Zetas may be smuggling US government weapons

Reposted from El Paso Times
By Diana Washington Valdez \ El Paso Times
Posted: 07/13/2011 12:00:00 AM MDT

The brutally violent Zetas drug organization may be smuggling military-grade weapons through El Paso and Columbus, N.M., to feed its ongoing battles against other cartels and to possibly disrupt the 2012 elections in Mexico.

Phil Jordan, a former director of the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center and a former CIA operative, said the Zetas have shipped large amounts of weapons through the El Paso area.

A federal law enforcement agency in El Paso said it has no information about the allegations that the Zetas are smuggling weapons through El Paso.

"They are purchasing weapons in the Dallas area and are flying them to El Paso, and then they are taking them across the border into Juárez," said Jordan, a law enforcement consultant MEXICO IN FOCUS
Analysis on news out of Mexico and former DEA official who still has contacts in the law enforcement community.

Jordan said the Zetas were flying weapons caches out of the Alliance Airport in Fort Worth, and after they arrive in the El Paso vicinity, the Zetas smuggled them into Juárez.

"What's ironic is that the DEA also uses the Alliance Airport for some of its operations," Jordan said. "The Zetas were working out of a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in the Dallas area to smuggle the weapons to the border."

The DEA has its Aviation Operations Center at Alliance.

Robert "Tosh" Plumlee, a former CIA contract pilot, supported Jordan's allegations and said the Zetas allegedly also purchased property in the Columbus-Palomas border region to stash weapons and other contraband.

He said purchasing property and setting up a weapons-smuggling network suggests that the Zetas were establishing a staging area for their operations.

DEA Special Agent Diana Apodaca, spokeswoman for El Paso's DEA office, said the agency did not have any information about the Zetas allegedly operating in this border region.

No one from the Border Patrol or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives returned calls Tuesday for comment.

Earlier this month, Plumlee had a debriefing with the Border Patrol in Las Cruces about the intelligence he gathered when he accompanied the U.S. military's Task Force 7 along the border. The military, which assists civilian law enforcement in counter-drug operations, was looking into allegations of gun smuggling along the border.

"The military task force became concerned that its information about arms smuggling was being compromised," Plumlee said. "From the intel, it appears that a company was set up in Mexico to purchase weapons through the U.S. Direct Commercial Sales program, and that the company may have had a direct link to the Zetas."

Under the Direct Commercial Sales program, the U.S. State Department regulates and licenses businesses to sell weapons and defense services and training for export. Last year, according to U.S. statistics, the program was used to provide Mexico $416.5 million worth of weapons and equipment, including military-grade weaponry.

The program is different from the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, which operates on a government-to-government basis.

Plumlee said military-grade weapons were found in a Juárez warehouse two years ago, and some of them were moved later to a ranch elsewhere in Juárez. Arms stash houses have also been reported in places across the border from Columbus and Antelope Wells, N.M.

"They've found anti-aircraft weapons and hand grenades from the Vietnam War era," Plumlee said. Other weapons found include grenade launchers, assault rifles, handguns and military gear including night-vision goggles and body armor.

"The information about the arms trafficking was provided to our U.S. authorities long before the 'Columbus 11' investigation began," said Plumlee, referring to recent indictments accusing several Columbus city officials of arms trafficking in conjunction with alleged accomplices in El Paso and Chaparral, N.M.

Jesús Rejón Aguilar, the number three man in the Zeta's hierarchy, disclosed last week that the Zetas bought weapons in the United States and transported them across the Rio Grande. Mexican federal authorities captured Rejón on July 3 in the state of Mexico, and presented him to the news media the next day. His recorded video statement was uploaded on YouTube.

Jordan agreed with Plumlee's allegations that the Zetas are operating in the Columbus-Palomas border.

Plumlee, who has testified before U.S. congressional committees about arms and drug trafficking, said the roads in Southern New Mexico provide smugglers easy access to Mexico's highway networks.

Recently, Juárez police removed a couple of "narco mantas" (drug cartel banners) allegedly signed by the Zetas that were left in two parts of the city. The message claimed that the Zetas had nothing to do with a July 8 massacre at a nightclub in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon.

Similar banners containing the same message appeared in cities in eight other Mexican states. The messages blamed the Gulf drug cartel for the attack in Monterrey that killed or injured 34 people.

Zetas have been reported in Juárez and other Chihuahua cities, but so far they have kept a low profile.

According to an FBI Investigation Intelligence Bulletin, "Los Zetas activities in the United States to date have largely been limited to the U.S./Mexico border area," but have expanded their reach into the Southeast and Midwestern United States.

Authorities in Arizona previously reported that Zetas dressed up as SWAT officers were implicated in the 2008 murder of a man in Phoenix.

The FBI said the Zetas emerged from an elite Mexican army unit known as Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, or GAFE, that was created to fight drug-traffickers. Some GAFE members received special U.S. military training.

In 2002, "an unknown number deserted and joined the Gulf cartel, serving as the hired guns for cartel leadership," the FBI bulletin said. "Since that time Los Zetas has grown into a sizeable, semi-independent organization."

The FBI said the organization has been tied to public corruption, immigrant smuggling, kidnapping, assault, murder, extortion and money laundering.

"The group is well-armed, highly trained, and reputed for their brutal tactics as cartel enforcers," the FBI memo said.

Plumlee said most of the military-grade weapons that made their way into Mexico are not showing up at crime scenes where drug violence is rampant.

"Most of the military-type weapons have been found in stash houses, being stored up," Plumlee said. "This is getting into theory now, but I think the Zetas are saving them for the (2012) election season. They probably want to be included in a part of the government."

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140.

Grassley Suspects Botched Gun-Tracking Program Was Motivated by Desire to ‘Restrict Guns’

reposted from CNS News

Friday, July 22, 2011
By Fred Lucas

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says the Obama administration may have launched a failed gun-tracking operation along the Mexican border because “they don’t like the Second Amendment” and want to “restrict guns.”
Grassley is leading the Senate’s investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) knowingly allowed semi-automatic guns such as AK-47s to be straw-purchased in the U.S., then sent to Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
Grassley said he does not know definitively if there was a political motivation, but he suspects there was:

“My suspicion is they don’t like the Second Amendment the way it is, and they are going to do everything to hurt guns and restrict guns. So they could have been building a case for that. But I can’t prove that.”

Operation Fast and Furious began in September 2009 but was halted after two of the weapons were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010. Operation Fast and Furious ended with the indictment of 20 straw purchasers but no one from the drug cartels, which were a primary target of the program.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a second hearing on the matter next week, on Tuesday.

Even before the botched gun-tracking operation came to light, President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and other high-ranking administration officials talked about the need to curb the alleged flow of guns from the United States into Mexico.

During a joint press conference on April 16, 2009 in Mexico City with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama talked about gun-tracing, calling it an area “where I think that we can make some significant progress.”

Holder mentioned gun smuggling as a priority in a speech to a police group on April 15, 2010.
“In particular, we'll be soliciting your assistance in our reinvigorated drug enforcement efforts -- work that is driving an enhanced focus on Mexico and on our southwest border,” Holder said. “To date, the (Justice) Department has launched a series of efforts aimed at confronting the threats posed by Mexican cartels, by sophisticated criminal organizations, by smugglers of guns, drugs and cash, and by those intent on illegally crossing into our country.”

Just last month, the Justice Department announced that all gun shops in four Southwest border states will be required to notify the federal government about frequent buyers of rifles.

Under the new policy, federal firearms licensees in Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico must report purchases of two or more of some types of rifles by the same person in a five-day span. The requirement applies to purchases of semi-automatic rifles that have detachable magazines and a caliber of greater than .22 – the kind of weapons favored by Mexican drug cartels.

NRA Executive Director Chris Cox called the reporting requirement "a blatant effort by the Obama administration and ATF to divert focus of Congress and the general public from their gross incompetence in the Fast and Furious scandal."

Demand Gunwalker Accountability

Its Your Government Hold Them Accountable – Demand Gunwalker Accountability
By Jeff Knox

FirearmsCoalition.org

Manassas, VA --(Ammoland.com)- Most of the larger national media outlets are doing their best to ignore the Gunwalker scandal, but the word is dribbling out despite the best efforts of the Obama Administration and their lackeys in the mainstream press.

Those who know about the outrageous project should be demanding answers and accountability.
The recent hearings in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), showed clearly that agents of the ATF and other agencies, working with the approval from the highest levels of the Department of Justice – no more than one desk below Attorney General Erik Holder, if not Holder himself – actively conspired and facilitated the sale of some 2000 or more rifles to suspected illegal firearms traffickers and then intentionally allowed those guns to continue in illicit channels with no attempt to track, interdict, or disable them.

ATF field agents who objected to the program were threatened and even fired. On one occasion an agent pointed out that people were being killed with guns supplied by the ATF and his manager responded with the callous cliché that if you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.
Mexican authorities report that some 300 Mexican nationals have been killed with these guns along with at least one and possibly two US law enforcement officers. Those are some pretty costly eggs.
The President of the United States has told a Mexican journalist that he did not authorize the program and that Erik Holder didn’t either.

ATF and DOJ have claimed that the objective was to track guns up to Mexican “drug lords” and possibly topple a Mexican drug cartel, but the whole program was kept a secret from Mexican authorities and agents were ordered to make no effort to track the guns beyond the original purchaser. Agents watched as suspected firearms traffickers purchased dozens of AK-style firearms. They trailed the suspects, and guns, to a rendezvous where the guns were transferred to another vehicle, and then, in accordance with strict orders, they allowed the other vehicle, and the guns, to drive away without even an effort to identify the person or track or interdict the guns.

Meanwhile the ATF and DOJ have continued to promulgate inaccurate and deceptive statistics regarding firearms trafficking and the involvement of illegally trafficked firearms in crime in Mexico – statistics that are falsely inflated by the Gunwalker project itself. They have also continued with attempts to change congressionally mandated regulations to include the reporting and tracking of purchasers of more than one rifle in a given week.

While such reporting and tracking might seem reasonable on the surface, even including some firearm owners, the actual utility of the reporting program is questionable, and is a major usurpation of power by ATF. The Bureau is specifically forbidden in the same statute which authorizes such reporting for multiple handguns. What’s more, ATF is notorious for failing to delete information gathered in this manner as required by law, thus building a de facto registration system.

The evidence does not support the existence of any large-scale gun trafficking rings. The largest and most successful gun trafficking rings uncovered so far were those endorsed and supported by the ATF in Project Gunwalker, aka “Operation Fast and Furious.” Without ATF assistance forcing gun dealers to cooperate, these dealers would never have taken the chance of repeatedly selling large quantities of guns to suspicious-looking cash customers. And even then, ATF ignored the structure of these organizations. They were only interested in the straw buyers, not any of their immediate associates, and, as I mentioned above, ATF specifically forbade any disclosure of the Gunwalker program to anyone within the government of Mexico.

All that ATF seemed interested in was who bought the guns, how many they bought, and where the guns turned up in crimes. The fact that the guns did turn up at crime scenes – murders, maimings, and massacres, including of Mexican police officers or government officials – seems to have been of little concern to ATF and DOJ officials.

This limited interest suggests only two possible motivations: to build stronger, more incriminating cases against straw purchasers – the guys ATF has consistently insisted are the bottom of the food chain – or to generate statistical and emotional support for their requested increases in authority. Perhaps one was just a “happy side effect” of the other. In either case, the strategy was seriously flawed and hundreds of people lost their lives.

This administration intentionally allowed arms to flow into the hands of criminals and the policy factored in the deaths of hundreds of Mexican citizens and at least one US Border Patrol Agent. They have also intentionally blocked congressional and media inquiries into the matter and retaliated against ATF whistleblowers.

Compare the scope and reach of Gunwalker to Watergate.
Watergate began with a handful of overzealous political supporters incompetently trying to bug their opponent’s offices and the administration working to protect those loyal supporters. Gunwalker, from its inception, was a criminal enterprise directed from the cabinet level.

Where is the outrage and indignation – at the administration, at DOJ and ATF, at politicians for defending the guilty and intentionally obfuscating the issues, and at the media for virtually ignoring the story?

Don’t allow this story to fizzle out on the back pages, and don’t allow the ATF and this administration to be rewarded for this very bad behavior. Tell them that you want to see the administration held accountable. Write your local paper and television outlets. Tell them that you want to see better coverage of this scandal.

Your senators and congressmen will be home for the summer recess. Tell them that you want funding and authority to ATF curtailed until more safeguards against usurpation of rights can be established.

This is your government. It’s up to you to hold them accountable.

About:
The Firearms Coalition is a loose-knit coalition of individual Second Amendment activists, clubs and civil rights organizations. Founded by Neal Knox in 1984, the organization provides support to grassroots activists in the form of education, analysis of current issues, and with a historical perspective of the gun rights movement. The Firearms Coalition is a project of Neal Knox Associates, Manassas, VA. Visit: www.FirearmsCoalition.org

The Stimulation Of Murder

Posted 07/08/2011 07:02 PM ET  reposted from   Investors Business Daily opinions

Scandal: The ATF's gun-running disaster was funded in the stimulus bill. Think about all the criminal and drug cartel jobs saved or created. And our attorney general once bragged to a Mexican audience about implementing it.

This could be, no pun intended, the proverbial smoking gun in a growing administration scandal that deserves as much mainstream media attention as Iran-Contra or Watergate.

Right there in the stimulus bill that no one in Congress bothered to read is $10 million for Project Gunrunner (aka Operation Fast and Furious), which resulted in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and increased drug cartel violence.

Right there in the "shovel ready" stimulus, no black humor intended, is a provision for $40 million for "state and local law enforcement assistance" along our border with Mexico and in high drug-trafficking areas, "of which $10 million shall be transferred to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, salaries and expenses for the ATF Project Gunrunner."

Attorney General Eric Holder's "I know nothing" imitation of TV's Sgt. Schultz has evaporated with the discovery of an April 2, 2009, speech to authorities in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in which he took Gunrunner credit for himself and the rest of the Obama administration.

Holder told the audience: "Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner. DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion."

So which administration official put the Gunrunner money in the stimulus? Which congressman insisted on this deadliest of earmarks?

The original Southwest Border Violence Reduction Act of 2009 was sponsored by Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-Texas. Rodriguez's co-sponsors were two other Texans, Henry Cuellar and Silvestre Reyes, plus Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Harry Teague, D-N.M.

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Holder is clearly not telling the truth about his role in Gunrunner. He knew about it, boasted of it and took credit for it. Now he's orchestrating a cover-up of it. President Obama needs to man up about Gunrunner and either take responsibility for this tragedy or admit, under oath if need be, that even he didn't know what was in the stimulus bill.

During an interview with a Univision reporter that aired in March, Obama said he was "absolutely not" informed about the ATF program that deliberately funneled guns into Mexico. "I did not authorize it," he said. "Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. He's been very clear that our policy is to catch gunrunners and put them into jail."

Clearly somebody is lying here. At a House oversight hearing last month, three federal firearms investigators testified they wanted to "intervene and interdict" the guns at the border, but were repeatedly ordered to step aside and let the traffickers proceed.
Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, in closed-door testimony in front of Rep. Darrell Issa's committee, said administration officials sought to control and limit his communications with Congress, including withholding documents that made Melson "sick to his stomach" after he reviewed them.

On Dec. 14, Terry was fatally shot in the Arizona desert while patrolling one of the region's most dangerous drug- and human-smuggling corridors. He was shot in the back with an AK-47 assault rifle. Two weapons that were allowed to cross the border as part of Project Gunrunner were found at the scene.

The evidence suggests that Agent Terry's death was financed by the president's stimulus package with the full knowledge and support of Attorney General Holder.
It makes us sick to our stomachs too.

Obama stimulus funded 'guns-to-drug-lords'

Spending bill gave $10 million of taxpayers' funding to project Gun Runner

---

Posted: July 09, 2011
1:00 am Eastern

By Michael Carl
© 2011 WND

Just a day after U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., called for Attorney General Eric Holder's removal, alleging a White House connection to the "Project Gunrunner" that allowed weapons to be delivered to Mexican drug lords, confirmation has come that the program originated at the highest levels of the Obama administration. The link is the $10 million in taxpayer dollars designated to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for Project Gunrunner in Obama's 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, otherwise known as the Stimulus Bill. Section 5, Division A, Title II, under the heading of "Office of Justice Programs," says the money is set aside for border regions.

For an additional amount for 'State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance,' $40,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2014, for competitive grants to provide assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the Southern border and in High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas to combat criminal narcotics activity stemming from the Southern border, of which $10,000,000 shall be transferred to 'Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses' for the ATF Project Gunrunner.

Understand the importance of being able to defend yourself, get "Shooting Back: The Right and Duty of Self Defense" Gun Owners of America President Larry Pratt believes stimulus money was given to a drug dealer to buy guns. "Ten million dollars, and one of the ways they were spending it was a paid FBI informant who was a drug dealer they had flipped. So he was buying lots of guns with that stimulus money," Pratt said. Pratt said that the stimulus bill enhanced one industry in particular. (Story continues below)

"We can say there's one thing that was stimulated by the stimulus bill and that was the Mexican undertaker business," Pratt said. "Mexican authorities say that 150 people were murdered using these guns."
Listen to an interview with Pratt:

Pratt said that the gun buyer involved was the subject of what he calls an "aspect of tragic comedy."
"This FBI informant was being surveilled by the ATF that was running the Fast and Furious Operation and they had no idea that he was an FBI informant," Pratt observed.
"But obviously they didn't need to be informed because they didn't care. They just wanted the guns to walk," he stated.
Today, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he would support the call for a special prosecutor if members of Congress investigating the issue believe that is the best solution.
Appearing on the Steve Gill show, he said, "The point of our inquiry is to find out who really signed off on this operation. Who is the one who said 'yeah, this is a good thing to do.' It might have sounded like a good idea, but it ended up with the murder of Mr. Terry, a border control agent, and two of the guns were found at the scene of that murder."
A report in the San Francisco Chronicle says that FBI informants were connected to the ATF's Project Gunrunner.
Firearms law analyst and writer David Codrea believes that even if there is evidence to prove that known criminals used taxpayer money to get guns to take to Mexico, nothing is likely to be done with the evidence.
"If left to Holder's Justice Department, nothing, because it shows this had to be top-level DoJ-authorized," Codrea explained.
Reports say other federal agencies have also been drawn into the operation. The DEA, FBI and upper-level DOJ officers, including the U. S. Attorney's office in Phoenix, have been named.
Attorney General Holder's office has not responded to WND's request for comment.
Codrea believes that it's possible that ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson's office was bypassed in decision-making about the operation.
"It's absolutely possible and may even be probable that they bypassed Melson in the operation. However, that does not excuse him from having no control of his agency," Codrea said.
"But this kind of thing cannot take place in your agency unless you have unless you have people ... who are absolutely flat-out lying to you," he said.
Pratt also believes that some of the guns were purchased by the Mexican cartels directly from federal agents.
"One of the founders of the cartel, one of their top 14 directors if you will, a guy whose nickname is El Mamito, has said that he was buying guns directly from the federal government," Pratt explained.
Jesus Rejon Aguilar, nicknamed El Mamito or "Pretty Boy," he third highest ranking member of the drug gang Los Zetas, was captured Monday by Mexican authorities.
Pratt said he believes for the guns to go across at a designated location, there had to be coordination between several federal law enforcement agencies.
"There had to be some kind of a deal with the Border Patrol. ... We know that in that '09 meeting that set-up Fast and Furious, those four or five agencies were all part of the deal," Pratt said.
Pratt said that it's not likely that many of the representatives who voted for the stimulus package were aware that money was allocated for Project Gunrunner.
"Anyone who voted for the stimulus bill has another reason to regret their vote. Obviously they didn't read the bill," Pratt asserted. "They don't read most of the bills up there at all."
Pratt illustrated his comment by citing former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's comment about the health care bill: "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy."
Several border state representatives contacted about the stimulus package and its allocation of $10 million for Project Gunrunner have not returned WND's calls.
Pratt also said that he's supportive of West's call for the removal of Holder and for a special prosecutor to be appointed.
"This is something that is very appropriate. While Rep. Issa was very correct in his choice of words, he said he didn't think Attorney General Eric Holder told the truth," Pratt said. "He could have said it more sharply, that he thinks Eric Holder is a liar, but it comes out the same in the wash."
Codrea believes that the pressure felt by the administration may be the leverage needed for the Justice Department or the White House to force Melson to resign.
"I think they were hoping they could have him quietly transferred out but he saw what was going on and he has to understand which way the wind blows and he has things on higher ups and they want him to keep quiet," Codrea commented.
"It looks like [Melson] decided that going quietly is not in his best interest. What was in his best interest is to lawyer up and to go and talk to the congressional oversight committee," he said.
Listen in an interview with Codrea:

Codrea and Pratt believe that the issue is going to get bigger as more details become public. Pratt believes that if Issa's committee continues its work, the entire scenario may rise to the level of Watergate.
"Just like Watergate became the only thing the Richard Nixon administration could think about, I think 'Fast and Furious' is coming to the point where it's going to be an all consuming issue," Pratt said.
"It's going to take the Obama regime off their stride and they're going to have to be playing defense."