Chicago is the murder capital of America. Why? Because in Chicago, drugs rule. Which is the same thing as saying Joachim “El Chapo” Guzman rules. Is this news? NPR seems to think so — in a recent interview, NPR’s Steve Inskeep asks Bloomberg reporter John Lippert if “El Chapo” Guzman, the leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa […]
You know, I promised myself I wasn’t going to write about this. Promised. The fact is I heard about it yesterday, so we’re talking, what? 24 hours? But this is the Foreign Policy Association global blog site, right? And despite my focus on crime and corruption, I like to think I bring a certain (educated) perspective to events too often triggered by what even I, an east coast elitist, can only describe as bad, bad craziness. Boundaries–or their absence–can be important cultural markers, and I knew–I know–even as I write, that this is a name guaranteed to set a lot of very straight, very white teeth on edge: Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa Country, Arizona.
June 6, 2012. Four months after the post below went online, the MSM (NYT, CBS, New York Post, Fox) is reporting that Representative Darrelll Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigating DOJ’s gunrunning scheme, Fast and Furious, claims the wiretap applications submitted during the course of the operation prove that DOJ officials at the highest levels knew ATF agents were bending, ignoring, and violating US law to move more than 2000 combat-ready weapons across the US border into Mexico. None of the weapons carried tracing devices, and ATF whistleblowers who pressed superiors about the need to have some sort of interdiction strategy in place that would allow them to recover the weapons before they could be used to murder innocent people (Brian Terry) were told to stand down or find another job.
Whether Issa’s latest revelation will revive the official investigation into a government scheme to supply Mexican gangs with weapons that could be traced back to recent sales by US gundealers along the SW border, a move that even the most skeptical mind has trouble believing was designed to do anything but shore up the argument for stricter gun control in the US, is yet to be seen.
Attorney General Eric Holder has told the press that Issa’s Committee is on a ‘witch hunt’ meant to target high-ranking ‘African-Americans’ within the Administration, officials Holder identified more explicitly by adding ‘like me, and the President,’ and it is unlikely the GOP House Leader John Boehner is eager to divert pre-election media coverage from Romney’s singleminded focus on the economy–even though Fast and Furious, with its parallels to Iran-Contra, might well result in the prosecution of admininstration officials for contempt, obstruction of justice, perjury, and multiple violations of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA). Think Ollie North.
In case today’s (June 6th) reports about the importance of wiretap applications linked to Fast and Furious still leave you confused, there’s a repost of my earlier analysis below. Of special interest should be the photocopy of the memo requesting approval for a wiretap signed by Lanny Breuer in March 2010. A DOJ spokesperson says Breuer never scrutized the details, that they were never spelled out to the Head of DOJ’s Criminal Division.
Hmmm…..
Let’s talk wire taps, investigative tools popularized by every cop and criminal show that’s crossed our television screens.
Well, it turns out that ATF agents involved in the gun walking scheme known as Fast and Furious made numerous applications over a significant period of time for the issuance of court orders authorizing wire taps.
Bad news for top cops at DOJ. Like Willy Sutton, who said he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is,” members of the House Oversight Committee have told DOJ they want those wire tap applications because they know that’s where the evidence is–in detailed descriptions of investigative techniques and signatures they believe will point to the involvement of senior DOJ officials.
Countdown to the February 2nd Issa-Grassley hearing into Operation Fast and Furious is underway, and one of the biggest questions still unanswered is whether Congress will offer former AUSA Patrick Cunningham immunity for his testimony, and if Cunningham, so immunized, will shed any light on the parentage of an ATF operation that allowed roughly 2000 military-grade weapons to walk across the US-Mexico border and disappear, without a trace, into cartel arsenals.
Nobody seems to be holding his or her breath, but if Congress does pull an ‘Ollie North’ with Cunningham, or any of the witnesses it seeks to depose on Fast and Furious, expect the narrative to change. The irony alone, in a case that so closely resembles Iran-Contra, may provide the MSM with a much-needed jolt: Cunningham reprises North’s role when Congress, challenged by his close hold on the 5th Amendment, compels him to testify by granting him use or (less likely) transactional immunity.
Don’t remember the way it worked with North? Consider the following, pulled from court documents…
The New York Times gets it wrong again…after all I’ve written about spin, diversion, and just plain sloppy reporting on Fast and Furious, New York Times reporter Ginger Thompson lands on page A1 with a claim that DEA agents are ‘walking’ narco-dollars into Mexico and back to the cartels the same way ATF, we now know, has been ‘walking’ lethal, military-grade weapons across the US-Mexico border into the hands of cartel killers.
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 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.
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. The only kind of money laundering investigations DEA is allowed to conduct today are the kind designed “‘never to embarrass the government of Mexico,” which means US enforcement’s “war against drugs” is, at best, only a skirmish…
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.
Think about this as well….the ‘downpayment’ for the ‘hit,’ the100k wired to the US undercover bank account is enough to trigger a case for conspiracy, but it still doesn’t 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.
This is a critical 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. . .
On 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. Listen. It’s time for the media and Congress, to get the story (the whole thing) right. We need more focus more 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…
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…