Free Republic

Media Cover Up: U.S. Government Invokes National Security to Conceal Deal Cut with Mexican Drug Cartel Tuesday, 4. October 2011 Mainstream Media Assists Government in Cloaking Evidence of an Ugly Duplicity in the So-Called Drug War 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. governmentÂ’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...

Los Zetas is a sadistic cartel in Mexico which apparently has convinced some that because it genuflects before the Catholic Church it must fear God as reported by Damien Cave for The New York Times: "it's true that for all their infamous cruelty -- beheadings, kidnappings, the mass murder of 72 Central and South American migrants in 2010 ­ -- the Zetas are also known for their respect of the Catholic Church." Of course, religious superstitions never should be mistaken as genuine faith, and sometimes the dirty devil hides behind a pious front. Frankly, with respect to Los Zetas and...

"Texas Congressman Says Terrorists Taught to 'Act' Hispanic To Enter U.S." SNIPPET: ""We know that Al Qaeda has camps over with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border,” U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert said on C-SPAN. “We know that people are being trained to come in and act like they're Hispanic when they're radical Islamist."" SNIPPET: "Gohmert, who is vice chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, said during the interview that while the United States should continue welcoming immigrants, it also needs to be highly vigilant about its borders."

REYNOSA — Fear and panic filled the streets of Reynosa on Sunday night as rival gunmen battled during a three-hour firefight that saw automatic weapons and grenades used. Surprisingly, Mexican authorities were absent for most of the melee. The opening clashes were reported just before 9 p.m. Sunday, when rival factions of the Gulf Cartel consummated what appeared to be a yet another rift within the criminal organization. During the protracted gunbattle, dozens of gunmen were killed, but authorities Monday would only confirm the deaths of two bystanders and the injury of a third. A Tamaulipas law enforcement official, who...

MORELOS, Mexico — A 13-year-old Mexican drug cartel hitman was found dead along with five other people. Univision reports that Jorge Armando Moreno’s body showed signs of torture when he was found near the town of Morelos. Moreno — who was a member of the Los Zetas gang — was arrested earlier this month, along with 15 other suspects, and confessed to taking part in 10 executions. He was released into his family’s custody because he was too young to be criminally prosecuted. Zacatecas state law says no one under the age of 14 can be subject to criminal prosecution....

In the past few years they have taken control of Mexico’s Coahuila region in the north, along the border of Texas, and are now starting to thrive like never before. Los Zetas covertly entered the region, and under the threat of extreme violence for those who didn’t cooperate they swiftly brought every aspect of commerce, politics, and business under their control in less than three years.This expansion was not undertaken to increase its drug trafficking or prostitution ring operations, but rather to enter into the business of coal mining.

At Stratfor, we follow Mexico's criminal cartels closely. In fact, we are currently finishing our 2013 cartel forecast, which will be released later this month. As we analyze the Mexican cartels, we recognize that to understand their actions and the interactions between them, we need to acknowledge that at their core they are businesses and not politically motivated militant organizations. This means that although violence between and within the cartels grabs much of the spotlight, a careful analysis of the cartels must look beyond the violence to the business factors that drive their interests -- and their bankrolls.  There are several distinct business factors that have...

Drug cartels are all over the place in Mexico, but the Los Zetas have gained the title of the most technologically advanced and dangerous cartel in the country. They’re ex-paramilitary, tooled up like a miniature army, and have even set up their own radio communications network to organize all their horrible, murderous, people-trafficking business. Los Zetas' radio network is the rock of the low-level operations carried out by the "street-soldiers." It keeps daily activity running smoothly as well as providing a quick method of communication for the network of lookouts monitoring police movement and making sure the cartel is always...

The woman mayor who was kidnapped and murdered by a Mexican drug gang pleaded with her attackers for her young daughter’s life, it emerged today. Maria Santos Gorrostieta, who had already survived two assassination attempts, was driving the child to school at around 8.30am when she was ambushed by a car in the city of Morelia. The 36-year-old was hauled from her vehicle and physically assaulted as horrified witnesses watched, according to newspaper El Universal. They described how she begged for her child to be left alone and then appeared to get into her abductors’ car willingly. The little girl...

PROGRESO, Mexico (AP) — Mexico's navy said Wednesday that its personnel had no idea they had killed the leader of the country's most-feared drug cartel until after his body was stolen from a funeral home in this border town. The death of Zetas cartel leader Heriberto Lazcano, alias "El Lazca," in a gunfight with marines Sunday left a wake of fear in the small mining and farming towns that dot the northern plains of Coahuila state. Residents of Progreso said they heard a series of three loud explosions Sunday, apparently from the grenades that Lazcano reportedly fired at marines who...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An Iranian-American man who U.S. officials say has links to Iran's security forces pleaded not guilty in federal court on Monday to plotting to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington in a bomb attack. , 56, who was arrested on September 29 in New York, faces several charges including conspiracy to murder a foreign official, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism. Another man, Gholam Shakuri, was also charged in the plot but is believed to still be in Iran. U.S. officials said he is a...

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

In an effort to catch one of the world’s most notorious drug kingpins, the U.S. may use the same daring methods that took down Osama bin Laden. More than a year after the terror leader’s demise in Abottabad, Pakistan, Seal Team Six raid, the highly-trained commandos may be dispatched to Mexico to kill or capture Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman. Like the 9/11 Mastermind, Guzman has been the subject of a vast manhunt for the last ten years after he escaped from a Mexican high security prison in a complex breakout that reportedly cost him nearly $4million

Bank regulators to face tough questions over HSBC money laundering Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:57am IST * Connections to Iran, Mexico under the spotlight * HSBC crackdown on money laundering riddled with lapses * Senate investigation expected to guide Treasury, Justice By Carrick Mollenkamp July 16 (Reuters) - Current and former bank regulators are likely to face tough questions by a U.S. Senate panel Tuesday about their agency's oversight of HSBC Holdings Plc's efforts to stop illegal money flows between its U.S. and international offices, according to people familiar with the situation. The Senate investigation is expected to be a...

The ties between the cartels and violent terrorist groups like Hezbollah and al-Shabaab of Somalia are well-documented, and when put into context alongside other developing similarities between the two factions, it begs the question: are the cartels taking notes from terrorists? Only two weeks ago, a man in an Afghan soldier’s uniform shot and killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, according to an Associated Press report. The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack. The shooting marked the 15th time in 2012 alone that Afghan soldiers or enemy combatants impersonating soldiers in military uniforms fired on foreign troops, according to...

Violence like this along the border is getting worse and is already spilling over into the US and Texas. When will the Obama Administration and the Federal Government step up to do more to protect our own border from this escalating violence? The car bomb article today from the associated press (see below) is yet another example of this escalating violence. If you live on the border, massive gun battles and explosions can be heard on a nearly daily basis. Here are some articles I have posted about border violence just in the last year. I barely even scratch the surface: SHOCKING Texas/Mexico Border WARZONE...

Note: The following text is a quote: Travel Warning United States Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs Washington, DC 20520 This information is current as of today, Sun Mar 14 2010 15:23:05 GMT-0700 (PDT). MEXICO March 14, 2010 The Department of State has issued this Travel Warning to inform U.S. citizens traveling to and living in Mexico of concerns about the security situation in Mexico, and that it has authorized the departure of the dependents of U.S. government personnel from U.S. consulates in the Northern Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Matamoros until...

EL PASO, TX — A critical opponent of drug law reform in Texas has been indicted on charges of trafficking 50 kilograms of marijuana and money laundering. El Paso County Commissioner Guillermo “Willie” Gandara Jr., 37, who is currently a Democratic candidate for the Texas legislature, along with Juan Canales, 50, were arrested late Wednesday night following a multi-agency investigation that included the DEA and FBI. A federal grand jury indictment charges the defendants with one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 50 kilograms or more of marijuana, and one count of possession with intent to distribute...

Three beheadings in two different states and they happened here in the United States, not Mexico. Former DEA supervisor Phil Jordan says all three beheadings have cartel written all over them. They happened in Arizona and Oklahoma in the past year. A murder mystery is now unraveling on a stretch of North Reservation Road in Tucson, Ariz. County workers found a headless man lying on the side of the road Jan. 6. The man's hands and feet were reportedly missing, too. "It would lead me to believe the message wanted to be sent. This is one of the ways they...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- The number of new prescription drug shortages in 2011 shot up to 267, well above the prior record and about four times the number of medication shortages in the middle of the last decade. Figures just released by the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which tracks national drug shortages, show there were 56 more newly reported drug shortages in the U.S. last year than in 2010, when there were 211. By contrast, there were only 58 drug shortages reported in 2004. As the drug shortages worsen, so does their impact on patient care, particularly...

Authorities are investigating human remains found at the same U.S. border lake where a Colorado man was reported to have been killed by Mexican drug cartel members last year. A professional fisherman found the skeletal remains on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake on the Texas-Mexico border, according to multiple reports. The skeleton was found about 15 miles from where 30-year-old David Hartley was last seen alive on Sept. 30, 2010. His wife, Tiffany Hartley, said the couple had set out on Wave Runners to take photos of a half-submerged church on the Mexican side of the lake when they...

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican army says it has dealt a significant blow to the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel with the arrest of the cartel leader's security chief. The army says special military forces seized computer files and other data when they detained Felipe Cabrera Sarabia. But Chief Army spokesman Gen. Ricardo Trevillo offered few details about the hunt for cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Trevillo told a news conference Monday that Cabrera was captured without a shot being fired Friday in the capital of Sinaloa state, headquarters of the cartel allegedly run by

Drug Enforcement Administration agents have raided an Oklahoma car dealership that the government suspects may be one of about 30 such businesses in the U.S. involved in funding the terrorist group Hezbollah. DEA agents say the car lot of Ace Auto Leasing in Tulsa is part of a huge network that is selling cars and drugs -- and then using the money to support terrorism against the U.S., myfoxphoenix.com reports. During Friday's raid, agents could be seen carryout out filing cabinets and other items. They also questioned employees and took inventory. "They're making big time money and it's going right...

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - The recent arrests of three alleged drug gang leaders from Mexico and the shooting of a sheriff's deputy in South Texas are raising fears among some Lone Star State officials that the brutal drug wars plaguing Mexico are taking hold north of the Rio Grande. On Sunday, Deputy Hugo Rodriguez of Hidalgo County in the southern tip of Texas was shot several times when he pulled over a vehicle containing a person kidnapped by members of Mexico's Gulf Cartel, County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said. Rodriguez's bulletproof vest saved his life, Trevino said. "I have always said...

WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama said on Thursday "individuals in the Iranian government" were aware of the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, and they must be held accountable. "We believe that even if at the highest levels there was not detailed operational knowledge, there has to be accountability," Obama told a joint news conference with the visiting South Korean president.

Ms Valles, 21, fled Mexico in fear of her life, hustling her parents, sisters, husband and one-year-old son into a 4 x 4 vehicle and hurtling across the border to seek asylum in the United States. They left just in time. That night a squad of hit men arrived at their small bungalow and ransacked the rooms. "I would like to go back home," she said. "But if I hadn't left my country I wouldn't be alive now." In spite of her diminutive size and sweet, girlish manner, Ms Valles had some powerful and vicious enemies. The criminology graduate was...

Gunmen in northern Mexico have shot dead three relatives of a police officer being held over a deadly arson attack on a casino last month. The officer's father, stepmother and stepbrother were killed in their home in the city of Monterrey. Police believe it was an act of revenge by the Zetas drugs cartel, after the officer named gang members allegedly involved in the casino attack. The blaze killed 52 people and caused revulsion across Mexico. Police officer Miguel Angel Barraza is one of six suspects detained in connection with the 25 August arson attack on the Casino Royale in...

The DEA announced Thursday the results of Project Delirium. Agents said it was a 20-month long investigation that spanned the country with the La Familia Michoacana cartel as its target. DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart said the operation resulted in 1,985 arrests, $62 million in cash, and around 2,773 pounds of meth, 2,722 kilos of cocaine, 1,005 pounds of heroin, 14,818 pounds of marijuana and $3.8 million in other assets. Of those arrested, 35 were in Austin after law enforcement executed search warrants at 11 homes in the area on Wednesday.

In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins. The elderly are killed. Women raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death. In an interview arranged by intermediaries on condition neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push $5 million to $10 million a month worth of cocaine into the U.S. Law-enforcement sources confirm...

The signature crimes of the most violent drug cartel in Mexico are its beheading and dismemberment of rival gang members, military personnel, law enforcement officers and public officials, and the random kidnappings and killings of civilians who get caught in its butchery and bloodletting. But this disparate band of criminals known as Los Zetas is no longer just a concern in Mexico. It has expanded its deadly operations across the southwestern border, establishing footholds and alliances in states from New York to California. Just last year, federal agents tied a cocaine operation in Baltimore to the Zetas. “Those of us...

The U.S. is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of whoever is responsible for the slaying of an American federal agent in Mexico, suggesting Washington seeks to snare the person who ordered the killing or doubts those in Mexican custody acted alone. [snip] Mike Vigil, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration executive who was based in Mexico, said....."They have arrested a few lowlifes that apparently were involved, but what is not known is if they were the only ones responsible," Vigil said. ...Alonzo Pena, who recently retired as deputy director of Immigration and...

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) The mayor and police chief of a small town on the U.S.-Mexico border were among 11 suspects indicted for allegedly trafficking around 200 guns to Mexico, authorities said on Thursday. The U.S. Attorney's office in New Mexico said the mayor of Columbus, Eddie Espinoza, the town's police chief Angelo Vega, and village trustee Blas Gutierrez were among those arrested on an 84-count indictment. "Gutierrez, Espinoza and Vega were duty sworn to protect and safeguard the people of Columbus," U.S. Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales said in a statement. "Instead, they increased the risk of harm that the...

La Familia drug cartel is selling not just drugs, but also counterfeit Microsoft Office computer software, according the Redmond, Wash., tech giant. Microsoft showed off unauthorized copies of its Office 2007 software in Paris today which the company said it found for sale in Mexico. The pirated copies of Office were marked with La Familia cartel's rectangular "FMM" logo that the Microsoft says proves the link between the counterfeiting and the organized crime group, according to a Bloomberg report. "This is the real side, the scary side of counterfeiting and it plagues the world," said David Finn, Microsoft's associate general...

The decapitated bodies of 15 young men have been found in the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco. Police said they were discovered near a shopping centre and were all aged between 15 and 25. They were dumped there by drug cartel members fighting over the control of the drugs business in the city. SNIP In this latest violent incident, police responding to a report of a burning vehicle near Acapulco's Plaza Senderos shopping centre shortly after midnight found five other abandoned vehicles and the decapitated bodies. Media reports say that three messages signed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, leader of...

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - The mother of a 14-year-old boy suspected of working as an assassin for a Mexican drug cartel pleaded not guilty in San Diego Thursday to a charge of being in the United States illegally.

... The murder rate in Guatemala is already double that of Mexico, where more than 10,000 drug-related murders have taken place this year. Now there is evidence that one of Mexico’s most vicious cartels, the Zetas, are setting up bases in Guatemala as they come under increasing pressure from Felipe Calderon’s government. The Zetas have set up training camps and are trying to intimidate Guatemalan cartels. So far they’ve forced at least one Guatemalan drug family to leave the country. “When you have drug traffickers afraid of other drug traffickers, you know its getting pretty bad,” U.S. Ambassador Stephen McFarland...

...one law enforcement officer, speaking on condition that his name not be used, told The Brownsville Herald that the two-day toll “easily” passed 100... A Texas businesswoman, who was in Matamoros running errands, reported being in the downtown area when a shootout erupted just a block away. The woman reported hearing machine guns and over 20 seconds of continuous grenade explosions... Another woman said that while she was walking near the Pumarejo General Hospital in Matamoros, she saw a truck with armed gunmen collide with an SUV carrying a family. The woman stated that the impact rolled the SUV on...

The decapitation of the lead Mexican investigator in the alleged murder of a jet-skier on a border lake is a sharp retort to President Obama's administration, a Texas congressman said. "The Mexican drug cartels just sent a message to the White House that the United States no longer controls the border," Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, told WND. The severed head of investigator Rolando Armando Flores Villegas was delivered this week to an army garrison in Ciudad Miguel Aleman in the Tamaulipas state in Mexico. The city is across the river from Zapata County, Texas, the location of Falcon Lake, where...

Violence continued Wednesday in Matamoros as a grenade was thrown at city hall and a local university was shut down because of a threat of some type of attack. Also, the Mexican navy announced the arrest of 30 Gulf Cartel members during operations conducted Monday and Tuesday throughout the state of Tamaulipas. As disturbances continued to plague Matamoros, panic ripped through downtown around 9:30 a.m. when a grenade was thrown at city hall, injuring two people. Federal police and the military cordoned off an area six blocks wide around the main plaza at the intersection of Calle Sexta and Morelos....

The bodies of the four young men were discovered early on Sunday, hung upside down by their feet from a bridge near a wealthy area of Cuernavaca, a leafy city about an hour outside Mexico City, where many of the nation's elite own homes. The victims' genitals, index fingers and heads had been cut off, according to a statement from the attorney general's office in Morelos state, which includes Cuernavaca. Their heads and genitals were found nearby, along with a handmade sign, the statement said. "This will happen to everyone that helps the traitor Edgar Valdes," the placard read, referring...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities say that police in Ciudad Juarez have captured five alleged drug gang members suspected in the killings of two federal officers, including one whose body was hacked to pieces. One of the suspects is also believed to have acted as a lookout in the July 15 car-bomb attack on police that killed an officer and two other people, Luis Cardenas Palomino, regional security chief for the federal police, said Friday. He described the five men as members of the La Linea gang, which works for the Juarez drug cartel. He alleged they killed two federal...

Barbara "Hair on Fire" Espinosa of Scottsdale, AZ is down on the border today along with some 500 other Arizona citizens, at a Tea Party rally in support of Arizona's SB 1070 Immigration Law. Barbara is on private property, just west of Naco, and described her position as about 100 feet from the border fence. She says, "Right across from the border fence where we are, the property belongs to the drug cartel and the area is used to transport drugs and humans into the United States. Senate candidate JD Hayworth is there and has been talking to the ranchers...

Local law enforcement was bombarded with calls from across the country Saturday asking about a report that the Zetas had taken over two ranches off Mines Road. But officials with the Laredo Police Department, Webb County Sheriff’s Department and Border Patrol said they knew nothing about such an incident, while Erik Vasys, an FBI spokesman in San Antonio, said the agency does not comment on rumors.

With the massive amount of US military on the way to Costa Rica, has our country rolled over and now admitted that it has lost control of the trafficking of drugs, money laundering and crime in general? Ever since I can remember Costa Rica has said, “If ever invaded, it´s neighbors would come to its rescue.” In times past that referred to Venezuela, but now we have Chavez and….well that´s another 100 pesos. The new friendly neighbor must be the United States who is sending 46 war ships, 200 helicopters and 7,000 Marines to rescue us from invading drug cartels,...

Drug traffickers are spending $1 million a pop to build boats that look like submarines and can carry 4 tons of cocaine for 2,000 miles without refueling. Nicknamed "narco subs," they're made to sneak loads up from South America to Mexico, where the drugs are offloaded and taken overland into the United States. "It is a semi-submersible coffin," said Jay Bergman, Andean regional director for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "You batten down the hatches and you are doing everything to not be detected sailing in the middle of the ocean." At least 13 of the craft have been stopped and...

Note: Photos included. NOTE The following text is a quote: DEA-Led Operation Delivers Over 2,000 Arrests FBI, ICE and Mexican Govt. also take part in “Project Deliverance” which leads to the seizure of $154 million and 74.1 tons of drugs, as well as the arrest of a high-priority target DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart Announces Project Deliverance JUN 10 - (WASHINGTON) – DEA Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart joined Attorney General Eric Holder to announce the arrest of 2,266 individuals on narcotics-related charges in the United States and the seizure of more than 74.1 tons of illegal drugs as part...

Prowling these border dumps provides the equivalent of a graduate-level seminar on what illegal immigration really is, and as importantly, what it's not. We know the crossers are a religious bunch, because of the Catholic medallions, statues and Bibles they drop, and we know they're superstitious. The litter almost always includes garlic cloves: Illegals hang them from backpacks in the false belief that the scent will keep rattlesnakes away from their campsites. Some call illegal aliens "undocumented," but the truth is they have documents falling out of their pockets, literally. Examine the ground, and you'll find driver's licenses, birth certificates...

*******NOTE********* This is from December 2009. I don't remember hearing about this. I post it now, because this story is as relevant now as it was then. These Cartels are moving north, and have a presence, according to Janet Napalitano, in 230 of our cities. And its on the increase. See this thread for more information on this: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2532599/posts *********NOW TO THE STORY*************** MEXICO CITY -- The brazen murder of several family members of a Mexican Naval hero threatens to start a dangerous new chapter in the country's drug war, in which cartels increasingly resort to terror tactics to try...

While Obama and Congress sit on their hands on border security, a drug cartel planned a terrorist attack on American soil. The Houston Chronicle is reporting that a drug cartel was plotting to blow up the Falcon dam along the Texas border near Rio Grande City, an area of about 4 million residents. The cartel known as Los Zetes was intending on placing dynamite near the dam to blow it up in order to get revenge on a rival gang called the Gulf Cartel, which smuggles drugs in the area. Meanwhile in Washington, the meeting between Obama and Arizona Governor...

In the debate over illegal immigration – largely from Mexico into the United States – it is often easy to focus exclusively on the security of the border and the rule of law. While both are extremely important, so are the human costs that are paid as a result of the drug trade; when illegal aliens are caught, they are often caught smuggling illegal drugs.