The Truth About Mexican Drug Cartels’ Arsenal: Follow the Grenades

The Gunwalker scandal proceeds apace. Senator Grassley’s still fighting the Department of Justice for a full accounting of the ATF Gunrunner program. That’s the anti-gun smuggling interdiction effort that allowed indeed enabled illegally-obtained weapons to “slip through the net,” into the hands of men who used them to murder U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry. The truth about the ATF’s extra-legal bungling and the subsequent government cover-up—which likely extends to Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder–has yet to ping the mainstream media radar. Meanwhile, it’s important to note that northern Mexico continues its descent into lawlessness. And that the real problem of the drug cartels’ weapons supply remain unaddressed . . .

For the last ten months, I’ve been trying to gather hard facts about the weapons used by Mexican drug cartels. The infamous 2008 ATF trace data, used by the ATF to justify Project Gunrunner, is thoroughly unreliable. All it tells us: how many weapons that the Mexicans submitted to the U.S. for tracing were traced to the U.S. As I’ve pointed out before, our neighbors to the South are hardly likely to ask for a weapons trace on firearms marked “property of the Mexican military.” Or any other military, for that matter.

But they might. But I can’t find out. Despite a FOIA request, the data is not available to jobbing journos. So far, the Mexicans haven’t honored my requests for ANY raw data on the non-ATF trace guns their country’s law enforcement officers have confiscated in the course of their work. So all I have is anecdotal evidence. News reports. Stories that tend to flag examples of American modern home defense sporting rifles found at Mexican crime scenes or stopped at the border. ‘Cause that’s what’s important, apparently.

I’m left with only two ways to analyze the Mexican drug cartels’ armory: the application of common sense and the contemplation of grenades.

Obviously, the drug cartels don’t get the majority of their weapons from Bob’s gun store. Sure, they might get a few rifles that trickle across the border one way or another. But why would drug barons go to all the trouble and risk to smuggle a handful of semi-automatic rifles or FN Five-seveNs from Uncle Sam when they can get fully-automatic weapons from Mexican police and army suppliers? It’s not like the people providing drugs to eager Americans are hurting for cash. If there’s a domestic premium for a hot shit Mexican gun, they’ll pay it.

Saying that, there are drug cartels and there are drug cartels. Los Zetas is a highly disciplined organization comprised of former Mexican military men; criminals who know their way around a rifle and understand the importance of a clued-in quartermaster. For them, nothing but the best. The gangs at the lower end of the drug cartel food chain could well be making a living using the ballistic crumbs falling off America’s table. But the really bad guys are not depending on American guns smuggled and sold in ones or twos. No way Jose.

Remember that the drug cartels are, increasingly, international criminal syndicates. They sell stolen oil, for example. And extort foreign businesses operating in Mexico. They can reach out to fellow gangsters across the globe, especially their “friends” in the Eastern Bloc countries. How do we know this? Grenades. Bob’s Gun Store doesn’t sell grenades. Mexican drug cartels use grenades. ID the source of that ordnance and chances are you’ve fingered the source for all their other weaponry.

And here’s the thing: the ATF knows from whence cometh the cartels’ firepower. Proof of their savvy arrived in the form of a recently released Wikileaked secret cable, dated the third of March, 2009. For those of you afraid of black helicopters (should you click on that link), here’s the relevant text:

CLASSIFIED BY: Bruce Williamson, Principal Offficer, Consul General Monterrey, State. REASON: 1.4 (a), (b), (d) ¶1. (SBU) During recent months Mexican narco-traffickers have directed a series of grenade attacks directed against, inter alia, Mexican law enforcement and military facilities, civilian crowds, and U.S. consular installations. The escalation in the strength and power of the weapons used by the narco-traffickers has not only cost lives, but has taken its toll in terms of the damage done to local civil society.

¶2. (S) AmConsulate General Monterrey's ATF Office, the ATF Explosives Technology Branch, and AmEmbassy Mexico DAO have been working with Mexican law enforcement authorities to identify the origin of various grenades and other explosive devices recovered locally over the past few months, including the unexploded M26A2 fragmentation grenade hurled at the Consulate itself during the October 11, 2008 attack. Other ordnance recovered includes 21 grenades recovered by Mexican law enforcement on October 16, 2008 after a raid at a narco-warehouse in Guadalupe (a working class suburb of Monterrey), and twenty-five 40mm explosive projectiles, a U.S. M203 40mm grenade launcher, and three South Korean K400 fragmentation grenades recovered the same day in an abandoned armored vehicle that suspected narco-traffickers used to escape apprehension.

¶3. (S/NF) Local Mexican law enforcement has recovered a Grenade spoon and pull ring from an exploded hand grenade used in a January 6, 2009 attack on Televisa Monterrey, a Monterrey television station. Based upon ATF examination, it appears that the grenade used in the attack on the Consulate has the same lot number, and is of similar design and style, as the three of the grenades found at the narco-warehouse in Guadalupe. On January 7, 2009, the Mexican Army recovered 14 M-67 fragmentation grenades and 1 K400 fragmentation grenade in Durango City, Durango. Finally and perhaps most disturbing, on January 31, 2009 three men tossed a K-75 grenade into a night club near Pharr, Texas -- an East Texas border town --but the grenade did not explode. The attackers may have been targeting three off-duty police officers who were in the club at the time.

¶4. (S) The lot numbers of some of the grenades recovered, including the grenade used in the attack on Televisa, indicate that previously ordnance with these same lot numbers may have been sold by the USG to the El Salvadoran military in the early 1990s via the Foreign Military Sales program. We would like to thank AmEmbassy San Salvador for its ongoing efforts to query the Government of El Salvador as whether any of its stocks of grenades and other munitions have been diverted or are otherwise unaccounted for.

¶5. (SBU) AmConsulate Monterrey requests that Department instruct AmEmbassy Seoul to discreetly query the Korean government regarding the whereabouts, disposition, and the possibility of any missing stocks of South Korean-made:

--- 40mm High Explosives Cartridges K200, with Lot numbers HWB95L615-012; HWB95L615-014; EC-87E615-061; EC-88G615-071, EC-84D610-096, EC-83H615-012, and EC-83H815-012.

--- K400 Fragmentation Grenades, with Lot numbers EC-89E605-063, HEB96H605-033, HWB96H605-033, HWB96H-609-003, KG94DK400002-017, KG94D002-017, HWB89S605-063, ME183D, and HWB95K605-029.

--- K402 Fragmentation Grenades, with Lot numbers HWB96H605-063 and HWB96H605-033.

¶6. (SBU) Any information as to the destination of this ordnance and to whom it may have been sold would be most appreciated. This information will be used in an U.S. ongoing criminal investigation. WILLIAMSON

So we know that military supplies, including grenades produced in the good old US of A have fond their way into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. What’s the bet that rifles sold to Mexico or other South American allies in U.S. government sanctioned deals are also in the hands of the drug cartels? Thousands and thousands of them. How do we know that the weapons we’re still selling Mexico and South American armed forces—hundreds of millions of dollars worth—aren’t filtering into criminal hands? We don’t.

We do know that Heckler & Koch recently stopped selling their guns in Mexico for that very reason. The American government isn’t even looking at this problem. Officially, that problem doesn’t exist. But the “Iron River” from U.S. gun dealers to Mexican drug cartels does, apparently. Enough so that the ATF can ignore the reality of the situation, and lobby for increased manpower, funding and power (gun registry anyone?).

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Mexican are being slaughtered, Mexican democracy is fast disappearing and America is doing nothing effective to seal its porous border; allowing drugs to flood our streets and illegal immigrants to tap into the debt-ridden public purse. (I wonder how many journalists smoke Mexican dope?) Make no mistake about the first casualty of this drug war: the truth. Which TTAG will continue to defend in the face of the ATF’s obvious obfuscation, lies, stonewalling and deceit. Watch this space.

We will NEVER see such a report in the LSM. Hard hitting, accurate and researched fully. Why? Simple, it does not advance the anti gun story line.

>> Obviously, the drug cartels don’t get the majority of their weapons from Bob’s gun store.

Obviously.

This would make a perfect cartoon.

Picture an over the top bunch of ATF jackboots descending on a gun dealer with a text bubble “This dealer sold a gun that later turned up in Mexico”.

In the background, there’s a US/Mexico border crossing and there’s a line of tractor trailers stacked up as far as the eye can see(on both sides of the border) with the back of one open showing that they’re loaded with guns. The sides have a “Approved by Uncle Sam” or something stamped on there and the guards are just waving them through.

*Finally and perhaps most disturbing, on January 31, 2009 three men tossed a K-75 grenade into a night club near Pharr, Texas -- an East Texas border town --*

The Texas/Louisiana border has always been a dangerous area. /Sarc.

Doesn’t this have overtones of Waco written all over it? In that debacle the ATF was going to use the ‘raid’ as a ‘visual aid’ for further funding + a big feather in its Usefulness Cap. The ATF has certainly earned the F Troop moniker. In this case its been mostly Mexicans who’ve been killed.

In the end though I think if Chuck does by chance come up w/ any truth it’ll end the ‘investigation’ or be relegated to a classified document stored in sub basement 103. Frankly, Congress has a very very poor track record of taking substantive action based on findings.

I really appreciate that someone is following this story and doing such a pro job at it.

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