A whiff of that may already be in the air–maybe I’m wrong, but here’s the question: if the Office of the US Attorney is not ‘controlled’ by the Attorney General or the Department of Justice, why can’t press officers assigned to the Office of the US Attorney answer questions specific to that venue? Why is DOJ, main Justice, talking (or in my case, not) for the Office of the US Attorney?

Call me ‘over-reacting,’ but I’m thinking that Sharyl Attkisson, CBS news, or Fox news might want to call the PAO at the Office of the US Attorney in Texas or Arizona and mention the phrase “Prosecutorial Independence“?

IS DOJ (main Justice) muzzling or muscling the Offices of the US Attorney in Texas and Arizona?

Now, that would be a big story….

The fact that President Obama gave a collective green light (an unusually efficient move, it seems) to all four candidates for US Attorney in Texas did garner some press attention, as did their speedy confirmation on September 28, 2011. I know they’re new. But maybe it’s time for them to start doing their jobs, even if it lands them between a rock and a hard place–after all, that’s where careers are made.

The mainstream press might want to give these same US Attorneys a jingle as well, and ask the same question I’ve been trying to pose: Does, as the US Attorneys’ Manual suggests, a US Attorney in any district have the statutory authority to empanel a grand jury, and/or open lines of investigation into alleged criminal violations believed to have occurred in his or her district?

If not–if the Office of the US Attorney does indeed ‘work’ for the Department of Justice, or the White House, and opening an investigation would, as a result, constitute conflict-of-interest, does that mean that DOJ employees, or administation higher-ups, are above the law?

Interesting questions.

For a map of Districts and US Attorneys possibly impacted by ATF operation, click here.

If you’re a journalist, or just a citizen invested in the issues we’ve been talking about in this blog, you might want to start with the names and addresses below.

US Atty, Arizona–Ann Birmingham Scheel 602.514.7500 Two Renaissance Sq., 40 N. Central Ave. Ste. 1200, Phoenix, AZ 85004
US Atty, Texas, Eastern District–Malcolm Bales 409.839.2538 350 Magnolia Blvd, Beaumont, TX 77701
US Atty, Texas, Western District–Robert Lee Pitman 210.384.7100601 N.W. Loop 410, Ste. 600, San Antonio, TX 78216
US Atty, Texas, Northern District–Sarah Saldana (1st Latina to be appointed US Atty) 214.659.8600 110 Commerce St., 3rd Fl, Dallas, TX 75242
US Atty, Texas, Southern District–Kenneth Magidson 713.567.9000 (Houston, Brownsville, Corpus Christi, McAllen) PO Box 61129, Houston, TX 72208

Are we clear?

Nobody at DOJ, DHS, State, or the White House knows anything about Fast and Furious. Three House Committees and one Senate Committee are asking questions, but Connie Mack, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is the only elected representative who’s mentioned a possible violation of the Arms Export Control Act. The rest are still focusing on perjury.

The White House is studiously ignoring a request from Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) asking the President to appoint a Special Counsel.

The fact that any US Attorney can, under public pressure, open an investigation into any alleged criminal violations in his or her district appears to be one of America’s best-kept secrets–and something the Department of Justice appears not to want to talk about.

This, in turn, raises the possibility that Holder’s organization is limiting prosecutorial independence….for a chart updating the ‘turnover’ within the ranks of the US Attorneys, from Bush appointees to Obama appointees, click here.

It also raises a question about the integrity of five newly-confirmed US Attorneys (appointed by Obama) and about how much time and energy the American people are willing to invest to get the job done.

The Quds Force

The news that Holder’s DOJ had bagged a ‘terrorist mastermind’ named Manssor J. Arbabsiar followed shortly on the heels of my last post about ‘spin,’ and the ways ‘stakeholders’ in the DOJ/ATF Fast and Furious story may be using it to sell their own POV, lack of culpability, or, in the case of the press, newspapers or their e-equivalents.

So the caller who woke me up way too early to tell me about US law enforcement’s latest tour de force, the discovery and preemption of an Iranian murder plot to assassinate the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia, really only had one question: “Is this the kind of ‘spin’ you’ve been talking about?”

Well, gee. It took me a minute, but my initial impression is the one I’m sticking with–if it isn’t spin, it should be, because the media ball is back in DOJ’s court–the story’s knocked the Fast and Furious scandal off the front page, replacing it, apparently, with a tale told by an idiot, a US national who’s failed at every job he’s ever had, from selling used cars to hawking luncheon fajitas.

On full display as well is an exceptional discharge of sound and fury—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (the lady in charge of issuing exemptions to the Arms Export Control Act) and top dogs from the FBI, DOJ, ICE, DEA, and even the CIA, charging through the halls of the UN in Manhattan demanding further ‘isolation’ of Iran. Brrrrr…

And, of course, in the end, it’s a tale that signifies…what?

That there are countless wannabe conspirators wandering the mean streets of LA, Dallas/Ft. Worth—wherever USA—heads filled with squeegee plots to rid the world of real or imaginary evils?

That when these hapless miscreants connect with law enforcement informers, whose own fates depend on helping agents build career-enhancing cases, the pot begins to boil?

That the best way to kill a story about the enemy within is to refocus attention on a bigger, badder enemy without?

I’m not sure. . .

But here’s a version of the “Iran Plots Terrorist Strike on US Soil” story (told to me) that I’d like to share with you.

Let’s start with the protagonist, Manssor J. Arbabsiar, who by dint of his ethnicity, may or may not have a beef against the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

But one thing we do know: he wants and needs to make money—no easy task for the dumb-and-dumber, especially in a hard economy.

But all is not lost: Arbabsiar has a relative, in Iran’s Quds Force, and this ‘cousin’ wants to help both his kinsman in the US and their countrymen in Iran via a collection of touchdowns for the home team.

And what does that mean?

Maybe pushing back at the Great Satan, killing some Israelis down the road, and knocking off a Saudi sheik bold enough to refuel at an enemy watering hole in DC.

“You can count on me,” Arbabsiar tells his cousin back in Iran, who, according to the Criminal Complaint filed by DOJ, suggests that locating one of those cartel assassins south of the US border might be the way to go. (Can we tell these two guys are related?)

Arbabsiar, who has lived on the Tex-Mex border, agrees.

Manssor Arbabsiar-Terrorist Mastermind?

But how to get it done? This is a man who can’t keep track of his car keys or his cell phone. A small-time hustler slippin’ and slidin’ on the global stage….

Then Arbabsiar gets lucky. He puts out the word on the street that he has money and knows who’s hiring, and lo and behold, Arbabsiar stumbles across a guy with Connections.

Someone who ‘knows about these things.’

Illicit trafficking, bribery, theft, bomb attacks, mayhem and murder. When the hustler manages to connect with the ‘hit man’ (in reality, a trafficker turned DEA informant who has worked in Mexico), he’s elated and, he thinks, in business.

The Confidential Informant

“Sure,” says Arbabsiar’s new friend, whose DEA code name is ‘Confidential Source #1,” or “CS-1,” for short . “We do assassinations – we do it all.”

Now the informant really goes to work, teasing out his target’s intentions, assessing just how far Arbabsiar and his Iranian contacts will go, how many crimes they may be willing to commit (how many counts could end up on the Criminal Complaint), and how much they’re willing to pay.

It’s called a ‘murder-for-hire’ sting, a standard law enforcement ploy designed to help the criminal find the very worst in his nature and act on it. But sting operations come with their own risks as well as rewards—and attorneys know that ‘entrapment’ can be a strong defense.

Informants are like sharks, scouring the underworld for opportunities and targets the feds can use as springboards to career-making cases. It’s the informant’s job to find two sticks (agent and opportunity), to rub them together vigorously, and to blow gently on the sparks of criminal enterprise.

So it’s the DEA informant, CS-1, who makes the pitch, polishing his credentials for Arbabsiar, a potential target. It’s the informant who tells the Iranian he has ties with Los Zetas, guys who kill people every day for nickels and dimes, and who’d be more than happy to do it better for better-paying customers. It’s CS-1 who’s making it up as he goes along.

And you know, this clears something up, something that’s been bothering me. You see, immediately following DOJ’s announcement that the assassination plot had been foiled, a number of US intelligence liaisons in Mexico, people who work for ICE and for the CIA providing trafficking intel, were scrambling to identify the DEA informant who’d partnered up with Arbabsiar.

He was an unknown.

Our guys in Mexico, whose job it is to know ‘who’s who’ in the world of cartel trafficking, should have had the skinny on the man Arbabsiar believed was a big player for Los Zetas. But they didn’t.

They couldn’t place him because Arbabsiar’s hired hand may not have had any meaningful ties to Los Zetas or to any Mexican assassins. He may have created those associations as the need arose, to meet Arbabsiar’s expectations.The link between the purported plot to assassin the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and Los Zetas may have been real only for the Arbabsiar, his ‘cousin’ and his contacts in Iran, and for CS-1, a paid snitch trolling for new targets and some government coin on the side.

Yeah.

Here’s how it works: informants hunt for targets as assiduously as would-be conspirators look for accomplices. CS-1′s job is to be whatever Arbabsiar needs him to be. To be creative, adaptable, and opportunistic. Indeed, in a carefully worded statement embedded in DOJ’s Criminal Complaint, the FBI witness confirms that the informant, CS-1, ‘posed’ as an associate of a DTO operating in Northern Mexico. Critical word, “posed.”

So what we have is roughly four months of fantasy and role-playing, during which time the plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States remains only a figment in the imaginations of a handful of would-be assailants: Arbabsiar, his cousin (“a big general”) in the Iranian military, Gholam Shakuri, a member of the Quds Force, and according to the Criminal Complaint, another Iranian belonging to the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Meanwhile, DEA is waiting for the kind of case they can take to a US Attorney, and that means their informant needs to move from make-believe to real-time crime. He needs to get paid.

How much?

It had to have been Arbabsiar asking this question, because at this point, CS-1 is calling the shots.

1.5 million with 100k on deposit. . .

The Iranians agree to the deal, and wire the 100k to the undercover bank account, routing and account numbers supplied by CS-1.

And here’s where it gets interesting.

100k proves conspiracy–but not involvement of Iranian government

It’s illegal, a violation of OFAC, for any US bank, business or US citizen to accept funds wired from Iran or from an account anywhere belonging to an individual or entity using it to conduct commerce with Iran.

In a case like this, the 100k would have likely come from the United Arab Emirate, maybe Dubai, where Iranian interests established shell companies many years ago for the specific purpose of circumventing OFAC and the US embargo on Iran.

It’s likely that the Iranian government, the Quds Force, have billions in UAE banks, money that at this point, could never be traced back to Iran. So this begs the question–would Arbabsiar’s contacts send funds that might indeed be traced back to Iran to the undercover bank account in the US when big-time players intent on an assassination plot could just as easily route a transfer out of a corporate account in UAE?

I don’t think so.

If Arbabsiar’s backers were high-level players working on behalf of the Iranian government, the 100k wired to the US would, almost certainly, have come out of a UAE corporate account, or via an account belonging to an international bank with correspondent branches/banks around the world.It’s highly improbably that US authorities can prove the owner/s of that account have direct links to the Iranian government.

And that’s a problem, isn’t it?

US indulging in ‘Wag the Dog’ foreign policy?

Yes, receipt of the 100k by US authorities is enough to make a conspiracy case against Arbabsiar and the Iranian cohorts he’s implicated in the plot.

But that 100k in the US undercover bank account still does not prove that the Iranian government was driving the bus. To do that, US authorities must establish a link between the owner of the account in the UAE — or the owner/s of an account held by an international financial institution with correspondent branches/banks around the world — and the government of Iran. No mention of this in the Criminal Complaint, is there?

But it’s a crucial point–one that could defuse the Obama Administration’s claim that ‘senior officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government’ were tied to the assassination plot and challenge the call of senior US officials for alterations to current foreign policy, in the US and abroad, toward Iran. If US authorities cannot prove that this was something more than a plot formulated by a small group of non-state actors, the President, the Secretary of State, DEA and the FBI have some explaining to do.

What’s also interesting is that, with the exception of The Guardian (which asks if the US may be indulging in a “Wag the Dog” type of foreign policy) the mainstream media doesn’t seem to be picking up on any of this.

Maybe that’s because Arbabsiar’s own statement in the Criminal Complaint seems to implicate the government of Iran:“This isn’t personal–not my money–it’s the government’s money.”

It’s important to note, however, that Arbabsiar made this statement to CS-1 in response to the informant’s request for more money: CS-1 told Arbabsiar that he needed at least a ‘five man team’ to pull off the assassination, and that his people wanted half of the 1.5m — as opposed to a measly 100k — as downpayment for the hit. Arbabsiar wants to reassure CS-1 that it’s the Iranian government that’ backing him, not just a ‘personal’ circle of contacts–so how reliable Arbabsiar’s statement is remains to be proved.

What we do know at his point is that Arbabsiar appears to be under pressure, and, is, in turn, pressing CS-1 to get on with the scheme. By this time, we’re calling the proposed plot ‘Operation Chevrolet,’ a sentimental nod, it seems, to Arbabsiar’s former career in used car sales, and his contacts back in Iran, Arbabsiar tells CS-1, want to ‘take delivery’ of the vehicle.

This is all according to testimony provided by Arbabsiar to the FBI, the same outfit responsible for Ruby Ridge in 1992, a situation that began when an ATF informant convinced a white separatist named Randy Weaver to sell him what the government later alleged were two ‘sawed-off’ shotguns (shortening the barrels of these weapons before selling them constitutes an illegal sale), and that ended a little more than a week after an FBI sniper killed Weaver’s wife with a shot to the head as she stood in her doorway holding a baby in her arms.

ATF and the FBI have a history…

Weaver family-Ruby Ridge

especially when it comes to making criminal mountains out of some pretty strange molehills—focusing on small-time and sometimes delusional targets in an attempt to build a case authorities believe they can manage and bring, once it’s been parented into a full-blown crisis, to successful (and high profile) prosecution.

Randy Weaver was low-hanging fruit, as was David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidians—cultural oddballs with spare educations and no clout, waiting with their off-the-grid religious beliefs and caches of canned food and long guns, for the apocalypse.

When it came, it was wearing a badge.

But this current murder-for-hire sting is different—unlike previous domestic ‘stings’ run out of the FBI, the dynamic between Arbabsiar and his informant stand to affect global foreign policy, reshaping strategic relations between the US and the Mideast in ways that are difficult, unless maybe you’re the Secretary of State or the cigarette man in the X-files, to envision.

Karen Greenberg, a journalist for the Guardian, puts it this way:

In the Arbabsiar case, the issue has immediately leapt from a matter of individuals to a matter of state – and from a matter of non-state actors engaged in alleged criminal activity on behalf of al-Qaida (or another transnational terrorist group) to a matter of state actors (that is, the Quds Force). The US government is claiming that this case constitutes a diplomatic breach and an act of international violence planned by the Iranian authorities – in the president’s words, “a flagrant violation of US and international law”.

This is important stuff—read it again.

Then ask yourself this. . .

Is Arbabsiar just another screwball—more low-hanging fruit—involved in a crank scheme engineered by a ‘rogue faction’ (otherwise known as three more screwballs) in the Iranian military, or is he, as he seems to believe and the US government continues to insist, a henchman for powerful officials within the highest echelons of the Iranian government?

If he’s small-time and delusional, a ‘hook’ on which the feds and the Administration have managed to hang some very serious allegations, well then, Houston, we’ve got a problem. If he’s the gateway player in an international terrorist plot, we’ve got a different problem.

You choose.

But first hear the rest of Arbabsiar’s story . . .

It’s almost fall now, 2011. Arbabsiar’s contacts in Iran, he tells CS-1, are unwilling to invest more upfront money in the operation (he says they want to see how this first ‘test’ pans out), so Arbabsiar agrees to go himself to Mexico and wait there as ‘human collateral’ until the hit on the Saudi Ambassador in DC had gone down, and everyone, we assume, gets paid.

Now, according to the FBI report, Arbabsiar admits that his own contact in Iran told him this might be a bad idea and advised against it. But for some reason (crazy or broke?) Arbabsiar gets on a flight to Mexico City, expecting that he will be held as human ransom by Los Zetas (?????) until it is confirmed that the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, as well a room full of unsuspecting fellow-diners in DC, have been blown to smithereens via a wad of well-placed C4 plastique.

On or around September 28th, Arbabsiar flies to Mexico City, only to be denied entry, per the request of the US. DEA, with only 100k as a ‘down payment’ for the proposed murder of the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, arranges surveillance as Arbabsiar boards another flight out of Mexico to JFK in New York, and once this plane lands, US agents arrest the man who still can’t do anything right.

The terrorist plot to bomb and murder foreign nationals on US soil remained, from start to finish, an imaginary plan, beyond any possible implementation and always under the control and management of CS-1 and US law enforcement.

Whether CS-1 did more than root out and manage the alleged plot is already a question the media is asking.

In other words, did US law enforcement, via the actions of CS-1, lend legal substantiality to a ‘plot’ that may have existed only within the close confines of a few fevered minds?

Senior Iranians officials, of course, are saying just that, and more:

Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, told reporters that the U.S. accusation is “a really big lie” and it “doesn’t make sense.” He also accused the U.S. of setting a “dangerous precedent.”

Another Iranian official accuses President Obama of ‘spinning’ the story to divert attention away from the economic crisis in the US.

And from DOJ’s Fast and Furious?

What do you think?

Then there are the more than usual number of Euro-skeptics who also contend that Iranian operatives in charge of mounting terrorist attacks would never enlist the aid of an amateur like Arbabsiar, deal with non-Muslim players, or engage in what intelligence experts are diplomatically calling ‘clumsy tradecraft.’

They have a point, and it’s gratifying to see common sense and a call for verification weaving its way through the mainstream media. Trust but verify.

Of course, it’s small comfort to find oneself ‘siding’ with the Iranian government. Iran is still the most dangerous (along with Pakistan) country in the world, and its interests and its behavior run counter to that of the United States and our allies.

In an earlier blog,”Wikileads…who’s following up?” I referenced a leak that struck me as amusing: Saudi Arabia had been lobbying the US to take on Iran at the same time that the US has been pressing Saudi Arabia to lean on that same country. Apparently, the Saudis haven’t let up, a clue, perhaps, as to why the US might want be looking for a politically acceptable reason to distance itself and its allies further from Iran. Ok, fine. But let’s not use the Keystone Kops to do it and call it strategic foreign policy.

Listen, I’m no diplomat and I don’t have the inside scoop. I do, however, have some gut feelings about how we should conduct our law enforcement operations at home and our foreign policy abroad—straight up.

That’s not going to happen, is it? So let’s just try this: respecting the laws of the United States.

Rewind: did the architects of Fast and Furious violate the Arms Export Control Act?

Ask Hillary Clinton, the same US official who just advised the UN Security Council to come down hard on Iran for the part (alleged, Hillary, alleged) its government played in this latest DOJ-revealed plot to blow up the Saudi Ambassador at a DC restaurant.

Diversion, diversion, diversion. Thy name is Spin.

Is the “Iran Plots Terrorist Strike on US Soil” story an attempt to divert attention from Fast and Furious, and maybe (a twofer), a strategic move toward Saudi Arabia, designed to seem motivated, not by shared US and Saudi interests, (and certainly NOT at the behest of the Saudis who cannot, under any circumstances, break ranks with the Arab world), but by justifiable outrage over the national security threat posed by Manssor J. Arbabsiar et al?

Wow. Consider the irony here. A man who couldn’t sell fajitas to a hungry lunch mob could end up up altering History.

Is it spin? I don’t know. But if it isn’t, it should be.

Why?

Because it looks like it could work.

Fast and Furious: where's the REAL story?

I love the smell of spin in the morning.

Turn on the news, rev up the internet, and there it is—false leads, partial truths, irrelevant facts, muddled narratives, legal misfires, knee-jerk politics, conspiracy theories, and ‘insider info’ hot off the grill from a government spokesperson intent on staying employed or from an ‘informed and trusted source’ with, wouldn’t you just know it, an agenda of his or her own.

Listen. It’s time for the media and Congress, to get the story (the whole thing) right. We need more focus on the criminality that may attend Fast and Furious and less discussion about the outrageous, but not illegal, aspects of the operation. More news and less noise. Last Monday morning, Fox News ran a cover story— “ATF ‘Fast and Furious’ Claim SHOT FULL OF HOLES” (The caps belong to Fox). The visuals were pretty exciting, but the revelations in the article, hardly breaking news, were SHOT FULL OF SPIN.

Let’s review

Fox reporter William LaJeunesse (US Government Bought and Sold Weapons) tells us, first, that it was ‘taxpayer money’ (1.25 million—ok, sounds right) that paid for the military-grade weapons ATF sent across the US-Mexico border as part of Fast and Furious.

Where else would that money have come from? Do we think ATF agents in Phoenix passed the hat? It came from the ATF ‘buy find.’ True, the feds have, in some cases, funded investigations with money garnered from the bad guys, but in the case of Fast and Furious, as we know, the US was giving, not getting.

The notion that any US law enforcement agency might have obtained authorization for an operational plan premised on the idea that we could merely throw guns into Mexico—to support the Sinaloa Cartel or any other DTO—and then trace those guns is nonsense.

If the Sinaloa Cartel had needed guns, here’s how it would have worked: someone close to the top of the drug game in Mexico, let’s say Joachim Guzman Loera’s ‘CFO,’ calls whatever US enforcement agency seems a likely supplier (our agent would be a high-level investigator, working in an undercover capacity, who had ‘earned’ the trust of top cartel figures) with a coded shopping list. That’s right. A list. Bad guys don’t generally say “Just send us whatever you have sitting on the shelves…AK-47s, Barrett .50 cals, how about some RPGs? You decide.”

The proposal? Cash for guns.

The cartel contact tells his US enforcement contact to send a man to, say, LA. When our guy gets there, he’s told he should call a cartel contact—cell number provided—and text in a code. This same cartel contact then calls the US agent back, gives him instructions re a meeting place and transfer logistics, shows up at the designated location, opens up the trunk of his vehicle and pulls out a big bag of money.

US law enforcement, after obtaining exemptions from the Arms Export Control Act (ITAR), then uses that cash to buy the weapons, and arrange (as part of a legitimate sting operation) for the transfer of the guns into Mexico.

That’s how it’s done in a by-the-book sting. That’s not how it worked in Fast and Furious. But back to the question: is the fact that taxpayers paid for the guns ATF sent into Mexico headline news?

Next?

The Fox News reporter goes on to tells us that ‘this disclosure (re the use of taxpayer money) “could undermine” the claim that Fast and Furious was merely a ‘botched operation’ where agents ‘simply lost track of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another….Instead it heightens the culpability of the federal government…”

Am I missing something?

How does the ‘disclosure’ that taxpayer money was used to buy the weapons ATF let walk across the US-Mexico border ‘undermine the defense that Fast and Furious was simply a ‘botched operation’?

I agree with LaJeunesse, who, by the way, has a longstanding and solid rep, about Fast and Furious being something other than a sting gone wrong, (and have said so in my last three blogs) but please, Bill, connect the dots here for me …

The reason Fast and Furious cannot claim the ‘preferred’ status of a ‘botched op,’ with its regrettable, but not criminal outcome, is this: no provisions were in place at any point or at any time to trace, track or interdict the weapons before they could be used to kill innocent people (not an option under US law) on both sides of the SW border.

And then, of course, there’s also the question nobody seems willing to ask: did ATF violate the Arms Export Control Act (ITAR)—the same oversight that resulted in the indictment of 14 high-level administration players linked to Iran-Contra?

Fast and Furious is not under scrutiny because the US taxpayer footed the bill for the guns purchased from US gun dealers–an ‘insult-to-injury’ addendum, yes, but nothing compared to the criminal violations the architects of this operation may face.

Not the story

LaJeunesse also reports that ATF agents encouraged gun dealers (FFLs) along the SW border to sell weapons, singly and in bundles, to straw buyers gun dealers suspected were fronting for criminals—even when those firearms dealers objected. Old news.

All of this is in the Grassley-Issa Report on Fast and Furious prepared for the House Oversight Committee—in the public domain for months.

Fox News tells us as well that this was not a ‘buy-bust’ or legitimate ‘sting’ operation.

Snore.

Haven’t we already covered this territory?

Yes, ATF agents were specifically advised by superiors that interdiction of these weapons, at any point in the process, was not an option. ATF knew it would not see these weapons again until Mexican or US authorities retrieved them at crime scenes and sent then ‘back home to ATF’ for identification. ATF did, in fact, enter the serial numbers of the weapons they encouraged dealers to sell into the ATF database before they let these lethal weapons walk into Mexico.

We know this. We’ve said it here in this blog. Read the Grassley-Issa report. Or even better, brush off those Intro to Logic skills and ask yourself how a plan purportedly designed to track or trace the movement of lethal weapons might have done so sans tracking/tracing/GPS devices or ongoing human surveillance.

Forget the sizzle, Bill, and move on to the steak.

The real deal

Here are some better questions for Fox News—and for its colleagues in the Mainstream Media (MSM). Why were field agents running the op told by their supervisors NOT to interdict? Why were they ordered by their supervisors to let the guns walk?

Because those were the orders given to their supervisors by their bosses. And the buck stops…where?

ATF, a malleable, ambitious agency ISO glory and an enhanced budget, was, as they say in the homicide division, the means. Operation Gunrunner, a run-of-the-mill op ideally suited to parent darker offspring, was the opportunity. All we need now is motive.

Who stood to benefit, politically or practically, from a ‘secret’ plan to supply Mexican gangs with military-grade weapons that could be identified, incontrovertibly, once returned to ATF by Mexican authorities, as short ‘time-to-crime’ weapons purchased from US gun shops by illegal buyers? No mention of ATF involvement.

Were field agents in Phoenix making money via the sale of these weapons? Don’t think so.

Were their supervisors or the Assistant US Attorneys in Arizona masterminding some self-promoting scheme sans sign-off from the top, boldly breaking the chain of command? Unlikely.

Was Kenneth Melson suddenly overtaken by so much anti-gun fervor that he decided to violate federal law and abandon a career in government (guaranteed work in a shaky economy) for irresistible ideological passions? Sure.

Media muddles, Congress carps

Who’s ready to follow this winding stair all the way to the top? Fox News, The Washington Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times? Forbes just came out yesterday with a headline reading “Fast and Furious Just Might be Obama’s Watergate.” Wow. Where have they been?

NRA’s Wayne LaPierre sent the “W” word out into mediaspace last week as well, hoping he had a scoop and convinced, it seems, that he was letting loose with a big nasty one. Wake up, Wayne, that train’s already left the station.

And what’s holding up the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee? Maybe they’re having a hard time getting that elephant out of the Hearing Room….

Ok, ok. Maybe I’m being too hard on these folks—because never has so simple (and so BIG) a story been so deliberately muddled, complicated, recast, and revised.

And, of course, there’s a reason for this.

Spin

Moving targets are harder to hit. And the stakes—for everyone involved in and affected by Fast and Furious—are high. There are going to be losers.

Disinformation (from the Russian dezinformatsiya) translates into a toolbox of disparate strategies, all designed to manipulate public opinion via half-truths (the limited hangout), diversions, confusion/conflation, deceit, and the appeal to political biases already at work in the hearts and minds of people who might otherwise be mistaken for rational citizens.

With Fast and Furious, we see it all.

The limited hangout (an admission to having played a lesser or partial role in a scandal in the hope that what looks like a quick and sincere confession of a relatively ‘minor crime’ will preclude further investigation and take the transgressor off the hook): the admission by President Obama that ‘serious mistakes may have been made,’ and the characterization of the operation by DOJ/ATF as a ‘botched operation’ as opposed to a criminal enterprise. The pledge to conduct a rigorous ‘internal investigation’ by OIG/DOJ.

Diversions (‘disambiguation’ or the ‘red herring strategy’): look to reports highlighting the involvement of other agencies, i.e., the FBI, ICE, DHS, CIA. Any of these entities might have jumped on the bandwagon at any given point, but the fact is that while ICE officially exercises jurisdiction over covert cross-border tracking operations, ATF and the Office of the Attorney General clearly appropriated authority (and accountability) for Fast and Furious. As far as the legality of this ATF operation is concerned, the role of other players (with the exception of the US Department of State) isn’t relevant—their possible involvement, in other words, doesn’t ameliorate or diminish possible criminality on the part of ATF/DOJ.

If Fast and Furious was a legitimate enforcement operation, one or more of the top three officials at the Department of Justice requested and obtained exemptions from the Arms Export Control Act (ITAR) by the State Department. No requests from DOJ and/or no exemptions from State means Eric Holder may be reprising the role of Oliver North in this administration’s re-enactment of Iran-Contra. A former federal agent suggests that if the Attorney General feels the North role may be too demanding, he might do well to remember the John Mitchell part has yet to be cast.

Confusion/conflation: (Cluttering/littering a story with speculation about larger umbrella scenarios, or links which may impact the core story in plausible or seemingly parallel, but not causal, ways) i.e., Fast and Furious was part of a larger ‘covert’ CIA operation whereby US arms were smuggled to Sinaloa Cartel to prevent a takeover of the Calderon Administration by Los Zetas. Or a suspect involved in manufacturing grenades for Mexican criminals eluded ATF. Or ATF also walked guns to Chicago gangs and to criminals in Honduras via Operation Castaway.

Fast and Furious plays for the CIA?

This is where it gets good. I especially like the claim, advanced by The Washington Times, about Fast and Furious being part of a CIA operation.

Why? Because it’s a first-class diversion, plenty shiny enough to engage an untold number of glittery-eyed conspiracy theorists. And it transforms a simple tale into the kind of spinetingler we just don’t want to put down. You see, the CIA is the only agency that can, in certain limited circumstances, run a covert op without involving Congress (you’re still supposed to brief the President, but that’s never in the movies, so…) It’s also an agency able to obtain what’s called a ‘pocket exemption’ from State re the Arms Export Control Act (ITAR)—not in connection with an operation like Fast and Furious, a domestic op, but in situations where the agency is part of an effort to supply arms to an insurgency the US supports. Moreover, a federal prosecutor is unlikely to get involved in a case where the CIA is lurking in the background.

The bottom line? A connection with the CIA can give you some wiggle-room, legally, psychologically, politically, and certainly in the court of public opinion.

A fabricated link, nurtured by the press, between the CIA and Fast and Furious, could spin the blame away from DOJ (look at it from their angle) and give the agency the breathing space it needs to deflect the relentless upward probe of the House Oversight Committee—the narrative reads like the Bourne Trilogy, and just the notion that a under-rated little agency like ATF might be running with dogs big enough to ‘save’ Mexico’s Prez from some of the most vicious assassins in the world (and only a skip and a jump away) packs a powerful wallop.

If it’s a lie (OGA, I hear, is less than keen these days to engage south-of-the-border), at least it’s an interesting one, and kudos to the spin doctors who called it into being. I was on the edge of my seat last week, mesmerized by the report in the Washington Times and its subliminal warning: don’t get involved in things you don’t understand.

The ATF-CIA connection laid out in the WT, of course, was the contribution of a cartel higher-up named Vicente Zambada Niebla, (aka ‘El Vincentillo’), extradited to the US in 2010 on drug trafficking charges and now in US custody awaiting trial. Does this sound like a reliable witness? Does it matter? Apparently not.

Prevarication

Lying, the bottom rung on the ladder of disinformation, is a Don’t Blink kind of business. You need brass.

“El Vincentillo’s” very expensive legal team has it: they continue to advise their high-profile client to ‘come clean’ about the US-Sinaloa ‘partnership,’ and according to the drug kingpin (behind bars in Chi-Town), it’s a very special friendship, so special, in fact, that, allegedly, the US government was only too happy to look the other way when, on one memorable occasion, the Sinaloa Cartel flew a 747 packed to the brim with cocaine into American airspace. And this, according to the Washington Times, is straight from the mouths of ‘CIA insiders,’ former employees.

Well then, what more is there to say?

Maybe this: creating, or fueling ever-widening conspiracy theories is uber-spin. A related tactic involves ‘planting’ one team’s player within the ranks of the opposing team, for the purpose of gaining the trust of that larger constituency, playing on its passions and loyalties, and then sowing confusion, doubt and false information within its ranks. The ‘plant’ could be a journalist, a blogger, or a ‘source’ driven by self-interest or a personal vendetta to ‘share’ or ‘corroborate’ little-known information of interest to the host organization. In war, we call these folks ‘double-agents.’ In spy-talk, the term is ‘counter-intelligence.’ In politics, the phrase is ‘dirty tricks.’

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not pointing at any specific blog, website, or news outlet. I’m not questioning the motives of any reporter’s sources or the credibility of a specific article. I’m only sending out a message of my own: caveat emptor.

‘El Vincentillo’s’ defense lawyers, highly paid and out to win, understands that a successful legal defense, like military propaganda, like the political ploy, is all about spin. And theirs is the best that money can buy. Good stuff.

The US Government and the Sinaloa Cartel

But let’s get back to a bone (extracted from the Washington Times article) I think still needs picking: the claim about the Sinaloa Cartel needing the 2000 weapons ATF sent into Mexico via Fast and Furious.

Mexico is awash in guns: Calderon’s government is the number one purchaser of US arms through our own State Department’s Direct Commercial Sales program (DCS), a subject, certainly, for another blog.

Mexico spends roughly twice as much (416m) through this program as Brazil (209m), the next largest customer on the list, and a country, what? Three times as big as Mexico? No matter: given the negligible degrees of separation between Mexico’s military, its federal police force, and other powerful players throughout the country, weapons tend to travel freely through different sectors of the economy. No stovepiping, no bottlenecks here.

It’s also (still) well-known that Mexican gangs can get all the ordnance they want from Venezuela. Da, that’s right: Russia continues to support Chavez in the construction and maintenance of at least two factories currently churning out AK-47s and the ammunition the weapon’s users need.

Another blow to the ‘US is sending guns to Sinaloa to prevent the overthrow of the current US-friendly administration’ argument: Joaquin Guzman Loera. “El Chapo,” as Guzman is called, is reportedly the 11th richest man in Mexico. Still, the drug lord scores a relatively low ranking on Forbes Magazine’s 2011 Global List of Billionaires, (Mexico’s Telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helu heads the list as the richest man in the world), but I suspect the magazine significantly underestimates El Chapo’s wealth (listed at 1.0 bn). The truth is that Guzman ‘owns’ the Sinaloa Cartel, and the Sinaloa Cartel, say enforcement insiders, owns Mexico.

Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman

El Chapo certainly doesn’t need ATF’s measly 2K contribution of AK-47s and .50 cal sniper rifles to fend off Los Zetas—as violent as they are, the fact is the breakaway assassination squad now controls only a small piece of the pie with a much smaller piece of Mexico’s criminal GDP. The Mexican military is pounding Los Zetas, to good effect. Guzman runs a juggernaut operation, and his very flush associates have the resources to buy an army and twice the weapons that army needs. El Chapo supports PAN, Mexico’s ruling National Action Party, and Calderon.

The CIA used Fast and Furious to shore up Sinaloa and prevent a political coup by Los Zetas? Please.

There are other sidebar articles generated by Fast and Furious, of course–less-thorny reports about ATF’s failure to nab grenade-man or possible ‘companion’ gun walking operations benefiting gangs in the Windy City or mobsters in Honduras. And these make for good reading. But more details about who did what at the lowest levels–the operational architecture of these undertakings–still do not make Fast and Furious anything other than exactly what it appears to be—an under-the-table plan to supply the Administration with strong public support for more stringent gun regs and Mexico with the evidence it seeks to support Calderon’s claim re US weapons fueling Mexico’s drug violence. The simplest answer is usually the correct one. Let’s not forget …

Occam’s Razor

In this case, it comes with a double edge. Because the same simple plan that supported the needs of our trading partner to the south also played to a critical part of the administration’s base here at home: the folks pushing for more stringent gun regulation. A straightforward case of political win-win.

Almost.

The challenge now, for the media, and certainly for Congress, is to address the real questions, to clarify the dangers inherent in Fast and Furious—especially the threat to the rule of law—and to step up to the possible consequences of a genuine, no-holds-barred investigation into a US government operation that triggered the provision of lethal weapons to criminal actors in Mexico. Weapons used to murder US citizens.

We know how Fast and Furious worked. Now it’s time to ask ‘who’ and ‘why.’ If Fast and Furious operated in violation of US law, which laws, exactly, did DOJ/ATF break? The Arms Export Control Act? The Hobbs Act? Is there perjury at work here? Where’s the crime?

Everyone has a dog in this fight. The press, the government, the White House, Congress, the House Oversight Committee. Republicans. Democrats. US gun dealers. The pro-gun lobby. The anti-gun contingent. US banks with big Mexican accounts. US corporations riding high with NAFTA. The government of Mexico. Mexico’s cartels. Everyone has ‘boundaries,’ not the kind Dr. Phil says we need to protect our psyches—the kind we use to protect our own interests. We want Fast and Furious to mean what what our bank accounts, our careers, or our ideologies need it to mean.

So let’s not pretend the MSM is going, at some point, to offer the public the red meat it craves. Forget about ‘discomfiting the comfortable.’ Fox News has fed us subprime in the hope we’re hungry enough and sufficiently ill-formed to mistake it for NY Strip. Send it back.

Issa’s Committee inches along as well, postponing the appointment of a Special Prosecutor for reasons just vague enough to sound important. One article I recently read mistakenly cites what the author says is a Committee concern that a special counsel would be chosen by DOJ—not true…the special counsel usually comes out of the private sector.

So, what’s the real problem? Loss of control over the outcome of the investigation? Political blowback, perhaps, in an election year–charges of racism? Maybe dangerous revelations about the part our Nafta-partner could have played in the ATF debacle? Mexico, aka ‘Golden Goose,’ enjoys bipartisan support in Washington.

Wait–if Congress needs a rationale to sell a real investigation to its corporate sponsors (ok, maybe, with a ‘surgical strike’ against the present administration, but not with a dig that might rattle our trade deal with el jefe), well, how about this?

What was it that the ATF supervisor in the Phoenix office told worried field agents when they queried him about the advisability of letting lethal weapons disappear without a trace? If you want to make an omelette, you gotta’ break some eggs. HOOAH!

My take? Find an upright, do-right US prosecutor (a Spanish-speaker) willing to leave a comfortable berth in the private sector to take a job he’s smart enough to know may end his career, and let that dog hunt.

Mexico, engaging perhaps in some heady spin of its own (the best defense is a good offense), is turning up the rhetorical heat and threatening to extradite ATF agents involved in Fast and Furious (more on this later). Yes, the Mexican government has opened two, count ‘em, two criminal investigations into Fast and Furious.

Who’d have thought they’d have the time, fighting off all those impending coups?

Government agencies across DC are also on high-alert: organizations that fear they may be connected in even the most remote way to ATF’s gun walking operation have their people working overtime to distract, delay and deceive anyone who manages to get a live voice on the press office phone.

And then (remember the link between spin and political passions?), there are the sincere, unwitting accomplices to the kinds of disinformation campaigns that depend on true believers: Americans who refuse to see the investigation into Fast and Furious as anything but a political witch hunt.

Here’s the problem with any kind of hard, to-hell-and-back investigation into Fast and Furious: no matter who you are, if you choose to do it right–and pay full price for this ticket–the ride is going to take you places you really don’t want to go.

Believe me.

What is it they say about ‘inconvenient truths’?

How about ‘freedom isn’t free.’ Or easy.

Try spinning that for a while. ..

Damage control: Holder 'reassigns' Melson

Ok. Now we’re into it.

Administration top dogs have thrown ATF Director Ken Melson and US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke under the truck.In firefighting, they call it a ‘controlled burn,’ torching a perimeter of just enough man-made flame to meet and beat the advance of a wildfire impervious to less-drastic solutions.

Good luck, gentlemen.

The House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the DOJ/ATF gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious is roaring through the halls of Congress, and despite DOJ’s efforts to spin the story every which way but up, Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) are on a trail insiders whisper may lead investigators all the way to the top.

Melson, who brought his own attorney with him when he first testified before the House Oversight Committee over the July 4th holiday, continues to allege that DOJ ‘planted’ rumors of his impending resignation in the press prior to that date to force the ATF Director’s hand, and that the present scapegoat strategy to jettison the ATF Director and several US Attorneys closely linked to Fast and Furious is more of the same: a last ditch attempt to stop the House Oversight Committee investigation before Congress homes in on political appointees, who, Melson suggests, devised and implemented Operation Fast and Furious at the behest of higher-ups in the Obama Administration.

Controlled burn: can DOJ contain the damage?

Note to Issa’s Committee

Consider the benefits if someone armed with a Forthwith Subpeona had been waiting to meet Melson on his way out of the building. Just because the man’s been reassigned doesn’t mean he can’t testify before a Grand Jury.

If investigators determine that Fast and Furious was intended to be something other than a bona fide law enforcement operation—an under-the-radar political ploy, for instance, designed to shore up Mexico’s claims that US gun dealers have been responsible for fueling Mexico’s gang wars and to lend support to the push for stronger gun control in the US—then Fast and Furious will stand beside the Iran-Contra scandal as a politically inspired effort devised by officials within the US government to export weapons illegally, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), to criminal actors in Mexico.

The Oversight Committee indicates DOJ/ATF officials knew from the beginning there was a high probability the guns ATF let ‘walk’ would fall into the hands of cartel gunmen who would use those guns, not just to murder Mexican nationals, but to attack and kill US citizens as well.

Guns supplied to Mexican gangs have been linked to the killings of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata. Just this week, CBS broke a story about an early ‘cover-up‘ on the part of ATF officials and the US Attorney’s Office in Arizona. According to a report filed by Sharyl Attkisson, Assistant US Attorney Emory Hurley, who was at that time simultaneously investigating the Terry shooting and Fast and Furious, chose to conceal the fact that the weapon used in Terry’s murder was one sent across the border via ATF’s gun-walking operation.

Investigators have also linked guns trafficked through the ATF Operation to a number of additional crimes committed in the US; reports supplied to the Committee indicate there was ‘panic’ within ATF immediately after the attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), triggered by concern that the weapon used to gun down Giffords might have been one supplied through Fast and Furious.

Export Control Act

The Arms Export Control Act is the same law that brought down the architects of Iran-Contra, officials who facilitated the illegal sales of weapons to Iran and to Nicaraguan rebels (Contras) during the Reagan Administration.

It’s a critical piece of legislation, especially for the ordinary American, who’s usually the one wearing the boots when they hit the ground in bad places. Americans have a hard time with the notion that the bullets, guns, missiles, tanks, and other military hardware the enemy may be using to kill their sons and daughters in the military may have been ‘made in the USA.’

Here’s how it’s supposed to work. The Arms Export Control Act prohibits US arms merchants and defense manufacturers from selling lethal weapons and sensitive or dual-use technology to people who may want to use those weapons and technology to fire back at US citizens—at the military, law enforcement agents, and more and more often, a lot of just plain Americans who routinely miss those signs 80 miles inland on the US side of the Mexico-Arizona border warning tourists to go no further–Mexican gunmen on the prowl.

US weapons cannot be sold and shipped to countries that support terrorism, or nations, states, groups, or other entities deemed unfriendly to the United States.

Los Zetas and US weapons

I’d say Mexican cartels, especially the violent assassination squads that comprise Los Zetas, fall into that category, wouldn’t you?

Even more importantly, the Arms Export Control Act is, in fact, a servant to Article Three of the United States Constitution, which defines the act of selling weapons to those who would ‘levy war against the United States’ or ‘giving aid and comfort to our enemies’ as treason. No kidding. Treason.

If a US law enforcement agency wants to involve itself in the sale of weapons purchased from US gun dealers for export purposes–sales that may be part of an legitimate enforcement or military operation–that agency, let’s say ATF, must apply to the State Department for an exemption from the licensing requirements normally imposed on the commercial sale and export of such weapons. If an enforcement agency or military entity intent on running a covert op involving the export of lethal weapons does not obtain the necessary exemptions from State, for–listen carefully–each weapon or bundle of weapons purchased, that agency or military purchaser has committed a crime. Consider. ATF sent more than 1700 weapons across the border into Mexico–that could translate into 1700+ violations of the Arms Export Control Act.

When arms are purchased as part of a commercial deal from US manufacturers for shipment overseas–when the sale is not part of a law enforcement or military operation–the purchasing agent must apply to State for both a license and an End-User Certificate (EUC). If the EUC is obtained as part of a fraudulent deal, i.e., the guns were never meant to go where the purchaser said they were going, then the export license is automatically deemed null and void. If a commercial buyer does not obtain an export license from State as well as a bona fide EUC, that buyer has committed a crime.

Did ATF violate the Arms Export Control Act?

But let’s give the devil his due, and suppose that Fast and Furious was, in fact, conceived as a legitimate law enforcement operation: the agency, which intended to facilitate the sale of guns from US dealers to agency informants or ATF ‘ringers,’ chosen to act as straw buyers, would have factored in the need to obtain exemptions from the licensing requirements mandated by the US Department of State.

But even before State issued those exemptions to ATF, DOJ/ATF would have had to demonstrate operational accountability, convincing State Department officials and other relevant agencies that Fast and Furious reflected solid planning, measurable objectives, and an endgame which guaranteed that none of the weapons in question would go missing or be used in the commission of crimes.

As we know, that’s not what happened with Fast and Furious.

Ice Agent Jaime Zapata killing linked to Fast and Furious

Congressional investigators tell us that from the inception of the operation, there was no strategy to trace or tag the weapons DOJ/ATF officials knew would cross illegally into Mexico, and no plan to interdict in an alternative manner, or to prevent thousands of deadly fully-functional weapons from disappearing without a trace once they moved across the US-Mexico border.

Instead, federal agents merely entered the serial numbers of the weapons sold to straw buyers (at ATF’s urging) into their database, and went back to the office to wait until Mexican, or US authorities returned these same weapons, by then used in the commission of a crime or a killing, to ATF.

ATF agents had no way of knowing to whom or where those weapons had traveled once they had crossed into Mexico, or who used any specific weapon to commit a crime or homicide. All ATF was able to do, and perhaps expected to do, was count the number of guns they knew for certain (because ATF had arranged the sale) had been purchased at gun shops along the US side of the border.

Does this sound like a gun-tracing operation that went bad? Or a clandestine gun-running operation whose purpose was to retrieve, mostly from Mexican authorities, piles of ‘illegally purchased and trafficked’ AK-47s and other lethal weapons ATF and DOJ could point to as solid evidence that the US has, as Calderon keeps insisting, been responsible for fueling the violence that’s already killed 40,000 Mexican civilians? Was the US responsible for the deaths of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata?

Who approved the ATF operation?

Ask yourself this question: who ok’d Fast and Furious? What are the chances that an interagency review board, the kind to which every enforcement agency that wants to run a cross-border covert operation goes to for approval, would give a thumbs-up to a plan to smuggle thousands of military-grade weapons into Mexico when there were no provisions in that plan to interdict, or track/trace, or somehow retrieve those guns before they could be used to kill innocent civilians?

Zero.

Why would other law enforcement/intelligence agencies put their heads on the block for a plan that promised to do nothing but send weapons to killers in Mexico and provide the Administration with a tally, after the fact, that proved how deeply involved the US had become in Mexico’s murderous gang wars?

Let’s think about who would have had representatives sitting on this kind of inter-agency review board, ready to yea or nay the ATF operation? DOJ and ATF, obviously. DHS and ICE—the latter has authority for investigating violations of the Export Control Act. Then DEA, the FBI, and the State Department—since State would have had to issue exemptions re the Export Control Act to allow ATF to move the guns into Mexico. DOD? NSA? CIA? Sometimes.

Why so many players?

The easy answer is coordination. But here’s the rest of the story . . .

First, a covert operation involving the trafficking of weapons across the US-Mexico border falls within ICE’s jurisdiction, not ATF’s.

You don’t steal turf in federal law enforcement and walk away unscathed.

If ATF wanted to ‘own’ Fast and Furious, it would have had to strike that deal with ICE and then work out the potential for jurisdictional ‘overlap’ with other enforcement and intelligence agencies as well. All of it before, not after, the operation began.

Let’s say that didn’t happen. No coordination with DHS/ICE. No green light re Fast and Furious from an interagency review board. Bad judgement. Bad form. Bordering on the illegal.

But not a crime.

Big dog in the fight: US Department of State

Did State provide ATF with exemptions to Arms Control Act?

The State Department had, and still has, the really big dog in this fight—that’s why it would have sent a department rep to a review board meeting re Fast and Furious. Play fast and loose with State, and it is, indeed, a crime. A serious one.

It was ATF’s job to make sure State knew it was engineering shipments of AK-47s and .50 cal rifles across the border and ATF’s responsibility under the law to obtain exemptions from State’s licensing requirements to send these guns south. To obtain these exemptions to the Arms Export Control Act, officials at DOJ, ATF’s parent agency, would have had to send a letter or formal request to State.

The State Department would have a copy of that letter or request in its files today, and on it would be the signature/s, no doubt, of one or more of the top three officials at DOJ–the Deputy Assistant Attorney for the Criminal Division, the Deputy Attorney General, or the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder. It takes horsepower to obtain authorization to send guns to Mexico.

So, where is that letter, that request for exemptions? Let’s take ATF off the hook.

The State Department isn’t talking, and the media doesn’t yet seem to understand how deafening that silence is.

ATF is talking, but their spin doctors are clinging desperately to a single message: ‘botched operation.’ Not good, but infinitely preferable to admitting Fast and Furious might have been a criminal endeavor, a deliberate effort to circumvent US law and use a US law enforcement agency to pursue political, as opposed to operational, objectives.

Plead guilty to a lesser crime, and cop a plea.

‘Botched operations’ are about ineptitude, not criminality. But ‘botched operations’ start out with good intentions and then go south. Fast and Furious, its intentions, its motive, seems to be about one thing only: supplying arms to Mexican gangs. No tag. No bag.

Listen. Melson, Burke and a slew of carefully selected US Attorneys haven’t been selected for ‘reassignment’ because ATF failed to play well with others, but because the folks who should know do know that an operation launched without the collective approval of an inter-agency law enforcement/intelligence panel was also an operation that engineered the sale and export of thousands of lethal weapons into Mexico in violation of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA)—the law that lends those big sharp teeth, even today, to Article Three of the United States Constitution.

And no one is above the law. Not ATF. Not the Attorney General of the United States. Not the Secretary of State or the President of the United States. You know who said that? Ronald Reagan, when he went on national television to admit his Administration did, in fact, “own Iran-Contra.”

Reagan takes ownership of Iran-Contra

But here’s the problem. When you start drawing comparisons between Fast and Furious and Iran-Contra, the issue ‘gets political.’ Hot. Really. Check out the blogosphere. Not a pretty picture.

One blogger writes that Fast and Furious will never become for the present Administration what Iran-Contra was to Reagan or Watergate was to Nixon. Why? He says the American people ‘love’ Obama,’ while they ‘hated’ Nixon.

A progressive blogger, and yes, even a Democratic Congresswoman, contend that any questions about possible wrongdoing directed toward the Administration are rooted in racism. And then there are the media-skeptics, who accuse writers like myself of stepping over the line with hyperbolic comparisons which are themselves only sub rosa attacks on Obama and his appointees. Stop.

It’s a good thing to support our leaders, to rally behind policies and ideas we think will benefit our country. It’s also a good thing to hold passionate opinions about political positions that we believe will shape our future for better or worse.

But here is the point, the crux of the matter now before us: it is fine to love one’s president, one’s leaders, one’s beliefs, but it is imperative, in this country, to love the law more. Forced resignations, diversionary political rationales, debates about the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law—none of this speaks to the central question. Did ATF, under advisement of its political administrators, break the laws of the United States of America?

Iran-Contra was a criminal enterprise undertaken by officials within a Republican administration–that investigation went to the top and resulted in criminal indictments. The parallels between that scandal and ATF’s Fast and Furious are hard to ignore:

Administration officials devised Iran-Contra in clear violation of the Export Control Act, a law constructed to prevent US manufactured weapons from being sold to the enemies of the US (AECA covered arms shipments to Iran; the Boland Amendment covered the use of proceeds from arms sales forwarded to the Contras)—it appears this may be the case with Fast and Furious as well.

Administration officials facilitating the shipment of arms to Iran failed to obtain licensing exemptions from the State Department—no evidence has materialized that ATF sought or obtained exemptions from State’s licensing requirement before facilitating the shipment of arms, via the ATF ‘undercover operation’ tagged Fast and Furious to Mexico.

The architects of Iran-Contra dissembled to Congress—certainly DOJ/ATF obfuscated with an intent to mislead and deceive. Even Attorney General Eric Holder claims he knew none of the details regarding ATF’s gun-running operation until he was informed that a weapon trafficked via that operation had been used to kill US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Brian Terry's family attend funeral of slain Border Patrol Agent

Of course, there were important differences between Iran-Contra and Fast and Furious, the most obvious being that none of the guns manufactured in the US and shipped to Iran were used to kill Americans. A slim moral distinction, perhaps, but one I believe that speaks powerfully to critics who will still argue that Fast and Furious will never approximate Iran-Contra in scope or intent. If we look at the consequences of the two scandals, Fast and Furious stands in a league of its own. Ask the family of slain US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Let’s get to the bottom of this ATF scandal. Stop the games, the professional executions, the subterfuge, the diversionary strategies, and the disinformation that aims to distract the press from the real story.

Administration officials can end this controversy right now. If DOJ/ATF did not break the law, if that agency did obtain exemptions to the Export Control Act, the Department of State will have that information at the ready.

All we have to do is ask.

Makes you wonder just which side of the drug war we’re on….

Make no mistake. We’re talking about the US selling deadly firepower to the same drug thugs who’ve already killed more people–almost 40,000–than the US has lost during the entire course of our engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And that’s not all. As the report makes clear, there was no ATF plan in place to interdict the weapons (1700+) before they disappeared into Mexico’s criminal underworld. There were no tracking devices, no GPS attached to any of the weapons that might have allowed US law enforcement to follow the guns. There was no way to retrieve any of these deadly, fully operational weapons before they could be used to murder civilians and our own federal agents on both sides of the border (the phrase ATF used was ‘collateral damage’). Indeed, the next time the US government expected to see these weapons, if at all, would only be after Mexican authorities recovered the guns at various homicide scenes and sent them back to ATF to be counted and identified as rifles recently purchased from US gun dealers. The buck, it appears, was meant to stop there.

I know. It sounds unbelievable, doesn’t it?

Why would ATF undertake such a boneheaded enterprise?

July 26th Hearings Focus on Holder, Mexico

Issa’s Committee has another chance to ask this same question on Tuesday, July 26, when a whole new slew of DOJ/ATF actors arrives on Capitol Hill to talk about the whys–the motive–as well as the whos. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Mexican government are still denying any knowledge or involvement, and if their stories change, all bets are off.

Law enforcement insiders say there’s no way ATF could have sent 1700 weapons into Mexico without the Attorney General’s knowledge and approval: the initiation of an undercover cross-border investigation by any US law enforcement agency turns on strict authorization requirements–approval by the Department head, in this case, Holder, his Deputies, and various Assistant AG’s.

At this point, any inhouse documents ATF may have possessed–documents which Issa and Grassley might have used to trace the evolution of the operation and its chain of command, have probably disappeared. But the financial documentation relevant to Fast and Furious, the requests for money, approval for wire transfers, operational expenses, etc., should still be there: it’s not good to misplace the underlying narrative of an operation, but no one goes to jail. Not the case if you obliterate the money trail.

Fast and Furious would have depended as well on additional signoffs at periodic review meetings by an interdepartmental undercover operations review board, an assembly of other enforcement agencies like the FBI, DEA, ICE and folks from the Office of Export Control, in case the ATF operation ran into overlap, or jurisdictional issues somewhere down the road.

We know now from press reports that the FBI and DEA were linked to Fast and Furious, a tip-off that at least initially, ATF must have followed protocol and run its secret op by a review board of some kind–the involvement of other agencies suggests information-sharing.

Whether ATF came back to a formal inter-agency review board every six months to report on the operation’s progress is still an unanswered question (as well as a good one). It’s a pretty sure bet as well, given the deafening silence coming out of Foggy Bottom, that the folks in charge of Fast and Furious did not–let me repeat–did not go to State and obtain the special export certificates they needed to send multiple shipments of deadly weapons across the US border into Mexico.

If you ask Hillary Clinton what that means, she–no wait, her spokesperson might tell you that unless ATF obtained export certificates from State to attach to every shipment of illegal weapons they had a hand in sending south (weapons purchased with taxpayer money taken from the ATF ‘buy find’), the agency has violated the Export Control Act–not once, but many times. These are serious, criminal violations.

A botched operation or a successful political ploy? 

It doesn’t seem to matter. So far, the press and the public appear to be giving ATF the benefit of the doubt, referring to Fast and Furious as a ‘botched investigation.’

Understandable.

Most Americans, despite the shock delivered to our collective confidence by other stunts filed away under FUBAR–Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Clinton’s perjury-producing dalliance with a White House intern–believe their government is, if not always right, still sufficiently right-thinking to distinguish between that which is morally and legally acceptable, and that which is not.

In Europe, of course, they call it simplistic thinking–things are either black or white. Here we call it knowing the difference between right and wrong.  Not for us the delicious slide into moral stupor. Forget Berlusconi and his nonchalant attitude toward boom-boom rooms or presidential penchants for teenage hookers. Focus instead on the image of IMF Chief Strauss-Kahn being pulled out of his overstuffed business-class seat on Air France moments before takeoff and handed an orange jumpsuit. Qui est votre papa maintenant? 

Ordinary Americans still believe there’s a line, and that sometimes even the proud and powerful have to walk it. We can also be pretty tolerant, products ourselves of too many second-chance generations not to believe in reprieves. And we want to give our leaders the benefit of the doubt, not because we think they’re incapable of wrongdoing, but because we tend to believe that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that best laid plans go awry, and that there’s a difference between poor management and stone cold bad.

So when, as was the case with Fast and Furious, our supervisors tell us that they expect innocent people may be killed in the execution of what we clearly perceive to be a flawed investigative strategy, or when our bosses tell us ‘you’ve got to scramble some eggs’ to get results – meaning look the other way when people start getting killed—we’re stunned. Disbelieving.

But this is exactly what happened with Fast and Furious. Believe it or not.

Conclusion? To dismiss the investigation as merely ‘a botched operation’ could be a mistake. Denial, delusion or a jaundiced nod to realpolitik—it doesn’t matter how we maneuver to avoid the logical conclusions to which the facts of this matter lead us, because in the end, the DOJ/ATF version of this story simply doesn’t add up.

Consider. Even ‘bungled operations’ begin by paying homage to the rules. According to US statutes, this means offering solid credentials to authorizing committees, presenting concrete goals and objectives, and clearly describing a credible endgame, achievable over a reasonable period of time.

Fast and Furious did none of these things.

It was a ‘tag and bag’ operation that at no time attempted to trace or ‘tag’ the guns it ‘walked’ across the border and then allowed to go missing—an operation that succeeded in ‘bagging’ one measly suspect during its entire operational lifetime.

There were no investigative mechanisms in place that might have allowed agents to penetrate complex arms trafficking organizations in Mexico or the US. No plan for the eventual interdiction of the deadly weapons sent into Mexico, or mention of alternative methods of interdiction to be employed later down the line. ATF agents in the field were told not to interfere with straw buyers, not to arrest them, not to intercept the weapons these criminal front men had purchased to smuggle into Mexico. Read the report.

Here’s what ATF Agent John Dodson told the Congressional Committee investigating Fast and Furious:

Every time we voiced concerns [about letting guns ‘walk’ with no plan to interdict]…we were told to stand down. And this is so hard to convey because I understand you guys were not there, you didn’t live it. But watching a guy go into the same gun store every day buying another 15 or 20 AK-47 variants or five or ten Draco pistols or FN Five-seveNs…guys that don’t have a job…walking in here spending $27,000 for three Barrett .50 calibers…and you are sitting there every day and you can’t do anything…It was like, are we taking this guy? No. Why not? Because it is not part of the plan, or it is not part of the case. [Agent L] said no. Dave said no. [Agent E] said no. What are we doing here? What the hell is the purpose of this? I have no idea. This went on every day.

The ATF agents in the Phoenix office remained confused. But then, in December, 2010, two AK-47s were recovered from a crime scene in Southern Arizona, an engagement between US Border Patrol Agents firing beanbags, per the instructions of their superiors, and Mexican gunmen armed with powerful assault rifles. Why beanbags? Because Washington was concerned about blowback from Mexico should US Border Patrol agents injure or kill Mexican nationals. Even when the other guys have live ammo.

Mexico’s laws also prohibit US enforcement agents on Mexican soil from carrying weapons–when ICE Agent Jaime Zapata was gunned down by cartel killers in 2011, both he and his partner were traveling, unarmed, in a US government car.

US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed by a Mexican gunman armed with an AK-47 trafficked into Mexico via Fast and Furious, and it was that fact which drove Senior ATF Agent John Dodson, a field agent in the Phoenix office, to make a life-changing decision. John Dodson stepped out of line, taking several colleagues with him, as he filed for official Whistleblower Protection and made his way to Capitol Hill. Without Dodson’s testimony, Fast and Furious would have remained an under-the-radar operation, its funding requirements buried in a  larger umbrella appropriations request.

Fast and Furious–a wild success?

Question: what if Fast and Furious was something other than a ‘failed and reckless ATF investigation’? That’s how Representative Issa has described it, and he’s not an ATF fan. But from Calderon’s perspective, and from the perspective of senior Administration officials–Obama, Holder and ATF’s leadership included–from the perspective of anyone who favors stronger gun control and who endorses the idea that the US is to blame for violence in Mexico, Fast and Furious qualifies as a huge success.

Could Fast and Furious have been  a political ploy?  A partisan offensive, perhaps, wrapped in enforcement garb, designed to pleasure our NAFTA-neighbor to the south and bolster Mexico’s claim that violence along the SW border was fueled by US gundealers willing to do anything to satisfy their greed….

The idea is gaining speed.

Intentionally or not, Fast and Furious made it happen–Calderon had the evidence he needed to blame America first; advocates for stronger gun regulation within the government, and that means Obama, Holder, and senior leadership within DOJ/ATF, were feeling good, and single-issue voters (guns) still had a reason to believe.

This is a serious accusation, to suggest that our leaders may have attempted to advance a partisan agenda in the guise of an enforcement operation–using millions in taxpayer money. But it’s happened before.

Tell me I’m wrong.

But when you piece the puzzle together–the absence of genuine investigative strategies, the lack of goals, objectives and a credible endgame, the ‘secret’ nature of the operation from Congress and the American public, the hidden funding, the warning to frontline ATF agents to stand down and shut up, DOJ’s refusal to submit requested documents to Congress even after the issuance of subpoenas, DOJ/ATF stonewalling, and the denials and coverup that continue even today–well, you get the picture.

It isn’t pretty.

Especially when you factor in the deaths of BP Agent Brian Terry, ICE Agent Jaime Zapata, and an increasing number of victims we know have been murdered with weapons provided compliments of ATF.

As the investigation gains traction, with DOJ/ATF insiders scrambling to sidestep responsibility for Fast and Furious, the likelihood of tracing the operation to its source increases.

Only a few weeks ago, Washington was sending out signals that ATF Director Kenneth Melson would step down, but Melson responded to premature rumors of his professional death by meeting with Congressional investigators over the July Fourth holiday, at which time the beleaguered ATF Director told Congressional investigators that the list of political appointees and senior officials who knew and approved Fast and Furious, even when it was clear the operation was an failure, extended into the highest ranks of the Department of Justice and beyond.

Both Congressman Issa and Senator Grassley have accused the Department of Justice of willful obfuscation, as well as of targeting ATF Director Melson as an Administration fall guy. Melson’s forced resignation, according to investigators, would have facilitated the continuation of a DOJ coverup and served to protect the careers of higher-ups in DOJ and the Administration. President Obama, who has denied any knowledge of Gunrunner/Fast and Furious, has called the DOJ/ATF operation a ‘serious mistake.’

Can Obama’s Department of Justice hold that tiger? Anything is possible when there are deals to be made in Washington, DC, especially during budget talks, but if the information offered to Congress by ATF whistleblower John Dodson is correct, there may not be much wiggle room left.

Mexico–in or out?

Senator Grassley says the upcoming hearings will home in on Mexico. It’s about time. Those called to testify include Carlos Canino, ATF Acting Attache to Mexico; Carlos Gil, former ATF Attache to Mexico; Jose Wall, ATF Senior Special Agent, Tijuana/Mexico; Lorren Leadmon, ATF Intelligence Operations Specialist; William Newell, former ATF SAC, Phoenix Field Division; and William McMahon, ATF Deputy Assistant Director for Field Operations (West, including Phoenix and Mexico). If anyone knows where the skeletons are buried, or if the US briefed Mexico on Fast and Furious, it’s this group.

Whether Congress wants to know if Mexican officials were involved in the ATF operation is another story.

Both the LA Times and UPI reported yesterday that the US Embassy in Mexico knew nothing about the operation, and that officials there voiced their concerns about increasing shipments of guns into Mexico to the State Department early in the game. The July 26th hearings should straighten the situation out. But enforcement insiders have speculated that officials from the US Department of Justice met with their counterparts from Mexico’s Justice Department as early as 2009 to update Mexican officials on Fast and Furious and obtain their ‘cooperation,’ as required by the Brownsville Agreement.

If the DOJ bypassed the Mexican authorities on this one, if ATF initiated an undercover operation involving Mexico without inviting them to the party, then guess what? They’ve broken another law. Here’s how it works. The Brownsville Agreement, signed by Janet Reno, Attorney General of the US, and her counterpart from Mexico’s Department of Justice was a Clinton Administration response to Mexico’s outrage over a unilateral undercover investigation into money laundering launched by US Customs in the late 90s.

Operation Casablanca tracked millions in narco-dollars to members of the Mexican Cabinet, triggering outrage and embarrassment on the part of the Zedillo Administration. The Brownsville Agreement is a US-Mexico ‘treaty,’ still in effect, that ensures the US government will never again initiates an investigation that might ‘ensnare’ or involve Mexican nationals–it requires the US to brief and involve the Mexican government (and by definition this includes the Mexican military and federal police) in any operation, including Fast and Furious, that could mean trouble for our second largest trading partner.

Now get this: when the news about Fast and Furious broke in early March, President Calderon happened to be visiting the White House–a perfect venue to showcase his legendary ire. But Calderon, for once, bypassed the drama, opting instead for a muted, low-key response to yet another disclosure that los Yanquis had invaded Mexico’s sovereignty. What’s wrong with this picture?

When Calderon’s spokespeople did finally weigh in on the situation, Mexico denied any knowledge of the operation–surprising since ATF had issued a press release in 2009 citing US-Mexico cooperation on Project Gunrunner, the larger umbrella enterprise that spawned Fast and Furious.

It sounds like this time the Brownsville Agreement might have left Mexico between a rock and a hard place. Clearly, that’s where it deposited the US Department of Justice….

If DOJ failed to inform Mexico about Fast and Furious, Holder’s people violated the Brownsville Agreement–a serious problem for US-Mexico relations. On the other hand, if investigators determine that US officials from the Department of Justice and ATF were acting in concert with Mexico to implement the ‘gun walking’ operation, it could mean that ATF drove the illegal sale of thousands of assault rifles to Mexican cartel gangs with the knowledge and perhaps the logistical support of the Mexican military and federal police force, institutions with close ties and market access to drug kingpins.

Let the House Oversight Committee tackle that can of worms, the possibility that the US government may have worked hand-in-hand with the Calderon Administration to lend substance and evidentiary support to Mexico’s claim that the US is somehow to blame for the slaughter in the no-man’s land that is northern Mexico and southern Arizona/Texas. US Border Patrol Agents on the SW border are restricted to lobbing bean bags at Mexico–what’s Congress going to do? Threaten to pull the US out of NAFTA?

The House Oversight Committee has the duty as well as the appetite to go after DOJ and ATF, but Mexico, where nothing enters that isn’t allowed to by the government, the military and the federal police, is likely to remain off-limits.

It isn’t personal, it’s business.

Message to Congress?

Let the games begin.

Fast and Furious restricted to in-house investigation

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are going after the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco (ATF)—the same folks who brought us Waco and Ruby Ridge—as well as Eric Holder, US Attorney General and head of the Department of Justice (DOJ—ATF’s parent agency).

That means they’re also looking at Holder’s boss, President Barack Obama.

The problem this time is Project Gunrunner, and its offspring initiative, Operation Fast and Furious—an operation that only came to light when an ATF whistle blower, ATF Agent John Dodson, stepped forward with disturbing, detailed information about the ‘secret’ ATF undertaking.

The facts Dodson has shared with Congress are startling indeed—enough, say some critics, to warrant an all-out ‘Weaponsgate’ type of investigation into ATF’s latest debacle.

Illegal operation capsizes Presidency

It seems that over roughly a three year period, ATF agents have been pressuring US gun dealers, mostly along the Arizona-Mexico border, to sell thousands of semi-automatic weapons to ‘straw buyers,’ in this case to Mexicans (it’s illegal for US gun dealers to sell weapons to Mexican nationals), who then, with ATF’s knowledge and approval, would smuggle these weapons across the US-Mexico border and into Mexico, where they were sold (with or without the knowledge of Mexican authorities—still an unanswered question) to members of Mexico’s criminal cartels.

An AK-47 recovered at the murder site of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has been identified as one of the rifles ATF agents permitted to be sold to a Mexican straw buyer and ‘illegally’ trafficked into Mexico. There are also links between Fast and Furious and the weapon used to kill ICE Agent Jaime Zapata.

Weapon used to kill ICE Agent Zapata, 32, also linked to Fast & Furious

The original objective, says ATF, was a ‘bag and tag’ operation designed to trace the movement of assault rifles and other weapons sold by US gun dealers into Mexico and the hands of cartel killers.

Ok.

Doesn’t sound good.

But so what? asks the average American.

If Fast and Furious was a legitimate ATF operation, albeit one that was less than successful, what’s the problem?

Here’s the problem

First, no one seems to know if Fast and Furious was, in fact, a legitimate operation, one built and played ‘by the book.’ No one at ATF, or anywhere else, seems to have any paperwork (that they want to share) on the operation.

Second, if one of the weapons that made its way into the hands of a Mexican gunman via the ATF operation was the same weapon used to murder US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, killed last December on US soil, it suggests that, at a very early stage, ATF lost control (to the Mexican military? To Federal Police? To the cartels?) of the operation. Why and how?

Third, if ATF Agent John Dodson had not blown the whistle and revealed that an ATF operation called Fast and Furious was in play, no one could have linked the weapon found at Terry’s murder site to an operation that had to have been initiated and approved by high-levels officials at ATF and DOJ—and that story would have benefited not just Mexico, but proponents of stronger gun regulation here in the US, and in the US government, as well. Win-win.

The straw that broke ATF Agent Dodson’s back? Why he ‘blew the whistle’?

The realization that the weapon used to kill a fellow agent had fallen into the hands of his murderers via an operation sanctioned and implemented by US authorities.

Factor in the ‘rest of the story’ about the attack on Agent Terry and several other Border Patrol agents on December 14 in Peck Canyon, north of Nogales on US soil—ie, that our guys had been instructed by superiors to fire bean bags, as opposed to live ammunition, at their assailants—and you start to understand why even a career ATF agent close to retirement might just throw caution to the wind.

William Lajeuness (a FOX reporter who earned his creds on SW border issues as a reporter for the Brownsville Herald), offers us these details from a May 4 hearing on Capitol Hill:

ATF agent John Dodson. . . told Fox News in March that the tactic of letting guns “walk” was approved by his supervisors in the Phoenix ATF office over the objections of several agents.

How many people have to die?” he [Dodson] said. “We don’t know where those guns are gonna end up. I’ve been here since the beginning. Tell me I didn’t do the things that I did. Tell me you [Holder] didn’t order me to do the things I did. Tell me it didn’t happen.

Congress issued subpoenas to DOJ/ATF on April 13, demanding the receipt by March 31, of any and all documents pertinent to Operation Fast and Furious.

CBS News reports that Dodson was not the only ATF agent worried about Fast and Furious:

One agent called the strategy “insane.” Another said: “We were fully aware the guns would probably be moved across the border to drug cartels where they could be used to kill.”

On the phone, one Project Gunrunner source (who didn’t want to be identified) told us just how many guns flooded the black market under ATF’s watchful eye. “The numbers are over 2,500 on that case by the way. That’s how many guns were sold – including some 50-calibers they let walk.”

But here’s what’s really amazing: as much testimony as we have, and despite threats by Representative Issa (R-Calif) to cite principals at ATF and DOJ for  ‘contempt,’ the investigation into Fast and Furious seems to be going nowhere.

Senior ATF officials, Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States, and, most importantly, President Barack Obama have discounted the need for Issa’s subpoenas, contending that an ‘in-house’ investigation by the Office of the Investigator General within Holder’s Department of Justice is all the situation warrants.

They are betting that what the public doesn’t know won’t hurt ATF/DOJ…

Did taxpayer dollars pay for weapons ATF 'sold' to cartels?

Early coverage helps Calderon

When the story about ATF’s Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious broke in March, the mainstream press jumped on it, offering readers a fast and, as we now know, far too easy analysis: federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) had been engaged in an arms trafficking ‘sting’ that facilitated the sale of mostly semi-automatic weapons from US gun shops along the US-Mexico border.

Again, ATF and early press reports describe the operational objective as an attempt to infiltrate the world of illegal arms trafficking along the US-Mexico border, and to nab the bad guys somewhere down the line—the kind of anti-trafficking initiative Mexico has been pushing the US to undertake for some time.

The initial drop-kick coverage of Operation Fast and Furious, which coincided with the visit of President Felipe Calderon to the White House in early March, was, in a number of ways, a boon to the Mexican leader, who has been ‘staying on message’ with three key points, all anti-US, for years.

Calderon blames cartel violence in Mexico on 1) Washington’s lack of financial support and inadequate sharing of US intelligence, 2) the US government’s lax attitude toward cross-border arms trafficking, and 3) the drug habits of the American people.

In other words, send more money south, reinstate the ban on the sale of assault rifles in the US, and give America’s eight million drug addicts what they really need most–treatment and prevention (as opposed to prosecution and jail time).

Hmmmm . . .where have we heard this before? Could this be what they call ‘the intersection of politics and policy’?

An interesting aside: on March 3, Calderon, sharing a podium at the White House with President Obama, appeared unperturbed by the news about the ‘secret’ ATF operation, a surprise given Calderon’s typical ire regarding any US violation of Mexico’s ‘sovereignty,’ and the inviolability of the Brownsville Agreement which prohibits any unilateral US investigations into Mexico’s affairs–please note that Mexico claims it had no knowledge whatsoever of Operation Fast and Furious.

But if that’s so, why has it taken so long, weeks after the ATF ‘intrusion’ became public knowledge, for Mexico to express its official ‘outrage’? Why so slow off the block, when Calderon had a chance to defend Mexico’s ‘national sovereignty’ on March 2 in Washington, DC? Good manners?

Am I the only one who’s confused?

Instead of targeting the breaking news about Fast and Furious and reiterating the terms of the treaty that prohibits the US from initiating this kind of operation inside Mexico without working hand-in-hand with Mexican authorities, Calderon used his White House visit the first week of March to strike back at a WikiLeaks report which suggested ‘widespread corruption among Mexico’s security agencies.’

The leaked cable suggested Mexico’s military had been lax in its response to intelligence relayed from Washington (US tipped Mexican army on activities of important cartel figure, but they did nothing. The Mexican navy was left to act on the intelligence at a later date).

President Obama, standing next to Calderon outside the White House, remained silent. But he did nod. Frequently. The next day, at another White House meeting, the President made a point of praising Calderon’s international leadership and the ‘shared responsibility of the United States for the drug violence’ in Mexico.

The Washington Post followed Obama’s lead (re our ‘shared responsibility’), and while the newspaper was quick to jump on the Fast and Furious as soon as it broke, in a oped published during Calderon’s visit, one Post writer cited the US need to admit its “shame” for its complicity in providing arms to violent Mexican cartels.

Mexico’s president, says the WP article, was dead-on in his criticism of Mexico’s arrogant partner to the north, and it’s time for the US to eat humble pie—after it apologizes to Mexico and toughens its gun-control laws.

ATF, led by senior officials who, along with Eric Holder, share a predilection for tougher gun laws, also fell in behind Presidents Calderon and Obama when the report about Fast and Furious broke, presenting a strong and very silent front to the public.

Let’s not forget that one former ATF Acting Director, Michael Sullivan (an on-the-record advocate for stringent gun control) claimed his investigators were able to trace 90-95 percent of guns found in Mexico to the United States. (Note: the only ‘guns found in Mexico’ to which ATF eventually gains access are weapons we know can be traced back to the US, because they are cherry-picked and hand-delivered to US law enforcement by the Mexican authorities themselves.)

Another of Obama’s erstwhile nominees for ATF Director, Andrew Traver, who has headed ATF’s Chicago Office, is also an on-the-record spokesperson for tougher gun legislation. Speaking to Traver’s nomination, a few months ago, Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) said, “You might as well put an arsonist in charge of the fire department.”

Current Acting Director Kenneth E. Melson is keeping a very low profile–leaving the heavy lifting, we assume, to higher-ups like Eric Holder, who clearly subscribes to the notion that ‘the best defense is a good offense.”

Ok. Let’s get to the point.

You see, the discovery of that AK-47, which may well have been ‘planted’ at the site of Agent Brian Terry’s murder (ask a homicide detective how often a murderer leaves the murder weapon behind at the crime site—never?) had unintended consequences, because the fact is that none of this information—the operational details of Operation Fast and Furious, the fact that ATF was assuring US gun dealers that suspicious and illegal sales to straw buyers were ‘ok,’ part of an official investigation, or the links between that ATF operation and the AK-47 recovered at Terry’s murder site—none of it would  have come to light except  for the impassioned decision of our single career ATF agent, John Dodson, to go public with the facts—after he had registered as an ‘official government whistleblower’ in an attempt to protect himself from agency retaliation.

And that means…

The perfect PR storm–if Dodson hadn’t talked

Dodson’s decision to lay out the connections between the weapon that killed fellow-Agent Brian Terry and an ATF operation he clearly viewed as poorly conceived and improperly (if not illegally) implemented made the current congressional investigation into Fast and Furious inevitable.

But let’s say Agent Dodson hadn’t talked.

Let’s just suppose.

The AK-47 used to gun down fellow federal agent Brian Terry, once recovered, would no doubt have been identified by ATF as a weapon recently purchased from a US gun dealer on the southwest border (ATF would have had, after all, the serial numbers and other identifying documentation).

There would have been no need to mention the existence of any ATF ‘secret sting,’Operation Fast and Furious, or any links between these ATF endeavors and the movement of the weapon used to murder Terry across the US border and into the hands of his Mexican assailants.

US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, 40, gunned down with AK-47 ATF 'sold' to cartels

Instead, the discovery and identification of the AK-47 used to gun down a US agent as one sold by a US gun dealer and then trafficked ‘illegally’ over the border into Mexico and into the possession of the cartels might have created a ‘perfect PR storm,’ neatly reinforcing the arguments put forth, first, by Mexico’s government, which contends there would be no gang violence in that country if the US didn’t supply gangs with guns; second, by higher-ups in the US government who favor tougher gun-control laws and non-intervention in Mexico (DOJ and the Obama Administration); and, third, by the public anti-gun lobby in America.

Indeed, here’s how that story would have read: Mexico’s claim re the US fueling cartel violence is right, and worse yet, weapons trafficked from the US are no longer being used just to murder Mexicans, but to kill Americans as well.

We’re killing our own guys.

ATF stonewalls

How fast can we say “Pulitzer Prize”?

But what if Fast and Furious was a ‘rogue operation,’ a let’s get together, guys, and just do it kind of undertaking?

Then ATF, the Attorney General and even the President of the United States may be staring down a long barrel of their own construction—a three-year Weaponsgate initiated and implemented by a US law enforcement agency that accomplished little else but the provisioning of Mexican cartels with more than 1800 assault rifles sold to them by gun dealers in the US who were, in turn, assured by ATF that this was not, in fact, illegal, but part of a ‘secret operation.’

Of course, if you follow this line of thinking to the end, you find yourself in possession of some very serious ‘what-if’s,’ threads which, if Congress decides to pull them, could unravel the careers of senior ATF officials, the Attorney General, and even the President of the United States.

That prospect isn’t stopping Representative Issa (R-Calif), who minced no words at the May 4 congressional hearing about what he sees as obstructionist ploys on the part of ATF/DOJ to escape accountability for an operation insiders say might, in a worst-case scenario, implicate the White House and DOJ in a ‘secret,’ politically-motivated US-Mexico agreement via which the US played a part in supplying concrete evidence for Calderon’s claim that US guns are fueling cartel violence. Did we give them the guns just so they could be counted?

The response to this kind of scenario could range from career-shattering scandal to criminal indictment and anywhere in between.

At the very least, the evidence already in possession of the House Oversight Committee might give the families of Agents Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata  a starting place for legal enquiries.

William Lajeuness reports the exchange on Capitol Hill between Issa and Holder was both combative and explicit:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) went after Attorney General Eric Holder for refusing to answer questions and subpoenas for documents that implicate who approved the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives project that allowed guns purchased illegally in U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico on behalf of the drug cartels with the knowledge and consent of the ATF.

“We’re not looking at straw buyers, Mr. Attorney General, we’re looking at you,” Issa said. “We’re looking at you, we’re looking at your key people who knew or should’ve known about this.”

Holder shot back.

“The notion that somehow or another that this Justice Department is responsible for those deaths, that assertion is offensive,” Holder said, referring to the death of American Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

“What if it’s accurate, Mr. Attorney General?” Issa responded. “What am I going to tell Agent Terry’s mother about how he died at the hands of a gun that was videotaped as it was being sold to a straw purchaser fully expecting it to end up in the hands of drug cartels?”

Holder responded. “We’ll have to see exactly what happened with regard to the guns that are an issue there.”

Now, when Holder says “We’ll have to see exactly what happened with regard to the guns”—the ‘we’ he’s talking about, again, is his own organization—DOJ, whose in-house Office of the Inspector General (the same folks we suspect might have been involved in the construction of Fast and Furious) is at this very moment conducting a ‘rigorous,’ internal investigation into the situation.

Repeat—President Barack Obama agrees with his Attorney General that the DOJ ‘in-house’ investigation into its own operations is sufficient.

He’s standing by his man.

Indeed, the President has also encouraged the top Democrat on Issa’s House Oversight Committee, Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Md), to make an appeal to Chairman Issa—to be reasonable and ‘to sit down with Justice’ to talk about the ATF documents for which the Committee has delivered subpoenas, but which, almost a month past the deadline, have not yet been delivered.

Critics, including ATF whistleblowers, say OIG/DOJ and the White House have one priority in regard to Justice’s internal investigation: damage control.

Crisis sliding off public radar?

Was Fast & Furious a legitimate undercover investigation or a 'rogue operation'?

The standoff between Issa’s committee and the Attorney General is an edgy situation.

But oddly enough, the situation has not fully captured the attention of the press or the public.

Perhaps Representative Issa (R-Calif) and his staff seem are confused about the questions they should be asking?

Or maybe they’re unaware of the danger that ATF’s stonewalling presents—like it or not, there are standard ripostes, ”I’ don’t know,” “We’re working on it” and “Let’s pretend it didn’t happen,” that generally signal a cover-up is in the works.

Ask any experienced law enforcement investigator to explain the difference, in terms of efficacy, between obtaining a search warrant when you need to find concrete evidence quickly, and issuing a subpoena.

For all practical purposes, a subpoena is nothing more than ‘an order to shred’

And that’s what critics suggest is going on at DOJ and ATF—tactical stalls designed to allow time for the destruction of documents and the elimination of incriminating evidence, something that may be happening right now, as the House Oversight Committee continues to stew.

What Representative Issa (R-Calif) and Senator Grassley (R-Iowa) want and need to find out is who authorized Fast and Furious, and if the process by which the operation was authorized and implemented was “by-the-book’—or outside ATF’s legal authorities.

We also need to know why Fast and Furious materialized—the catalyst, the practical and political motives driving the initiative, and the authors of an undertaking, that from its conception through its implementation to its sad and confused conclusion, appears to have become an ‘orphan enterprise,’ with no one claiming responsibility or, in some cases, even knowledge of its existence.

Think about that.

Think NAFTA, the financial boon to US banks catering to ‘high net-worth’ Mexicans, the ideological bent and votes of anti-gun activists in the US, and the bend-over-backward machinations of US decision-makers to get past Mexico’s problems and on to its economic ‘potential.’

Then do some reverse-engineering: if the upshot of Fast and Furious, the endgame, was to provide Mexico with thousands of weapons that could be quickly and unequivocally traced back to US gun dealers, might one not assume, with no evidence to the contrary, that this was the operation’s intent?

Serious accusations, to be sure.

Let Eric Holder prove them wrong.

A less cynical analysis, of course, might characterize Operation Fast and Furious as a bungled attempt (another one) on the part of ATF/DOJ to assuage the Mexican government by initiating a “tag and bag’ investigation that aimed to ‘track’ the progress of assault weapons from their purchase point (US gun dealers along the border), through their ‘illegal’ transport across the US-Mexico border, to their final destination—cartel gang members in Mexico who would, at some point, and in some not-yet-determined manner, be identified and apprehended.

The evidence, if any is ever produced, could point either way. But, believe me, we’re way beyond any “he said, she said” scenarios.

If Issa’s Committee doesn’t press on, if investigative journalism doesn’t do its job, then why the weapon used to murder a US federal agent happened to be one supplied (illegally?) by US law enforcement to Mexican gunmen may remain a largely unasked and unanswered question.

For Brian Terry’s family, that doesn’t sound like an option. And the rest of us, I’m thinking—millions of US taxpayers—have a right to know if the people we pay to protect us are really doing something else. (Question: where did ATF find the money, let’s guess 1m, that it used to purchase the heavy weaponry the agency ‘sold’ to Mexican cartels? Was it taxpayers’ money pulled out of ATF’s official ‘buy fund’?)

Rogue operation?

An operation like Fast and Furious doesn’t just happen. Not if it’s legal.

A Group One Undercover Investigative Operation, and Fast and Furious fits that bill, would first require departmental approval from ATF and, second, approval from its parent organization, DOJ—plans and proposals, with mission, targets and specific outcomes ready for scrutiny.

That means signatures—a senior executive at ATF, and a John Hancock from no less than an Assistant Attorney General at Justice.

After Fast And Furious gets a green light from ATF and DOJ, the same fully fleshed-out proposal, the power-point presentation and the agency-department signoff travel upwards (step three) to what’s called an Undercover Operational Proposal Committee, a body composed of senior executives from every US enforcement agency—Justice, ATF, DEA, DHS, ICE, FBI, Secret Service et al—any department or agency whose interests might be affected or intersected by the operation.

Committee approval doesn’t happen easily.

If the Committee says yea, as opposed to nay, it’s because every agency member of the Committee has been convinced that ATF’s operation doesn’t imperil its own ‘turf,’ and/or that the ATF op won’t leave it (ICE, DEA, and so on…) holding the bag in front of a congressional hearing or a federal judge (…And why exactly did you surrender jurisdictional authority, Madam Director?).

The members of the Committee might also nix the proposal of a ‘competing’ agency if someone thinks the plan is too good, an op they recognize as one they should have thought of themselves. Kill it for ATF, and “we’ll replicate the operation under our own departmental umbrella down the road.”

Yes, our nation’s finest compete among themselves, all the time, for operational clout and glory.

If the Operational Proposal Committee gives an agency, in this case, ATF, the go-ahead, it’s still not over.

Every six months, ATF would be required to reconvene with that same group of ‘unfriendly friendlies,’ to report on the success and progress of Fast and Furious, how close it was conforming to mission objectives, to financial perimeters, to deadlines and other performance markers.

Now, let’s consider.

What are the chances that an operation like Fast and Furious, whose aim is to send operational assault rifles to criminal cartels in Mexico (with no apparent guarantee of mission success?), via ‘illegal’ sales to Mexican straw buyers, would be approved by an Undercover Operational Proposal Committee? Zip?

Well, wait—that’s step three.

Smoking gun

Back up–let’s weigh in. Do we think Fast and Furious was in fact approved in the earliest stages at the agency level, by an Assistant US Attorney General, by ATF’s Acting Director, or by his boss, Eric Holder? Now, there’s a question for the House Oversight Committee….

I don’t know—but I suspect there is, indeed, an ATF signature on a piece of paper that may or may not, at this juncture, exist (return to definition of ‘subpoena’—ie, ‘order to shred’).

A few weeks ago, word on the street was that something resembling a copy of an MOU, signed in 2008 by reps from Mexico’s Justice Department and by senior ATF officials at the US Embassy in Mexico City, an agreement that may have jumpstarted Fast and Furious, does in fact exist, and was making the rounds at DHS-HQ in Washington, DC.

Fox News carried this report on May 4:

In an equally explosive disclosure, a law enforcement source tells Fox News, that ATF undercover agents were acting as the straw buyers and purchasing guns using government-issued false identifications and then providing those guns to cartel traffickers to gain credibility in their undercover roles. In that capacity, the ATF “provided 2, 50 cal. machine guns to traffickers that are loose in Mexico and unaccounted for,” the source said.

Yet, the ATF and the Department of Justice did not shut down the operation. [ Click here for CBS News report ]

The House Oversight Committee has obtained additional documents that show:

– U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis Burke (a senior policy analyst in the Clinton White House) was in full agreement with the investigative strategy of allowing the transfer of firearms from gun stores to straw buyers.

– Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer (who, incidentally, defended former President Clinton in the 1999 Senate Impeachment trial) knew about and even approved a wiretap application for suspects targeted in Operation Fast and Furious over a year ago. Issa on Wednesday released documents from Assistant Attorney General Breuer, head of the Criminal Division and a former White House counsel to President Bill Clinton that show he approved Operation Fast and Furious wiretaps.

A second document shows that Burke supported the strategy “to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place … in order to further the investigation and allow for the identification of additional co-conspirators who would continue to operate and illegally traffic firearms to Mexican [Drug Trafficking Organizations].”

Imagine: ATF participates in the (illegal) transport of 1800+ assault rifles and two .50 caliber weapons into Mexico with knowledge and support of Mexican authorities and those weapons are then sold, even hand-delivered, to Mexican cartels . . .

Did ATF sell .50 caliber weapons to cartels?

Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Impossible? Who knows?

Maybe we should be looking for a shadowy figure lurking in an underground garage off Mass Ave. Or thinking about Calderon’s strangely muted response to news of the gun walking op on March 2-3. Or wondering why no one’s taken Eric Holder or Kenneth Melson to the woodshed over an undercover op Mexico keeps saying it knew nothing about.

Or maybe we should just keep our eye on the ball: if certain ICE or DHS officials suddenly enjoy new international career opportunities, (promotions to high-paying postings in foreign capitals), via recommendations from the Mexican government, the House Oversight Committee may want to ask why.

Silence is golden, especially when you believe your career can outlive a request for subpoenas.

Back to step three: signoff from the Undercover Operational Committee…

Now, this is a different can of worms—and, I’m happy to say, not nearly as brain-bending as the ‘riddle wrapped in the mystery inside the enigma’ dilemma we encounter when we think about who in ATF and DOJ signed-off on the original gun walking plan.

Why?

Because inquiries into the decisions of a multi-agency undercover committee take us, mercifully, outside the maneuvers of the Praetorian Guard, past the close-hold machinations of an inner circle that insiders say may be operating, in this case, within ATF/DOJ.

Here’s what I’m thinking—that when ATF told reporters, in early March, that Fast and Furious was a ‘secret’ arms trafficking operation (as opposed to ‘covert’), maybe they weren’t just whistling Dixie.

The question is, ‘secret’ from whom?

The notion that the plans and proposals for Fast and Furious made it past a multi-agency law enforcement committee is hard to believe—but, again, it is just as difficult to believe that senior officials at a lower level—at ATF/DOJ—were not in on the plan.

Melson, Holder, and Obama stand before us—pawn, knight, king.

Take a moment.

If this game goes south, in which order do you figure the pieces will fall?

What does Washington think?

Depends on who’s talking.

But I’ve heard rumblings, a sneaking suspicion that a coalition of like-minded individuals, a group whose various interests might be served by a shared agenda, gave a subtle nod to a plan whose existence was never intended to be acknowledged, particularly by men like Senior ATF Agent John Dodson in the agency’s Phoenix office—apparently the operational heart of Fast and Furious.

We don’t need no stinkin’ Committee?

Maybe.

Again, whose interests stood to be served?

Mexico’s, certainly.

The Obama Administration’s? Yes.

The anti-gun lobby? Of course.

ATF’s—the “little agency” with a big (once-in-an-agency-lifetime) opportunity? the career prospects of ambitious ATF agents in the Phoenix office?

There’s a comment block directly under this post.

The Export Control Act, ICE, and the Brownsville Agreement

Of course, there’s more.

If Fast and Furious was a ‘legal’ undercover operation, one sanctioned by agency/departmental and Committee approval, the ATF agents running it would still have had to do a fair share of hop, skip, and jumping to make it work—through strict State Department regs involving the Export Control Act; across agency ‘turf’ owned, not by ATF, but by ICE; and over a treaty, the Brownsville Agreement, which would have prohibited ATF from mounting an unilateral undercover operation involving Mexican nationals—without the knowledge and involvement of the Mexican government.

Whew.

You still with me?

Did Clinton issue exemptions to ATF agents?

I hope so, because now we’re talking Hillary Clinton, the Big Girl who runs the US Department of State.

The US State Department ‘owns’ a piece of legislation known as the Export Control Act, which prohibits the sale of certain deadly weapons and serious military hardware to foreign nationals without the express consent and the issuance of an exemption from State. Generally, in a case involving cross-border trafficking of these weapons, it is ICE which is authorized to oversee any operation or investigation involving such exemptions.

This means that even in a case where ATF and DOJ officials had signed off on Fast and Furious, even in a case where a multi-agency Operational Committee might have approved the gun walking op and ATF’s request to appropriate jurisdictional authority belonging to ICE, ATF agents would have still been compelled by law to obtain an exemption re the Export Control Act from the US State Department—each and every time they ok’d the sale of one or a bundle of weapons from a US gun dealer to a Mexican straw buyer (as part of a ‘secret’ operation).

Every time.

And in every case. (How often do you think ATF would have had to go to State for exemptions/permissions to ‘walk’ 1800+ weapons across the US-Mexico border?)

Now, that would mean that Hillary Clinton, or a high-level State Department representative with the authority to act for her, knew all the details re Operation Fast and Furious.

It would also mean that, with that reassuring knowledge in hand, the State Department ok’d every ATF request for an exemption to the Export Control Act each time ATF convinced a gun dealer on the US-Mexico border to let his weapons go . . . that it was not only ‘ok’ to sell to Mexican straw buyers, but almost patriotic.

This was an “official ATF operation,” after all.

Do we think that Hillary Clinton’s State Department bought into this arrangement?

Is that why no one from State has emerged to set the House Oversight Committee straight?

Who ‘owns’ Fast and Furious?

Did Napolitano surrender DHS "turf"?

Then we have the question of ‘jurisdiction,’ moot of course, if ATF/DOJ took the proposal for Fast and Furious before a multi-agency committee and got its approval.

But let’s pretend that didn’t happen.

ATF has no jurisdictional/legal authority to run a covert arms trafficking investigation—this responsibility belongs to ICE, which operates within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

So, how did ATF grab a ball rightfully belonging to an ‘opposing team’ (I’ve worked for Customs/ICE and know first-hand how unlikely the agency is to surrender its ‘turf’ without a fight) and run with it–for three years, no less?

And without anyone at ICE/DHS knowing the ATF operation was in play, or anyone from ICE/DHS emerging after-the-fact to deny or acknowledge the legitimacy of Fast and Furious?

A little history

ATF began its life as a specialized tax agency within IRS/Treasury, and its primary mission was, and still is, to ensure that appropriate US taxes are collected on the sale of alcohol, tobacco and firearms, and that these monies make their way, along with other tax revenues, into the general fund.

After 911, ATF, still a part of Treasury, jumped ship to avoid transfer to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where ATF management feared its status and mission would be further marginalized.

Then opportunity knocked. ATF wangled a new home as a small organization within the Department of Justice (this is important–hold on), but its role, taxman to both large and small purveyors of liquor, tobacco, and guns, remained unchanged. What also remains unchanged, it seems, is the agency’s desire to expand its mission and its importance in the larger scheme.

ATF’s big break seems to have materialized in 2008, when Project Gunrunner first appears on the radar screen.

Critics suggest that a seamless chain of command and communication from Obama to Holder might have made ATF the agency of choice in a situation where the goal was to assuage Calderon’s concern (or possibly reinforce his claim?) regarding the ‘substantial, on-going flow of US weapons’ into Mexico.

Involving DHS/ICE in an attempt to direct ICE to the same end would have been far more complicated, success less than guaranteed.

Too many bureaucratic speed bumps.

The operation would have been more likely to have garnered the attention of Congress and the media. An in-house operation, an Obama-Holder-Calderon production, might have looked like the best way to go.

Of course, it had to work.

But how?

Obama tells Calderon US has 'shared responsibility' for drug violence in Mexico

If Fast and Furious was a cooperative venture with Mexico, we should know that. Mexico says ‘no,’ and while a press release on the ATF website noted Mexico-US cooperation re Project Gunrunner, the agency has not admitted a link between the subordinate investigation, Fast and Furious, and Mexico. Either the US cooperated with Mexico on Fast and Furious, or ATF undertook a unilateral ‘secret’ investigation involving Mexico’s internal affairs and violated the Brownsville Agreement.

What’s going on here? The American people have a need to know.

Why?

Because any evidence that the US did, in fact, sign such an agreement with Mexico, authorizing ATF, in cooperation with Mexican authorities, to implement the gun-walking ‘sting’ that provided Mexican gunman with killing tools used to fire on and murder US agents would corroborate the intent and involvement, at the highest levels, of ATF officials, of the Attorney General (either Holder or his representatives would have had to sign off on the operation), and of the President of the United States—who, as Holder’s supervisor, must be held accountable for the decisions and actions of his subordinates.

It is difficult, as well, to believe that Eric Holder would have undertaken such a risky endeavor, such a politically sensitive gamble, without a discussion having occurred between Holder and Obama before the implementation of the ATF operation. The stakes, in terms of US-Mexico relations, would have just been too high.

This should be the focus of the investigation conducted by the House Oversight Committee.

Mexico tolerates no intrusion into national sovereignty

The Brownsville Agreement, a treaty that carries the weight of law, was a bone the Clinton Administration tossed to the Mexican government in 1998 after a covert money laundering investigation dubbed Operation Casablanca uncovered the involvement of Mexico’s Minister of Defense and threatened to implicate other  highly placed government officials.

President Zedillo, a close associate of the jeopardized Defense Minister, expressed outrage that the US would permit Customs to run an undercover operation targeting the cross-border transfer of billions in drug dollars without informing and including top officials in the Mexican government.

The US had invaded ‘Mexico’s sovereignty,’ offended the powerful, and thrown a wrench into the smooth workings of the US-Mexico banking partnership.

The US rushed to make things right, shutting down Operation Casablanca (which quickly became ‘a rogue operation’), placating Mexican leaders loaded with NAFTA-chips, and shuttling Attorney General Janet Reno down to Brownsville, Texas to meet with her counterpart, Mexico’s Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuellar.

There Reno and Madrazo signed the treaty responsible, even today, for keeping US agents in Mexico both unarmed and at arms length from evidence that might suggest anyone other than ‘the usual (cartel) suspects’ might be accountable for Mexico’s violent crime spree.

So it is inconceivable that neither acting ATF Acting Director Melson, his boss, Attorney General Eric Holder (the head of DOJ), nor his boss, President Barack Obama could be ignorant of the restrictions the Brownsville Agreement imposes on US investigations involving Mexico.

Let’s say Mexico and ATF were partners in Fast and Furious (remember, Mexico says ‘no’).

If Mexico knew, that means that  Mexico’s military and federal police were most likely involved in the chain of events that led to the murder of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry—a murder during which the killer deliberately threw down what he must have known was an AK-47 obtained from a US gun dealer.

It’s a perfect circle, or would have been, except for the whistle blowing efforts of ATF Agent John Dodson.

Did ICE (and Janet Napolitano) know about it? The odds say no. Why would ICE/DHS surrender such valuable ‘turf’?

Did the State Department (and Hillary Cllinton) know about it? Again, probably not. I cannot believe Madam Secretary would get involved if ATF had not obtained approval for its operation from the interagency Operational Committee, or if the required 6-month reviews of the operation, which would have reassured Clinton of its success, were not forthcoming.

Then why don’t these agencies step forward to ‘disown’ Fast and Furious?

It’s only a guess but I suspect that none of the agencies (State, ICE, DHS, etc.) that might have been ignored or mistreated via this ‘secret ATF operation’ are ready,  no matter how miffed they might be, to throw stones. Napolitano, Clinton and the rest, do, after all, work for Obama. They’re political appointees who are not going to abandon ship while they think it may still be possible to bail incoming out of the boat.

But what about Holder and Melson?

Will the White House succeed in holding the line for its team?

Could be. But sometime before that, perhaps we’ll get an answer to what I think may be the most important question in this case: did ATF end up working, directly or indirectly, with Mexican officials, Mexico’s military, the Mexican Federal Police and/or the Mexican cartels during the implementation of what has been described as an ‘cross-border sting’?

Was ATF a willing or unwitting collaborator with Mexico’s criminal actors, with the gunmen who murdered our own agents?

Mexico’s carefully calibrated responses to the exposure of Fast and Furious, its pr-savvy reactions, and past experience suggest this could be the case. And veterans of the US-Mexico drug wars, drug enforcement agents and intelligence operatives will all tell you what Mexico and the US government continue to deny: that nothing moves across the US-Mexico border without the knowledge and consent of the Mexican authorities, Mexico’s military and Mexico’s Federal Police. Or without these players getting their ‘cut.’

What do you think?

It’s a complicated story, with an out-of-control ending, but it looks like Washington, in this case, may have gone too far to accommodate Mexico City. And  the White House may have cut too many corners in the process.

It’s time to start connecting the dots.

We have an ATF operation that no one in Washington will acknowledge as ‘legal’ or  ‘legitimate.’ We have no evidence that the operation was conducted ‘by the book.’

We know that Fast and Furious facilitated the sale of at least 1800 semiautomatic weapons to cartel gang members, and we know that at least several of these weapons were used, deliberately it seems, to murder our own agents. We know that these weapons were thrown down at the scene of the crime by cartel criminals.

Why?

I can think of no answer except one: that the AK-47 used to gun down US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was deliberately left at his murder site (by whom? Cartel members? Mexican federal police?) to corroborate, for the US and international media, and for the world, Calderon’s claim that weapons illegally trafficked from the US are fueling the violence in Mexico. Wag that dog.

No matter.

Because whoever threw down that weapon made a mistake: he underestimated the courage of Brian Terry’s colleagues in US law enforcement, and the need of ATF Agent John Dodson, to tell the truth.

The only question now for Representative Issa’s Committee and the American people is—do we have the guts to listen?

Photographs taken after a Navy SEAL team raided Osama bin Laden?s compound in Pakistan show the wreckage of one helicopter that clipped a rotor on a compound wall, was abandoned and destroyed. (European PressPhoto Agency)

Monday morning quarterbacks continue to swamp the airwaves and internet with competing interpretations, analyses and sidebars about the bin Laden raid last week, but stories like the one that appeared via NYT.com (penned by, count ‘em, three NYT reporters who got their information from ‘senior administration officials who declined to be quoted by name’), reports which claim Obama was ready to ‘fight it out’ in the event Navy SEALs encountered blowback from the Pakistani military, beggar the experience and common sense, not just of foreign policy, defense and military experts, but of  the “street” at large.You don’t have to have a degree from Hopkins to understand ‘the fix,’ as they say, was in on this one, and that a meeting between US Army General Petraeus and his Pakistani counterpart a week before the raid points to both sides understanding the the game plan and the rules of engagement in advance.

The scene was blocked, roles cast, timing determined, and no doubt, certain contingency plans laid–in case  someone in Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI (not always team players with Pakistan’s military) decided to transform a double-cross into a triple-cross for reasons and rewards of their own.

Of course, we know now this didn’t happen, and that on this occasion, at least, the US found the right people to whom it proposed the right deal at the right time. The man, the money, and the moment coincided.

After the Bay of Pigs debacle, JFK told Congress and the nation that “Victory has many fathers, failure  none.” Reports that Obama and top White House aides resisted the incursion into the bin Laden compound, and that it was Hillary Clinton who finally persuaded Leon Panetta to ‘screw his own courage to the sticking place’ sound right. The Administration’s grab for glory after the fact, Washington’s bravado, and Pakistan’s bellicose rumblings about firing on US aircraft if we ever “try anything like that again” are standard stagecraft.

If the ISI had managed to turn the assault on bin Laden’s compound into Operation FUBAR, paternity testing in Washington, DC would have taken on a whole new meaning–with White House DNA classified and off-limits. A conciliatory, risk-aversive president a year away from reelection is not going to chance armed conflict with the only strategic (and yes, erstwhile) partner we have in a region that poses an incalculable security threat to the United States.

The US needs Pakistan badly, and don’t they know it.

Our steady financial contributions to Pakistan’s government and military total billions over the past decade, and the suspicion that bin Laden has been hiding in Pakistan these many years has kept US dollars flowing steadily to Islamabad.The support the US received from Pakistan for the raid on bin Laden’s compound (confirmation, as required by the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill, that Pakistan remains our partner re ‘counter-terrorism’) ensures continuing aid to Pakistan’s military for the foreseeable future.

David Millar (no relation), a blogger for The Huffington Post, has written a smart, in-depth account (“Why Pakistan Plays a Double Game”) of the US-Pakistan relationship over the past ten years, and the role that US greenbacks have played in keeping that dubious partnership in place–read it here.

If bin Laden was ready to run, as has been reported, do we not believe that Pakistan and bin Laden’s ‘in-country’ protectors would have been ready to cash out, to squeeze as much gold as possible out of this particular goose before he flew the coop?You betcha.

Money made it happen–and politics, in the US, drove an enterprise that might have been better timed (closer to the 2012 election), but which the White House understood had to happen. Letting bin Laden escape was neither a political nor a security option.

Timing was something here, but not everything.

Everything was killing bin Laden.

The Stealth Helicopter

Did the US get away clean? Almost. As close to it, maybe, as Fate allows. For the past few days, another story, a sidebar to the bigger report, has been gathering steam: one of the Stealth Blackhawks used to invade the bin Laden compound crashed as a result of a ‘hard landing.’ An accident. No matter. It turns out that the Stealth Helicopters used to transport the Navy SEALs are “never-before-seen,” state-of-the-art military technology, composed of carbon fibers that resist radar detection by the enemy. Cutting edge, top-secret, and not available to the world.

Until now.

It appears that the pre-raid talks between the US and Pakistan, the choreography that made the invasion of the bin Laden compound so successful, did not include discussion about what to do with any US military equipments that our side might not be able to retrieve, for any reason, from the attack site. Not on the list. Not in the contract. No buy-back clause.

And so now, according to sources in the US intelligence community and the media, what we have is a situation in which Pakistan, with its indomitable entrepreneurial energy, is in sole possession of top-secret military hardware, technology that cost US taxpayers billions to develop and build. And Pakistan is offering bits and parts of that technology from the carbon-composite Stealth Helicopter to the highest bidders, who in this case seem to be the Chinese.

ABC News has this to say:

Pakistani officials said today they’re interested in studying the remains of the U.S.’s secret stealth-modified helicopter abandoned during the Navy SEAL raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound, and suggested the Chinese are as well.

The U.S. has already asked the Pakistanis for the helicopter wreckage back, but one Pakistani official told ABC News the Chinese were also “very interested” in seeing the remains. Another official said, “We might let them [the Chinese] take a look.”

A U.S. official said he did not know if the Pakistanis had offered a peek to the Chinese, but said he would be “shocked” if the Chinese hadn’t already been given access to the damaged aircraft.

The chopper, which aviation experts believe to be a highly classified modified version of a Blackhawk helicopter, clipped a wall during the operation that took down the al Qaeda leader, the White House said.

The U.S. Navy SEALs that rode in on the bird attempted to destroy it after abandoning it on the ground, but a significant portion of the tail section survived the explosion. In the days after the raid, the tail section and other pieces of debris — including a mysterious cloth-like covering that the local children found entertaining to play with — were photographed being hauled away from the crash site by tractor.

Aviation experts said the unusual configuration of the rear rotor, the curious hub-cap like housing around it and the general shape of the bird are all clues the helicopter was highly modified to not only be quiet, but to have as small a radar signature as possible.

The helicopter’s remains have apparently become another chip in a tense, high-stakes game of diplomacy between the U.S. and Pakistan following the U.S.’s unilateral military raid of bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, more than a week ago. The potential technological advancements gleaned from the bird could be a “much appreciated gift” to the Chinese, according to former White House counterterrorism advisor and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke.

“Because Pakistan gets access to Chinese missile technology and other advanced systems, Islamabad is always looking for ways to give China something in return,” Clarke said.

So the US gets bin Laden and China gets billions in top-secret US technology (even if they only purchase remnants, the Chinese can reconstruct the whole from its essential components–extrapolate the finished design from the configuration and composition of the  parts).

This is not a small misfortune for the US; not only do we lose a huge financial investment–an adversary has gained access to secret military technology that China, its allies (think North Korea), or other well-paying customers are likely to use against the United States.

The moral of this story? We see it everywhere, of course, in literature and life: a kingdom lost for want of a horse, a sibyl who asks for immortality instead of eternal youth, a paranoid American president who records hundreds of hours of taped conversation that ultimately destroy instead of save him.

The devil, as we are reminded by this situation, is always in the details. Particularly the ones we overlook.

But let’s keep it simple, down-to-earth, and just say that if we’re going to pay good taxpayer money (and lots of it) for services rendered, let’s examine the fine print in those agreements with the same perspicuity we apply to the logistical and strategic aspects of the military operation itself. In other words, don’t drop the ball.

Let’s remember this is Pakistan, not Atlantic City, and if you’ve come to play, and you’re ready to pay, you have to do both with exceptional dexterity. Not just more, but faster, smoother, and with greater foresight and cunning than the big ugly guy with no rule book sitting across the table.

This is something many people in the US government, including Senator John Kerry (D-Mass), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appear not to understand–or perhaps he simply refuses to accept the fact that when you make deals with corrupt states, partners rendered unreliable by their insensibility to what we call ‘the rule of law’–you cannot hold them to their ‘word,’ or expect consistency or ‘fair play.’ Forget it. Not even when you keep paying them.

With Pakistan, we’re talking about competitive bidding: getting into the game, even staying in, doesn’t necessarily mean winning. A single good hand doesn’t mean you get to leave at the end of the night with everybody else’s money in your back pocket. No, no, no.

Ask China, or the Pakistani officials who’ve undoubtedly already collected their money for our stealth technology. They’re on the way to the bank to deposit those funds along with what we’ve given them for ‘looking the other way’ while we invaded the bin Laden compound. You won’t have any trouble recognizing them–they’ve been laughing all the  way.

]]> http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2011/05/14/1202/feed/ 0 http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2011/05/03/killing-bin-laden-how-much-did-it-cost/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=killing-bin-laden-how-much-did-it-cost http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2011/05/03/killing-bin-laden-how-much-did-it-cost/#comments Tue, 03 May 2011 10:41:46 +0000 Kathleen Millar http://globalorganizedcrime.foreignpolicyblogs.com/?p=1112 The media coverage of the US assault on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, a few miles from that nation’s most renowned and well-protected military academy– less than an hour’s distance from Islamabad–has swung from celebratory accounts of swift, secret, single-handed US assaults by special ops teams so covert that even their own members identify themselves only by acronym, to more speculative ‘think’ pieces that raise, but are too discreet to answer, the inevitable questions about the involvement or non-involvement of Pakistan in this effort, how such involvement (or lack of it) may now affect US-Pakistan relations, and why, if members of Pakistan’s government, military, or police were involved, these actors might have been persuaded to give up a guy so valuable to so many of their constituents–in Pakistan and across the Muslim world.

Money.

Lots of it over a long period of time.

The way it works in Pakistan is the same way it works in Mexico: you want a kingpin’s erstwhile ‘protectors’ to throw da boss over the fence, you make them an offer they simply can’t refuse–it’s too good, too workable, and on the strategic chessboard separating you from your ‘frenemy,’ the  move promises advantages for both players down the road. Fast money, strategic plays, the game goes on.

But let’s talk about bin Laden. The first notion we can discard is that the US pulled this feat off alone–that our intelligence and military capabilities allowed a convoy of Blackhawk helicopters carrying teams of Navy SEALs, along with gunships (loaded with 100+ Army Rangers or Marines) flying defense above the Blackhawks, to penetrate, probably from Afghanistan, 100 miles or more into Pakistan’s airspace to one of the country’s most heavily garrisoned locations (Pakistan’s ‘West Point’) without detection by Pakistan’s intelligence/military forces or without encountering Pakistani fighter jets.

Did the radar suddenly shut down in Pakistan?

Did Arnold Schwarzenegger, intent on reigniting his Hollywood career, somehow find the right power grid in Islamabad and pull the plug?

Maybe the military, on full-alert 24/7 for Indian incoming, simply fell asleep at the switch, like the air traffic controller recently caught napping on the job in Washington, DC?

Not likely, my friend.

The story I hear is a different one–that the US has known the location of bin Laden’s compound for six months–plenty of time to ‘lay the groundwork.’ The residency has been there for six years–known to have been built for and to have belonged to the same family–the bin Ladens.

We also know that all of the information that made the assault possible came from human sources (an important fact given all the talk about the newly acquired hi-tech skills of US special ops teams). No doubt the conversation began via less-than-friendly communications between US interrogators and prisoners in Gitmo four years ago, leading the US/CIA to ‘the courier.’ After that, it got easier, the discussion improving through the kind of cooperation you get when ‘money talks,’ when circumstances and financial opportunity conspire in ways that most likely led one or more of bin Laden’s ‘protectors’ to become a catalyst, instead, for his demise.

US government insiders offer this scenario: at some point in the information-gathering process, the US switched from the use of force to the force of financial enticement, and the initial payoffs began, first, perhaps, to a single individual in Pakistan’s military or police force–someone who knew the location of the compound and the logistics maintaining its security, maybe a trusted bin Laden ‘loyalist’–and then, through this first ‘high-value informant,’ payments started moving into the accounts of his higher-ups, in the military, the police force, the government–as far up as anyone who thinks an unopposed large-scale incursion into the interior of Pakistan might warrant.

Ask yourself this: is it possible that an attack force like the one that took out bin Laden–four Blackhawks carrying Navy SEALs with companion gunships loaded with troops equivalent to the size of an infantry unit–was able to penetrate 100 miles into Pakistani airspace and into a heavily guarded interior location within striking distance of Islamabad without the knowledge or acquiescence of Pakistan’s ruling elite?

Given the number of Army Rangers or US Marines assigned to back up the Navy Seals, we can assume the perimeter established around the bin Laden compound was probably a quarter of a mile.

We’re talking about quite a ruckus.

Consider this as well–a US military airborne assault targets a compound clearly constructed with the knowledge and cooperation of Pakistan’s military and political rulers without trading a single shot with that nation’s military?

The initial bounty offered by the US for Osama bin Laden was 25m.

Chump change when the split is wide.

But money travels to Islamabad in many forms.

Example: the Obama Administration has just authorized an appropriations request for 300m made at the behest of  US Senator John Kerry (D-Mass), who heads the  Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the current US Ambassador to Pakistan to pay for weapons and defense systems Islamabad says it needs right now. House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King suggests that the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill, which sets no conditions on Pakistan for continued US assistance, may tally up to more than 1bn short term with undetermined amounts to follow.

So, here’s the question. Media reports indicate the CIA was ‘worried’ Pakistan officials might tip off bin Laden’s people. Common sense and US intelligence indicate the attack was, for the most part, ‘money well-spent.’ The current “outrage’ on the part of Pakistani officials about the ‘secret’ US incursion, and rumblings in the US about the failure of Zardari’s government to ‘tip us off’ about bin Laden’s whereabouts seem to be a subterfuge much of the mainstream media and the diplomatic community are prepared to accept.

But, in the end, what’s this all about? Yes, Osama bin Laden has received his just deserts. He’s an important symbol. But Pakistan, the country that both bought and sold Osama bin Laden, remains a wild card, one we play at our own risk and perhaps to our own ruin.

Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world right now, and I am not alone in suggesting its fickle loyalties, the corruption that unseams it, its nuclear capabilities, its kinship to hard-core terrorist organizations, and its extravagant, impossible ambitions translate into a challenge no Western leader seems able or willing to confront.

There are some who say Obama triggered the assault on bin Laden at this moment because there were indications Osama was on the move, prepared to vacant the compound he had occupied for the past six years.

There are others who accuse the US Administration of unfolding Old Glory for election time–and talk about Obama’s plan to visit Ground Zero do little to scuttle such suspicions. There are also rumors in Washington, DC (my hometown) that Leon Panetta revealed all to Obama and advised him not to move, but that Hillary (you GO, girl!) stirred the pot to the disadvantage of both Panetta (now ‘promoted’ to Secretary of Defense) and bin Laden.

What can we say? Perhaps that it was worth every last penny to get the mastermind of 911. That we should probably keep paying Pakistan for this kind of  ‘actionable’ information. That Hillary Clinton has . . . ?

Yes. Absolutely. All of that. But most importantly, perhaps we should move beyond symbols and on to real life challenges. Osama bin Ladin is gone. Our ‘frenemies’ in Pakistan, with their shifting alliances, diverse customer base, and rising price tags, remain.

The US agents were unarmed, and the scenario appears to mirror the February 15th attack on ICE Special Agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila.

According to verifiable accounts, one of the Mexican gunmen in the lead vehicle was also wearing a badge around his neck.

The Mexicans ordered the US agent driving the OGV out of his car. The US agent refused and began to move his vehicle forward toward the highway median when another armed Mexican gunman from the truck to the rear got out and started to walk toward the OGV.

Several other trucks with Mexican plates, also carrying armed gunmen, accompanied the two vehicles that appeared to take the lead in targeting the US agents.

While the US agents maneuvered to avoid ambush, traffic began to backup, and as the commotion and attention to what appears to have been another ambush/kidnapping and/or murder attempt increased, the Mexican gunmen returned to their vehicles and pulled away.

The US agents immediately reported the incident to their agency.

According to the Washington Post (DEA Sweep Targets Cartels in Response to Agents Slaying in Mexico, William Booth, 2/25/11) President Calderon is scheduled to visit the White House next week to discuss the US failure to cooperate in Mexico’s war against drugs.

Calderon has called the US contribution to the effort “notoriously insufficient.”

Agent Jaime Zapata's vehicle after 'mistaken' attack by Mexican Gunmen

ICE Agent Zapata's vehicle after 'mistaken attack' by Mexican gunmen

What follows is the sequence of events that occurred on February 15th, 2011, and ended in the murder of ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata and in the shooting of Special Agent Victor Avila–evidence that the attack on two US federal agents was premeditated and planned, not a case of ‘being in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ or an incident triggered by the desire of the assailants to hijack a valuable vehicle.

ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata, 32, a four-year veteran of the agency, was the driver of the official government vehicle (OGV) in which the agents were traveling. Special Agent Victor Avila, his companion, rode in the passenger seat.

Both were on their way back to Mexico City when they noticed two large SUVs pull up next to them on the highway. Agents Zapata and Avila also noted that the occupants of these vehicles had long arms in their possession.

The vehicles, now known to have belonged to the gunmen, sped up ahead of the OGV carrying Zapata and Avila until they passed the agents and sped out of sight.

Shortly afterwards, however, Special Agents Zapata and Avila saw these same vehicles blocking both south lanes ahead of them, traveling at a speed slower than the normal traffic flow.

One of the vehicles driven by the Mexicans then dropped in behind the government owned vehicle driven by the ICE agents, while the other sped up and positioned itself in front of Zapata and Avila, blocking them in.

The ICE agents rammed into the gunman’s vehicle which had blocked them in front. The gunmen then exited–roughly eight Mexicans carrying long guns.

At that point, ICE Special Agent Zapata stopped the official government vehicle and put it in park, an action which unlocked the doors of the OGV.

Next, one of the assailants opened the driver’s door and tried to pull Special Agent Jaime Zapata out of the vehicle.

Zapata struggled with the assailant, and closed the driver’s side door of the OGV. At the same time, the passenger side window opened, letting gunmen  insert the muzzle of one long arm and one 9 mm pistol into the window space on the front passenger side where Avila sat.

The gunmen shouted for the ICE agents to exit their vehicle.

Although the agents identified themselves as ICE agents attached to the US Embassy in Mexico City, the Mexican gunmen began firing into the agents’ vehicle. Zapata put his vehicle in drive and sped off. A few moments later, Zapata slumped over, and the vehicle went off the road.

The Mexican gunmen then positioned themselves directly in front of the agents’ vehicle and began firing indiscriminately.

Special Agent Jaime Zapata died on the site, while Special Agent Victor Avila was seriously wounded.

Both ICE agents were unarmed, since Mexican law prohibits US law enforcement agents from carrying weapons in that country.

Reports suggest the Zetas, a notoriously violent cartel, were behind the ambush. Authorities are still investigating the possible involvement of other actors.

Mexico’s President Calderon, who is scheduled to visit the White House on March 3, has repudiated US diplomatic criticism revealed via WikiLeaks that suggests a lack of coordination among Mexico’s federal police, military and anti-drug agencies. According to Calderon, US diplomats misconstrued their analyses to “impress their bosses.”

In any case, Calderon states that no one is the US knows what he says to his Cabinet or other government officials, and that such information will remain, per the Brownsville Agreement, off-limits to US authorities.

“I don’t have to tell the U.S. ambassador how many times I meet with the security Cabinet or what I say,” Calderon said. “The truth is that it’s none of their business. I do not accept nor tolerate any kind of intervention.”

When DEA Agent Camarena’s body was discovered by US authorities in March 1985, and an autopsy indicated that the 38 year-old former Marine had been brutally tortured (skull smashed, windpipe crushed, a hole in Camarena’s head administered via electric drill, and evidence that he, like his driver, may have been buried alive), US law enforcement flooded across Mexico, making it clear to authorities there that Mexico’s cooperation on this investigation was a given.

Eventually, all the players in Mexico got the message, and the Mexican physician who had kept Camarena alive in order to extend his torture, along with other perpetrators, were “thrown across the fence,” as they say in law enforcement parlance, and arrested by federal authorities in the US. Extradition of a Mexican citizen to the United States is prohibited by Mexican law.

Something similar may occur in the next few weeks, as another flood of ICE, DEA and FBI agents begin to ‘work cooperatively’ with Mexican officials to identify and apprehend Zapata’s killers—and this time there remains a living eyewitness to the attack near the town of Santa Maria del Rio, Zapata’s fellow-agent who is now hospitalized and cooperating with authorities.

Anatomy of the Ambush

Reports indicate that the ICE agents were the targets of a highway chase by vehicles belonging to their assailants before they arrived at the checkpoint, and once at the checkpoint, the US government vehicle was boxed in by vehicles carrying eight Mexican gunman, each armed with a long weapon.

The surviving ICE agent was able to get a close look at the attackers before they opened fire on the government SUV in which he and Zapata were traveling; one of the Mexican gunmen peered into a window the agents lowered at the request of their assailants. The ICE agents, unarmed in compliance with Mexican law, were able to escape the checkpoint after the shooting and travel a short distance before Agent Zapata collapsed behind the wheel.

The attack plan clearly reflects premeditation and organization, facts that contradict the “wrong place at the wrong time” analysis offered to reporters by some official US government spokespeople.

Gunmen also fired into the vehicle from both sides (90 rounds were recovered from the site), action that appears to discount other theories now circulating in the press that the attack may have been motivated simply by the desire to hijack a high-value SUV similar to one stolen a short time ago from a missionary working in Mexico.

Unlike the Camarena affair, where there were no eyewitnesses left to testify, this leaves the Mexican government is a tenuous position, with little room for shifting blame or denying possible connections between the cartels, in this case most likely the Zetas, and actors who have so far managed to escape international scrutiny.

To his credit, Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, called the attack on the ICE agents ‘a complete ambush,’ adding that he also believed the incident to be a “complete game changer” in regard, one assumes, to ‘the rules’ now governing US-Mexico relations.

Department of Homeland Security

Questions also remain for the Department of Homeland Security.

While news reports indicate only that Zapata and his companion were traveling the 600 miles between Mexico City and the US border ‘on official duty,’ the fact is that the two ICE agents had been ordered by superiors in Mexico City to report to home offices in the United States for the purpose of fulfilling the biannual requirement that each agent “qualifies” with his or her weapon on a range approved by DHS.

Given the mundane nature of this mission, it is impossible not to question the decision of high-ranking DHS officials in Mexico City to instruct Zapata and his fellow-agent, not to fly back to the States, which would have been less expensive, but to travel 600 miles through some of the most dangerous territory in Mexico in an easily identified government vehicle.

It is common knowledge within DHS, DEA, indeed, throughout the US enforcement community, that any journey from Mexico City to the US border requires travelers to pass through numerous checkpoints, many of them “narco-blockades” manned by the Zetas or, in some cases, well-paid surrogates pulled from the ranks of former police or military.

ICE insiders are puzzled as well: in some quarters, there is speculation, uncorroborated, that the decision to send Zapata and his fellow-agent by vehicle across the no-man’s land between Mexico’s capital and the United States might have been triggered by an imprudent decision on the part of DHS management.

While there has been no suggestion that Zapata and his colleague were deliberately placed in harm’s way by their DHS superiors, federal agents familiar with the interplay of US-Mexico drug enforcement politics, and the dynamics that underlie decision-making within DHS and DEA, indicate that lack of coordination and careless oversight are almost certainly among the factors responsible for the attack near the town of Santa Maria del Rio.

There is also wonderment at the failure of DHS officials in Mexico City to provide the ICE agents with the necessary ‘credentials’ the men would need to pass through both legitimate checkpoints and any ‘narco-blockades’ they might encounter.

Drug enforcement agents in Mexico are routinely supplied with identification papers or other bona fides that allow them to navigate through territory held by traffickers and other criminal gangs. Surely US government agencies had sufficient intel to anticipate the presence of ambush sites, controlled by the Zetas or other cartel assassins, along the route from Mexico City to the US border.

White House Outraged

President Obama has promised Zapata’s family that the US government will spare no effort to bring the Mexican gunman responsible for the attack to justice, and Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, has also ‘expressed outrage’:

“Because the attack occurred on Mexican soil, Mexican authorities have jurisdiction in the investigation. However, Napolitano said the full resources of her department “are at the disposal of our Mexican partners in this investigation.”

Translation: The Mexican authorities have told the United States ‘hands-off’ regarding this investigation, and Napolitano wants Mexico to know that neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the Obama Administration intends to let this shooting of two unarmed ICE agents jeopardize the treaty (the Brownsville Agreement) then Attorney General Janet Reno and her Mexican counterpart signed in 1998–a treaty whereby the US agreed never again to conduct a unilateral investigation into the affairs of Mexico’s cartels and/or any links the cartels may have established with Mexican officials or institutions.

In other words, the US can only launch investigations into incidents occurring on Mexican soil in cooperation with Mexican principals who themselves–as history and evidence suggest–may be linked, closely or loosely, to the very crimes under investigation.

Example: DEA reports that “Kiki Camarena’s murder led to the most comprehensive homicide investigation ever undertaken by that agency, which ultimately uncovered corruption and complicity by numerous Mexican officials. . . .Operation Leyenda was a long and complex investigation, made more difficult by the fact that the crime was committed on foreign soil and involved major drug traffickers and corrupt government officials from Mexico.”

Of course, that was then, and this is now.

Given the dearth of substantive press coverage of Mexico’s long-running drug war, and the muted attitude of US officials toward Mexico’s efforts to curb drug trafficking and cartel violence over the past five years—during which roughly 38,000 people have been killed, including scores of US citizens—the vocalization of even these stylized objections from DHS and the White House is noteworthy.

But caution is still in the wind, with Napolitano yesterday counseling against “border rhetoric,” and the inevitable inclusion, in news reports of the attack on Agent Zapato and his colleague, of the need, not to assume a more active US enforcement posture in Mexico (to go after the bad guys ourselves if Mexican authorities won’t or can’t deliver), but to focus on beefing up US immigration laws, curtailing gun sales along the US border, and redirecting more money toward border security.

Priority: US-Mexico Relations Must Remain on Even Keel

Media deflections of this kind, designed to preempt an outcry against Mexico, its government and its inability or unwillingness to stand up against its ruling drug cartels, have been standard operating procedure within the US government and the subsidiary interests (media corporations, financial services, international traders, etc) that take their cue from our elected officials.

The scapegoat argument that identifies US gun dealers as central to the violence in Mexico has been undercut by none other than the United Nations Office of Drug Control in Vienna (UNODC) and enforcement analysts of significant stature here in the United States.

Illegal immigration is a consequence of, not a trigger, for Mexico’s current unwillingness to protect and preserve the rule of law.

And no amount of increased funding for border security is going to prevent the overflow into the United States of violence, corruption, and criminal opportunities engendered by Mexico’s illegal drug industry.

It is simply too late in the game.

When Kiki Camarena was kidnapped in February 1985, President Ronald Reagan, Attorney General Edwin Meese, and Customs Commissioner William von Raab responded immediately to the investigatory impotence of Mexican authorities in concrete and powerful ways: indeed, von Raab ordered a closing of the US-Mexico border, choking off trade and all other movement across that line for days at a cost, to Mexico, of billions of US dollars.

Don’t hold your breath. In this case, the last thing we’re likely to see is a restored willingness on the part of the US government and the Obama Administration to unleash the investigatory expertise within DHS and DEA in any direct way on the drug cartels and corrupt officials across Mexico who persist in their attempts to convince the American public that it is we, not they, who are the problem.

The US will continue to negotiate, persuade, cajole and cooperate with Mexico’s political elite, who have once more been reassured by the Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, speaking on behalf of the Administration, that the US will never go digging alone into Mexico’s dirty laundry.

And the Mexican authorities, most likely after they or a more business-minded drug lord, also throw Zapata’s murderers over the fence, will go back to business-as-usual.

Let the US Fight Back

Bad move. When Mexico’s criminal armies start killing us, when they invade US territory, it’s time to stop ‘cooperating’ and start leading.

Let US enforcement agencies do what they’re trained to do—root out criminal systems and enterprise, take down the criminals and colluders (whomever they turn out to be), secure the protection of the American people and protect the rule of law.

Restart the kind of covert investigations into criminal activity within Mexico this country needs to unearth the information and the intelligence we need to stay ahead of cartel maneuvering, reinvest US law enforcement with the authority and flexibility it needs to identify and sever criminal and official alliances in Mexico, and use the funds we’re currently funneling into governmental black holes in Mexico City to underwrite the energy, skills and determination of US agents like Jaime Zapata and Kiki Camarena.

That’s when justice will be done.

The attack on ICE Agent Jaime Zapata and his fellow-agent tells us many things about the drug war in Mexico and our responses (increasingly uncoordinated, it seems) to it.

Most of those lessons, it appears, we do not want to hear. Money, as usual, is talking louder: NAFTA represents billions in profits on both sides of the border, and drug trafficking provides ‘private wealth’ managers and their institutions with a no-fail hedge fund.

But here’s the deal: if President Obama and the Homeland Security Secretary really want to put the taxpayers’ money where their mouths seem to be right now, let’s respond seriously to Jaime Zapata’s murder, and to the murders of  Border patrol Agent Brian Terry (2010); Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas (2009), and American David Hartley (2010)—as well as to the ongoing murders along the US-Mexico border of countless innocent men, women and children—and let’s start doing it our way.

Supporters of the global proletariat hail the ‘unstoppability’ of the protests in Cairo, where 90,000 of the nation’s 8 million citizens continue to shout for Mubarak’s ouster and, the media tells us, the establishment of a government sensitive to the ‘rights of the people’–freedom of speech and assembly, an independent judiciary, economic opportunity, and open and free elections.

So far, so good.

But what’s missing in this rush to an ideal society are the lessons of history, especially the stories that end with with descriptions of guillotines, icepicks, death squads, gulags, and mass graves.

Changing governments doesn’t always mean improving governance.

Honor Among Thieves?

The chaos in Egypt may in fact signal opportunity, but the big question is whether the Egyptian people (or their fellow protestors in neighboring countries) will end up with ‘reform’ or merely a different gang of corrupt officials who’ve agreed, under pressure, to cut more (or different) people in on ‘the take.’

The irony in this latest tale of revolution is that, during Mubarak’s administration, the crime rate in Egypt has been among the lowest in the world– achieved, we admit, via a blatant disregard for fair judicial process and  basic human rights, but for millions of free-spending tourists, expats, and well-to-do nationals, a comfort all the same.

In Egypt, might has made right–as it continues to do in so many parts of the Arab world.

For the ordinary guy on the streets of Cairo, however, justice has too often been a terrible swift sword, and commentators who cite the propensity of authorities to humiliate, degrade and abuse the common folk in Egypt and across the Middle East tell us nothing new.

It is understandable that these same downtrodden masses, now equipped with alternate visions via the internet and other social media, are determined to breathe free.

The situation, however, defies a simple “good guy-bad guy” solution.

Despite Egypt’s low crime rate, official corruption has always been in play: the nation’s government, its “well-paid” military, and the bureaucratic/corporate satellites that orbit Egypt’s center of power are the beneficiaries of scams, schemes, and strategies that would make Bernie Madoff blush.

Whether the kind of cooperative relationship the US maintains with Egypt can be  interpreted as tacit approval of Mubarak’s repressive domestic policies is a frequently asked question. The US gives Egypt 1.3 billion per year in military aid, quid pro quo for US access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace, and for Egypt’s promise to maintain a peaceful relationship with Israel, sufficient distance from Iran, and security in Gaza.

Over the past 36 years, the US has given Egypt 28 billion via USAID, money ostensibly dedicated to economic development and the elimination of corruption–28 billion for reform that never happened.

US Proposes–Egypt Disposes

The problem hasn’t gone unnoticed. For years, both Republican and Democratic Administrations have been counseling Mubarak’s government about the need for social and economic reform and the dangers of ignoring the voices of millions struggling to survive on less than $2 per day.

The motivation behind this advice has not been wholly altruistic or humanitarian: US interest in the region is engendered by hard political realities, and a regime, even a corrupt one, en route to capsizing a vital strategic alliance with the US via its own obdurate, willful blindness to the social and economic needs of its citizens invites repeated lectures about wisdom of ‘trickle-down economics’ and the benefits gained when governments allow the angry and aggrieved ‘space’ to vent.

Mubarak didn’t listen, and the US didn’t press.

And so now what we have is the old apple and barrel dilemma, the hard place that sends so many reformists and revolutionaries scrambling back to the rock: for the US,  for the Egyptian military, and for the robber barons inside and outside of Mubarak’s government, the best and most practical solution (short of keeping the President in power) is to jettison the ‘single rotten apple,’ so to speak,  and leave the barrel alone.

Power, jobs, income (legal, illegal, and extra-legal), influence, and US foreign policy are all on the line. Getting rid of the President is one  thing; deep-sixing the entire ruling (military) apparatus is another.

The Mubarak administration, of late referred to as the Mubarak ‘regime,’ operates as both a political hierarchy and an opportunity for ‘insiders’  to pad their incomes through all the usual forms of official corruption: bribes, kick-backs, pay-offs, protection rackets, nepotism, fraud, and preferential treatment from any and all government agencies.

The military and other favored stakeholders enjoy benefits that will disappear quickly if the current political machine–even without Mubarak–or a US-friendly government does not survive. The hope, naturally, is to replace Mubarak with a successor (Vice President Suleiman?) who mirrors his predecessor’s foreign policy leanings but also understands the importance of giving more bread/less cake to the Egyptians in the street.

The dilemma, of course, is that you don’t have to be protesting in Tahrir Square to know that the contents of this particular barrel are as far past their ‘use by’ date as the big apple on top.

For the US, this is disconcerting, but not a deal-breaker: a US alliance with Egypt, no matter how much its leaders misuse their power to line their own pockets, is first and foremost about our own security and clout in a dangerous world.Yes,Virginia, we do business with despots.

The last thing either the US or the beneficiaries of the status quo in Egypt wants, albeit for different reasons, is a hasty replacement of the devil we know with one we don’t, a coup that is as likely to fail at rooting out systemic corruption as it is to succeed at installing a new assembly of rascals (probably Islamic and anti-American) at the top.

Islamic Institutions Step In

While USAID  money funneled to the Mubarak government has consistently gone missing, it has, more often than not, been Islamic charities across Egypt that have stepped in to fill the gap, providing aid and opportunities to poor communities. Simple logic tells us the US is right to anticipate an Islamic usurpation, in the form of a coup or, even more problematically, as the result of ‘free and fair elections’ in September–think Palestine and Hamas.

Will a Islamic government be ‘cleaner’ that the current administration? Look to Afghanistan and Pakistan for an answer. To the authoritarian antics of the Taliban and al Qaeda’s respect for human rights.

Egypt ain’t Germany, and the wall separating the haves from the have-nots in the  Middle East will not be torn down overnight. The kind of thinking that rationalizes corruption in Egypt as well as the grinding poverty and social injustice we see  across the Arab world, is embedded in the culture–fed by notions that are comfortable with class and gender distinctions, and clear as to which populations, sects, and factions ‘deserve’ (for a long and ancient list of reasons) wildly disparate portions of the economic pie.

Corruption Flows Downhill

As a result, the difficult task of stamping out corruption in the Middle East isn’t just about getting the leadership right. In Egypt and neighboring countries, there’s a matter-of-factness about corruption that may not be wholly  incompatible with global capitalism, but which is clearly antithetical to democracy and its foundation in the rule of law.

It could make you wonder, in fact, which the average Egyptian wants more: economic justice over the long term, or merely a ‘more equitable opportunity’ to grab bigger handfuls of whatever booty happen to be lying on the table right now?

Wanting justice is different from just wanting to get in on the action.

We’ve seen corruption in Egypt trickle down steadily during the past two weeks, at airports where low-level authorities have demanded bribes from US citizens and other Westerners trying to catch a flight out of Cairo. Cabdrivers and checkpoint guards have also had their hands extended, and it’s a sure bet that a lot of other Egyptians, suddenly finding themselves of service to thousands of  foreigners in flight, have cashed in on the panic.

The bribe, the payoff, the “little bite” (what the Mexicans call the ‘Mordita’) is an fact of everyday life across the Middle East, just as it is in Latin America and in poor countries everywhere.

In places where people know that their government is stealing, and stealing big, there are few moral prohibitions to keep the victims of official corruption from following suit, opportunistically and on a smaller scale. We see it in Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, and across Africa–in developing countries where the government, military, police, multinational corporations, and criminal cartels grow richer even as the people become more impoverished.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t leaders and intellectuals in Eqypt who envision and aspire to the installation of a corruption-free democracy, but even they admit that it will take time for the thinking and the political patterns we see now in the Middle East to change.

None of this, of course, will affect the Twitterati, the thousands of people  frenetically texting  “Freedom Now” to like-minded idealists across the world, or prevent the ongoing Facebook analyses that predict the victory, finally, of ‘the masses’ over ‘the man.’

But the bottom line remains: you cannot introduce democracy to a country lacking the prerequisite framework–a real constitution, strong civil institutions, and an independent judiciary. Don’t expect to see this in Cairo anytime soon, and certainly not before the upcoming elections in the fall–when theater (and ‘pro-democracy’ banners) will once more trump reality and grab the big media lens. Remember this when the time comes–it’s important to know who’s really waving which flags.

Right now, Egypt is overflowing with intelligence types from every corner of the world–actors whose big bosses all have big dogs in this fight. Their job, I’m betting, isn’t as much about bringing reform to Egypt as it is about preserving or grabbing (in the case of regime change) critical strategic advantages in this part of the world. Both Washington and Egypt are also worried about destabilization of Egypt’s monetary system and capital flight.

The Egyptian military, which holds the real balance of power, is almost certainly fielding huge numbers of offers and counter-offers from the strangest of political bedfellows, while the US, not blind to the writing on the wall, counsels slow, deliberate moves and orderly transition.

Chaos, violence and haste favors the opposition–hence the inevitable finger pointing at “foreign agitators.’ Time allows the US the opportunity it needs to reposition and realign with its interests intact. Right now, on February 7, Mubarak’s ability to hang on suggests that the military remains wedded to a US-Egypt partnership.

The Egyptian Street

That leaves the “Egyptian street’ (as it is now being called): what does it really want or expect?

It seems likely that the Tunesian fruit-seller who set fire to himself to protest police brutality represents the passions of millions of down-trodden workers across the Middle East who simply want a fair deal–the economic basics minus ongoing intimidation and insecurity. There are also ideologues (including those ‘foreign agitators’) in the crowd–players intent on seizing the  moment, getting the  US out and the Muslim Brotherhood in. And of course, there are intelligence agents, pros whose job it is to  direct the herd and harness its energy in ways that benefit would-be powers behind the throne.

It’s safe to assume the middle-class, who don’t generally rock the boat, wants stability, not extremism, and, on top of that, maybe a chance to move up and become bigger players themselves. They work hard, they save, they wait.

And then there are the ‘insiders,’ the wheeler-dealers, the fat cats who want what everyone on top wants–more.

And that ‘more’ is what grows a criminal empire and what topples it. Then the cycle begins again.

But I could be wrong.

My favorite film about revolution, in this case the Russian Revolution, is “Reds,” produced by and starring Warren Beatty as Jack Reed (Ten Days that Shook the World), Diane Keaton as his companion, Louise Bryant, and Jack Nicholson as Eugene O’Neill, the odd-artist out in this tale.

My favorite scene from “Reds” is the one in which Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton) visits O’Neill in his studio in Manhattan to talk about Reed (out-of-pocket, as usual) and the couple’s uplifting experiences in Bolshevik Russia.

“Ah, yes,” says O’Neill, “Russia has been good for you and Jack, hasn’t it? It’s given you something to talk about, the dream, and Jack an opportunity to hustle the American worker, whose only dream is to become rich enough not to work.”

I’m thinking that as stellar as straight-up reform in Egypt might be, actors close to the scene, including Egypt’s new cabinet, also understand that ‘reform’ or any kind of change which does not quickly reroute the flow of cash (not all of it, but enough) into the streets may not be sufficient to convince millions of working-class Egyptians that their dream is finally coming true.

POSTSCRIPT (Feb 7) This morning the Mubarak/Suleiman government and its new cabinet voted a 15% pay increase to workers…..

Great, but the deal is that I’m not so sure Everyman is, first, interested in the kind of raw data WikiLeaks is spewing out, or second, sufficiently schooled in international affairs to figure out how these facts, the policy blueprints, the test parts thrown out by the State Department’s  Office of Research and Development, so to speak, drive the actual production of history–decisions to send US soldiers onto foreign battlefields, to force information out of alleged terrorists when terror may be minutes away, to impose hard economic sanctions to head-off conflict, to say no to the rapid and disproportionate buildup of arms or the acquisition of nuclear capability by self-avowed enemies of the US on an American continent, or to prevent the meltdown of our economy and the repetitive patterns of crime and corruption that continue to erode the nation’s economic security.

WikiLeaks, as many analysts have already noted, isn’t throwing grenades.

In fact, most of the information revealed in the cables is common knowledge in Washington, stories that have traveled news circuits in abbreviated or disconnected forms for years or months, their urgency or relevance disguised by half-hearted coverage or editorial choices that bury the items on back pages or inside the daily flood of indiscriminately ordered  information on the web.

Without the ability to put these WikiLeaks into a larger context, to follow the ‘leads’ that punctuate this virtual information dump, what we’ve got (as Robert Dinero, playing Al Capone in “The Untouchables” put it) is “nuttin.”

“NUT-TING.“

WikiLeaks hole? Advice: stop digging

Indeed, the fact that government outrage continues to provide the international media with grist for its insatiable mill is one of the great ironies in this scenario: perturbed at the site’s revelation of embarrassing diplomatic discussions and fumblings–tales only mildly interesting to the average reader–government officials are now in the process of creating a better, and far more spectacular story over First Amendment rights and the ‘treasonable’ activities of a Dutch citizen accused of committing “sex by surprise” (in Sweden?).

Even worse, the official call from some quarters for draconian regulation of the internet has given Russia (which suggests nominating Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize) and China, a human-rights violator of mammoth proportion, opportunities to ‘prove’ to an already hostile world that when Washington suddenly finds itself looking out through wall-to-wall glass, this nation of stone-throwers is no better than anyplace else.

The WikiLeaks story as denoted by Moises Naim (Will Assange be indicted? By whom? For what? Will he go to jail? Will governments ‘cleanse’ the internet via raging bonfires of nationalist insularity?) will no doubt continue to fuel media coverage through the New Year, longer if DOJ manages to build a criminal case against the WikiLeaks mastermind.

But let’s face it: getting Assange for espionage and/or conspiracy and making the internet safe for democracy is a much better, and easier to follow story than Hillary Clinton’s permutated musings about what North Korea could possibly be planning to do with its nuclear arsenal or whether the US will ever be in a position to ‘get tough’ with China, a country Clinton intrepidly calls ‘America’s  banker.’

The information Assange threw out into cyberspace, the ‘secret cables’ and such, will fade sooner than later from front pages around the world, reduced to the feeble stuff of obscure policy discussions editors know will not sell papers.

People want black and white, ‘gotcha’ news reports accompanied by photos of burned out bunkers.

Steak Not the Sizzle

Not me. It’s the steak, not the sizzle I’ve been savoring, especially those juicy WikiLeaks that seem to confirm tips I’ve posted on this site.

One of my favorites is the evidence WikiLeaks provides regarding the Iranian infiltration of Venezuela, its willingness with Russia to supply Hugo Chavez with billions in weapons (1900 surface-to-air missiles as of 2009) as well as financial support (from Putin) for the construction of a factory in Venezuela dedicated to the manufacture of Kalashnikov rifles and a second factory dedicated to the manufacture of ammunition for these weapons.

WikiLeaks also zeroes in on offers from Iran and Russia to aid Chavez in the buildup of Venezuela’s nuclear capabilities, another story that’s been making the rounds for some time.

Then, of course, there’s also acknowledgment, deep within the US Department of State, that Venezuela is trading weapons for drugs supplied by the FARC, which are, in turn trafficked through cartel gangs in Mexico–the same gangs that have already killed roughly 30,000 civilians on the US-Mexico border and that continue to threaten US lives on our own side of the line.

What do we think the FARC wants to do with all those arms, and eventually, maybe, the nuclear materials Chavez will be doling out? Do we really need Assange to connect these dots for us?

Some of the WikiLeaks revelations even manage to generate humor–who says there’s no fun in foreign affairs?

“No Intervention” Calderon Urges US to Get Tough with (the rest of) Latin America

We have, for example, President Calderon’s concern about the growing connections between Venezuela, Iran and Russia and his consequent urgings to the US government (which is itself prohibited by a US-Mexico Treaty from ‘interfering’ in Mexico’s sovereign affairs via unilateral counter-drug investigations) to  intervene (Urgent!) against the Venezuela, FARC, Bolivia, Cuba, Iran, Russia coalition Calderon cites as a looming threat.

While Calderon wants the US to stay out of Mexico’s involvement in the drug trade, the storm he sees gathering to the south has him playing Winston Churchill to a US administration happily non-interventionist and definitely not ready to extend a sympathetic ear–no Harry Hopkins in this picture. One savors the image of Obama advising Calderon to move any resources he thinks may be threatened to a safer port–maybe Canada, the site to which Roosevelt suggested Britain might want to move its naval fleet. Oh well.

The question is: Do we really need Calderon or Assange to paint a portrait of an ever cozier relationship between Venezuela, Cuba, Boliva, Nicaragua, the FARC, Iran and Russia?

The Latin American nations referenced above openly share an anti-US animus and a common enterprise: to launder criminal funds, traffic in drugs and illegal weapons, achieve nuclear capability, and establish a robust Marxist base (like the one the US faced down in Cuba) to support destabilization and revolution in the Americas. Their old-line communist sponsors openly vow to assist and support them.

WikiLeaks also leads us to another story, reported already, about the US government sending ‘special US advisors’ (paid via funds from Merida Intiative, aka “Plan Mexico”) to work with the Mexican military and ‘vetted units’ (theoretically, individuals with no connection to the bad guys, in this case, the Zetas and other rogue cartel figures) to end the siege of violence that has given the Mexican drug trade such a bad name in recent years.

The best thing we can say about this arrangement is that at least a few US government employees are reclaiming, via contractor salaries, some of the billions we’re sending to Mexico in the wild hope those dollars may work against and not in support of the national drug industry.

Unfortunately, the notion that US operatives will  work only with stand-up individuals within the Mexican military or the Federal Judicial Police Force, people who represent absolutely clean links in an untainted chain, is hard to swallow. Everyone reports to someone, and, as they say, it only takes one rotten apple.

US and Russia: Enemy of My Enemy My Friend

The US is also involved in joint counter-drug operations with Russia in Afghanistan: the Russians are giving us supply lines, and at this point, with troop withdrawals scheduled for July 2010, we’re only too happy to take them.

Expect US-Russia cooperation on counter-terrorism as well.

Winning elections means ending unpopular wars, and that means foreign threats to the US which remain unresolved must be addressed covertly (joint operations) or through proxy interventions–think Russia against Afghanistan; India (shhh!) leaning on Pakistan; and, believe it or not, the notion, hatched somewhere in the State Department, that the Saudis, amply supplied with cutting-edge weaponry from the US, might want to take on Iran.

Think again, Pilgrim.

The Saudis, WikiLeaks reveals, don’t want more weapons–they really want the United States to stay and stand tall (Gary Cooper, High Noon) even while they sympathize with other middle eastern states about American imperialism and jawbone with NATO about US exceptionalism.

And then, of course, there’s Pakistan, another real bad boy of narco-nuclear states. Leslie Gelb (Council on Foreign Relations) says Pakistan is the “greatest threat to world peace, highly unstable, haven for countless extremist groups, with 100 nuclear weapons–a country with 180 million people that can’t govern itself…”

“We can’t fix it [Pakistan],” finishes Gelb. “What are we going to do?”

It’s a rhetorical question, of course, and Gelb races to answer it: “Ask THEM what we can do…”

Palistan, John Kerry, and Osama bin Laden

WikiLeaks suggests another scenario, reporting that US Officials believe Pakistan’s ISI has been aiding the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan for years, cooperating in suicide attacks, and maintaining bonds with Taliban leaders Pakistan knows will take back power when the US and NATO pulls out.

The US, however, has assured Pakistan that we won’t be pulling our money out with our troops, so the current plan might well be code named “Keep Showing Them the Money”–tens of billions per year.

What will that buy? No one in the US government really seems to know, and Senator John Kerry suggests it’s time to review our policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan. Good thinking.

Pakistan has already let us know that our money can’t buy their love, only maybe, if we’re on time and looking good, a place on the dance card. Given that Pakistan is as fickle as it is dangerous, that may not be enough, but it is all the US has.

According to WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton believes Osama bin Laden in hiding in Pakistan’s tribal regions–again, not new news, but an important clue to understanding what Pakistan is really all about. If bin Laden is still alive and still well in Pakistan, it’s because he knows it’s the safest place in the world for him to be.

You don’t need a WikiLeak to know the way this wind blows.

The revelations flowing from Assange’s organization offer us more than repackaged facts, however. They tell us what we already feared–that foreign policy is as much luck as it is knowledge and skill, and that US negotiators, lacking clear direction, are opting for slow moves, small moves, and sometimes no moves at all.

It’s our job, I guess, to figure out whether this is the good news or the bad news.

Yes, WikiLeaks may have damaged our confidence in our government  leaders, shown them with their pants down and thinking caps off, but the next time they tell us “We’re just like you,” we will at least know that much is true.

Does the discovery of a second, highly sophisticated (construction costs estimated at more than $1 million) drug tunnel mean the US is pushing the cartels back, or that we’re hitting traffickers where it hurts the most–in their bank accounts?

Working, as usual, on an inside ‘tip,’ the same special multi-agency taskforce (agents from ICE, Border Patrol, DEA and regional law enforcement) that bagged and tagged tunnel #1 on November 4 in San Diego unearthed tunnel #2 barely two weeks later. The “Thanksgiving Day Tunnel” is almost half a mile long and stretches from a shaft discovered under a kitchen in a  house in Tijuana, Mexico to exits in two separate warehouses in Otay Mesa, CA.

Feds also seized another 20 tons of marijuana (at $800. per pound that comes out to roughly $32 million). US agents arrested three suspects in the US–Mexican authorities arrested five more in Mexico. Whether these are low or high-level suspects, we don’t know.

The most interesting aspect of the 2nd tunnel discovery was speculation by ICE/SAC Mike Unzueta that an ‘ongoing investigation’ suggests both the November 3/4th tunnel and the ‘Thanksgiving Day Tunnel’ were constructed, not by the Tijuana Cartel, which has controlled the Tijuana-San Diego corridor for some time, but by the Guzman organization, reputedly more violent, if that can be believed, than the rival cartels and criminal gangs currently turning northern Mexico into an American killing ground:

Federal investigators believe both underground passageways were under the control of the Sinaloa Cartel, which is run by Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, the world’s most wanted drug lord.

This isn’t new news.

El Chapo

The link ICE posits between the November drug tunnels and cartel power shifts is interesting, but any agent who’s worked the southwest border for a while already knows that if a tunnel or any other kind of operation is high-end (expensive, structurally sophisticated, professionally planned, etc), it’s almost certainly the work of “El Chapo” (listed by  Forbes magazine as “the 60th of the 68 most powerful  people in the world”)–no one else has the money, the skill or the contacts to construct the kind of high-tech tunnels discovered on November 3 and on Thanksgiving Day.

It’s only the media–not a special, dedicated tunnel team–who might believe the identification of Guzman as the tunnel mastermind qualifies as breaking news.

Here are the facts:

• ICE indicates 125 drug tunnels have been discovered since the 1990s.
• Seventy-five tunnels have been unearthed in the last 4 years and 25 shut down.
• The most sophisticated drug tunnels so far unearthed (including the longest at 7.10 of a mile uncovered in Operation Catacomb, 1990) are estimated to have cost between $1-2 million . . . small change, when you consider that annual revenue from Mexico-US Drug Trade is estimated at anywhere from $40 billion upward.
• Conclusion: traffickers can afford to build and lose hundreds of drug tunnels per year, along with millions in drugs and bulk cash, and still come out ahead–these losses are merely factored in as ‘the cost of doing business.’

If tunnel busts are going to hurt narco-profits–the cartel drug industry–they must generate investigations that imperil the billions of laundered drug dollars wired into US and international bank accounts every year.

Traffickers don’t construct cross border tunnels specifically or solely to move drugs–any illegal product that generates big profits will do.

¡Es el Dinero, Estúpido!

Take Tunnel #2–authorities seized 20 tons of marijuana on one day, Thanksgiving–at $1.6 million per ton, we’re talking roughly 32 million dollars worth of pot.

Federal agents also estimate the tunnel was up and running for at least one month–so three to five runs per week of 20 tons ($100-160 million) translates into a little under or over half a trillion dollars in dope that may have moved through that tunnel during the single month before its discovery.

And that’s a modest appraisal, given the solid, sophisticated construction of tunnel #2, the fact that it may have been operative for more than a month (engineers or a local contractor could easily test the concrete to determine its origin–Mexico or US–and its age), its dual exits into the US, and the work ethic of traffickers focused on making the most money possible in the least amount of time.

Tunnel Treasure

Operation Catacomb, the 1990 tunnel investigation described in my last post, produced the most substantive investigative results to date, and given its estimated length of operation, its value to the cartel (again, the Guzman organization) was also substantive:

Operation Catacomb was a wide-ranging investigation, not a one-time hit. In the end, agents estimated  the  Douglas-Agua PrietaTunnel had been up and running for at least six months. Sources close to the case estimate more than 144 tons of cocaine entered the US through the Douglas-Agua Prieta Tunnel-if that is so, then  the value of the cocaine traveling through the tunnel into the US over the course of 6 months, estimated at $20,000 USD per kilo, would exceed $2.3 billion USD.

The key to making tunnel discoveries important steps in a much larger counter-drug initiative is using the investigative information they may yield to undercut the massive criminal revenues that flow through these corridors, no matter what form that flow takes–marijuana, coke, meth-amphetamine, trafficking in illegal workers or sex slaves, you name it.

But going after the big money, the only reason criminals get up and go to work each day, means more effort, more cooperation and less collusion between traffickers and their enablers on both sides of the border–a big order for too many reasons.

Too Many Obstacles

First, you have a criminal confederacy that spreads out on both sides of the US-Mexico border like the inkblots Hollywood directors once used on movie screens to depict the dark, fast-flowing stain of Nazi aggression or Communist conquest.

Crime can be good business, especially in places that are economically bust and in times that are economically depressed.

Think Mexico and the US.

We’re not alone.

The same dynamic is at work Central Asia and beyond, where tribes, regions, and surrounding states are far more concerned about riding the flood tide of criminal dollars spilling out of Afghanistan than they are about escaping the deluge.

For industry, businesspeople, small-town bureaucrats, bankers and police officers, short-term affiliations with folks you’d never invite home to dinner happen all the time. Drug tunnels lead to the construction of ‘tunnel towns,” where every conceivable form of  complicity and corruption spreads indiscriminately and with viral speed.

Some people become willing, full-time partners-in-crime, hoping that their roles as ‘niche players’ (white collar bankers, real estate agents, accountants, track rental managers, etc) may leave them room to keep moving between various criminal syndicates and the legitimate world of commerce.

We call it collusion, a disincentive to tamper with criminal boom times–an incentive to maintain and grow criminal enterprise where or when reward tops risk.

Collusion is rampant, from top to bottom in border tunnel towns, throughout law enforcement organizations and industry on both sides of the border, and throughout the ranks of military and high-ranking government officials with too few degrees of separation between them and the drug industry–people whose names and influence are protected by the folks they’re in a position to hurt, help, and/or protect.

Of course, this is the way it’s always worked (Gibbon’s Decline and Fall), and while WikiLeaks might be  throwing its considerable e-weight against centuries of unspoken cultural and quasi-legal tradition, some suggest the code of silence that keeps collusion moving smoothly seems to be embedded in human DNA.

The next reason the cartels are winning: piecemeal discoveries (one-time, one news cycle tunnels) and aborted investigations that happen when the possible political ramifications (see above) of those investigations stand to impede the smooth ‘facilitation’ of billions of dollars in legal cross-border trade–no one is going to mess with NAFTA.

We can have mutual self-screening and compliance agreements, industry promises to self-police and international honor codes galore, but no one is going to bruise, much less kill, this golden goose.

Investigations also lose steam when stymied by malfeasance and incompetence, when investigators whose stake in their own careers is larger than their commitment to the law engage in lukewarm, as opposed to hot pursuit, or when agents without the necessary skills are assigned to lead an investigation (hmmm).

Reason number three: cartels also (and always) win when only one side is really investigating, when the United States, for example, signs a treaty in 1998 with Mexico that prevents US authorities from conducting covert and/or unilateral enforcement investigations (meaning without the full cooperation of the Mexican government, military, or police–in whatever combination) when there is reason to believe members of the Mexican establishment might be implicated.

Waiting for Mexico to Lead the Way

History and hard experience have demonstrated to US law enforcement that cooperation and support from Mexican authorities is not always guaranteed, and if you press your ear to certain doors in DC, almost all marked ‘politically incorrect,’ you will hear reports up and down the Potomac that gain credence with each new act of violence on the southwest border–that distinctions between legal and illegal in Mexico no longer apply. That the economic power of Mexico’s cartels have suborned that nation’s institutions and left the citizens of Mexico defenseless, without a working judicial system or viable executive leadership.

It’s a bleak picture, one handed, in fact, just last week to a highly placed intelligence official in Washington, a career bureaucrat who, like any federal employee who wants to remain hopeful, as well as employed, found the assessment hard to swallow.

He’s an educated man, but education, as we all know, is not an antidote for denial. So let’s try this (a kind of Miller Analogies Test): Mexico is to the United States what Afghanistan is to Russia (maybe worse). How would you feel about living in Russia, especially in one of its former border states like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, or Georgia?

Ask your neighbors in Texas, Arizona, and California.

OK. Back to tunnels and the part they could play in true knock-out investigations: tunnels, like any piece of evidence, are starting points US investigators could and should use to trace trafficking operations back to their sources (through the tunnel, up the ladder, into the ‘rec room,’ kitchen, shower, chicken-coop or whatever on the Mexican side, to the photos, the checkbooks, the bank account information, the inevitable chain of increasingly important informants, to the wire remitters, the banks, and the trajectory of payments that spew from these accounts into the pockets of beneficiaries (so far unnamed) in Mexico, the US, and across the world.

This is the mission (if they choose to take it) for US law enforcement–to take the point on serious drug trafficking  investigations many believe Mexico is no longer in a position to lead.

This is the sticking point for politicians, diplomats, political appointees, the US-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, and businesspeople anywhere who make their livings via cross-border trade. Heavy hitters. The idea that US law enforcement might take off its gloves and get into the ring for real. That when US citizens and US security are threatened, we might lead the charge instead of waiting for Mexico to sound the bugle, a cry that may never come.

Yes, there are counter-arguments. The United States provides the cartels with an irresistible market for cocaine, marijuana, and the rest. The laws of the United States work in favor of those who choose to purchase semiautomatic weapons from gun shops along the southwest border.

Both of these arguments have weight. But the question is whether rebuttals of this kind are pertinent given an enforcement approach the US not only endorses, but on which it also spends billions each year. Washington may pay lip service to the  notion of reducing demand, but politicians also know that serious talk about ending enforcement efforts might well mean an end to their careers as well. Americans are not going to beat their swords into plowshares while bodies of US citizens continue to turn up in mass graves in Mexico.

So the only relevant question here centers on the quality and outcome of the investigations taxpayers are funding–in the belief that Washington is doing everything within its means to prevent Mexico’s drugs, its drug war, and the corruption that travels with cartel crime, from spilling over onto US soil and into our economy, our political system, and our society.

It seems unlikely Mexico is going to win its war with the cartels.

Maybe it’s time to ask if we can win ours.

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