Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

By

Mexico: El Chapo’s Fast & Furious rifle

Well, lookie here,
‘Fast & Furious’ rifle capable of taking down helicopter found in ‘El Chapo’ cache

A .50-caliber rifle found at Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s hideout in Mexico was funneled through the gun-smuggling investigation known as Fast and Furious, sources confirmed Tuesday to Fox News.

A .50-caliber is a massive rifle that can stop a car or, as it was intended, take down a helicopter.

After the raid on Jan. 8 in the city of Los Mochis that killed five of his men and wounded one Mexican marine, officials found a number of weapons inside the house where Guzman was staying, including the rifle, officials said.

When agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives checked serial numbers of the eight weapons found in his possession, they found one of the two .50-caliber weapons traced back to the ATF program, sources said.

Federal officials told Fox News they are not sure how many of the weapons seized from Guzman’s house actually originated in the U.S. and where they were purchased, but are investigating.

Out of the roughly 2,000 weapons sold through Fast and Furious, 34 were .50-caliber rifles that can take down a helicopter, according to officials.

34. Ponder that.

We’ll be talking about this in tonight’s podcast.

UPDATE:
Kevin McCullough has more.

Share

By

Mexico: El Universal claims DEA-Sinaloa deal in Fast & Furious

Business Insider posts: CONFIRMED: The DEA Struck A Deal With Mexico’s Most Notorious Drug Cartel

An investigation by El Universal has found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs in exchange for information on rival cartels.

Sinaloa, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S.

There have long been allegations that Guzman, considered to be “the world’s most powerful drug trafficker,” coordinates with American authorities.

But the El Universal investigation is the first to publish court documents that include corroborating testimony from a DEA agent and a Justice Department official.

The written statements were made to the U.S. District Court in Chicago in relation to the arrest of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, the son of Sinaloa leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and allegedly the Sinaloa cartel’s “logistics coordinator.”

On Fast & Furious,

Zambada-Niebla also alleged that Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the cartel in exchange for information used to take down its rivals. (If true, that re-raises the issue regarding what Attorney General Eric Holder knew about the gun-running arrangements.)

Is any of this true?

Ace asks,

True? Bullshit? I don’t know. As far as partisan/presidential blame, the narrative goes like this: The agreement (about permitting Sinaloa drugs to get through to the US in exchange for tips on rivals) is struck by Clinton. It “peaks” under Bush, in 2006, through Obama, in 2010, but at that point we seem to still be talking about laying off Sinaolo [sic] drug deliveries. I’m not sure if there is anyone blamed for the “arming the narcogangsters” by this narrative except for Holder and Obama.

It strikes me as hard to believe… and yet the government does things which are hard to believe.


Former ATF Special Agent John Dobson made similar claims in his book The Unarmed Truth: My Fight to Blow the Whistle and Expose Fast and Furious. Agent Dobson is the agent who originally blew the whistle on Fast and Furious.

Last November Holder appealed a judge’s ruling allowing the House of Representatives to continue with a contempt case stemming from his refusal to turn over documents related to the Justice Department’s response to the Operation Fast and Furious gunwalking controversy.

Rep. Darrell E. Issa, chair of House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is vowing to keep up the heat in the investigation into Operation Fast and Furious

Share

By

Mexico: Another Fast & Furious gun found

Hundreds of Mexicans continue to die,
ANOTHER FAST & FURIOUS GUN TURNS UP AT MEXICAN CRIME SCENE on an attack on the Rocky Point resort area near the Arizona border.

Whether the ATF has “accepted responsibility” or not, Congress has continued to attempt to try and get to the bottom of the failed program despite repeated attempts by Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder to stonewall the investigation led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA).

And Holder appealed a judge’s ruling allowing the House of Representatives to continue with a contempt case stemming from his refusal to turn over documents related to the Justice Department’s response to the Operation Fast and Furious gunwalking controversy.

Feds consider new gun regsin the USA, after sending thousands of firearms to Mexico, a country with some of the most strict gun laws in our hemisphere (h/t Instapundit).

Share

By

Mexico: Caro Quintero, and Fast & Furious

In what can only be described as a slap in the face to the US, last Friday Mexican authorities released drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, who founded the disintegrated Guadalajara Cartel and was the man behind the torture and killing of (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena. Now the U.S. asks Mexico to detain freed drug lord so can be extradited

The United States has asked Mexico to detain freed drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero to face charges brought decades ago by a U.S. court, the Mexican attorney general’s office said on Wednesday, setting the stage for a formal extradition request.

Caro Quintero, one of the infamous godfathers of Mexican drug trafficking, was freed last week from the Puente Grande prison after serving nearly three decades of a 40-year sentence for ordering the 1985 murder of undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena.

The ruling was a bitter blow to the DEA, and the United States said it would not cease in its efforts to bring Caro Quintero to justice on home soil.

Good luck with that: Not only does Mexico forbid extradition in cases where the accused may receive a death penalty, more ‘Fast and Furious’ weapons are still appearing at Mexico crime scenes

Three more weapons used in Operation Fast and Furious have been recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, Fox News confirms.

CBS News first reported earlier this week that the guns had been tracked down. According to Justice Department documents, all three are described as WASR-10 .762-caliber Romanian rifles and all three were traced to a gun shop in Glendale, Arizona. The exact locations where the guns were recovered, and what crimes the guns may have been used in, was not immediately clear.

The documents further state that two of the three guns were purchased by Uriel Patino, who is believed to have purchased 700 weapons with encouragement from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The third was bought by Sean Steward, who was convicted on gun charges in 2012.

Hundreds of Mexicans have been killed with F&F weapons. To say that doesn’t sit well with Mexico doesn’t begin to describe it.

Indeed (emphasis added),

Edward Heath, the DEA’s regional director for Mexico at the time of the Camarena killing who was present during the identification of the agent’s body from dental records, said on Saturday that Caro Quintero’s release reflected a broader lack of cooperation with the US from the new Mexican government, in contrast with the administration of former president Felipe Calderón. “There’s some collusion going on,” he said. “This guy is a major trafficker. This guy is bad, a mean son of a gun.”

Caro Quintero has gone into hiding, and now, “acting on a request from the United States”, the Mexican government wants Caro Quintero detained, in the spirit of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.


Share

By

Holder withholding Fast & Furious docs

Hundreds of dead Mexicans, and one American, but HOLDER BEGS COURT TO STOP DOCUMENT RELEASE ON FAST AND FURIOUS

Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”

The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder’s and Obama’s desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is “ironic” now that they’re so gung-ho on gun control. “It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” Fitton said in a statement. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”
The only justification Holder uses to ask the court to indefinitely delay Judicial Watch’s suit is that there’s another lawsuit ongoing for the same documents – one filed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Judicial Watch has filed a brief opposing the DOJ’s motion to stay.

As the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was voting Holder into contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators by failing to turn over tens of thousands of pages of Fast and Furious documents, Obama asserted the executive privilege over them. The full House of Representatives soon after voted on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt.

It’s ironic that one of [O]bama’s executive orders states “the DOJ will release a report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement”.


Share

By

Unarmed in Mexico

If you’re an American law-enforcement agent on duty in Mexico, you’re out of luck:

Because the official role of U.S. agents south of the border is limited to intelligence gathering and training their Mexican counterparts, they are barred by Mexico from carrying weapons.
…
U.S. agencies involved in intelligence and training operations in Mexico include the CIA, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and others. Their presence has increased since the launching of the 2008 Merida Initiative, in which American operatives help Mexican law enforcement officials go after the violent and ruthless Mexican drug cartels, according to law enforcement sources.

President Obama gave tacit approval to Mexico’s prohibition against U.S. agents carrying weapons in March 2011, following the ambush killing of ICE agent Jaime Zapata and the wounding of his partner, Victor Avilla.

“There are laws in place in Mexico that say our agents should not be armed,” Obama said.

Too bad he forgot about those 2,000 Fast and Furious weapons the DoJ shipped to Mexico. But I digress.

And DEA spokesman Michael Rothermund said it’s for Mexico to decide if American agents can carry guns in Mexico, not the U.S.

“The Drug Enforcement Administration respects the sovereignty and rules of the Government of Mexico that says United States Law Enforcement is not allowed to carry firearms,” Rothermund said.

Javier Manjarres asks,

In light of Obama’s recent “amnesty pact” with Mexico’s new Socialist President Enrique Pena Nieto, is the work of the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies becoming more difficult to execute? If the two leaders are on the same page with regards to both border security and Obama’s immigration policy as they say they are, it’s Americans citizens who on the front lines of the drug war that will suffer the consequences.

Will Mexico Yield the Next Benghazi-Style Attack?


Share

By

Fast & Furious on @Univision

Due to a prior commitment, I couldn’t watch Univision’s broadcast of their Fast and Furious investigation last night. Univision has the videos here, where you can watch the entire series without English subtitles. Among their findings,

  • Some of the Mexican authorities knew about F&F, which contradicts statements from Mexican functionaries saying they had no knowledge of the program.
  • An ATF source asserts that Operation Castaway, launched in Florida, allowed weapons to end up in the hands of  drug cartels in Honduras, Colombia and Puerto Rico.
  • Lawyers of ICE agent Jaime Zapata, who was murdered in a Mexican highway, state that the weapons were used by a gang being investigated by the ATF on a separate investigation.

Sooper Mexican has video with subtitles of part of the show:

Bob Owens:

The hour-long Univision report revealed the existence of another 57 guns recovered by Mexican authorities, including some of those used in the mass-murder at a party just one year after Obama’s inauguration...
…
These 57 recovered weapons discovered are in addition to the 122 weapons referenced in a congressional report. It is chilling to learn that each weapon recovered was dumped at the scene of a crime by cartel members who had attempted, and in most cases completed, the crime of first-degree murder. It is even more disturbing to know that American Department of Justice officials knew that most of the weapons walked over the border would only be discarded by the police and recovered by Mexican authorities after they were used in a crime, and that they were indifferent to the body count being racked up, callously noting that to make an omelet, eggs had to be broken.

Additionally,

While the Univision report focused on guns the DOJ ran to Mexican cartels, there is enough evidence to suggest other Obama administration-sanctioned gun-walking plots arming domestic criminal gangs, such as the so-called Gangwalker plot in Indiana, which supplied Chicago street gangs, and similar rumored operations in California, North Carolina, northern Florida, and elsewhere, which provided weapons to gangs in U.S. cities. Nor has the Univision report focused on weapons that have found their way to cartels via the State Department or the Department of Defense.

More captioned video at ABC:

Plus the Daily Caller:

And a question from Bob Owens: Will Romney mention Fast and Furious during the debates, to help force an issue to the surface that the palace guard MSM are “unexpectedly” reticent to discuss?

UPDATE,
In today’s WSJ,
Bullets Follow Guns to Mexico
Ammunition Is Easier to Buy and Hide Than Weapons; Smuggling Is Harder to Stop

Share