Posted on 12/29/2011 11:17:13 PM PST by neverdem
‘Fast and Furious’ Linked to Immunity Deal Between U.S. and Sinaloa Cartel, Trafficking Defendant Alleges in Court Papers
A Mexican drug trafficker awaiting trial in a Chicago federal court claims that the notorious Sinaloa cartel received weapons from "Operation Fast and Furious" under an alleged immunity agreement that the U.S. government made with cartel leaders, in exchange for information on rival gangs.
The defendant in a trafficking case before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Vicente Jesus Zambada-Niebla, also claims the immunity deal allowed the criminal cartel to "continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs" into the United States.
He wants the U.S. government to provide documents relating to the botched gun running sting operation along the southwest border, arguing that it would benefit his defense.
Operation Fast and Furious, which began in September 2009, saw the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives supervise the sale of guns to straw purchasers with the intent of tracing the guns to Mexican drug trafficking organizations and prosecuting their members. The ATF allowed about 2,000 guns to be sold in this manner.
The operation came under congressional scrutiny after it was linked to the December 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry at the hands of Mexican bandits.
An investigative report, spearheaded by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), found that most of the weapons provided to Mexican criminals under the operation were going to the Sinaloa cartel, arguably one of the world's largest drug trafficking organizations.
In a court pleading filed last July, Zambada-Niebla made the claims about an immunity deal.
"Mr. Zambada-Niebla believes that the documentation that he requests will confirm that the weapons received by Sinaloa Cartel members and its leaders in Operation 'Fast & Furious' were provided under the agreement entered into between the United States government and [a Mexican lawyer] on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel that is the subject of his defense...," it said.
"Mr. Zambada-Niebla believes that the documentation will also provide evidence showing that the United States government has a policy and pattern of providing benefits, including immunity, to cartel leaders, including the Sinaloa Cartel and their members, who are willing to provide information against rival drug cartels."
The defendant argued that he is protected from federal prosecution for trafficking drugs into the U.S. between 2004 and 2009 under an alleged immunity deal struck between the U.S. government and Sinaloa leaders.
According to court documents, Zambada-Niebla claims that the immunity deal provided the cartel's leadership with "carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States" in exchange for information on rival drug cartels.
U.S. prosecutors deny the existence of such an immunity deal between the U.S. government and the cartel.
Nevertheless, the U.S. government last September filed a motion to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act, which is aimed at assuring that national security information stemming from criminal cases – such as details associated with CIA operations – are not leaked to the public during court proceedings.
In a court pleading filed in September, U.S. prosecutors claimed that Zambada-Niebla's allegations about Fast and Furious have no merit.
"Defendant requests all information in the possession of the U.S. government related to an ATF investigation referred to as 'Fast and Furious'..." it said. "Defendants request related to Fast and Furious... and other unrelated matters are gratuitous and wholly unrelated to any legitimate discovery issues in this case."
Zambada-Niebla, who was arrested in Mexico in March 2009 and extradited to the U.S. eleven months later, is accused of smuggling tons of cocaine and heroin into the U.S.
He claims he was working on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, court documents show.
The defendant's pleading highlighted a July 2011 letter sent by Issa and Grassley to Attorney General Eric Holder, "suggesting that multiple United States agencies were employing as informants members of Mexican drug organizations."
"The evidence seems to indicate that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons, but that tax payers' dollars in the form of informant payments, may have financed those engaging in such activities," the pleading added.
More like they are trying to rob the US from within. Whether the US remains as a functional 57 state union or not, is probably immaterial to them. Putin called them parasites, and unfortunately, our leaders took that as a compliment.
Wow... It’s like Sons of Anarchy, but with a very devious plot twist, and with the Sons being replaced by gun shop owners who used by the ATF and other US Gov’t agencies.
Is our government CAPITULATING to the cartels (or one in particular) in order to appease them in some way? In order to settle a threat of violence? Could this be tied to La Raza and such? Where is McCain on this? Someone should ask him, point blank. After all, he is the one who (in mid-2007), said that, if we didn’t change our “immigration” policies and create a “path to citizenship” that there would be riots in the streets of California. Sounds like that was a threat they put out to me!
Is this the Democrats way of winning “hearts and minds” in the “La Raza”-supporting public, and the drug and human trafficking circles of the cartels? Did they actually SIT DOWN with these cartel leaders and make deals for weapons??? To what end? Did our ally Mexico KNOW we were meeting with THEIR enemies - the ones who were killing the Federales and their innocent citizens (and OURS)???
I’m aware, of course, that the cartels would LOVE for the citizens in the border states to be without lethal PROTECTION - especially states like Arizona. Obama and Co. are DEFINITELY attempting to shut down the one man in Arizona who is a pain in their side.
Those men, also charged in the Chicago case, remain fugitives. Guzman-Loera is considered one of the world’s top drug kingpins.
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MORE BACKGROUND INFO
Joaquin “Chapo ("shorty")” Guzman-Loera, or most often called Joaquin Guzman
Cartel boss [Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman] may resort to force north of border [May 2009]
Local police and federal agents in Arizona said they recently have received at least two law enforcement alerts focused on Guzman’s reported orders that his smugglers should “use their weapons to defend their loads at all costs.”
Guzman is believed to have delivered the message personally in early March, during a three-day gathering of his associates in Sonoita, a small Mexican town a few miles south of the Arizona border, according to confidential U.S. intelligence bulletins sent to several state and federal law enforcement officials, who discussed them on the condition of anonymity.
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Mexico's Sinaloa gang grows empire, defies crackdown [Jan 2011]
Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, 53, is arguably the world's most infamous drug trafficker, and has extended his empire from Colombia to China since he broke out of prison in a laundry van on January 19, 2001.......
(snip)
Forbes magazine estimates his wealth at $1 billion, and experts say his cartel moves up to two-thirds of drugs into the United States. "Guzman is number one because of the sheer volume of drugs he handles and the violence he has unleashed," said another U.S. anti-drug official.
Mexico knows it cannot stem insatiable U.S. demand for drugs, but the growing power of Guzman's cartel to corrupt officials, extort businesses and control parts of the country is a major concern as the oil-producing nation aims to convince investors it is an attractive market.
PACT WITH THE DEVIL? Amid the mayhem of severed heads and blood-stained streets, Guzman and his right-hand man Ismael Zambada have adeptly taken territory from gangs weakened by army operations while bringing in raw materials from China to make meth, using Africa as a route for cocaine into Europe, and growing their business in Colombia and across Central America.
"In the past five years, the Sinaloans have transformed themselves into a global criminal organization with operations in 52 countries," said Edgardo Buscaglia, a drug trade export at Mexico's private ITAM university, who compares the Sinaloa cartel's reach to the Russian mafia in the 1990s.
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Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman's wife, Emma Coronel, gave birth Aug. 15 to twin girls at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, according to birth records and a senior U.S. law enforcement official.
(snip)
Turns out Coronel, a 22-year-old former beauty queen, holds U.S. citizenship, which entitles her to travel freely to the United States. By being born in California, and to a mother who is an American citizen, her little girls also have U.S. citizenship.
Guzman, 54, the multibillionaire fugitive head of the Sinaloa cartel, married Coronel the day she turned 18 in a lavish wedding in the highlands of central Mexico in 2007. She is believed to be his third or fourth wife and is a niece of Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, a onetime partner of Guzman who was killed in a July 2010 shootout with the Mexican army.
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America's Third War: The U.S. Cut a Deal With the Sinaloa Cartel [Aug 2011]
U.S. federal agents allegedly cut a deal with the Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed it to traffic tons of narcotics across the border, in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to documents filed in federal court.
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U.S. Admits Mexican (Drug) Cartels Control Parts Of Border [Oct 2011]
Remember this? The Mexican border “is as secure as it has ever been.” Or what about this; violence along the Mexican border is merely a mistaken “perception” because the Obama Administration has successfully fostered a “secure and prosperous” region. Napolitano also said that “misinformation about safety” is negatively impacting border communities and that the U.S.-Mexico border is not “overrun or out of control.”
The truth is that Mexican drug cartels do in fact “control access to the U.S.-Mexico border” and the “smuggling routes across it,” according to the Justice Department’s drug assessment, which has been kept quiet by the administration. No press conferences or photo ops to promote this report, which concludes that the “unprecedented levels of violence in Mexico” will continue for years to come.
(snip)
This is hardly shocking news. The National Drug Intelligence Center has for years determined that Mexican drug trafficking organizations represent the greatest crime threat to the United States. In fact, the agency’s 2009 report says that the violence, intimidation, theft and financial crimes carried out by the illicit operations “pose a significant threat” to the nation as a whole.
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Obama's DOJ Let [Sinaloa] Cartel Bombmaker Walk [Oct 2011] <
Jean Baptiste Kingery seems to be yet another thug that took advantage of the Obama Administration's criminal stimulus package for the southwest, building grenades and IEDs for the Sinaloa cartel.
So what did the Department of Justice do when they caught him. They released him free as a bird within hours.
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On Saturday, October 1, 2011, investigative journalist Bill Conroy of the Narcosphere reported scandalous and highly troubling new developments in the criminal case against accused Mexican narco-trafficker Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla.
The breaking story unravels the U.S. government’s ugly national-security interests in the drug war by exposing a quid pro quo deal between the US government and the most powerful international narco-trafficking organization on the planet- the Sinaloa “Cartel,” and the US government’s recent attempt to cover this up by filing a motion in the case seeking to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), a measure designed to assure national security information does not become public during court proceedings.
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The evidence is mounting that the Fast and Furious gun giveaway was orchestrated and/or initiated from the top of the Obama administration. Forbes Magazine is calling it “Obama’s Watergate.” Are we to believe that they gave away enough guns to equip a small army of narcoterrorists out of a simple error? We would have to be pretty gullible to believe that.
We have to ask just what they intended to achieve by doing this. It was a truly extravagant gift to the Sinaloa Federation Cartel. It was not just expensive in tax dollars; it was expensive in political capital, and it was so close to the 2012 election.
People don’t give such expensive things away for nothing. The Obama people must have expected something in return.
Consider the fact that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, and the Obama Administration has a long and continuing pattern of giving gifts to the Sinaloa Cartel:
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Gunwalker: Justice Dept. Violated US Laws Beyond Those Being Investigated
As we continue to watch the general uproar over the Operation Fast and Furious program, and specifically what Attorney General Holder knew and when he knew it, it needs to be noted that perjury is not the only apparent violation of law to have occurred.
I refer to the apparent violation of at least one (probably two) major U.S. laws by the Holder Justice Department. A few years ago, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701, the follow-on to the Trading with the Enemy Act) was expanded in order to criminalize any transactions between U.S. entities — to include departments and agencies of the U.S. government — and all foreign drug cartels.
I am familiar with these prohibitive statues because several years ago, while serving as the senior drug analyst for the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was tasked to initiate and became the principal drafter of legislation which became known as the Kingpin Act (21 U.S.C. §§ 1901-08).
The Kingpin Act is an extension of the highly successful IEEPA sanctioning program specifically targeting Colombian drug cartels. It expands sanctions authority against various drug cartel operations worldwide — including Mexico — which have been determined by the president [????] to be threats to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.
A violation of any of the IEEPA sanctioning programs or the Kingpin Act carries stiff penalties, both criminal and civil, and potentially totaling decades in prison and tens of millions of dollars in fines.
It is not necessary that an individual or governmental entity be shown to have “knowingly” violated any of these programs: it is illegal for any U.S. entity or individual to aid, abet, or materially assist — or in the case of Operation Fast and Furious, to facilitate others to aid, abet, or materially assist — designated drug traffickers. There are no exceptions within IEEPA programs for unlicensed U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agency operations.
Feds: [Sinaloa] Mexican Cartel Plotted Attack on U.S. to 'Send the Gringos a Message' [Nov 2011]
The leaders of a powerful Mexican cartel, frustrated that U.S. law enforcement was interfering with their lucrative drug business, plotted a military-style attack on a U.S. or Mexican government building to "send the gringos a message," federal prosecutors allege in documents filed this week.
Leaders of the Sinaloa cartel sought dozens of American-made weapons for an attack in Mexico City on possible targets that included government buildings, an embassy or consulate or media outlet, according to documents in the case against Vicente Zambada, an alleged top lieutenant in the cartel.
Zambada is in jail in Chicago awaiting trial, one of dozens of defendants charged in the city as part of a sweeping international investigation. He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he conspired to import and sell large amounts of cocaine and heroin in the United States, including Chicago.
Authorities say his father, Ismael Zambada, runs the cartel along with Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. There's nothing in the documents to indicate the plot was carried out.
Vicente Zambada's lawyers claim he and other cartel leaders were granted immunity by U.S. agents — and carte blanche to smuggle cocaine over the border — in exchange for intelligence about rival cartels engaged in bloody turf wars in Mexico. Prosecutors have denied that such an agreement exists.
But deals with key players in...
--snip--
During the conversation, the documents say, Guzman suggests they target a Mexican or American government building in Mexico City. Vicente Zambada then turns to Margarito Flores and tells him to find a U.S. soldier returning from overseas to give him 20-30 "big powerful weapons," specifying that they be American-made. During a later recorded phone conversation, prosecutors say, Vicente Zambada reiterates with Flores that the cartel will buy the weapons...
Your cautions are understood. I really, honestly, don’t believe that the President and his co-horts in the various agencies are all that interested in fighting against the Militant Islamic Hirabists. Unless Obama is somehow tied to the rival group of Islamic Radicals. This COULD have been an excuse to get some of the agency staff to go along with such an insane plan... but, I doubt that, too. If they were going to bust Hezbollah folks in Mexico that were operating within the cartels why wouldn’t Mexico know about it? Did our President go behind the Mexican Gov’t and People’s backs and make on of those wheeling and dealing agreements he seems so fond of? The reasoning doesn’t make it OK.
The road to hell (and socialism/Communism) is paved with mostly “good” intentions...
I don’t think Obama is tied to the Mob - honestly. They may have made deals with folks tied to the mob, but they are NOT friends with it. The groups they straddle are in Liberal and Gangland circles... A tangent through the Chicago Political Machine, but not IN the mob. (That wouldn’t make much sense to me... Obama doesn’t have tentacles in the right circles for that, IMHO.) He’s no “made man”.
It's his lawyer who is reading the same news we are reading.
Has anyone dug deeper into this (if there has been time) or will they now?
Seems like AZ, TX issues were all collateral damage for the real focus of getting drugs into Chicago?
I should add:
Who knows what deals have been made among various groups with political power - what other exchanges? I call to mind the radical change in structure to the CPD’s assignments and tactical methods in the worst neighborhoods via Rahm Emmanuel. It wouldn’t surprise me if these were neighborhoods that were controlled by various gangs that may be aligned with the Sinaloas (or not).
Except this skel places the time period between 2004-09. Placing it squarely in W’s administration. If true you can bet that fact will eclipse any of the F&F info about Holder and Obama. It would be better if this guy is proven a liar and just goes to prison.
“It’s like Sons of Anarchy, but with a very devious plot twist...”
True. Unfortunately there is no Jack Bauer to save the day.
See the posts I just made. I’m coming at this from the view of having lived in Cook County (but outside the city) until I was 24 years old. Unless things have changed HUGELY within politics in the last decade I think it’s drugs, plus everything else. Control of the cities drug trade and distribution routes are “bonuses” and how corrupt agencies make these people rich. Wheeling and Dealing with various political and gang factions.
If anyone has looked into this it is US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. There were rumors among Hillary’s supporters and camp in Chicago that he had the goods on everyone from Blago all the way up to the President and incl. Pelosi, Reid, et. al. For some reason they basically stopped at taking care of Rezko, and Blagojevich - the “fall guys”. It’s not being pursued openly, but I think he and his office probably know the truth - even if they are being silenced, or simply can’t tack down the proof. I was thinking that the Clinton Machine may be trying to manuever to take down the lot of them in some way, but I don’t know if they will succeed. Many liberals do seem to be very tired of Obama...
I hope our candidates and RNC use the presidential campaign to educate the American people
Obamah & Eric Holder need to be impeached and charged criminally with racketeering.
Fast and Furious was nothing more than to link guns from dealers to bad guys and to clamp down on the second amendment. That is it!!! That is who they blamed early on..
Excellent advice...research to verify...it will surprise you.
One of his made men just walked into Chicago and became Mayor. Just like that. Definitely has ties to the control structure.
You might want to read through this thread...Didn’t keep it up most of the year as I was off the computer, but it will give you an idea of how it all works. IMO it’s more international than just Chicago. Note the country of origins of the names beginning with A
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2151323/posts
You would not believe how much control the various Conquistador Cartels have in Kalifornia. Almost getting to the point where you have to align with one for protection. That is probably what DC has done.
It appears this operation involves both the Bush and Obama administrations. Why our government would arm Mexican gangs is beyond me.
Wow and thank you! This will be first up on the 2012 TM thread as soon as I get it up there. Not only do we have the muslim brotherhood in the WH, we have the filthiest, most obscene North American drug cartel partnered with the muslims AND the WH to form a worldwide criminal organization right in front of our faces, using corrupt government officials in MANY countries to expedite their business.
This has been going on for years and we have known this for years. I have been posting about this for years right here and people thought I was crazy.
The only thing that has changed is that NOW the muslims and the latin cartels have become partners instead of rivals.
Peace talks in Afghanistan my a$$.
Iran used to be the muslim hub. Every drug that came through Asia and the Middle East passed through Iran. clinton made his move on Iran and used bin laden, al qaeda, and the taliban to control the drugs and empower the KLA to move them. Cut Iran out.
There is so much more to the story. So much. And the corruption stayed within the highest echelons of our government including bush.
obama is fingerfood in this. He does as he is told And that is ALL that he does. He gets all the perks he could ever want or need to just to show his face.
People wonder why Sarah Palin suddenly ‘decided’ not to run. THIS is why. And THIS is why the field we have is so damn rotten you can smell it in Europe.
This year’s TM is going to get very interesting.
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