Gonzalez’s letter to Gaudioso - http://narcosphere.narconews.com/userfiles/70/ICE_Letter.pdf
Karen Tandy’s response to Gonzalez’s letter (note James Comey) - http://web.archive.org/web/20070316194024/http://www.cnsnews.com/PDF/2007/memo2.pdf
Testimony of Michelle Leonhart, DEA Deputy Administrator - http://narcosphere.narconews.com/userfiles/70/Gonzalez1.ecl.pdf
Q Now, the administrator, of course, is currently Karen Tandy, is that correct?
A That’s correct.
Q And you’ve been her deputy administrator?
A That’s correct.
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Q So yours and Karen Tandy’s is the current administration for the DEA at that top level?
A Yes.
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Q Now, the jury’s heard a little bit about this event in the — this horrific event in Ciudad Juarez. Did this event occur during your administration and Karen Tandy’s administration?
A Yes, it did.
Q Okay. Did you have a role in attempting to uncover — and let me, just for a moment so that everyone can see, this is the El Paso field division where that red pin is, is that correct?
A Yes.
Q Okay. And Ciudad Juarez would be right down here, not far from El Paso, is that correct?
A That’s correct.
Q Okay. Now, did you at some point in time get some information about events in Ciudad Juarez?
A Yes.
Q And please tell the jury what your role became when you attempted to determine what was happening there?
A Because I’m the deputy administrator, when there are critical incidents or serious matters, I’m briefed very often by the chief of operations. And it was brought to my attention that we had an agent and his family pulled over by a Mexican police officer and some other individuals, and I was also advised that we believed that those people had been to his home earlier.
Q Okay. Did you begin to learn of other information and events down there as time went forward or went on?
A Yes, because a car stopped in Mexico of our agents and his family and this visit to his house was pretty irregular and concerning, I was kept apprised for the next day or two on other events that started to be uncovered.
Q And those other events which we haven’t gone into in any great detail here, but they were horrible events.
A Yes.
Q Now, did you at some point learn that the customs service was in some fashion handling an informant that may have been involved in some of those incidents or aware of some of those incidents?
A Yes.
Q Did you — and, by the way, the DEA is not part of customs, is that correct?
A That’s correct.
Q Totally separate agencies?
A Like two different companies.
Q Okay. You can’t discipline customs employees, you can’t promote customs employees, you can’t get involved in custom employee matters, is that correct?
A That’s correct.
Q Okay. But when you learn of what was going on, did you go to customs, your equal in customs, and bring to their attention what was going on down there?
A Yes, I did.
Q And did they deny what was going on?
A I told them what I had found out. He said that that’s not the story that he had. He didn’t seem to express the same concern that we had, tried to explain that this is, you know, life or death situation. We had a family and an agent at risk. We needed to get to the bottom of this. And we stressed — I stressed that we needed to get together, and we offered to give him a briefing on everything we had learned and urged him to come to our office to meet with me and the chief of operations.
Q And when you say he, you are referring to someone within the customs service.
A It would be my counterpart at the customs service or ICE, the number two person for that agency.
Q Okay. So were you doing all you could to enlist the involvement and raise the concerns of this other agency, the customs service, about this event?
A Yes, not only at my level, but also at the chief of operations level.
Q Okay. Now, did there come a time in which the Office of the Attorney General, in fact, the Attorney General of the United States himself, wanted to know what was going on with this matter?
A Yes.
Q And was there a plan in place with the acknowledged approval of the attorney general on how to handle the investigation of what events occurred in Ciudad Juarez?
A Yes. We notified the attorney general of the United States and the deputy attorney general of the United States of what we had learned and the events and our concerns. We told him that we had talked to customs and let them know what we had found out.
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The Attorney General was John Ashcroft. The Deputy Attorney General was James Comey, now with the FBI.
Does anyone know how to write anymore? How many paragraphs to find out what happened?
All of this reminds me a little off the recent movie “Sicario”.
With all of the brutality, dishonesty, subplots and complete disregard for the law...it left one wondering who the good guys were.
Just depressing.