Drug boss shocker: I was a DEA snitch
Chicago Sun-Times (IL) - Sunday, August 7, 2011
Author: BY FRANK MAIN ; Staff Reporter/fmain@suntimes.com
EXCERPTS
Most of the Sinaloa Cartel’s communications with the DEA were through a cartel lawyer, Humberto Loya-Castro, according to Zambada-Niebla. He says Loya-Castro fed information to agents about rival cartels starting before 2004. Criminal charges against Loya-Castro in San Diego were dropped in 2008 because of his cooperation, Zambada-Niebla says.
In March 2009, Loya-Castro arranged for Zambada-Niebla to meet DEA agents at a Sheraton Hotel in Mexico City, according to the court filing.
Zambada-Niebla says he gave the U.S. drug agents information about rival cartels and, in return, was assured that a pending indictment against him in Washington, D.C., would be dismissed and that he would be immune from further prosecution.
(snip)
The indictment against Zambada-Niebla charges him and about three dozen other defendants with conspiring to import tons of cocaine and “multi-kilo” quantities of heroin to Chicago and elsewhere between 2005 and 2008. He is being held under high security in a federal lockup in downtown Chicago.
Zambada-Niebla claims that his cartel’s criminal activities were sanctioned by the regional assistant for the DEA in South America — as well as by the general director of the DEA for Mexico and DEA agents in several Mexican cities including Monterrey, Hermosillo and Mexico City. He says in the court filing that agents from the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were involved, too.
He also says that DEA officials tipped Loya-Castro about U.S. and Mexican investigations, allowing top Sinaloa Cartel leaders such as Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman-Loera and Zambada-Niebla ’s own father, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, to avoid capture.
Those men, also charged in the Chicago case, remain fugitives. Guzman-Loera is considered one of the world’s top drug kingpins.
“The United States government and its various agencies have a long history of providing benefits, permission and immunity to criminals and their organizations to commit crimes, including murder, in return for receiving information against other criminals,” Zambada-Niebla ’s court filing says. “Perhaps no better example is the celebrated case of Whitey Bulger, the Boston crime boss and murderer, who, along with other members of criminal organizations, were given carte blanche by the FBI to commit murders in order to receive information about the Italian mafia and other criminal organizations in the New England area.”
Bulger, 81, was arrested June 22 in California after 16 years on the lam. His FBI handler, former Boston FBI agent John Connolly Jr., was convicted of racketeering and obstruction of justice in 2002 for warning Bulger in 1994 that he was going to be indicted. Bulger is accused of killing 19 people.
As with Bulger, the U.S. government turned a blind eye to the crimes the Sinaloa Cartel committed, Zambada-Niebla says in his court filing.
Zambada-Niebla is seeking documents to show whether Sinaloa Cartel leaders received weapons as part of their alleged cooperation with U.S. agents.
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2009/August/09-ag-824.html
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Ten Alleged Mexican Drug Cartel Leaders Among 43 Defendants Indicted in Brooklyn and Chicago as Part of Coordinated Strike Against Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations
http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/chapo-mayo-indictment.pdf
(details at links)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2796575/posts
Obama and the Sinaloa Cartel
To the Point News (with permission) ^ | 21 October 2011 | Dagny D’ Anconia
http://www.npr.org/2010/05/19/126906809/mexico-seems-to-favor-sinaloa-cartel-in-drug-war
Mexico Seems To Favor Sinaloa Cartel In Drug War
U.S. federal agents allegedly cut a deal with the Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed it to traffic tons of narcotics across the border, in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to documents filed in federal court…
The allegations are made by Vicente Zambada-Niebla, a top ranking cartel boss extradited to the U.S. last year on drug charges. He is a close associate of Mexico’s most wanted man, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and the son of Ismael “Mayo” Zambada-Garcia…
The deal allegedly began with Humberto Loya-Castro, a Sinaloa cartel lawyer who became an informant for the D.E.A. after a drug case against him was dismissed in 2008.
According to the motion, the deal was part of a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy, where the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa cartel, through Operation Fast and Furious, in exchange for information that allowed the D.E.A. and FBI to destroy and dismantle rival Mexican cartels. Operation Fast and Furious is the failed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives anti-gun trafficking program which allowed thousand of guns to cross into Mexico.—Fox News
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_18608410?source=most_viewed
Documents: Feds allegedly allowed Sinaloa cartel to move cocaine into U.S. for information
By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/04/2011 08:30:37 AM MDT
The American government has become a criminal enterprise.
The American government has become a criminal enterprise.
The American government has become a criminal enterprise.
The American government has become a criminal enterprise.
Those men, also charged in the Chicago case, remain fugitives. Guzman-Loera is considered one of the world’s top drug kingpins.
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MORE BACKGROUND INFO
Joaquin “Chapo ("shorty")” Guzman-Loera, or most often called Joaquin Guzman
Cartel boss [Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman] may resort to force north of border [May 2009]
Local police and federal agents in Arizona said they recently have received at least two law enforcement alerts focused on Guzman’s reported orders that his smugglers should “use their weapons to defend their loads at all costs.”
Guzman is believed to have delivered the message personally in early March, during a three-day gathering of his associates in Sonoita, a small Mexican town a few miles south of the Arizona border, according to confidential U.S. intelligence bulletins sent to several state and federal law enforcement officials, who discussed them on the condition of anonymity.
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Mexico's Sinaloa gang grows empire, defies crackdown [Jan 2011]
Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, 53, is arguably the world's most infamous drug trafficker, and has extended his empire from Colombia to China since he broke out of prison in a laundry van on January 19, 2001.......
(snip)
Forbes magazine estimates his wealth at $1 billion, and experts say his cartel moves up to two-thirds of drugs into the United States. "Guzman is number one because of the sheer volume of drugs he handles and the violence he has unleashed," said another U.S. anti-drug official.
Mexico knows it cannot stem insatiable U.S. demand for drugs, but the growing power of Guzman's cartel to corrupt officials, extort businesses and control parts of the country is a major concern as the oil-producing nation aims to convince investors it is an attractive market.
PACT WITH THE DEVIL? Amid the mayhem of severed heads and blood-stained streets, Guzman and his right-hand man Ismael Zambada have adeptly taken territory from gangs weakened by army operations while bringing in raw materials from China to make meth, using Africa as a route for cocaine into Europe, and growing their business in Colombia and across Central America.
"In the past five years, the Sinaloans have transformed themselves into a global criminal organization with operations in 52 countries," said Edgardo Buscaglia, a drug trade export at Mexico's private ITAM university, who compares the Sinaloa cartel's reach to the Russian mafia in the 1990s.
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Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman's wife, Emma Coronel, gave birth Aug. 15 to twin girls at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, according to birth records and a senior U.S. law enforcement official.
(snip)
Turns out Coronel, a 22-year-old former beauty queen, holds U.S. citizenship, which entitles her to travel freely to the United States. By being born in California, and to a mother who is an American citizen, her little girls also have U.S. citizenship.
Guzman, 54, the multibillionaire fugitive head of the Sinaloa cartel, married Coronel the day she turned 18 in a lavish wedding in the highlands of central Mexico in 2007. She is believed to be his third or fourth wife and is a niece of Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, a onetime partner of Guzman who was killed in a July 2010 shootout with the Mexican army.
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America's Third War: The U.S. Cut a Deal With the Sinaloa Cartel [Aug 2011]
U.S. federal agents allegedly cut a deal with the Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed it to traffic tons of narcotics across the border, in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to documents filed in federal court.
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U.S. Admits Mexican (Drug) Cartels Control Parts Of Border [Oct 2011]
Remember this? The Mexican border “is as secure as it has ever been.” Or what about this; violence along the Mexican border is merely a mistaken “perception” because the Obama Administration has successfully fostered a “secure and prosperous” region. Napolitano also said that “misinformation about safety” is negatively impacting border communities and that the U.S.-Mexico border is not “overrun or out of control.”
The truth is that Mexican drug cartels do in fact “control access to the U.S.-Mexico border” and the “smuggling routes across it,” according to the Justice Department’s drug assessment, which has been kept quiet by the administration. No press conferences or photo ops to promote this report, which concludes that the “unprecedented levels of violence in Mexico” will continue for years to come.
(snip)
This is hardly shocking news. The National Drug Intelligence Center has for years determined that Mexican drug trafficking organizations represent the greatest crime threat to the United States. In fact, the agency’s 2009 report says that the violence, intimidation, theft and financial crimes carried out by the illicit operations “pose a significant threat” to the nation as a whole.
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Obama's DOJ Let [Sinaloa] Cartel Bombmaker Walk [Oct 2011] <
Jean Baptiste Kingery seems to be yet another thug that took advantage of the Obama Administration's criminal stimulus package for the southwest, building grenades and IEDs for the Sinaloa cartel.
So what did the Department of Justice do when they caught him. They released him free as a bird within hours.
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On Saturday, October 1, 2011, investigative journalist Bill Conroy of the Narcosphere reported scandalous and highly troubling new developments in the criminal case against accused Mexican narco-trafficker Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla.
The breaking story unravels the U.S. government’s ugly national-security interests in the drug war by exposing a quid pro quo deal between the US government and the most powerful international narco-trafficking organization on the planet- the Sinaloa “Cartel,” and the US government’s recent attempt to cover this up by filing a motion in the case seeking to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), a measure designed to assure national security information does not become public during court proceedings.
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The evidence is mounting that the Fast and Furious gun giveaway was orchestrated and/or initiated from the top of the Obama administration. Forbes Magazine is calling it “Obama’s Watergate.” Are we to believe that they gave away enough guns to equip a small army of narcoterrorists out of a simple error? We would have to be pretty gullible to believe that.
We have to ask just what they intended to achieve by doing this. It was a truly extravagant gift to the Sinaloa Federation Cartel. It was not just expensive in tax dollars; it was expensive in political capital, and it was so close to the 2012 election.
People don’t give such expensive things away for nothing. The Obama people must have expected something in return.
Consider the fact that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, and the Obama Administration has a long and continuing pattern of giving gifts to the Sinaloa Cartel:
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Gunwalker: Justice Dept. Violated US Laws Beyond Those Being Investigated
As we continue to watch the general uproar over the Operation Fast and Furious program, and specifically what Attorney General Holder knew and when he knew it, it needs to be noted that perjury is not the only apparent violation of law to have occurred.
I refer to the apparent violation of at least one (probably two) major U.S. laws by the Holder Justice Department. A few years ago, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701, the follow-on to the Trading with the Enemy Act) was expanded in order to criminalize any transactions between U.S. entities — to include departments and agencies of the U.S. government — and all foreign drug cartels.
I am familiar with these prohibitive statues because several years ago, while serving as the senior drug analyst for the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was tasked to initiate and became the principal drafter of legislation which became known as the Kingpin Act (21 U.S.C. §§ 1901-08).
The Kingpin Act is an extension of the highly successful IEEPA sanctioning program specifically targeting Colombian drug cartels. It expands sanctions authority against various drug cartel operations worldwide — including Mexico — which have been determined by the president [????] to be threats to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.
A violation of any of the IEEPA sanctioning programs or the Kingpin Act carries stiff penalties, both criminal and civil, and potentially totaling decades in prison and tens of millions of dollars in fines.
It is not necessary that an individual or governmental entity be shown to have “knowingly” violated any of these programs: it is illegal for any U.S. entity or individual to aid, abet, or materially assist — or in the case of Operation Fast and Furious, to facilitate others to aid, abet, or materially assist — designated drug traffickers. There are no exceptions within IEEPA programs for unlicensed U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agency operations.