Revolving Door: DEA’s No.2 quits amid reports of previous consulting work for Big Pharma
Excerpt:
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s second-in-command has quietly stepped down amid reporting by The Associated Press that he once consulted for a pharmaceutical distributor sanctioned for a deluge of suspicious painkiller shipments and did similar work for the drugmaker that became the face of the opioid epidemic: Purdue Pharma.
Louis Milione’s four years of consulting for Big Pharma preceded his 2021 return to the DEA to serve as Administrator Anne Milgram’s top deputy, renewing concerns in the agency and beyond about the revolving door between government and industry and its potential impact on the DEA’s mission to police drug companies blamed for tens of thousands of American overdose deaths.
“Working for Purdue Pharma should not help you get a higher job in government,” said Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a watchdog for corporate influence in the federal government. “Too much collegiality is a problem. It’s hard to view your past and potentially future colleagues as scofflaws. Any independent person would find this abhorrent.”
Milione initially left the DEA in 2017 after a 21-year career that included a two-year stint leading the division that controls the sale of highly addictive narcotics. Like dozens of colleagues in the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control, he went to work as a consultant for some of the same companies he had been tasked with regulating.
AP reported in May that Milione’s consulting included testifying on behalf of the nation’s fourth-largest wholesale drug distributor, Morris & Dickson, as it fought to save its license to supply painkillers to hospitals and pharmacies. A federal administrative judge determined four years ago that the Louisiana-based company failed to flag thousands of suspicious orders at the height of the opioid crisis but the DEA didn’t move to strip the license until days after the AP inquired about the case.
New reporting has found that during his time in the private sector, Milione also served as a $600-per-hour expert for Purdue Pharma as it fought legal challenges from Ohio to Oklahoma over its aggressive marketing of OxyContin and other highly addictive painkillers. Milione left the DEA again in late June just four days after AP sought comment from the Justice Department about his prior work for Purdue.
.....Since Milgram took the reins of the DEA two years ago, she has cycled through almost three dozen senior aides, many of them veteran agents who were pushed out or quit due to differences with Milgram. That includes the heads of all of the DEA’s principal divisions as well as the DEA’s chief counsel, its congressional affairs liaison, and the top agent in Mexico.
Milgram’s defenders say that house cleaning is part of an agency-wide reset to combat the fentanyl crisis. She’s also exhibited a zero tolerance for racism and sexism.....
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She’s more worried about racism and sexism than leading. The DEA as messed up as the rest of the DC sewer.
FBI Investigates FARC-EP Operation In Mexico: Jalisco
Translated excerpt:
The FBI and ATF are investigating the Tlajomulco bombings. According to the progress of their investigations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP) and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) were behind the explosions of seven explosive devices.
In an event never before seen in Mexico, seven explosive devices placed on a road in Tlajomulco, near Guadalajara, Jalisco, exploded on the night of July 11. The terrorist act caused the death of four public servants and two civilians, and caused serious injuries to 14 people, including three minors.
Since last week, a group from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) arrived at the scene to begin an investigation. According to public servants of the Mexican counterpart participating in the investigation, it has been discovered that, behind what the U.S. agencies call a “terrorist attack”, there could be elements that belonged to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP), considered by the U.S. government as a terrorist group, in complicity with the Jalisco Cartel - New Generation.
According to the investigation files I have collected for this DW collaboration, one of the main suspects in the attack in Tlajomulco is Carlos Andrés Rivera Varela, alias “La Firma,” born June 19, 1986, in Cali, Colombia. The files indicate that he is based in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, and works for the CJNG, specifically for Juan Carlos Valencia Gonzalez, better known as “Pelon” and “03,” stepson of Nemesio Oceguera Cervantes, leader of the criminal group.
“La Firma” would be the contact between FARC-EP and CJNG, and would have brought expert operators in the manufacture of explosive devices to Mexico.
.....Regardless of the FBI and ATF investigations, the CJNG’s ties to armed terrorist groups in Colombia are documented. The Mexican drug trafficking organization has been operating in that country since at least 2018, according to an investigation I have been conducting for months as part of my inquiries to understand the dynamics of organized crime in Mexico and its power.
Internal documents from the Colombian Attorney General’s Office, to which I had access, indicate that they have detected the operation of the Jalisco Cartel - New Generation in Colombia. In 2021 they seized assets related to that organization located in Cauca, Nariño, Boyacá, Cundinamarca, Valle del Cauca, Cesar, Norte de Santander, Guaviare and the city of Bogotá.
.....Despite the increasingly serious problems of violence and ungovernability in Mexico, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ignores, minimizes, and even claims they do not exist.
Instead of doing the job he was hired for, being president of all Mexicans and procuring justice and peace, AMLO occupies his time, public resources and efforts in illegally influencing the presidential elections of 2024, attacking with a misogynist and classist discourse the engineer Xóchitl Gálvez, of indigenous origin, successful businesswoman, who appears as one of the strongest candidates of the opposition to obtain the candidacy for the presidency of the Republic.
Even in moments like those experienced in Tlajomulco, AMLO puts the group interests of his party, Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (National Regeneration Movement), before the interests of the victims. It is not the first time, but it is increasingly unacceptable and scandalous, and the social cost is greater.
In the face of the explosions, on July 12, López Obrador refused to classify the attack with seven bombs as a terrorist act in order “not to give entrance, not to open the door for our ultra-conservative neighbors who want to have excuses, pretexts, to violate our sovereignty”.
López Obrador, frantic and blind, walks over a dynamited country. He does not realize that he is not walking alone, but with more than one hundred and twenty million people who, by his complicit omission, live in a climate of violence, death and disappearances.
Whoever wins the elections in 2024, what country will he receive if the president of Mexico prefers to defend the pyrrhic interests of his political group rather than those of a nation?
If the investigations confirm that the terrorist act that occurred in Jalisco on July 11 was indeed perpetrated by members of the FARC-EP in conjunction with the CJNG, an escalation of violence can be expected, with more serious and bloody episodes, putting the civilian population at greater risk.
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Terrorist orgs. operating right on our southern border thanks to FJB and his Mexican twin AMLO aka ELMO.
Plus with Mexico having elections in 2024 as well as the US 2024 is going to be an eventful year to say the least.