An FBI asset in the Sinaloan ‘cartel’ arranged massive purchases of assault rifles in Phoenix Gun Shops. Behind this operation, ATF surveillance gathered evidence that could have led to indictments, but federal prosecutors refused to prosecute ATF casework.
President Barack Obama signed the Brian Terry Memorial Act, which will rename the Border Patrol Station in the Bisbee area in honor of the slain agent.
Brian Terry was murdered over a year ago, with an assault rifle that was part of the infamous “Fast and Furious” gunwalking cases, where ATF and FBI agents documented sales, buyers and surveillance that allowed arms to be smuggled into Mexico.
At the height of the 2008 banking crisis, Antonio Maria Costa, then head of the United Nations office on drugs and crime, said he had evidence to suggest the proceeds from drugs and crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to banks on the brink of collapse. “Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade,” he said. “There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.”
Here is a primer on how to launder drug money through a major US bank, and not have anyone really go to jail. Wikileaks has released emails from the quasi-intelligent think tank, STRATFOR, detailing the 375 billion dollar Casa de Cambio run by Wachovia.
Bisbee and Naco area residents were arrested on warrants during the last 48 hours, on indictments for trafficking marijuana. Nine homes in Naco, Bisbee and Sierra Vista were raided, and several arrests were made.
KVOA leads with a lurid, hyperbolic headline: Feds take down members of a violent drug cartel. What they mean is that a bunch of juvenile delinquents have been smuggling cannabis in school backpacks. This qualifies as violence, under Arizona media guidelines.
The Brian Terry family has filed a lawsuit targeting both the Gun Shop and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for his death last year near Arivaca.
US Attorney General Eric Holder is under fire by the Republican members of Congress over the ‘Fast and Furious’ gun smuggling scandal that has begun to engulf the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI, including the DEA doing a collateral money laundry for Mexican cartels. Its little concern that these scandals began during the Bush administration, and are now fully endowed by Obama’s Department of Justice.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has new methods for enforcing drugs on the American public, similar to the ATF’s strategy of letting guns ‘walk’.
If you are an important member of an alleged Mexican Drug Cartel, you can have your money laundered, transferred and traced by the Drug Enforcement Administration, at an affordable price guaranteed to perpetuate the Drug War on Americans.
Former US Attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, blames Senator Charles Grassley’s staff for creating falsehoods, calling them the willing stooges of the gun lobby that distracted the public away from the successes of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms programs.
The Brian Terry murder has become a flashpoint for every policy and tactic that has failed in the drug war.
Besides rules of engagement issues, Fast and Furious weapons found at the scene, an informer’s missing gun, resignations at high levels of the ATF and DOJ, and denials of criminal activities from nearly everyone in the Bush/Obama administration, this Mystery of the Desert is a tragedy of policies that militarize rather than medicalize the enormous illicit drug markets.
