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Osama bin Laden tried to buy a massive amount of cocaine, spike it with poison and sell it in the United States, hoping to kill thousands of Americans one year after the 9/11 attacks, The Post has learned. The evil plot failed when the Colombian drug lords bin Laden approached decided it would be bad for their business - and, possibly, for their own health, according to law-enforcement sources familiar with the Drug Enforcement Administration's probe of the aborted transaction. The feds were told of the scheme earlier this year, but its existence had never been made public. The Post...

UN panel sees grave women's rights abuse in Mexico 27 Jan 2005 20:04:47 GMT Source: Reuters (Adds background, detail, paragraphs 4-14) By Irwin Arieff UNITED NATIONS, Jan 26 (Reuters) - A U.N. panel accused Mexico on Thursday of "grave and systematic" rights violations for failing to solve the killings of hundreds of women in the past decade near the Mexico-U.S. border. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women said it was "greatly concerned at the fact that these serious and systematic violations of women's rights have continued for over 10 years." The panel, in...

MEXICO CITY- Mexico's federal attorney general's office said Sunday it will investigate the killings of two U.S. citizens and two Mexicans in the central Mexican state of Michoacan. Omar Chavez and Alejandro Munoz, both of Dallas, were among four people whose bullet-ridden bodies were discovered Friday near Tacambaro, about 150 miles west of Mexico City. The four men were reported missing more than a week before their decomposing bodies were found. Authorities found 60 spent rounds of ammunition and one live round that suggested an assault rifle and another military firearm had been used in the killings, according to a...

Web Posted: 01/28/2005 07:47 PM CST Dane Schiller and Guillermo Contreras San Antonio Express-News MEXICO CITY — The FBI warned all federal agents Friday that a Mexican drug cartel has 250 armed men on the border near Matamoros and is planning to kidnap two federal agents in the United States and smuggle them into Mexico where they will be murdered. The FBI office in San Antonio declined to discuss the source of the information, but issued a written bulletin warning of an "immediate threat to law-enforcement personnel." The bulletin goes on to say the "extremely violent" drug-smuggling organization known as...

There are times when Hillary Clinton must wish that her husband were dead. Don't get me wrong. I want Bill Clinton to live a long and scandal-filled life. I have no plans to hurl an ashtray at the former beach-boy president. In fact, I would take a bullet for Bill Clinton if only to protect my income as a reporter. However, if Hillary wants to win the White House, she could make it a cakewalk if Bill were pushing up daises. Imagine Hillary running for president if Bill were suddenly to die. The former first lady would be the object...

The FBI's top man in El Paso, Hardrick Crawford Jr., retired "abruptly" Friday afternoon amid complaints against him by Mexican officials. Crawford, 54, declined Saturday to discuss specific reasons for his retirement after 23 years with the FBI, including the past two years as special agent in charge of the El Paso office. "I had think been thinking about retiring for over a year, and I decided to tender my resignation at this time to pursue private consulting," he said in a telephone interview. "I will remain in the El Paso area for now. That's all I want to say...

MEXICO CITY _ Mexico's success in arresting drug lords has led to a strange new world of trafficking: an influx of Colombian dealers, the rise of ''low profile'' smugglers and even the entrance of women as leading figures in some cartels. American officials are quick to praise the arrest of at least a half-dozen major traffickers in the last two years, successes that mark one of the few recent bright spots in U.S.-Mexican relations dominated by disagreements over the war in Iraq. But Colombian traffickers who long supplied the Mexican cartels, paying them either in cocaine or cash to ship...

A Mexican federal police pass belonging to Juarez Cartel drug lord Vicente Carrillo Fuentes was found by the FBI inside a West El Paso luxury home. The find occurred during the search of the house of a former, unnamed girlfriend of Carrillo on Oct. 16, 2000, FBI officials said. The agency chose to release the information now to jump- start the investigation that lost momentum when FBI priorities shifted from drugs to counter-terrorism after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, said Hardrick Crawford, the FBI special agent in charge in El Paso. Carrillo is wanted in the United States for...

MEXICO CITY - Reputed drug lord Osiel Cardenas was arrested Friday after a fierce firefight with Mexican soldiers, cutting short the career of a man so bold he once threatened U.S. federal agents, leading the FBI to offer a US$2 million reward for his capture. Allegedly the leader of the Gulf drug cartel and the third major drug boss to fall in the last year, Cardenas was arrested in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, Defense Secretary Gen. Gerardo Vega Garcia told a news conference. At least two Mexican soldiers were wounded, one seriously, in the shootout with Cardenas' gunmen, who...