Posted on 02/08/2007 10:21:37 AM PST by calcowgirl
A new Department of Homeland Security report about two Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a drug smuggler directly contradicts key conclusions reached by the department's own investigator on the case.
The report also does not support assertions about the agents made by the department's Office of Inspector General to several members of Congress during a private meeting last fall.
The Report of Investigation, written Nov. 20 - 21 months after the shooting - and released Wednesday, concludes that nine other agents at the scene of the shooting did not know it had taken place and thus were not responsible for reporting it.
The report states that Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean shot smuggler Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, then tried to cover up the incident by failing to file a report. It also asserts that the other agents on the scene were not aware shots had been fired.
All the names - other than Ramos, Compean and Aldrete- Davila - of those at the shooting scene, as well as several pages of the Border Patrol's firearms policy, were blacked out in the report.
"Subsequently, the DHS OIG investigation found no evidence to suggest that (names redacted) had any knowledge of an assault on a BP agent, nor did (names redacted) have any knowledge of a reportable shooting incident ...," the report states.
But that finding directly contradicts a Department of Homeland Security memo written March 12, 2005 - less than a month after the Feb. 17, 2005, shooting - by Christopher Sanchez, the original investigating officer for the Homeland Security Inspector General's Office.
In the memo, one of several confidential Homeland Security documents about the incident obtained by The Sun's sister newspaper based in Ontario, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Sanchez wrote that all the Border Patrol agents on scene, including two supervisors, knew about the shooting when it happened and failed to report it.
"Investigation disclosed that the following Border Patrol agents were at the location of the shooting incident, assisted in destroying evidence of the shooting, and/or knew/heard about the shooting: Oscar Juarez, Arturo Vasquez, Jose Mendoza, David Jaquez, Lance Medrano, Lorenzo Yrigoyen, Rene Mendez, Robert Arnold, and Jonathan Richards," Sanchez wrote.
Richards and Arnold were the supervisors on scene.
Further, Border Patrol firearms policy prohibits agents involved in a shooting from filing a written report on the incident, as reported earlier this week.
The policy requires that supervisors or investigators file the report within three hours of the incident.
"Ensure that supervisory personnel ... are aware that employees involved in a shooting incident shall not be required or allowed to submit a written statement of the circumstances surrounding the incident," according to the firearms policy.
The report released Wednesday also fails to support assertions made about Compean and Ramos by Office of Inspector General officials to four members of Congress during a private meeting in September.
At that meeting, OIG employees speaking on behalf of Inspector General Richard Skinner told the congressmen that the agents "were out to shoot Mexicans" the day they shot Aldrete-Davila, and that the smuggler posed no threat to them.
Nothing in the new report backs up either of those assertions.
On Monday, Skinner, in testimony before the House Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee, admitted under oath that the congressmen were given false information about the agents by high-ranking members of his department.
Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, one of the four congressmen, on Wednesday demanded the resignation of all investigators and Office of Inspector General officials who misled the congressmen.
According to Culberson's office, Elizabeth Redman, assistant inspector general for investigations under Skinner, made the allegations to House members and promised that evidence against the agents would be provided.
Inspector General Congresssional Liaison Tamara Faulkner also was at the September meeting on behalf of Skinner.
Neither Redman nor Faulkner could be reached for comment Wednesday.
Skinner also was questioned Wednesday at a House Homeland Security subcommittee on Management, Oversight and Investigations hearing by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who also was at the September meeting. Skinner apologized to McCaul for the OIG employees' unsupported statements about the agents.
McCaul has called for a congressional hearing into the matter.
"While I appreciated Mr. Skinner's accepting his office's mistakes, the fact remains that members of Congress were, at the very least, misled, and at most outright lied to," McCaul said. "Hearings need to be held about this, and more questions need answering."
TJ Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said the report released by the Inspector General's Office should not be trusted now that Skinner has admitted his office deceived the congressmen.
"This report is a transparent attempt to justify the government's inexcusable prosecution of two innocent law-enforcement officers," Bonner said. "Rather than being an objective recitation of facts, it is interspersed with innuendo, misrepresentations, and outright lies."
Compean and Ramos were convicted in March of shooting Aldrete-Davila in the buttocks, violating his civil rights and attempting to cover up their actions. They were sentenced to 12 and 11 years, respectively, in federal prison.
Aldrete-Davila was found to be driving a van with nearly $1 million of marijuana. He is suing the Border Patrol for $5 million.
Looks like these guys were nifonged.
Further, Border Patrol firearms policy prohibits agents involved in a shooting from filing a written report on the incident, as reported earlier this week.
The policy requires that supervisors or investigators file the report within three hours of the incident.
Not filing the report is the crux of the whole case against the Border Agents!
Sara Carter ping!
Wonder what elected office the D.A. is running for??
Jack
| U.S. retracts statements that agents were out `to shoot Mexicans' |
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| Posted by Kimberly GG to TomGuy On News/Activism 02/08/2007 11:43:36 AM CST · 40 of 45 "Posts in other threads have indicated a close relationship between Prosecutor Sutton and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales." |
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Don't let them resign, FIRE THEM.
My gawd, read this.
This report really deserves something great for her reporting...
Culberson is great. Heard him for the 1st time last night on Savage.
ping
Rep. Culberson on the Rush Limbaugh show with Roger Hedgcock now..
Chertoff has got to go..
Now!
Good for her, well deserved. I still worry for her safety.
I never thought he should have been confirmed and nothing that has transpired since has changed my conviction.
I swear they do a bet job at truth on the tv. The border agents need to be released from jail immediately. For the life of me; I can't understand how these two were arrested; much less put in jail.
Note that the original March 2005 investigative report may have simply been reporting what the agents told the investigator. We'd have to see the detais or depose Sanchez to ask if he did interviews with all of the agents at the scene, or based his investigation on interviews with Compean and Ramos.
That's why I'm not too interested in the investigative report memos -- they are simply a reporting of what people SAID about the case.
We need to see what people testified to under oath to understand why the jurors found them guilty. And to see if there are actual facts now indisputed which were incorrectly presented (or not presented) at the trial.
ah yes, HM and DP, two other cases where hysteria and hype far outstripped rational thought.
In one case we seem to have gotten lucky, as in the end when the facts were actually known, sufficient cause was found to support having HM withdraw her nomination, unfortunately at a high cost to Bush and to conservatives who had jumped the gun and given ammunition to the left to use on other court nominees.
BP was simply a disaster for conservatives. Jumping into bed with Schumer, who's only purpose was to make Bush look bad and get one of the ports for his union-thug democrat contributers. And what single bad thing has happened in this country since DP took over the ports? Where is the continued outcry over the threat to our way of life that was certain to follow if the deal went through?
As for the Dubai Ports deal, there was a legitimate security concern with handing over an American port to a company based in a part of the world brimming with anti-American hostility, even though Dubai is an ally. Would we have permitted a firm based in France or Italy, with their large Communist parties, to have operational control over a major port during the Cold War era? Or a Spanish, Swedish, or Argentinian firm, where the neutral regimes had fascist or pro-German leanings, to do so during World War II? The questions raised in this matter were legitimate.
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