Posted on 02/09/2007 2:09:08 AM PST by ovrtaxt
INVASION USA
Border-agent investigator had tie to smuggler
Played major role in Ramos-Compean case but name blacked out in report
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
According to official documents in WND's possession, a Department of Homeland Security agent played a major role in managing the drug smuggler and conducting the field investigation in the incident that landed Border Patrol officers Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean in federal prison for more than a decade.
Yet, in the heavily redacted 77-page DHS report submitted to Congress Wednesday there is no explicit discussion of the role DHS Special Agent Christopher Sanchez played in the case.
Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, yesterday called for the resignation of four DHS investigators, including Assistant Inspector General Elizabeth Redman, after DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner testified under oath his deputies had lied to Congress about non-existent reports that were supposed to have established Ramos and Compean as rogue cops who wanted to "shoot some Mexicans."
 Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila |
WND has obtained a copy of the government-issued border pass given to Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, the drug smuggler granted immunity to testify against Ramos and Compean. The border pass allowed multiple entries to the U.S. and carried the signature and badge number of Sanchez.
The border pass appears to have been issued March 16, 2005, the day Sanchez brought Aldrete-Davila to William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, to have a bullet removed from his right thigh.
"Aldrete-Davila was issued what amounts to a 'Gold Elite' border pass," Andy Ramirez, chairman of the Friends of the Border Patrol, told WND. "With the stamp for multiple entries into the United States, Aldrete-Davila didn't have to run the back roads as a drug smuggler any more. He could tell his drug bosses in Mexico that he could drive their loads right through border crossing points without much worry."
WND previously reported Aldrete-Davila was implicated in a second drug bust in October 2005, subsequent to the Feb. 17, 2005 incident with Ramos and Compean in which he abandoned a 1989 Ford Econoline containing 743 pounds of marijuana driven across the border from Mexico.
"With that border pass, Aldrete-Davila had the green light," Ramirez told WND. "He might have been indicted if the vehicle he drove in October 2005 with 1,000 pounds of dope was identified back to a border-crossing photograph, but he probably never had to be arrested."
The prosecutor of Ramos and Compean, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, has told WND that Aldrete-Davila was never arrested a second time for a drug offense in October 2005, but Sutton has never denied the smuggler was indicted for such an offense.
Medical records obtained by WND clearly establish the bullet wounds suffered by Aldrete-Davila involved a lateral wound to the left buttocks, not a "shot in the back" as repeatedly claimed by Sutton.
The medical records document that March 16, 2005, Dr. Winston Marne removed a large bullet fragment from Aldrete-Davila's right thigh. The records indicate bullet fragments were found in Aldrete-Davila's pelvis but not removed. The path of the bullet is clearly described as entering in the left side of the left buttocks, traversing the groin area, and lodging in the right thigh.
The records also indicate reconstructive surgery was performed on Aldrete-Davila the same day at the army hospital. Damage to the urethra required a catheter to be inserted. Aldrete-Davila was placed under anesthetics for the operation and was heavily sedated for pain.
The drug smuggler was released from the army hospital the same day and given to the protective custody of Sanchez, who also took with him the bullet fragment removed from Aldrete-Davila's thigh.
WND has learned Aldrete-Davila spent the night of March 16, 2005, at the home of Sanchez.
"Christopher Sanchez shows up again with the shell fragments from Aldrete-Davila's body," Ramirez pointed out to WND. "Sanchez was evidently Aldrete-Davila's handler and from the looks of it, he did a good job. Taking that bullet home broke the chain of evidence. From there on, what good would a report be even if it established the bullet was fired from Ramos' gun?"
WND previously reported that the weapons identifications ballistics analysis performed by the Texas Department of Public Safety on the bullet fragment held by Sanchez did not match the bullet to the weapons fired Feb. 17, 2005 by Ramos or Compean.
March 16, 2005, was also the date "Osvaldo" Aldrete-Davila signed and accepted his offer of immunity from Sutton's office, supposedly signed before the medical operation was performed and the border pass issued. There is no time stamp noted on the immunity document nor mention of the location where the document was signed.
As WND reported, Sanchez grew up with Aldrete-Davila in Mexico, and the drug dealer's identity was first discovered through these family connections.
WND repeatedly has noted many of the DHS investigative reports were filed by Sanchez, who appears to have played a major role in the DHS field investigation.
"There was no reason to have redacted Christopher Sanchez's name from the report," Ramirez told WND. "Sanchez was a DHS special agent. But everywhere you look, Sanchez shows up playing a role shepherding the drug dealer around and framing the evidence that ended up being used by Johnny Sutton to put Ramos and Compean in prison for 11 and 12 years respectively."
Yeah, it does feel that way. Sort of. The BIG difference, though, is that, unlike during the Clinton-era, we aren't going wake up tomorrow to find follow-up stories wondering whether the Bush Admin offed ANS to get the pressure off of him over this DHS case and these two incarcerated BP Agents.
IIRC, so many people with ties to "Whitewater" died under suspicious circumstances that the whole damned scandal should have been renamed "Bloodriver".
Compean and Ramos have always maintained that they told the supervisor there at the scene that shots have been fired. Apparently, according to the DHS memo, almost everybody else in that office knew of the shots but the supervisors remained oblivious to the fact.
That doesn't wash. The border has become a very dangerous place thanks to people Aldrete-Davila and his cronies. Exchanged gunshots between smugglers and BP agents has become a common occurrence. The two BP agents did not have to fear telling their supervisor that they had fired their guns. They would simply tell him that they had a scuffle with him, he fled for the border, he appeared to be armed with some kind of firearm and at one point attempted to take a shot at one of them during the chase. Hence they opened fire.
And Charles, since you still haven't figured this out : if you have actually fired off fifteen separate .40 caliber rounds (as Sutton tries to claim) out there in the desert there is a damn good chance your supervisor has already heard them! It is silly to try and pretend that nothing has happened. Any veteran law enforcement officer can immediately recognize the sound of gunshots, even at a distance. I have gone target shooting out in the desert area north of grandmother's place in Lancaster, California. You can easily hear gun shots being fired a mile and a half to two miles away (yes even if you are sitting inside a vehicle). Fifteen consecutive .40 caliber rounds..?? No, they told the supervisor that they had (obviously) fired their guns but that the suspect escaped to the other side of the border.
Thanks for the pings. I'll get to this tonight after work...
Apparently, they did report the incident. Their superiors lied about that too!
I saw the real Bush in 1999 when he uttered, "There ought to be limits to freedom." and tried to sic the FEC on a web site owner who'd pariodied Bush's own campaign site.
What's to understand?
Bush is lying to gain support for his amnesty program.
>>This week, President Bush addressed members of the Border Patrol telling them that passing his "guest worker" plan would greatly reduce their work load, because fewer people would have to sneak across the border.<<
Sounds like a great idea to me. And if we let terrorists in, we can cut manhours like you wouldn't believe.
True, but I was responding to this part of your post.
You're welcome!
OMG
Re your post to Charles Wayne, like so many others who post truth to his lies/spin/strawman arguments, he chooses to ignore you.
That's in order to educate the slow learners, and to make the crooks supporting Sutton run to their keyboards and type out new excuses.
That is so sickening, I want to throw up.
Bet the 'perks' are better now, though.
I can't get past your first inaccurate sentence. Sorry.
The drug smuggler is not "copping a plea" in exchange for testimony. That's what you do when you have enough evidence to convict a low-level operative, but want to get him to roll over on the higher-ups.
When you have NOTHING AT ALL to use against a criminal, but you want his testimony to convict another criminal, you have no leverage to ask for ANYTHING.
Why would the guy confess he was smuggling drugs? He's already free and clear. He's in Mexico, the agents can't identify him, there's no prints on file linking him to the van or the drugs. All you have is the agent of a mother of a mother who says their son was shot at the border. Nothing close to being actionable.
This drug dealer was NEVER getting punished for this deal -- the two BP agents assured that when they failed to either arrest him (two police officer with guns failed to contain an unarmed man who at one point tried to surrender), or to look at him well enough to identify him even though BOTH men saw him well enough to "think he had a gun" and to shoot at him, and Compean was within FEET of the guy with the guy facing him with his hands up.
If there's a backstory to all this, it's how the two BP agents failed to sit down with a sketch artist and get a picture of a drug dealer so they might catch him in a subsequent bust and get him on this set of drugs. Instead, (likely to hide their shooting) they said they couldn't identify him.
That's a pretty silly statement, since Ramos STIPULATED (meaning admitted to the court) that the bullet was his.
According to the DHS report, the union representative claimed the supervisors were on the scene and were told. That is not evidence. The supervisors say they were not told, and I'm not even sure Compean and Ramos are quoted as saying they TOLD the supervisor.
I'm pretty sure the story was they didn't tell the supervisors because they were "sure" others had already told the supervisors, or the supervisors already "knew".
Yes, parts of my post were speculation. I think most people, like you, can understand that attributing motives is obviously speculation. There's so much speculation on these threads from the pro-bp side that I am surprised you find it unwelcome, but I appreciate your sudden concern for only seeing facts, located as it were in a thread where we can't even keep straight two separate people whose last names are Sanchez.
His fingerprints were NOT all over the van with the drugs. There were 8 different sets of prints lifted from the van, NONE of which were tied to any person in the files.
There is no report that the prints were ever matched to the smuggler, even after he was granted use immunity and they would have his prints to test against the van.
I've had it with all the different, contradictory, and often incorrect representatations of the facts of this case.
Could someone who actually knows the facts on the bp agent defender's side post what they claim are the facts, so we can argue first whether the facts are even consistant, and then be able to judge whether those facts make sense?
FR is useless if people keep posting incorrect statements without refutation. And once again, the pro-bp agent posters have completely ignored for hours an obviously misstated fact here.
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