BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: Syndicated Investigative Reporter. March 10, 2009 at 12:01 AM PDT

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church in Mexico today chimed in and sided with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon on the controversial subject of U.S. government corruption and demanded that the U.S. government have a “change of attitude” that involves a “serious anti-corruption program to eliminate the protection that – from the highest levels of power to the businessmen and public servants – is provided the traffickers, whose impunity makes possible the commerce and consumption of drugs.”[SIC]

Last week we reported that Mexican President Calderon said that he blames U.S. “corruption” for hampering his nation’s efforts to combat violent drug cartels.

“Drug trafficking in the United States is fueled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities,” he said.

President Calderon also told the media that the main cause of Mexico’s drug gang problems was “having the world’s biggest consumer (of drugs) next to us.”

Corruption on both sides of the U.S. Mexican border runs deep and can be found in the highest levels of both the Mexican government as well as the U.S.

President Calderon also told reporters that “Drug trafficking in the United States is fuelled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities,” he said.

“It is not an exclusively Mexican problem, it is a common problem between Mexico and the United States,” he said.

The Mexican President said, “I want to know how many American officials have been prosecuted for this [corruption].”

The Mexican Government since the Calderon administration says there have been many high ranking Federal, State and City Officials arrested and openly exposed to the world and many Mexicans agree with their President and are asking why is the U.S. not doing the same?

It is rumored that the Mexican Government is close to naming names of American officials who profit and or benefit from the huge amounts of cash generated in their country and in the U.S. by Mexican Drug Cartels.

There seems to be no U.S. Government Agency immune from corruption, the FBI, DEA, CIA, IRS, DOD, National Guard, Federal Air Marshals, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs, U.S. Marshalls, ICE, Dept of Commerce, U.S. Justice, U.S. State, and even our state and federal Judiciary and others, many of which are answerable to the top U.S. Agency “Homeland Security” This powerful organization was created during the Bush administration and its power reaches around the world.

After describing the US military as vain and bewildered, the hierarchy of the Church indicated in its weekly publication that Mexico has recognized the serious problem of corruption among its authorities and public servants and demanded that the U.S. do the same and initiate actions to keep watchful and clean out the public institutions that contribute to narcotraffic.  

The periodical characterized the attitude of the U.S. as hypocritical and having double standards for offering Mexico assistance in the drug war, but on the other hand, demonstrating that it has little ability to control the traffic of drugs and flow of money in its own country.

The publication, which reflects the Church’s position in Mexico, accused the U.S. of “having no intention of confronting the ‘addict culture’ in its own country or stopping the traffic of arms inside and outside its borders…”  

The popular Catholic weekly publication asked the question, what is the U.S. doing at home in order to put an end to their own drug distribution networks and drug addict’s (which includes Mexican Drug Cartels and both Mexican and American gangs) and what are they going to do about the protection provided for highly placed drug traffickers and those who make a lot of money directly and indirectly from the trade besides just delivering puritanical and hypocritical speeches so characteristic of the U.S.

Information provided to the public by this and other reporters showed following a crash of a Gulfstream jet operated by the CIA allegedly for torture flights to Guantanamo and to other countries with loose torture laws. That particular aircraft it was found by rescue workers in Mexico to have contained 4 tons of high-grade Columbian cocaine.

With the raging war on drugs and terror authorities on both sides of the border are on the take. In a war that has cost billions of American tax dollars and a business that is believed by many to profit in the hundreds of billions, it is no wonder that officials from American street cops in the borders cities to the highest levels of both governments are benefiting financially from the illegal trade of smuggling drugs, humans, and terrorist into the U.S. via Mexican drug cartel smuggling routes that don’t end at the border but continue North, East and West throughout the U.S.A.

More U.S. officials and cops have been caught in criminal activities then ever before.

Customs supervisor Walter Golembiowski and Officer John Ajello face narcotics, bribery and conspiracy charges after they were arrested for helping smuggle drugs and contraband through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

According to a CNN report the investigation has led to the indictment and prosecution of more than 20 people from distributors to overseas sources of supply and the seizure of more than 600 pounds of imported hashish and other drugs from the United States and France.

Some Mexican legislators claim there is already covert action taking place in Mexico by the Americans and has taken many different forms reflecting the diverse circumstances in which it is being used.

According to Mexican authorities the U.S. military is covertly operating in Mexico and ” have boots on the ground.”  They are also accelerating training using U.S. Military, CIA, DEA, FBI and U.S. Police advisers.

According to a high-ranking Mexican official, who wants to remain anonymous, the U.S.- Mexican border is the primary focal point for military operations. There are U.S. Army Special Forces secret operation bases in Mexico.

Reports of federal agents and cops being involved in drug and other crimes like smuggling humans, drugs, guns and cash are becoming more routine.
 

Still many more believe the estimates of corruption among our own officials are much higher then are currently being reported. This situation is seriously hurting America. 

According to Paul Joseph Watson of Prison Planet, the corporate media will report on lesser drug smuggling scandals involving cops and customs agents, but when it comes to gargantuan sprawling U.S. Government agencies like the CIA, the silence is deafening.

Still the Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA which was forced to crash land in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula after it ran out of fuel was reported to have been used in at least three CIA “rendition” trips to Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and 2005.

 Many Americans believe that the CIA run illegal arms to Central America and smuggled drugs back into the states during the Reagan Bush years.

Kevin Booth’s underground hit documentary “American Drug War” features footage of former DEA head Robert Bonner admitting that the CIA was involved in cocaine smuggling operations.

Former DEA agent Celle Castillo, says he personally witnessed CIA drug smuggling operations funneled through terrorists that were also involved in kidnappings and the training of death squads on behalf of the U.S. government.

Investigative reporter Gary Webb was instrumental in exposing CIA cocaine trafficking operations before his alleged suicide in 2004. In the YouTube clip below, Webb traces the history of Agency involvement in drug smuggling and its links to financing wars in Central America.

Judicial Watch reports that corruption among federal officers guarding the U.S.-Mexico border is so rampant that the U.S. Government created an internal web site devoted to recently convicted border agents and lie detector tests will be administered to ensure future applicants don’t already work for smuggling organizations.

The report further points out that the alarming growing number of agents with the Homeland Security agency in charge of protecting the U.S. from terrorists, drugs and illegal immigrants are collaborating with Mexican Drug Cartel operations allowing those same illegal immigrants, drugs, weapons and possibly terrorists into the country.

Mexican Drug Cartels use some of the same methods they use to attract Mexican officials to attract U.S. officials some of those tactics are used to also lure the American officials with women, sex and cash. In return, those hired to guard the border assure the safe passage of truckloads of illegal immigrants, drugs and other contraband into the United States. Some have even used their government-issued vehicles to shuttle illegal aliens from Mexico to safe houses north of the border.
 

Numerous low level border agents have been convicted for accepting bribes from Mexican smugglers in the last few years alone and investigations are pending against hundreds of others.  One of the things that concerns the Mexicans is why are not the higher ups in the U.S. Government are not being exposed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oszATUJ4IRE

Sources:

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS (NAFBPO )

Mexico’s President Calderon

M-3 Report
Mexican Catholic Church publication

El Universal Newspaper

The Mexican National Defense Department (Sedena)

The Mexican Federal Attorney General

Carlos Rico, Mexico’s under-secretary of foreign affairs for North America

Youtube

BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: Syndicated Investigative Reporter. March 10, 2009 at 12:01 AM PDT

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church in Mexico today chimed in and sided with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon on the controversial subject of U.S. government corruption and demanded that the U.S. government have a “change of attitude” that involves a “serious anti-corruption program to eliminate the protection that – from the highest levels of power to the businessmen and public servants – is provided the traffickers, whose impunity makes possible the commerce and consumption of drugs.”[SIC]

Last week we reported that Mexican President Calderon said that he blames U.S. “corruption” for hampering his nation’s efforts to combat violent drug cartels.

“Drug trafficking in the United States is fueled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities,” he said.

President Calderon also told the media that the main cause of Mexico’s drug gang problems was “having the world’s biggest consumer (of drugs) next to us.”

Corruption on both sides of the U.S. Mexican border runs deep and can be found in the highest levels of both the Mexican government as well as the U.S.

President Calderon also told reporters that “Drug trafficking in the United States is fuelled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities,” he said.

“It is not an exclusively Mexican problem, it is a common problem between Mexico and the United States,” he said.

The Mexican President said, “I want to know how many American officials have been prosecuted for this [corruption].”

The Mexican Government since the Calderon administration says there have been many high ranking Federal, State and City Officials arrested and openly exposed to the world and many Mexicans agree with their President and are asking why is the U.S. not doing the same?

It is rumored that the Mexican Government is close to naming names of American officials who profit and or benefit from the huge amounts of cash generated in their country and in the U.S. by Mexican Drug Cartels.

There seems to be no U.S. Government Agency immune from corruption, the FBI, DEA, CIA, IRS, DOD, National Guard, Federal Air Marshals, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs, U.S. Marshalls, ICE, Dept of Commerce, U.S. Justice, U.S. State, and even our state and federal Judiciary and others, many of which are answerable to the top U.S. Agency “Homeland Security” This powerful organization was created during the Bush administration and its power reaches around the world.

After describing the US military as vain and bewildered, the hierarchy of the Church indicated in its weekly publication that Mexico has recognized the serious problem of corruption among its authorities and public servants and demanded that the U.S. do the same and initiate actions to keep watchful and clean out the public institutions that contribute to narcotraffic.  

The periodical characterized the attitude of the U.S. as hypocritical and having double standards for offering Mexico assistance in the drug war, but on the other hand, demonstrating that it has little ability to control the traffic of drugs and flow of money in its own country.

The publication, which reflects the Church’s position in Mexico, accused the U.S. of “having no intention of confronting the ‘addict culture’ in its own country or stopping the traffic of arms inside and outside its borders…”  

The popular Catholic weekly publication asked the question, what is the U.S. doing at home in order to put an end to their own drug distribution networks and drug addict’s (which includes Mexican Drug Cartels and both Mexican and American gangs) and what are they going to do about the protection provided for highly placed drug traffickers and those who make a lot of money directly and indirectly from the trade besides just delivering puritanical and hypocritical speeches so characteristic of the U.S.

Information provided to the public by this and other reporters showed following a crash of a Gulfstream jet operated by the CIA allegedly for torture flights to Guantanamo and to other countries with loose torture laws. That particular aircraft it was found by rescue workers in Mexico to have contained 4 tons of high-grade Columbian cocaine.

With the raging war on drugs and terror authorities on both sides of the border are on the take. In a war that has cost billions of American tax dollars and a business that is believed by many to profit in the hundreds of billions, it is no wonder that officials from American street cops in the borders cities to the highest levels of both governments are benefiting financially from the illegal trade of smuggling drugs, humans, and terrorist into the U.S. via Mexican drug cartel smuggling routes that don’t end at the border but continue North, East and West throughout the U.S.A.

More U.S. officials and cops have been caught in criminal activities then ever before.

Customs supervisor Walter Golembiowski and Officer John Ajello face narcotics, bribery and conspiracy charges after they were arrested for helping smuggle drugs and contraband through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

According to a CNN report the investigation has led to the indictment and prosecution of more than 20 people from distributors to overseas sources of supply and the seizure of more than 600 pounds of imported hashish and other drugs from the United States and France.

Some Mexican legislators claim there is already covert action taking place in Mexico by the Americans and has taken many different forms reflecting the diverse circumstances in which it is being used.

According to Mexican authorities the U.S. military is covertly operating in Mexico and ” have boots on the ground.”  They are also accelerating training using U.S. Military, CIA, DEA, FBI and U.S. Police advisers.

According to a high-ranking Mexican official, who wants to remain anonymous, the U.S.- Mexican border is the primary focal point for military operations. There are U.S. Army Special Forces secret operation bases in Mexico.

Reports of federal agents and cops being involved in drug and other crimes like smuggling humans, drugs, guns and cash are becoming more routine.
 

Still many more believe the estimates of corruption among our own officials are much higher then are currently being reported. This situation is seriously hurting America. 

According to Paul Joseph Watson of Prison Planet, the corporate media will report on lesser drug smuggling scandals involving cops and customs agents, but when it comes to gargantuan sprawling U.S. Government agencies like the CIA, the silence is deafening.

Still the Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA which was forced to crash land in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula after it ran out of fuel was reported to have been used in at least three CIA “rendition” trips to Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and 2005.

 Many Americans believe that the CIA run illegal arms to Central America and smuggled drugs back into the states during the Reagan Bush years.

Kevin Booth’s underground hit documentary “American Drug War” features footage of former DEA head Robert Bonner admitting that the CIA was involved in cocaine smuggling operations.

Former DEA agent Celle Castillo, says he personally witnessed CIA drug smuggling operations funneled through terrorists that were also involved in kidnappings and the training of death squads on behalf of the U.S. government.

Investigative reporter Gary Webb was instrumental in exposing CIA cocaine trafficking operations before his alleged suicide in 2004. In the YouTube clip below, Webb traces the history of Agency involvement in drug smuggling and its links to financing wars in Central America.

Judicial Watch reports that corruption among federal officers guarding the U.S.-Mexico border is so rampant that the U.S. Government created an internal web site devoted to recently convicted border agents and lie detector tests will be administered to ensure future applicants don’t already work for smuggling organizations.

The report further points out that the alarming growing number of agents with the Homeland Security agency in charge of protecting the U.S. from terrorists, drugs and illegal immigrants are collaborating with Mexican Drug Cartel operations allowing those same illegal immigrants, drugs, weapons and possibly terrorists into the country.

Mexican Drug Cartels use some of the same methods they use to attract Mexican officials to attract U.S. officials some of those tactics are used to also lure the American officials with women, sex and cash. In return, those hired to guard the border assure the safe passage of truckloads of illegal immigrants, drugs and other contraband into the United States. Some have even used their government-issued vehicles to shuttle illegal aliens from Mexico to safe houses north of the border.
 

Numerous low level border agents have been convicted for accepting bribes from Mexican smugglers in the last few years alone and investigations are pending against hundreds of others.  One of the things that concerns the Mexicans is why are not the higher ups in the U.S. Government are not being exposed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oszATUJ4IRE

Sources:

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS (NAFBPO )

Mexico’s President Calderon

M-3 Report
Mexican Catholic Church publication

El Universal Newspaper

The Mexican National Defense Department (Sedena)

The Mexican Federal Attorney General

Carlos Rico, Mexico’s under-secretary of foreign affairs for North America

Youtube

BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: SYNDICATED INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER.  Sunday DEC 14, 2008 at 12:01 PM PST

From Brownsville Texas to San Diego California Mexican cities bordering American cities along the U.S. Mexican border are where Americans are being killed by assassinations and executions. Many Americans were kidnapped in the U.S. and taken to Mexico where they were murdered. Still other Americans were abducted and slain in Mexico while visiting, others where shot gangland style in country. Dozens of U.S. citizens have been kidnapped, or held hostage, or killed by their captors in Mexico and many cases remain unsolved. Moreover, new cases of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom and Americans being killed continue to be reported.

38 year old American Carey McClintock was found dead Aug 31, 2008 in the dangerous Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The number of murders in Juarez has jumped from 300 in 2007 to roughly 1,500 this year more than five times as many as last year.

Due to the so-called drug war extortions, robberies, kidnappings and executions in Juarez these crimes have mushroomed unchecked, and many U.S. citizens are getting killed in that violence.

Of the few that the FBI reported as known kidnappings there were 30 U.S. citizens that have been kidnapped or disappeared, nine were later released, two found dead and 13 still missing .

The FBI now refuses to estimate the numbers of Americans being kidnapped or murdered in Mexico. These earlier reports were out dated and officials believe the real numbers are much greater. All 30 were Americans just from the San Diego area alone. How many other U.S. citizens are there? No one seems to know for sure. But there are others more from border cities like El Paso.

Carey was alone in a well known downtown Juarez tourist hotel. Two men where seen according to the bell boy forcing Carey from her room and it is believed she was taken to an unknown site where she was brutally beaten and then stabbed 37 times. Her bloody butchered lifeless body was found by police in an abandoned house on the out-shirts of town. Carey’s handbag, possible cell phone and all her personal possessions were found in her room at the hotel and Carey’s family wants to know what other things where found of Carey’s and what happen to them after the Juarez police took them into custody? We have asked the Juarez authorities for an accounting of them and to turn them over to us but so far no luck, according to Carey’s Father Stan McClintock.

In recent years over 500 girls and women have been killed in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua City, Mexico.  Most of the victims were young and poor and many were sexually assaulted prior to their deaths. If Carey was raped the police report does not indicate it.

The family was devastated to learn of Carey’s death and of course wanted to know what happened to Carey.

Carey’s Father and Mother Sheila along with sisters Cathleen and Colleen traveled to Juárez where they identified the mutilated body of Carey at the Juárez coroner’s morgue. As the police and coroner were poring over Carey’s murder scene, they knew that other Mexican drug cartel gunmen most likely were shooting down other victims with automatic weapons fire some where else in the city.

Carey’s family keeps attempting to find out the details of the murder and who was responsible. They first went to the Juárez Police Dept. and after being given the run around they were finely able to talk with the detectives charged with finding the killer or killers. The police said they had no suspects or even any leads. The detectives indicated that there were so many unsolved murders in Juárez that they held out little hope of ever finding out who did it. The family pleaded with the police to please keep them informed as the investigation went forward. After weeks of no word from anybody Mr. McClintock started contacting Mexican police again and the American Consulate General’s office in Juárez. Still Nothing! He than contacted the El Paso Police Dept. he was told that because the alleged crime took place in Mexico that the El Paso police could not open an investigation into his daughter murder.

When it became apparent that there was nothing really being done to find the killer of his daughter Mr. McClintock started investigating the matter himself.

 According to Mr. McClintock some time after contacting the El Paso City Police he received an e-mail from El Paso Police Detective Jesus C Terrones. “Needless to say I am disappointed that no one is really looking for Carey’s murderer”, McClintock said.  How do we ever get to the bottom of this if we have to rely on the Juarez Police Department I asked Terrones? I did think it was interesting that Torrones said the unit in Juarez assigned to this case was the best one they had. I guess meaning there best is not very good.  He offered this in a phone conversation I had with him earlier this week”.

McClintock says the local police, El Paso County Sheriff, FBI, DEA, and Homeland Security all have refused to investigate his daughter’s horrible death or even look into it for that matter.

In direct contras on June 19, of the same year 2008, ICE was contacted by an aide to Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), chairman of the influential and powerful House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which has oversight responsibilities for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent department of ICE, FBI,CIA and others, he asked for ICE to help arrange the release of Mexican National Erika Posselt a relative of the congressman’s wife who had been kidnapped for ransom from a business she owns in Mexico.

 “ she is not even a U.S. citizen, yet she gets the help she needed just because she is the relative of our El Paso Congressman, that is truly a shame” according to Donna Welch an El Paso native.  McClintock could not agree more and must wonder the same thing.

Still more murders of Americans are known such as an 11-year-old from El Paso who was killed recently during a highway robbery on the Durango-Mazatlan road in Mexico. The boy, Rico Armando Bañuelas, was on a family trip to Mazatlan.

New cases of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom and American deaths continue to be reported. No one can be considered immune from these crimes on the basis of occupation, nationality, or other factors. Mexican criminals have been known to follow  harass and kill U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles, particularly in border areas including Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Reynosa, Juarez, Mexicali, Tijuana and most all border towns. 

23 year old American Kyle Mostello Belanger has been reported missing since last May and believed to have been kidnapped and is being held against his will for ransom in Juarez Mexico. The information has been forwarded to the Mexican Government and to the FBI and other U.S. agencies with no apparent follow-up investigations much less locating arresting and punishing his perpetrators.

Two more U.S. residents, Roberto Martinez and Ruth Sagredo Velasco, were killed in a barrage of at least 20 shots from AK-47 assault rifles fired at them as they drove in a Nov. 22 funeral procession for Sagredo’s sister.

Both Martinez and Sagredo were U.S. residents living in El Paso and working at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center there.

Mexican police recently discovered the bodies of a male and female believed to be Americans. The riddled bodies were found in a gray 2004 Kia Amanti also riddled with bullets at Boulevard Cuatro Siglos between Hermanos Escobar and Pérez Serna. Police said the car had U.S. plates.

The American couple were believed visiting in Juárez attending the funeral of the killed woman’s sister, who was also killed in a homicide only last week; Juarez police investigators told the El Paso Journal that the couple were obviously targeted.

Cmdr. Fernando Lozano Sandoval, of the Chihuahua State Investigations Agency, was shot in the Mexican city just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. He was one of three police officials shot in Juarez over two days, and the only one to survive.

Lozano, identified by the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office as a U.S. citizen, was taken to El Paso County’s Thomason Hospital, the only Level 1 trauma center within 280 miles. 

Another U.S. woman slain in Juarez

A woman identified as Ana Lourdes Hernandez, 32 and a U.S. citizen was killed in a drive-by shooting in Juárez, officials said. She died after she was taken by ambulance to Thomason Hospital in El Paso at the request of her family, a Juárez police spokesman said.

A vehicle drove by, and several shots were fired at Hernandez as she stood outside a home in the Bellavista area west of downtown Juárez, police said.

Marisela Molinar, 48, and Jesús Martín Huerta Hiedra were fatally shot in her 2009 Dodge Journey at Juan Pablo II and Arizona boulevards in Juárez at about 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, Mexican authorities said.

They both suffered multiple gunshot wounds and Mexican investigators discovered 85 shell casings at the scene.

 
La Mesa California an American woman Libby Gianna Craig was among four people found shot to death in a canyon near Rosarito Beach in Baja California.

The 28-year-old was in an area known as Morro Canyon along with three Afro-American males, Mexican police identified as “Black Americans”. Early reports also said more bodies were found in a separate location at different points of Playas de Rosarito, reported some Mexican papers.

All the shootings were apparently deliberate and targeted. According to Rosarito police.

A member of a well-known Willacy County farming family was found shot to death in Guanajuato, Mexico, this year according to the online edition of Correo, the state newspaper. Paul Wetegrove, 46, whose family grows onions, sugar cane and cabbage outside Raymondville, was reportedly shot by a man who approached him in a red Dodge Caravan, Correo stated. There were four other men in the vehicle. A man at the office of the Wetegrove packing shed on Farm-to-Market 762 on Friday refused to comment on the published reports. He said that the family wanted its privacy at this time. “What’s happened?

American Sam Botner killed in Mexico. He was brutally murdered by six Mexican cops while he was arrested on August 27, 2008 at the penitentiary of San Jose del Cabo Mexico.

Earlier this year four Americans were shot and wounded as they were leaving the Arriba Chihuahua nightclub in the ProNaF tourist zone in the heart of city of Juárez.

This reporter believes the above Americans killed or wounded in Mexico in 2008 is but a few of many. We are awaiting the results of a freedom of information filing to try and determine how many Americans have been killed in Mexico just this year (2008) and who they are.

An alarming number of people have directly been killed in drug related violence in Mexico this year. Nearly 7,000 drug related deaths since January 2007. As previously reported in the Laguna Journal more people have died in Mexico than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Many of these deaths were Americans. This is all after more than 50,000 troops and federal police were deployed to Mexican cities, many along the border with the U.S.

Stan McClintock says he intents to continue his quest to find the killer or killers of his beloved Carey. He says he has some leads now and will investigate the matter no matter how long it may take to get to the bottom of it or where it may lead. He intents to pursue it with or without the American authorities help.

Editor’s note: The Laguna Journal/El Paso Journal will keep our readers up to date with the latest developments in the Carey McClintock case.

Michael Webster’s Syndicated Investigative Reports are read worldwide,  in 100 or more U.S. outlets and in at least 136 countries and territories. He has published articles for MaximsNews, which  is associated with MediaChannel.org and Globalvision News Network, global news and media information services with more than 350 news affiliates in 135 countries. Many of Mr. Webster’s articles are printed in six working languages: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. With ten more languages planed in the near future.

Mr. Webster is America’s leading authority on Venture Capital/Equity Funding. A trustee on some of the nations largest trade Union funds. A noted Author, Lecturer, Educator, Emergency Manager, Counter-Terrorist, War on Drugs and War on Terrorist Specialist, Business Consultant, Newspaper Publisher. Radio News caster. Labor Law generalist, Teamster Union Business Agent, General Organizer, Union Rank and File Member Grievances Representative, NLRB Union Representative, Union Contract Negotiator, Workers Compensation Appeals Board Hearing Representative. Mr. Webster does investigative reports for print, electronic and on-line News Agencies.  

BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: Syndicated Investigative Reporter. March 10, 2009 at 12:01 AM PDT

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church in Mexico today chimed in and sided with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon on the controversial subject of U.S. government corruption and demanded that the U.S. government have a “change of attitude” that involves a “serious anti-corruption program to eliminate the protection that – from the highest levels of power to the businessmen and public servants – is provided the traffickers, whose impunity makes possible the commerce and consumption of drugs.”[SIC]

Last week we reported that Mexican President Calderon said that he blames U.S. “corruption” for hampering his nation’s efforts to combat violent drug cartels.

“Drug trafficking in the United States is fueled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities,” he said.

President Calderon also told the media that the main cause of Mexico’s drug gang problems was “having the world’s biggest consumer (of drugs) next to us.”

Corruption on both sides of the U.S. Mexican border runs deep and can be found in the highest levels of both the Mexican government as well as the U.S.

President Calderon also told reporters that “Drug trafficking in the United States is fuelled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities,” he said.

“It is not an exclusively Mexican problem, it is a common problem between Mexico and the United States,” he said.

The Mexican President said, “I want to know how many American officials have been prosecuted for this [corruption].”

The Mexican Government since the Calderon administration says there have been many high ranking Federal, State and City Officials arrested and openly exposed to the world and many Mexicans agree with their President and are asking why is the U.S. not doing the same?

It is rumored that the Mexican Government is close to naming names of American officials who profit and or benefit from the huge amounts of cash generated in their country and in the U.S. by Mexican Drug Cartels.

There seems to be no U.S. Government Agency immune from corruption, the FBI, DEA, CIA, IRS, DOD, National Guard, Federal Air Marshals, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs, U.S. Marshalls, ICE, Dept of Commerce, U.S. Justice, U.S. State, and even our state and federal Judiciary and others, many of which are answerable to the top U.S. Agency “Homeland Security” This powerful organization was created during the Bush administration and its power reaches around the world.

After describing the US military as vain and bewildered, the hierarchy of the Church indicated in its weekly publication that Mexico has recognized the serious problem of corruption among its authorities and public servants and demanded that the U.S. do the same and initiate actions to keep watchful and clean out the public institutions that contribute to narcotraffic.  

The periodical characterized the attitude of the U.S. as hypocritical and having double standards for offering Mexico assistance in the drug war, but on the other hand, demonstrating that it has little ability to control the traffic of drugs and flow of money in its own country.

The publication, which reflects the Church’s position in Mexico, accused the U.S. of “having no intention of confronting the ‘addict culture’ in its own country or stopping the traffic of arms inside and outside its borders…”  

The popular Catholic weekly publication asked the question, what is the U.S. doing at home in order to put an end to their own drug distribution networks and drug addict’s (which includes Mexican Drug Cartels and both Mexican and American gangs) and what are they going to do about the protection provided for highly placed drug traffickers and those who make a lot of money directly and indirectly from the trade besides just delivering puritanical and hypocritical speeches so characteristic of the U.S.

Information provided to the public by this and other reporters showed following a crash of a Gulfstream jet operated by the CIA allegedly for torture flights to Guantanamo and to other countries with loose torture laws. That particular aircraft it was found by rescue workers in Mexico to have contained 4 tons of high-grade Columbian cocaine.

With the raging war on drugs and terror authorities on both sides of the border are on the take. In a war that has cost billions of American tax dollars and a business that is believed by many to profit in the hundreds of billions, it is no wonder that officials from American street cops in the borders cities to the highest levels of both governments are benefiting financially from the illegal trade of smuggling drugs, humans, and terrorist into the U.S. via Mexican drug cartel smuggling routes that don’t end at the border but continue North, East and West throughout the U.S.A.

More U.S. officials and cops have been caught in criminal activities then ever before.

Customs supervisor Walter Golembiowski and Officer John Ajello face narcotics, bribery and conspiracy charges after they were arrested for helping smuggle drugs and contraband through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

According to a CNN report the investigation has led to the indictment and prosecution of more than 20 people from distributors to overseas sources of supply and the seizure of more than 600 pounds of imported hashish and other drugs from the United States and France.

Some Mexican legislators claim there is already covert action taking place in Mexico by the Americans and has taken many different forms reflecting the diverse circumstances in which it is being used.

According to Mexican authorities the U.S. military is covertly operating in Mexico and ” have boots on the ground.”  They are also accelerating training using U.S. Military, CIA, DEA, FBI and U.S. Police advisers.

According to a high-ranking Mexican official, who wants to remain anonymous, the U.S.- Mexican border is the primary focal point for military operations. There are U.S. Army Special Forces secret operation bases in Mexico.

Reports of federal agents and cops being involved in drug and other crimes like smuggling humans, drugs, guns and cash are becoming more routine.
 

Still many more believe the estimates of corruption among our own officials are much higher then are currently being reported. This situation is seriously hurting America. 

According to Paul Joseph Watson of Prison Planet, the corporate media will report on lesser drug smuggling scandals involving cops and customs agents, but when it comes to gargantuan sprawling U.S. Government agencies like the CIA, the silence is deafening.

Still the Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA which was forced to crash land in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula after it ran out of fuel was reported to have been used in at least three CIA “rendition” trips to Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and 2005.

 Many Americans believe that the CIA run illegal arms to Central America and smuggled drugs back into the states during the Reagan Bush years.

Kevin Booth’s underground hit documentary “American Drug War” features footage of former DEA head Robert Bonner admitting that the CIA was involved in cocaine smuggling operations.

Former DEA agent Celle Castillo, says he personally witnessed CIA drug smuggling operations funneled through terrorists that were also involved in kidnappings and the training of death squads on behalf of the U.S. government.

Investigative reporter Gary Webb was instrumental in exposing CIA cocaine trafficking operations before his alleged suicide in 2004. In the YouTube clip below, Webb traces the history of Agency involvement in drug smuggling and its links to financing wars in Central America.

Judicial Watch reports that corruption among federal officers guarding the U.S.-Mexico border is so rampant that the U.S. Government created an internal web site devoted to recently convicted border agents and lie detector tests will be administered to ensure future applicants don’t already work for smuggling organizations.

The report further points out that the alarming growing number of agents with the Homeland Security agency in charge of protecting the U.S. from terrorists, drugs and illegal immigrants are collaborating with Mexican Drug Cartel operations allowing those same illegal immigrants, drugs, weapons and possibly terrorists into the country.

Mexican Drug Cartels use some of the same methods they use to attract Mexican officials to attract U.S. officials some of those tactics are used to also lure the American officials with women, sex and cash. In return, those hired to guard the border assure the safe passage of truckloads of illegal immigrants, drugs and other contraband into the United States. Some have even used their government-issued vehicles to shuttle illegal aliens from Mexico to safe houses north of the border.
 

Numerous low level border agents have been convicted for accepting bribes from Mexican smugglers in the last few years alone and investigations are pending against hundreds of others.  One of the things that concerns the Mexicans is why are not the higher ups in the U.S. Government are not being exposed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oszATUJ4IRE

Sources:

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS (NAFBPO )

Mexico’s President Calderon

M-3 Report
Mexican Catholic Church publication

El Universal Newspaper

The Mexican National Defense Department (Sedena)

The Mexican Federal Attorney General

Carlos Rico, Mexico’s under-secretary of foreign affairs for North America

Youtube

BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: Syndicated Investigative Reporter. March 10, 2009 at 12:01 AM PDT

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church in Mexico today chimed in and sided with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon on the controversial subject of U.S. government corruption and demanded that the U.S. government have a “change of attitude” that involves a “serious anti-corruption program to eliminate the protection that – from the highest levels of power to the businessmen and public servants – is provided the traffickers, whose impunity makes possible the commerce and consumption of drugs.”[SIC]

Last week we reported that Mexican President Calderon said that he blames U.S. “corruption” for hampering his nation’s efforts to combat violent drug cartels.

“Drug trafficking in the United States is fueled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities,” he said.

President Calderon also told the media that the main cause of Mexico’s drug gang problems was “having the world’s biggest consumer (of drugs) next to us.”

Corruption on both sides of the U.S. Mexican border runs deep and can be found in the highest levels of both the Mexican government as well as the U.S.

President Calderon also told reporters that “Drug trafficking in the United States is fuelled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities,” he said.

“It is not an exclusively Mexican problem, it is a common problem between Mexico and the United States,” he said.

The Mexican President said, “I want to know how many American officials have been prosecuted for this [corruption].”

The Mexican Government since the Calderon administration says there have been many high ranking Federal, State and City Officials arrested and openly exposed to the world and many Mexicans agree with their President and are asking why is the U.S. not doing the same?

It is rumored that the Mexican Government is close to naming names of American officials who profit and or benefit from the huge amounts of cash generated in their country and in the U.S. by Mexican Drug Cartels.

There seems to be no U.S. Government Agency immune from corruption, the FBI, DEA, CIA, IRS, DOD, National Guard, Federal Air Marshals, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs, U.S. Marshalls, ICE, Dept of Commerce, U.S. Justice, U.S. State, and even our state and federal Judiciary and others, many of which are answerable to the top U.S. Agency “Homeland Security” This powerful organization was created during the Bush administration and its power reaches around the world.

After describing the US military as vain and bewildered, the hierarchy of the Church indicated in its weekly publication that Mexico has recognized the serious problem of corruption among its authorities and public servants and demanded that the U.S. do the same and initiate actions to keep watchful and clean out the public institutions that contribute to narcotraffic.  

The periodical characterized the attitude of the U.S. as hypocritical and having double standards for offering Mexico assistance in the drug war, but on the other hand, demonstrating that it has little ability to control the traffic of drugs and flow of money in its own country.

The publication, which reflects the Church’s position in Mexico, accused the U.S. of “having no intention of confronting the ‘addict culture’ in its own country or stopping the traffic of arms inside and outside its borders…”  

The popular Catholic weekly publication asked the question, what is the U.S. doing at home in order to put an end to their own drug distribution networks and drug addict’s (which includes Mexican Drug Cartels and both Mexican and American gangs) and what are they going to do about the protection provided for highly placed drug traffickers and those who make a lot of money directly and indirectly from the trade besides just delivering puritanical and hypocritical speeches so characteristic of the U.S.

Information provided to the public by this and other reporters showed following a crash of a Gulfstream jet operated by the CIA allegedly for torture flights to Guantanamo and to other countries with loose torture laws. That particular aircraft it was found by rescue workers in Mexico to have contained 4 tons of high-grade Columbian cocaine.

With the raging war on drugs and terror authorities on both sides of the border are on the take. In a war that has cost billions of American tax dollars and a business that is believed by many to profit in the hundreds of billions, it is no wonder that officials from American street cops in the borders cities to the highest levels of both governments are benefiting financially from the illegal trade of smuggling drugs, humans, and terrorist into the U.S. via Mexican drug cartel smuggling routes that don’t end at the border but continue North, East and West throughout the U.S.A.

More U.S. officials and cops have been caught in criminal activities then ever before.

Customs supervisor Walter Golembiowski and Officer John Ajello face narcotics, bribery and conspiracy charges after they were arrested for helping smuggle drugs and contraband through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

According to a CNN report the investigation has led to the indictment and prosecution of more than 20 people from distributors to overseas sources of supply and the seizure of more than 600 pounds of imported hashish and other drugs from the United States and France.

Some Mexican legislators claim there is already covert action taking place in Mexico by the Americans and has taken many different forms reflecting the diverse circumstances in which it is being used.

According to Mexican authorities the U.S. military is covertly operating in Mexico and ” have boots on the ground.”  They are also accelerating training using U.S. Military, CIA, DEA, FBI and U.S. Police advisers.

According to a high-ranking Mexican official, who wants to remain anonymous, the U.S.- Mexican border is the primary focal point for military operations. There are U.S. Army Special Forces secret operation bases in Mexico.

Reports of federal agents and cops being involved in drug and other crimes like smuggling humans, drugs, guns and cash are becoming more routine.
 

Still many more believe the estimates of corruption among our own officials are much higher then are currently being reported. This situation is seriously hurting America. 

According to Paul Joseph Watson of Prison Planet, the corporate media will report on lesser drug smuggling scandals involving cops and customs agents, but when it comes to gargantuan sprawling U.S. Government agencies like the CIA, the silence is deafening.

Still the Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA which was forced to crash land in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula after it ran out of fuel was reported to have been used in at least three CIA “rendition” trips to Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and 2005.

 Many Americans believe that the CIA run illegal arms to Central America and smuggled drugs back into the states during the Reagan Bush years.

Kevin Booth’s underground hit documentary “American Drug War” features footage of former DEA head Robert Bonner admitting that the CIA was involved in cocaine smuggling operations.

Former DEA agent Celle Castillo, says he personally witnessed CIA drug smuggling operations funneled through terrorists that were also involved in kidnappings and the training of death squads on behalf of the U.S. government.

Investigative reporter Gary Webb was instrumental in exposing CIA cocaine trafficking operations before his alleged suicide in 2004. In the YouTube clip below, Webb traces the history of Agency involvement in drug smuggling and its links to financing wars in Central America.

Judicial Watch reports that corruption among federal officers guarding the U.S.-Mexico border is so rampant that the U.S. Government created an internal web site devoted to recently convicted border agents and lie detector tests will be administered to ensure future applicants don’t already work for smuggling organizations.

The report further points out that the alarming growing number of agents with the Homeland Security agency in charge of protecting the U.S. from terrorists, drugs and illegal immigrants are collaborating with Mexican Drug Cartel operations allowing those same illegal immigrants, drugs, weapons and possibly terrorists into the country.

Mexican Drug Cartels use some of the same methods they use to attract Mexican officials to attract U.S. officials some of those tactics are used to also lure the American officials with women, sex and cash. In return, those hired to guard the border assure the safe passage of truckloads of illegal immigrants, drugs and other contraband into the United States. Some have even used their government-issued vehicles to shuttle illegal aliens from Mexico to safe houses north of the border.
 

Numerous low level border agents have been convicted for accepting bribes from Mexican smugglers in the last few years alone and investigations are pending against hundreds of others.  One of the things that concerns the Mexicans is why are not the higher ups in the U.S. Government are not being exposed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oszATUJ4IRE

Sources:

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS (NAFBPO )

Mexico’s President Calderon

M-3 Report
Mexican Catholic Church publication

El Universal Newspaper

The Mexican National Defense Department (Sedena)

The Mexican Federal Attorney General

Carlos Rico, Mexico’s under-secretary of foreign affairs for North America

Youtube

BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: SYNDICATED INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER.  Sunday DEC 14, 2008 at 12:01 PM PST

From Brownsville Texas to San Diego California Mexican cities bordering American cities along the U.S. Mexican border are where Americans are being killed by assassinations and executions. Many Americans were kidnapped in the U.S. and taken to Mexico where they were murdered. Still other Americans were abducted and slain in Mexico while visiting, others where shot gangland style in country. Dozens of U.S. citizens have been kidnapped, or held hostage, or killed by their captors in Mexico and many cases remain unsolved. Moreover, new cases of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom and Americans being killed continue to be reported.

38 year old American Carey McClintock was found dead Aug 31, 2008 in the dangerous Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The number of murders in Juarez has jumped from 300 in 2007 to roughly 1,500 this year more than five times as many as last year.

Due to the so-called drug war extortions, robberies, kidnappings and executions in Juarez these crimes have mushroomed unchecked, and many U.S. citizens are getting killed in that violence.

Of the few that the FBI reported as known kidnappings there were 30 U.S. citizens that have been kidnapped or disappeared, nine were later released, two found dead and 13 still missing .

The FBI now refuses to estimate the numbers of Americans being kidnapped or murdered in Mexico. These earlier reports were out dated and officials believe the real numbers are much greater. All 30 were Americans just from the San Diego area alone. How many other U.S. citizens are there? No one seems to know for sure. But there are others more from border cities like El Paso.

Carey was alone in a well known downtown Juarez tourist hotel. Two men where seen according to the bell boy forcing Carey from her room and it is believed she was taken to an unknown site where she was brutally beaten and then stabbed 37 times. Her bloody butchered lifeless body was found by police in an abandoned house on the out-shirts of town. Carey’s handbag, possible cell phone and all her personal possessions were found in her room at the hotel and Carey’s family wants to know what other things where found of Carey’s and what happen to them after the Juarez police took them into custody? We have asked the Juarez authorities for an accounting of them and to turn them over to us but so far no luck, according to Carey’s Father Stan McClintock.

In recent years over 500 girls and women have been killed in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua City, Mexico.  Most of the victims were young and poor and many were sexually assaulted prior to their deaths. If Carey was raped the police report does not indicate it.

The family was devastated to learn of Carey’s death and of course wanted to know what happened to Carey.

Carey’s Father and Mother Sheila along with sisters Cathleen and Colleen traveled to Juárez where they identified the mutilated body of Carey at the Juárez coroner’s morgue. As the police and coroner were poring over Carey’s murder scene, they knew that other Mexican drug cartel gunmen most likely were shooting down other victims with automatic weapons fire some where else in the city.

Carey’s family keeps attempting to find out the details of the murder and who was responsible. They first went to the Juárez Police Dept. and after being given the run around they were finely able to talk with the detectives charged with finding the killer or killers. The police said they had no suspects or even any leads. The detectives indicated that there were so many unsolved murders in Juárez that they held out little hope of ever finding out who did it. The family pleaded with the police to please keep them informed as the investigation went forward. After weeks of no word from anybody Mr. McClintock started contacting Mexican police again and the American Consulate General’s office in Juárez. Still Nothing! He than contacted the El Paso Police Dept. he was told that because the alleged crime took place in Mexico that the El Paso police could not open an investigation into his daughter murder.

When it became apparent that there was nothing really being done to find the killer of his daughter Mr. McClintock started investigating the matter himself.

 According to Mr. McClintock some time after contacting the El Paso City Police he received an e-mail from El Paso Police Detective Jesus C Terrones. “Needless to say I am disappointed that no one is really looking for Carey’s murderer”, McClintock said.  How do we ever get to the bottom of this if we have to rely on the Juarez Police Department I asked Terrones? I did think it was interesting that Torrones said the unit in Juarez assigned to this case was the best one they had. I guess meaning there best is not very good.  He offered this in a phone conversation I had with him earlier this week”.

McClintock says the local police, El Paso County Sheriff, FBI, DEA, and Homeland Security all have refused to investigate his daughter’s horrible death or even look into it for that matter.

In direct contras on June 19, of the same year 2008, ICE was contacted by an aide to Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), chairman of the influential and powerful House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence which has oversight responsibilities for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent department of ICE, FBI,CIA and others, he asked for ICE to help arrange the release of Mexican National Erika Posselt a relative of the congressman’s wife who had been kidnapped for ransom from a business she owns in Mexico.

 “ she is not even a U.S. citizen, yet she gets the help she needed just because she is the relative of our El Paso Congressman, that is truly a shame” according to Donna Welch an El Paso native.  McClintock could not agree more and must wonder the same thing.

Still more murders of Americans are known such as an 11-year-old from El Paso who was killed recently during a highway robbery on the Durango-Mazatlan road in Mexico. The boy, Rico Armando Bañuelas, was on a family trip to Mazatlan.

New cases of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom and American deaths continue to be reported. No one can be considered immune from these crimes on the basis of occupation, nationality, or other factors. Mexican criminals have been known to follow  harass and kill U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles, particularly in border areas including Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Reynosa, Juarez, Mexicali, Tijuana and most all border towns. 

23 year old American Kyle Mostello Belanger has been reported missing since last May and believed to have been kidnapped and is being held against his will for ransom in Juarez Mexico. The information has been forwarded to the Mexican Government and to the FBI and other U.S. agencies with no apparent follow-up investigations much less locating arresting and punishing his perpetrators.

Two more U.S. residents, Roberto Martinez and Ruth Sagredo Velasco, were killed in a barrage of at least 20 shots from AK-47 assault rifles fired at them as they drove in a Nov. 22 funeral procession for Sagredo’s sister.

Both Martinez and Sagredo were U.S. residents living in El Paso and working at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center there.

Mexican police recently discovered the bodies of a male and female believed to be Americans. The riddled bodies were found in a gray 2004 Kia Amanti also riddled with bullets at Boulevard Cuatro Siglos between Hermanos Escobar and Pérez Serna. Police said the car had U.S. plates.

The American couple were believed visiting in Juárez attending the funeral of the killed woman’s sister, who was also killed in a homicide only last week; Juarez police investigators told the El Paso Journal that the couple were obviously targeted.

Cmdr. Fernando Lozano Sandoval, of the Chihuahua State Investigations Agency, was shot in the Mexican city just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. He was one of three police officials shot in Juarez over two days, and the only one to survive.

Lozano, identified by the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office as a U.S. citizen, was taken to El Paso County’s Thomason Hospital, the only Level 1 trauma center within 280 miles. 

Another U.S. woman slain in Juarez

A woman identified as Ana Lourdes Hernandez, 32 and a U.S. citizen was killed in a drive-by shooting in Juárez, officials said. She died after she was taken by ambulance to Thomason Hospital in El Paso at the request of her family, a Juárez police spokesman said.

A vehicle drove by, and several shots were fired at Hernandez as she stood outside a home in the Bellavista area west of downtown Juárez, police said.

Marisela Molinar, 48, and Jesús Martín Huerta Hiedra were fatally shot in her 2009 Dodge Journey at Juan Pablo II and Arizona boulevards in Juárez at about 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, Mexican authorities said.

They both suffered multiple gunshot wounds and Mexican investigators discovered 85 shell casings at the scene.

 
La Mesa California an American woman Libby Gianna Craig was among four people found shot to death in a canyon near Rosarito Beach in Baja California.

The 28-year-old was in an area known as Morro Canyon along with three Afro-American males, Mexican police identified as “Black Americans”. Early reports also said more bodies were found in a separate location at different points of Playas de Rosarito, reported some Mexican papers.

All the shootings were apparently deliberate and targeted. According to Rosarito police.

A member of a well-known Willacy County farming family was found shot to death in Guanajuato, Mexico, this year according to the online edition of Correo, the state newspaper. Paul Wetegrove, 46, whose family grows onions, sugar cane and cabbage outside Raymondville, was reportedly shot by a man who approached him in a red Dodge Caravan, Correo stated. There were four other men in the vehicle. A man at the office of the Wetegrove packing shed on Farm-to-Market 762 on Friday refused to comment on the published reports. He said that the family wanted its privacy at this time. “What’s happened?

American Sam Botner killed in Mexico. He was brutally murdered by six Mexican cops while he was arrested on August 27, 2008 at the penitentiary of San Jose del Cabo Mexico.

Earlier this year four Americans were shot and wounded as they were leaving the Arriba Chihuahua nightclub in the ProNaF tourist zone in the heart of city of Juárez.

This reporter believes the above Americans killed or wounded in Mexico in 2008 is but a few of many. We are awaiting the results of a freedom of information filing to try and determine how many Americans have been killed in Mexico just this year (2008) and who they are.

An alarming number of people have directly been killed in drug related violence in Mexico this year. Nearly 7,000 drug related deaths since January 2007. As previously reported in the Laguna Journal more people have died in Mexico than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Many of these deaths were Americans. This is all after more than 50,000 troops and federal police were deployed to Mexican cities, many along the border with the U.S.

Stan McClintock says he intents to continue his quest to find the killer or killers of his beloved Carey. He says he has some leads now and will investigate the matter no matter how long it may take to get to the bottom of it or where it may lead. He intents to pursue it with or without the American authorities help.

Editor’s note: The Laguna Journal/El Paso Journal will keep our readers up to date with the latest developments in the Carey McClintock case.

Michael Webster’s Syndicated Investigative Reports are read worldwide,  in 100 or more U.S. outlets and in at least 136 countries and territories. He has published articles for MaximsNews, which  is associated with MediaChannel.org and Globalvision News Network, global news and media information services with more than 350 news affiliates in 135 countries. Many of Mr. Webster’s articles are printed in six working languages: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. With ten more languages planed in the near future.

Mr. Webster is America’s leading authority on Venture Capital/Equity Funding. A trustee on some of the nations largest trade Union funds. A noted Author, Lecturer, Educator, Emergency Manager, Counter-Terrorist, War on Drugs and War on Terrorist Specialist, Business Consultant, Newspaper Publisher. Radio News caster. Labor Law generalist, Teamster Union Business Agent, General Organizer, Union Rank and File Member Grievances Representative, NLRB Union Representative, Union Contract Negotiator, Workers Compensation Appeals Board Hearing Representative. Mr. Webster does investigative reports for print, electronic and on-line News Agencies.  

William Hoover, Assistant Director for Field Operations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), recently told the United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affaires Subcommittee on the Western  Hemisphere that the violence fueled by Mexico’s drug cartels poses a serious challenge for both U.S. and Mexican Law Enforcement in that the drug trafficking related violence is threatening the well being and safety of citizens on both sides of the border. Mr. Williams is in charge of operations of all of the Bureau’s field offices, including those along the Southwest Border.

Mr. Hoover pointed out that the ATF has long been committed to investigating and disrupting groups and individuals who utilize firearms trafficking as a means to facilitate the drug trade on both sides of the border through the use of firearms illegally obtained in the U.S. and subsequently smuggled into Mexico.  Mexican President Calderon and Attorney General Medina Mora have identified the cartel-related violence as a top priority and have proclaimed the illegal trafficking of U.S.-sourced firearms the “number one” crime problem affecting the security of Mexico today.

Public safety along the U.S.-Mexico border has deteriorated considerably and Mexico has seen nearly five years of intensified bloody turf battles between the major Mexican drug cartels operating within Mexico. The ATF claim that the  battles for control over lucrative narco-corridors into the U.S. from Mexico are the result of intense U.S. and Mexican law enforcement and military counter-narcotics operations and extraditions that commenced in late 2003 targeting the leaders of the most prolific Mexican drug cartels.  In seeking to gain control of the disputed corridors, namely the Baja/Tijuana, Sonora/Nogales, Juarez/ Chihuahua and Nuevo Laredo corridors, Mexican drug cartels and their ruthless Mexican and American gang enforcers have more aggressively turned to the U.S. as a source of firearms. The weapons are then used against other cartels, the Mexican Military, Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials, as well as innocent civilians on both sides of the border.

The ATF says that the intelligence gathered by them and other domestic Federal law enforcement entities indicates that the cartels or as they like to call them DTOs have tasked their money laundering, distribution and transportation apparatuses, all of which reach across the border into the United States, to acquire firearms for illegal transfer back to Mexico for use in facilitating narco-trafficking and other criminal activities.

In analyzing the data collected through ATF’s investigative and regulatory operations that have been focused on the abatement of illegal firearms trafficking to Mexico, there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States.  An in-depth, comprehensive analysis of firearms trace data over the past three years shows that Texas, Arizona and California are the three most prolific source states, respectively, for firearms illegally trafficked to Mexico.

Until recently, the Mexican drug cartels “weapons of choice” had been .38 caliber handguns.  However, recent trace data of firearms seized in Mexico and “Stateside” interdictions of firearms bound for Mexico shows that cartel members and gang enforcers have now developed a preference for higher quality, more powerful weapons.  The most common of these firearms now includes the Colt AR-15 .223 caliber assault rifle, the AK-47 “type/variant” 7.62 caliber assault rifle, FN 5.57 caliber pistols (better known in Mexico as the “Cop Killer”… or “Asesino de la Policia”).  In conjunction with the dramatic increase in U.S. source firearms that have either been recovered in Mexico, or interdicted prior to reaching Mexico, ATF also routinely seizes small arms and assault rifle ammunition destined for Mexico.  ATF has also seized large quantities of .50 caliber ammunition for use in high-caliber long range sniper weapons and machine gangs.

The National Association of Retired Border Patrol Agents reported that the following are the first paragraphs of a long editorial found in Diario de Xalapa  (Xalapa, Veracruz), a member of “O.E.M.”, (A Mexican editorial organization ) a large media chain of 70 newspapers in Mexico. This particular column was found to have been removed from this and other ”O.E.M.” sites when they returned to it later today.
 

(SEC) “The alarming figures about crimes committed by the underworld in Mexico, which overall since Dec. 1, 2006 to date surpass 4,800 executions, demonstrate that in the country organized crime, the guerilla and narcotraffic have in their hands as many weapons as the national government.
The main clandestine entry of weapons into the country is done through the northern border and the Pacific, originating from the big American firms and from China, where there is no control for the transfer of weapons produced by their five gigantic firearms industries factories. For Georgina Sanchez, a researcher with the Latin American Social Sciences (”FLACSO”) in Mexico, there is an amount estimated at between 12 and 20 million high power firearms, mostly AK-47s from China, and 40 million pistols and rifles, the majority of them in the hands of guerilla fighters, narcotraffickers and organized crime.
 

As hard as one might fight (because in Mexico no one has declared war on anyone else since the EZLN did so on Jan. 1, 1994) against the criminals, nothing will be accomplished by the federal, state and city governments as long as firearms traffic is not brought to a halt.”

As such, ATF is working with Mexican officials to increase their current usage of ATF’s eTrace system. eTrace provides web based access to ATF’s Firearms Tracing System to allow law enforcement both domestically and internationally the ability to trace data from firearms seized in connection with a criminal investigation.  eTrace allows law enforcement to access their trace results directly and offers the ability to generate statistical reports to analyze their trace data to determine firearms trafficking trends or patterns.  In addition, ATF is developing Memorandums of Understanding with Mexico to provide e Trace training to nine consulates in Mexico.  This initiative should increase the amount of trace information Mexico provides to ATF each year.

ATF is also part of the Administration’s recently announced “Merida initiative.”  Mr. Hoover told the committee “This initiative is a comprehensive U.S. strategy to address drug smuggling, firearms trafficking, and increasing violence in Mexico and Central America.   If the FY 2008 supplemental is enacted, ATF would receive $2 million through the initiative to assist in the expansion of Spanish eTrace to countries in the Central America region.   Funding would also be used to deploy an ATF regional advisor to Central American countries to assist them with firearms trafficking issues.  As part of the proposed Spanish eTrace expansion, ATF would provide training to Mexican and Central American countries to ensure that the technology is utilized to the greatest extent possible.”

Sources:

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS

United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affaires Subcommittee on the Western  Hemisphere

Mexican Federal Government

“O.E.M.”, ( Mexican editorial organization )

Editorial found in Diario de Xalapa Newspaper 

ATF

Latin American Social Sciences (”FLACSO”)

Open source international news organizations

Mexico’s National Security Cabinet is holding an emergency meeting and is expected to declare a state of emergency. They will also discuss President Felipe Caldron’s current strategies against the Mexican war on drug cartels. Analysts say they expect the death toll nation wide among the security forces to climb, because the traffickers, under assault both from the government and rival gangs, believe they have nothing to lose.

“I know that organized crime reacts like this because they know we’re hitting their criminal structure,” said President Felipe Calderon of Mexico. “We must join together to fight this evil. We must all come together in saying a categorical, ‘enough is enough.’”

Calderon is reported to be rushing more Mexican Army troops to the border cities of Juarez, Tijuana, Mexicali, Palomas and others. Its believed that Mexico has 36,000 troops fighting the Mexican drug cartels and their para-military.

Calderon is seeking U.S. military aid under the provisions of the Merida Initiative, a multiyear $1.4 billion anti-narcotics package proposed by President Bush.

 Many of the leaders of the cabinet say that the Caldron administrations effort to curb the violence is failing and that is putting the country in danger. Mexican newspapers  report some attendants were Secretary of Government, Juan Mourino and his counterpart in Sinaloa, Jesus Aguilar. Also present was the Secretary of Defense, Guillermo Galvan and the Attorney General Eduardo Medina, plus the Secretary of Federal Public Security, Genaro Garcia, Genaro Garcia Luna, the federal security secretary, the Secretary  of the Navy and the Director of National Investigations and Security Center among other leaders.

As the death toll rises in the bloody war on drugs in Mexico with more police officers, soldiers and other officials being unmercifully slaughtered the violence remains unabated. The death toll is more than 3600 which is attributed to the Mexican drug cartels which is ravaging the country. The deaths have included some innocent Americans.

Edgar Millan, the federal police commissioner who was gunned down while entering his Mexico City condo early Thursday. Millan oversaw the civilian wing of the anti-narcotics offensive.

“These are difficult hours for the Federal Police,” said Genaro Garcia Luna, the federal security secretary. “The nation has lost three of its best men, heroes who gave their lives in the conscious pursuit of an ideal: to build a better country for all Mexicans.”

Federal investigators believe the Sinaloa drug cartel killed Millan in revenge for his recent arrests of several of the organization’s top brass. The cartel, which leads an alliance of drug gangs known as the Federation, is fighting the Juarez cartel for control of Mexico’s smuggling routes into the United States. But the killer must have had help from inside the police agency, because he had keys to Millan’s condominium, officials said. Check or Google Juarez police chief resigns for fear of his life

Mexico’s National Security Cabinet is expected to ask for more help from the Americans, even though Mexico has a history of resisting U.S. military aid, a kind of old fashioned notion of maintaining her independence, her sovereignty is expected to be put aside as they ask not only for more money than the 1.4 billion Bush has promised but on the ground training for Mexican military by the U.S. Special Forces. And U.S. training for Mexican national and local police forces.  Both overt and covert operations are the new strategies Mexico will be advocating. Mexico has in the past sent their soldiers to Fort Bragg and other US bases for special training.

Some Mexican legislators claim there is already clandestine covert action taking place in Mexico by the Americans and has taken many different forms reflecting the diverse circumstances in which it is being used.

However the circumstances have eroded to such a point that many Mexican leaders that have no ties with the cartels are desperate and are encouraging an out right overt U.S. military boots on the ground operation, and accelerate training using U.S. military, CIA, DEA, FBI and U.S. Police advisers.

According to a high ranking Mexican official who wants to remain anonymous indicated that the U.S. Mexican border is a primary focal point for military operations. “There are U.S. Army Special Forces secret operation bases both in Mexico and the United states, run by the California National Guard, who are on temporary border reconnaissance missions and are due to end within the next month or so.”

The Mexican cartels are challenging the Mexican government. They have huge amounts of money available to bribe officials, and they do, and currently have covert armies (para-military) that are better equipped, trained and motivated than national police and military forces, the cartels are becoming the government — if in fact they didn’t originate in the government. Getting the government to deploy armed forces against the cartels can become a contradiction in terms. In their most extreme form, cartels are already running much of the government. So many ask why would America provide the questionable Mexican Government 1.4 Billion?

It is important to point out that U.S. law enforcement agencies have many different types of support missions already operating in Mexico. The U.S. government admits that they ccurrently have more than 50 federal agencies working on the U.S. Mexican border. The Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (BCBP), which includes the U.S. Border Patrol; United States Attorneys; and state and local law enforcement agencies continue to work together to reduce the amount of illicit drugs entering the United States through the U.S./Mexico Border. But they are not successful ether. The law biding Mexicans want our strategy to be to attack major Mexican-based trafficking organizations on both sides of the border simultaneously by employing enhanced intelligence and enforcement initiatives and cooperative efforts with the Government of Mexico.

In recent months, and after Mexican president Caldron dispatched the Mexican army and federal police to many interior cities and to Mexican cities on the Mexican U.S. border the level of violence has risen substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. In the last few weeks, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican drug cartels and their gangs who are engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary.  But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres into the United States on this scale goes beyond what has become accepted practice. The dynamics in the borderland are shifting and must be understood in a broader, geopolitical context.

Bush policy is to not disrupt the trade with Mexico and not raising its cost has been a fundamental principle of U.S.-Mexican relations. Leaving aside the contentious issue of whether illegal immigration hurts or helps the United States, the steps required to control that immigration would impede bilateral trade. The United States therefore has been loath to impose effective measures, since any measures that would be effective against population movement also would impose friction on trade. It is a popular belief by people on both sides of the border that politicians from both governments are benefiting from the out of control but lucrative milti – billion dollar drug trade.

The United States has been willing to tolerate levels of criminality along the border. The only time when the United States shifted its position was when organized groups in Mexico both established themselves north of the political border and engaged in significant violence. Thus, in 1916, when the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa began operations north of the border, the U.S. Army moved into Mexico to try to destroy his base of operations. This has been the line that, when crossed, motivated the United States to take action, regardless of the economic cost. The current upsurge in violence is now pushing that line but just where that line is today is not clear. It appears the two governments keep moving the goal posts.

The United States has built-in demand for a range of illegal drugs, including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana. Regardless of decades of efforts, and billios of dollars, the United States has not been able to eradicate or even qualitatively reduce this demand. As an advanced industrial country, the United States has a great deal of money available to satisfy the demand for illegal drugs. This makes the supply of narcotics to a large market attractive. In fact, it almost doesn’t matter how large demand is. Regardless of how it varies, the economics are such that even a fraction of the current market will attract sellers.

 The Houston Chronicle reports that because they are involved in an illegal business, drug dealers cannot take recourse to the courts or police to protect their assets. Protecting the supply chain and excluding competition are opposite sides of the same coin. Protecting assets is major cost of running a drug ring. It suppresses competition, both by killing it and by raising the cost of entry into the market. The illegality of the business requires that it be large enough to manage the supply chain and absorb the cost of protecting it. It gives high incentives to eliminate potential competitors and new entrants into the market. In the end, it creates a monopoly or small oligopoly in the business, where the comparative advantage ultimately devolves into the effectiveness of the supply chain and the efficiency of the private police force protecting it.

That means that the Mexican drug cartels have evolved in several predictable ways. They have huge amounts of money flowing in from the U.S. market by selling relatively low-cost products at monopolistic prices into markets with inelastic demand curves. Second, they have unique expertise in covert logistics, expertise that can be transferred to the movement of other goods. Third, they develop substantial security capabilities, which can grow over time into full-blown paramilitary forces to protect the supply chain. Fourth, they are huge capital pools, investing in the domestic economy and manipulating the political system.

A Mexican college professor who wants to be nameless said “cartels can challenge — and supplant — governments. Between huge amounts of money available to bribe officials, and covert armies better equipped, trained and motivated than national police and military forces, the cartels can become the government — if in fact they didn’t originate in the government. Getting the government to deploy armed forces against the cartel can become a contradiction in terms. In their most extreme form, cartels are the government.”

He went on to say, “the drug cartels have two weaknesses. First, they can be shattered in conflicts with challengers within the oligopoly or by splits within the cartels. Second, their supply chains can be broken from the outside. U.S. policy has historically been to attack the supply chains from the fields to the street distributors. Drug cartels have proven extremely robust and resilient in modifying the supply chains under pressure. When conflict occurs within and among cartels and systematic attacks against the supply chain take place, however, specific cartels can be broken — although the long-term result is the emergence of a new cartel system.”

In the 1980s, the United States manipulated various Colombian cartels into internal conflict. More important, the United States attacked the Colombian supply chain in the Caribbean as it moved from Colombia through Panama along various air and sea routes to the United States. The weakness of the Colombian cartel was its exposed supply chain from South America to the United States. U.S. military operations raised the cost so high that the route became uneconomic.

The main route to American markets shifted from the Caribbean to the U.S.-Mexican border. It began as an alliance between sophisticated Colombian cartels and still-primitive Mexican gangs, but the balance of power inevitably shifted over time. Owning the supply link into the United States, the Mexicans increased their wealth and power until they absorbed more and more of the entire supply chain. Eventually, the Colombians were minimized and the Mexicans became the decisive power.

The Americans fought the battle against the Colombians primarily in the Caribbean and southern Florida. The battle against the Mexican drug lords must be fought in the U.S.-Mexican borderland. And while the fight against the Colombians did not involve major disruptions to other economic patterns, the fight against the Mexican cartels involves potentially huge disruptions. In addition, the battle is going to be fought in a region that is already tense because of the immigration issue, and at least partly on U.S. soil.

The likely course is a multigenerational pattern of instability along the border. More important, there will be a substantial transfer of wealth from the United States to Mexico in return for an intrinsically low-cost consumable product — drugs. This will be one of the sources of capital that will build the Mexican economy, which today is 14th largest in the world. The accumulation of drug money is and will continue finding its way into the Mexican economy, creating a pool of investment capital. The children and grandchildren of the Zetas will be running banks, running for president, building art museums and telling amusing anecdotes about how grandpa made his money running blow into Nuevo Laredo.

One of DEA’s main functions is to coordinate drug investigations that take place along America’s 2,000-mile border with Mexico; this is an effort that involves thousands of federal, state, and local law enforcement officers. Mexican drug groups have become the world’s preeminent drug traffickers, and they tend to be characterized by organizational complexity and a high propensity for violence. To counter this threat, federal drug law enforcement has aggressively pursued drug trafficking along the U.S./Mexico border. The DEA; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);

Today, the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) serves as the principal national tactical intelligence center for drug law enforcement. EPIC is multidimensional in its approach to intelligence sharing. It has a research and analysis section as well as a tactical operations section to support foreign and domestic intelligence and operational needs in the field. It is staffed by representatives from the DEA; FBI; U.S. Coast Guard; BCBP; the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE); U.S. Secret Service; Federal Aviation Administration; U.S. Marshals Service; National Security Agency; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Internal Revenue Service; and the Department of the Interior. Although the immigration and customs functions were recently incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security, representatives from BCBP and BICE will retain their participation in EPIC.

DEA reports that they also are maximizing the use of technology to combat drug trafficking organizations. The DEA’s Special Operations Division (SOD) is a comprehensive enforcement operation designed specifically to coordinate multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional, and multi-national Title III investigations against the command and control elements of major drug trafficking organizations operating domestically and abroad. The investigative resources of SOD support a variety of multi-jurisdictional drug enforcement investigations associated with the Southwest Border, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia.

 Drug trafficking organizations operating along the Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California and Mexico Border continue to be one of the greatest threats to communities across this nation. The power and influence of these organizations is pervasive, and continues to expand to new markets across the United States.

Mexican narcotraffickers and other criminals easily obtain their firepower north of the border. Effectively reducing the flow of illegal arms would mean tightening laws on gun sales and ownership in the US.

Not just the police are coming under fire. Thousands of Mexican citizens are getting caught in the crossfire. According to the US Centers for Disease Control, Mexico has one of the highest firearm homicide rates in the world, about 20 for every 100,000 people. (The rate for the United States is 7 per 100,000 people. In addition, there has been a spate of recent high-profile political and narco-assassinations, many of them carried out with guns purchased illegally in the US.

Many of the arms used by Mexico’s insurgencies were supplied by Washington either through massive military aid programs or as part of US covert operations that left enormous arsenals behind. Click on or Google Merida Initiative Will It Work?

For Related articles go to: www.lagunajournal.com

Mexico’s National Security Cabinet is holding an emergency meeting and is expected to declare a state of emergency. They will also discuss President Felipe Caldron’s current strategies against the Mexican war on drug cartels. Analysts say they expect the death toll nation wide among the security forces to climb, because the traffickers, under assault both from the government and rival gangs, believe they have nothing to lose.

“I know that organized crime reacts like this because they know we’re hitting their criminal structure,” said President Felipe Calderon of Mexico. “We must join together to fight this evil. We must all come together in saying a categorical, ‘enough is enough.’”

Calderon is reported to be rushing more Mexican Army troops to the border cities of Juarez, Tijuana, Mexicali, Palomas and others. Its believed that Mexico has 36,000 troops fighting the Mexican drug cartels and their para-military.

Calderon is seeking U.S. military aid under the provisions of the Merida Initiative, a multiyear $1.4 billion anti-narcotics package proposed by President Bush.

 Many of the leaders of the cabinet say that the Caldron administrations effort to curb the violence is failing and that is putting the country in danger. Mexican newspapers  report some attendants were Secretary of Government, Juan Mourino and his counterpart in Sinaloa, Jesus Aguilar. Also present was the Secretary of Defense, Guillermo Galvan and the Attorney General Eduardo Medina, plus the Secretary of Federal Public Security, Genaro Garcia, Genaro Garcia Luna, the federal security secretary, the Secretary  of the Navy and the Director of National Investigations and Security Center among other leaders.

As the death toll rises in the bloody war on drugs in Mexico with more police officers, soldiers and other officials being unmercifully slaughtered the violence remains unabated. The death toll is more than 3600 which is attributed to the Mexican drug cartels which is ravaging the country. The deaths have included some innocent Americans.

Edgar Millan, the federal police commissioner who was gunned down while entering his Mexico City condo early Thursday. Millan oversaw the civilian wing of the anti-narcotics offensive.

“These are difficult hours for the Federal Police,” said Genaro Garcia Luna, the federal security secretary. “The nation has lost three of its best men, heroes who gave their lives in the conscious pursuit of an ideal: to build a better country for all Mexicans.”

Federal investigators believe the Sinaloa drug cartel killed Millan in revenge for his recent arrests of several of the organization’s top brass. The cartel, which leads an alliance of drug gangs known as the Federation, is fighting the Juarez cartel for control of Mexico’s smuggling routes into the United States. But the killer must have had help from inside the police agency, because he had keys to Millan’s condominium, officials said. Check or Google Juarez police chief resigns for fear of his life

Mexico’s National Security Cabinet is expected to ask for more help from the Americans, even though Mexico has a history of resisting U.S. military aid, a kind of old fashioned notion of maintaining her independence, her sovereignty is expected to be put aside as they ask not only for more money than the 1.4 billion Bush has promised but on the ground training for Mexican military by the U.S. Special Forces. And U.S. training for Mexican national and local police forces.  Both overt and covert operations are the new strategies Mexico will be advocating. Mexico has in the past sent their soldiers to Fort Bragg and other US bases for special training.

Some Mexican legislators claim there is already clandestine covert action taking place in Mexico by the Americans and has taken many different forms reflecting the diverse circumstances in which it is being used.

However the circumstances have eroded to such a point that many Mexican leaders that have no ties with the cartels are desperate and are encouraging an out right overt U.S. military boots on the ground operation, and accelerate training using U.S. military, CIA, DEA, FBI and U.S. Police advisers.

According to a high ranking Mexican official who wants to remain anonymous indicated that the U.S. Mexican border is a primary focal point for military operations. “There are U.S. Army Special Forces secret operation bases both in Mexico and the United states, run by the California National Guard, who are on temporary border reconnaissance missions and are due to end within the next month or so.”

The Mexican cartels are challenging the Mexican government. They have huge amounts of money available to bribe officials, and they do, and currently have covert armies (para-military) that are better equipped, trained and motivated than national police and military forces, the cartels are becoming the government — if in fact they didn’t originate in the government. Getting the government to deploy armed forces against the cartels can become a contradiction in terms. In their most extreme form, cartels are already running much of the government. So many ask why would America provide the questionable Mexican Government 1.4 Billion?

It is important to point out that U.S. law enforcement agencies have many different types of support missions already operating in Mexico. The U.S. government admits that they ccurrently have more than 50 federal agencies working on the U.S. Mexican border. The Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (BCBP), which includes the U.S. Border Patrol; United States Attorneys; and state and local law enforcement agencies continue to work together to reduce the amount of illicit drugs entering the United States through the U.S./Mexico Border. But they are not successful ether. The law biding Mexicans want our strategy to be to attack major Mexican-based trafficking organizations on both sides of the border simultaneously by employing enhanced intelligence and enforcement initiatives and cooperative efforts with the Government of Mexico.

In recent months, and after Mexican president Caldron dispatched the Mexican army and federal police to many interior cities and to Mexican cities on the Mexican U.S. border the level of violence has risen substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. In the last few weeks, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican drug cartels and their gangs who are engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary.  But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres into the United States on this scale goes beyond what has become accepted practice. The dynamics in the borderland are shifting and must be understood in a broader, geopolitical context.

Bush policy is to not disrupt the trade with Mexico and not raising its cost has been a fundamental principle of U.S.-Mexican relations. Leaving aside the contentious issue of whether illegal immigration hurts or helps the United States, the steps required to control that immigration would impede bilateral trade. The United States therefore has been loath to impose effective measures, since any measures that would be effective against population movement also would impose friction on trade. It is a popular belief by people on both sides of the border that politicians from both governments are benefiting from the out of control but lucrative milti – billion dollar drug trade.

The United States has been willing to tolerate levels of criminality along the border. The only time when the United States shifted its position was when organized groups in Mexico both established themselves north of the political border and engaged in significant violence. Thus, in 1916, when the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa began operations north of the border, the U.S. Army moved into Mexico to try to destroy his base of operations. This has been the line that, when crossed, motivated the United States to take action, regardless of the economic cost. The current upsurge in violence is now pushing that line but just where that line is today is not clear. It appears the two governments keep moving the goal posts.

The United States has built-in demand for a range of illegal drugs, including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana. Regardless of decades of efforts, and billios of dollars, the United States has not been able to eradicate or even qualitatively reduce this demand. As an advanced industrial country, the United States has a great deal of money available to satisfy the demand for illegal drugs. This makes the supply of narcotics to a large market attractive. In fact, it almost doesn’t matter how large demand is. Regardless of how it varies, the economics are such that even a fraction of the current market will attract sellers.

 The Houston Chronicle reports that because they are involved in an illegal business, drug dealers cannot take recourse to the courts or police to protect their assets. Protecting the supply chain and excluding competition are opposite sides of the same coin. Protecting assets is major cost of running a drug ring. It suppresses competition, both by killing it and by raising the cost of entry into the market. The illegality of the business requires that it be large enough to manage the supply chain and absorb the cost of protecting it. It gives high incentives to eliminate potential competitors and new entrants into the market. In the end, it creates a monopoly or small oligopoly in the business, where the comparative advantage ultimately devolves into the effectiveness of the supply chain and the efficiency of the private police force protecting it.

That means that the Mexican drug cartels have evolved in several predictable ways. They have huge amounts of money flowing in from the U.S. market by selling relatively low-cost products at monopolistic prices into markets with inelastic demand curves. Second, they have unique expertise in covert logistics, expertise that can be transferred to the movement of other goods. Third, they develop substantial security capabilities, which can grow over time into full-blown paramilitary forces to protect the supply chain. Fourth, they are huge capital pools, investing in the domestic economy and manipulating the political system.

A Mexican college professor who wants to be nameless said “cartels can challenge — and supplant — governments. Between huge amounts of money available to bribe officials, and covert armies better equipped, trained and motivated than national police and military forces, the cartels can become the government — if in fact they didn’t originate in the government. Getting the government to deploy armed forces against the cartel can become a contradiction in terms. In their most extreme form, cartels are the government.”

He went on to say, “the drug cartels have two weaknesses. First, they can be shattered in conflicts with challengers within the oligopoly or by splits within the cartels. Second, their supply chains can be broken from the outside. U.S. policy has historically been to attack the supply chains from the fields to the street distributors. Drug cartels have proven extremely robust and resilient in modifying the supply chains under pressure. When conflict occurs within and among cartels and systematic attacks against the supply chain take place, however, specific cartels can be broken — although the long-term result is the emergence of a new cartel system.”

In the 1980s, the United States manipulated various Colombian cartels into internal conflict. More important, the United States attacked the Colombian supply chain in the Caribbean as it moved from Colombia through Panama along various air and sea routes to the United States. The weakness of the Colombian cartel was its exposed supply chain from South America to the United States. U.S. military operations raised the cost so high that the route became uneconomic.

The main route to American markets shifted from the Caribbean to the U.S.-Mexican border. It began as an alliance between sophisticated Colombian cartels and still-primitive Mexican gangs, but the balance of power inevitably shifted over time. Owning the supply link into the United States, the Mexicans increased their wealth and power until they absorbed more and more of the entire supply chain. Eventually, the Colombians were minimized and the Mexicans became the decisive power.

The Americans fought the battle against the Colombians primarily in the Caribbean and southern Florida. The battle against the Mexican drug lords must be fought in the U.S.-Mexican borderland. And while the fight against the Colombians did not involve major disruptions to other economic patterns, the fight against the Mexican cartels involves potentially huge disruptions. In addition, the battle is going to be fought in a region that is already tense because of the immigration issue, and at least partly on U.S. soil.

The likely course is a multigenerational pattern of instability along the border. More important, there will be a substantial transfer of wealth from the United States to Mexico in return for an intrinsically low-cost consumable product — drugs. This will be one of the sources of capital that will build the Mexican economy, which today is 14th largest in the world. The accumulation of drug money is and will continue finding its way into the Mexican economy, creating a pool of investment capital. The children and grandchildren of the Zetas will be running banks, running for president, building art museums and telling amusing anecdotes about how grandpa made his money running blow into Nuevo Laredo.

One of DEA’s main functions is to coordinate drug investigations that take place along America’s 2,000-mile border with Mexico; this is an effort that involves thousands of federal, state, and local law enforcement officers. Mexican drug groups have become the world’s preeminent drug traffickers, and they tend to be characterized by organizational complexity and a high propensity for violence. To counter this threat, federal drug law enforcement has aggressively pursued drug trafficking along the U.S./Mexico border. The DEA; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);

Today, the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) serves as the principal national tactical intelligence center for drug law enforcement. EPIC is multidimensional in its approach to intelligence sharing. It has a research and analysis section as well as a tactical operations section to support foreign and domestic intelligence and operational needs in the field. It is staffed by representatives from the DEA; FBI; U.S. Coast Guard; BCBP; the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE); U.S. Secret Service; Federal Aviation Administration; U.S. Marshals Service; National Security Agency; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Internal Revenue Service; and the Department of the Interior. Although the immigration and customs functions were recently incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security, representatives from BCBP and BICE will retain their participation in EPIC.

DEA reports that they also are maximizing the use of technology to combat drug trafficking organizations. The DEA’s Special Operations Division (SOD) is a comprehensive enforcement operation designed specifically to coordinate multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional, and multi-national Title III investigations against the command and control elements of major drug trafficking organizations operating domestically and abroad. The investigative resources of SOD support a variety of multi-jurisdictional drug enforcement investigations associated with the Southwest Border, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia.

 Drug trafficking organizations operating along the Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California and Mexico Border continue to be one of the greatest threats to communities across this nation. The power and influence of these organizations is pervasive, and continues to expand to new markets across the United States.

Mexican narcotraffickers and other criminals easily obtain their firepower north of the border. Effectively reducing the flow of illegal arms would mean tightening laws on gun sales and ownership in the US.

Not just the police are coming under fire. Thousands of Mexican citizens are getting caught in the crossfire. According to the US Centers for Disease Control, Mexico has one of the highest firearm homicide rates in the world, about 20 for every 100,000 people. (The rate for the United States is 7 per 100,000 people. In addition, there has been a spate of recent high-profile political and narco-assassinations, many of them carried out with guns purchased illegally in the US.

Many of the arms used by Mexico’s insurgencies were supplied by Washington either through massive military aid programs or as part of US covert operations that left enormous arsenals behind. Click on or Google Merida Initiative Will It Work?

For Related articles go to: www.lagunajournal.com

By Michael Webster: Syndicated Investigative Reporter. Feb 21, 2009 at 1:30 PM PST.

Mexico – Mexican President Felipe Calderon condemned this week’s street protests against his army-backed drug war, saying they were cowardly acts orchestrated by drug traffickers.

In commemoration of the Day of the Army, President Calderón labeled as cowards and traitors to the nation those who use women and children as part of their strategy to bring about the withdrawal of the Army in its battle against organized crime

Hundreds of Mexicans, some woman carrying small children, blocked roads and bridges in Mexican cities bordering the United States from the Gulf of Mexico (Matamoros) to the Pacific Ocean (Tijuana) and protested by marching in the northern city of Monterrey in a series of demonstrations that police say are organized and funded by Mexican drug cartels.

Police used water cannons to disperse protesters in the northern industrial city of Monterrey, Mexico, where hundreds of protesters in Monterrey and others in several border cities demanded that the Mexican army leave their cities. Officials say that the protests are organized by Mexican drug cartels that they say are trying to disrupt the government’s anti-drug crackdown. 

The protests, being held nation wide and in Mexican cities near the U.S. Border, put new pressure on President Calderon to continue to try and defeat the Mexican Drug Cartels (MDC’s). In 2007, Calderon’s administration launched a military campaign to combat spiraling drug violence in his country. Thousands of people died in drug-related violence last year as MDC’s and their gangs fought each other, the Mexican Army and Mexico’s security forces.

The day after these demonstrations Juárez police chief Roberto Orduña Cruz resigned after the Juárez Mexican drug cartel killed six city police officers and threatened to kill more unless he left the force.

 

Juarez Police Chief  and Public Safety Secretary Roberto Orduna Cruz, left, resigned on Friday during a news conference with Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz. At right is Juarez city official Guillermo Dowell. (Photo courtesy of Juarez city government)

“Those who see … their criminal structure weakened have tried to provoke the army’s retreat,” Calderon told soldiers at an army base in Monterrey.

“True to form as cowards, they have even used women and children for their wretched goals,” he said on Mexico’s national military day.

Aides said Calderon chose to celebrate Thursday’s event in Monterrey, rather than the capital, as a response to the demonstrations, where many marchers held up colored cloths to hide their faces.

Last week an alert went out to law enforcement officers across the United States issued by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence, Analysis and FBI.
 

The alert warned that the US Customs and Border Protection Offices located at the US-Mexican Border crossings located in El Paso, Big Bend, and Edinburgh, Texas has closed due to violence across the border in Mexico. Protesters clashing with Mexican Police have escalated at the border crossings which has involved gunfire and explosions. Intelligence has reported that the protests may have been staged by the Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) to mask criminal activities along the US – Mexican border.

Additional information reported that the Mexican border officials have also closed their side of the border.

Mexico’s drug war is affecting business throughout the country, tourist are no longer shopping in the Mexican border cities and tourism in general is down even in popular hot spots like Cancun. The violence is turning away investors who Mexico needs for business and has concerned and alarmed the Obama administration. The United States, has pledged $1.4 billion worth of drug-fighting equipment and training to Mexico and Central America and has delivered less than a 1/3rd. According to news reports the Obama administration is taking another hard look at that pledge.

At the same commemoration of the Day of the Army, President Calderón labeled the MDC’s as cowards and traitors to the nation those who use women and children as part of their strategy to bring about the withdrawal of the Army in its battle against organized crime.

“True to their status as cowards they have even used women and children for small minded purposes, their acts are treason”, said Calderón recently from the capital city of Nuevo Leon, where there have been six protest demonstrations against the army.

He added “Let no one make a mistake, let no one confuse the sides, the enemies of the country and of all Mexicans are those who assail its institutions, who harass, threaten and extort society, who poison its sons and who betray the country.”

Calderón, who praised the army’s task, asserted that organized crime is condemned to defeat because the Armed Forces and an entire nation are on the side of the Mexicans.

To all who pretend to be above the law, said Calderón, we say that our Armed Forces “are not intimidated nor will they ever desist because they are composed of Mexicans fully committed to the defense of our dear Mexico.”

Police and government officials in Monterrey say Mexico’s most violent drug gang, the Gulf cartel, and its feared armed wing, the Zetas, is behind the protests.

The cartel is paying people to attend marches and has handed out backpacks full of schoolbooks, pens and paper to poor families who joined the demonstrations, police say.

The northern states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, home to Monterrey and the border cities of Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa, are the trafficking routes into Texas for the Gulf Cartel.

Calderon has sent more than 45,000 troops and federal police across Mexico to fight drug gangs since late 2006, a move widely supported by many Mexicans angry with years of inaction and deep corruption in the country’s police forces.

Despite warnings from rights groups about soldiers using excessive force in the drug fight, Calderon also has Washington’s support for using the army, which has made historic drug seizures and is catching more gang leaders.

More protests and even rioting in Mexico is expected particularly along the U.S. Mexican border