UPDATED: FBI warns drug cartel has plot to kidnap federal agents

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 the Gulf Cartel already sent a contingent that are believed to have valid visas to enter the United States.

"Due to the nature of this immediate threat, all law-enforcement personnel are being cautioned to ensure appropriate measures are taken as well as to keep a high degree of vigilance," the bulletin states.

Rene Salinas, a spokesman for the FBI in San Antonio, said the information is "uncorroborated," but that federal agents and police are being told to use extra caution.

"It could be DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) or Border Patrol. It could be anybody," he said of potential victims.

He stressed the FBI bulletin was "law-enforcement sensitive" and not intended for the public.

The prospect of a U.S. federal agent murdered in Mexico conjures up memories of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, who in 1985 was snatched off the streets of Guadalajara and tortured to death by drug traffickers.

Agustín Gutiérrez Canet, the international spokesman for Mexican President Vicente Fox, said any possibility of a threat by the Gulf Cartel can not be underestimated.

"These kind of criminals are not playing games," he said. "This group is very dangerous and must be taken seriously, but let us hope it is only a false alarm."

It was not immediately clear if the FBI had sought assistance from Mexico in evaluating the threat.

An FBI agent who works along the U.S.-Mexico border said the threat was discovered as agents investigated illegal activity in the region.

"It had more specificity than usual, which caused us a little more concern then say a normal threat would," he said. "All of our agents have been urged to use extreme caution and to work in teams until this is resolved."

T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said it was too soon to know how the agency would address the threat, but options include keeping agents in pairs, staying in closer contact and changing routines.

"Unfortunately, in most incidents, most agents are out there alone, like sitting ducks," he said.

The bulletin could not come at a more awkward time for U.S.-Mexico relations, as President Fox Thursday blasted U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza for complaining Mexico was not doing enough to prevent murders, kidnapping and other drug-cartel violence.

In a letter to the Foreign Ministry and attorney general, Garza said violence is so rampant along the U.S.-Mexico border that it threatens U.S. citizens visiting this country.

Fox responded that no foreign country had the right to judge Mexico's efforts and that Mexico was fighting the cartels on numerous fronts.

Also earlier this week, Fox dispatched about 700 federal police and an uncertain number of soldiers to increase security in the vicinity of the Texas-Mexico border cities of Matamoros, Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo.

As part of the effort to increase pressure on jailed cartel leaders, who are believed to still operate their empires behind bars, federal police took over operations at three maximum security prisons, including facilities in Matamoros, Guadalajara and just outside Mexico City.

With regard to the FBI memo, there was no response from the Mexican government. The Mexican attorney general's office said it had no immediate information on the threat.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Jim Dickmeyer said the bulletin was not generated to heap more criticism on Mexico.

"People do not do this for political reasons, they do it for security reasons," Dickmeyer said. "No one is trying to be alarmist."

In related action, the Air Education and Training Command, based at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, is advising personnel to avoid Mexico, based on State Department concerns.

"We did not tell them they can not go, just that this is the situation — be advised," Lt. Col. Johnn Kennedy said.

From the link I gave:

'During the Iran Contra Investigation ten years ago, much evidence linking the CIA to drug dealing came out but was successfully covered up by an **** obedient and sheep-like mass media.'

See 'OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD'

3-24-00
Operation Mockingbird -
The Subversion Of America's Free Press By The CIA
http://www.psychicspy.com/ciamed.txt

"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor of the Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and COVER STORIES. "Katherine The Great," by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)

As terrible as it is to live in a nation where the press in known to be controlled by the government, at least one has the advantage of knowing the bias is present, and to adjust for it. In the United States of America, we are taught from birth that our press is free from such government meddling. This is an insideous lie about the very nature of the news institution in this country. One that allows the government to lie to us while denying the very fact of the lie itself.

The Alex Constantine Article

Tales from the Crypt The Depraved Spies and Moguls of the CIA's Operation MOCKINGBIRD

By Alex Constantine

'Who Controls the Media?

Soulless corporations do, of course. Corporations with grinning, double-breasted executives, interlocking directorates, labor squabbles and flying capital. Dow. General Electric. Coca-Cola. Disney. Newspapers should have mastheads that mirror the world: The Westinghouse Evening Scimitar, The Atlantic-Richfield Intelligentser . It is beginning to dawn on a growing number of armchair ombudsmen that the public print reports news from a parallel universe - one that has never heard of politically-motivated assassinations, CIA-Mafia banking thefts, mind control, death squads or even federal agencies with secret budgets fattened by cocaine sales - a place overrun by lone gunmen, where the CIA and Mafia are usually on their best behavior. In this idyllic land, the most serious infraction an official can commit is a the employment of a domestic servant with (shudder) no residency status.

This unlikely land of enchantment is the creation of MOCKINGBIRD.

It was conceived in the late 1940s, the most frigid period of the cold war, when the CIA began a systematic infiltration of the corporate media, a process that often included direct takeover of major news outlets.

In this period, the American intelligence services competed with communist activists abroad to influence European labor unions. With or without the cooperation of local governments, Frank Wisner, an undercover State Department official assigned to the Foreign Service, rounded up students abroad to enter the cold war underground of covert operations on behalf of his Office of Policy Coordination. Philip Graham, a graduate of the Army Intelligence School in Harrisburg, PA, then publisher of the Washington Post., was taken under Wisner's wing to direct the program code-named Operation MOCKINGBIRD.

"By the early 1950s," writes formerVillage Voice reporter Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great, "Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a former CIA analyst." The network was overseen by Allen Dulles, a templar for German and American corporations who wanted their points of view represented in the public print. Early MOCKINGBIRD influenced 25 newspapers and wire agencies consenting to act as organs of CIA propaganda. Many of these were already run by men with reactionary views, among them William Paley (CBS), C.D. Jackson (Fortune), Henry Luce (Time) and Arthur Hays Sulzberger (N.Y. Times)......'
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/mockingbird.htm

So....is this story out of San Antonio 'news' or just another 'cover story' for something else? We probably won't know 'til later.

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