“Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials,” the New York Times reports. Does that sound familiar?

It’s the exact same explanation the ATF used to justify Operation Fast and Furious, wherein ATF agents “allowed” some 2000 firearms to walk from U.S. gun stores to the Sinaloan drug cartel. Just like the DEA’s money laundering ops, ATF’s so-called “botched sting” operation was designed to “catch the big fish.” Damningly, in ten months F&F did no such thing.

The DOJ pulled the plug on Fast and Furious roughly a year ago, after drug thugs murdered U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with ATF-enabled firearms. As far as we know, the DEA’s “Cash for Goons” program is ongoing.

Former D.E.A. officials rejected comparisons between letting guns and money walk away. Money, they said, poses far less of a threat to public safety. And unlike guns, it can lead more directly to the top ranks of criminal organizations.

Yeah, sure. In theory. Maybe. In practice? The Times singularly, spectacularly fails to question the DEA on the number of prosecutions tied to Cashwalker. But they do provide a window into Uncle Sam’s participation in the financial side of the Mexican drug trade.

Today, in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions, the United States is running numerous undercover laundering investigations against Mexico’s most powerful cartels. One D.E.A. official said it was not unusual for American agents to pick up two or three loads of Mexican drug money each week. A second official said that as Mexican cartels extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations had grown as well. When asked how much money had been laundered as a part of the operations, the official would only say, “A lot.”

“If you’re going to get into the business of laundering money,” the official added, “then you have to be able to launder money.” . . .

And the former officials said that federal law enforcement agencies had to seek Justice Department approval to launder amounts greater than $10 million in any single operation. But they said that the cap was treated more as a guideline than a rule, and that it had been waived on many occasions to attract the interest of high-value targets.

“They tell you they’re bringing you $250,000, and they bring you a million,” one former agent said of the traffickers. “What’s the agent supposed to do then, tell them no, he can’t do it? They’ll kill him.”

So there’s a paper trail to the DOJ. No doubt the embattled Attorney General received but didn’t read the emails on Cashwalker either. And no one in DOJ connected the dots between two “sting” operations that helped the Sinaloans do business in the United States. Totally unconnected. (/sarcasm)

There’s simply no other way to put this: the United States government is in business with at least one Mexican drug cartel, now fully revealed as an international criminal syndicate.

The ATF and State Department ran the guns (including military and law enforcement sales). The DEA laundered and smuggled the cash. It’s only a matter of time before we learn that ICE and the CPB gave the drugs safe passage. Or, perhaps, smuggled the drugs into the U.S. for the bad guys.

More than that, Cashwalker puts the possible motives for Gunwalker into fresh perspective. Or, more accurately, a new foul perspective.

From the start of the Gunwalker scandal, Mike Vanderboegh of the Sipsey Street Irregulars has maintained that Fast and Furious was an attempt by the Obama administration to create a crisis to allow the feds to introduce gun grabbing legislation. The recently revealed anti-gun email from former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke gives credence to this theory.

I’ve suggested three alternative explanations. First, that the ATF enabled illegal firearms purchases to arm the Sinaloa drug cartel in an effort to counter a [complete] government takeover by Los Zetas. Second, that Uncle Sam let the guns go because various bureaucrats were on the take. And third, one, two and three.

In the light of this new angle, I’m going with door number three: gun-grabbing, CIA machinations and corruption. Hundreds of millions of dollars in cash flowing through American bureaucrats hands and no one takes a taste? Unlikely.

The Times doesn’t get it. They don’t grasp the full importance of the fact that Gunwalker recruited law-abiding American gun store owners into a criminal conspiracy, just as U.S. banks must be accomplices to the DEA’s epic money laundering. Even if the feds are fighting crime with these stingless stings—and there’s no reason to believe they are—the programs are perverting the rule of law in a country founded on that principle.

What’s more, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, ICE Agent Jaime Zapata and dozens if not hundreds of Mexicans paid for the inevitable blowback from Operation Fast and Furious with their lives. Cashwalker too; the money the DEA laundered for the cartels is drenched in blood.

No matter what their rationale, the U.S. government is guilty of aiding, abetting and conducting a criminal enterprise.

No wonder President Obama’s minions are doing everything they can to keep a lid on Fast and Furious. If the full truth were known, the current administration would be doomed. At least that’s what I’d like to believe.

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24 COMMENTS

  1. Im waiting for the email leak that explains the ATF and the DEA’s law enforcement mandate as merely cover identities for an American drug cartel that’s being run out of Washington.

      • We were there decades ago, Iran Contra. Perhaps not with the ATF and DEA specifically, but former LAPD officer Mike Ruppert confronted the executive director of the CIA (John Deutch) on CSPAN about the CIA’s role in smuggling cocaine, and the CIA’s attempted recruitment of him to participate in the project. Not many people cared then, just as few people care about Gunwalker. Shit even look at the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban virtually eliminated opium production, but once US forces took over, there was recording breaking production of opium.
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t3pl5Wxgyg

        • No proof was ever found that showed the CIA was linked to any cocaine smuggling into the US, despite the San Jose Mercury’s series of poorly researched stories. Even Sen. John Kerry’s multimillion dollar investigations turned up NOTHING, NADA, not a god damned thing of evidence.

          This is an “urban myth” that communists and leftists like Kerry, Maxine Waters, and a few journalists like to keep alive, like “Candyman’.

          Ask Kerry why he didn’t investigate the FARC narcoterrorism operations from Colombia to the US when he had a chance? The same for the Cuban smuggling operations, for which Castro sacrificed a General to cover it up. Forget about the massive Red Chinese heroin operations that ranged from Hong Kong, Macao, Yunnan Province, Amsterdam, and even Africa and Kerry never investigated the North Vietnamese heroin growing/smuggling operations from the northern provinces and occupied areas of Laos to So. Vietnam (some of this information, esp. on the heroin trains, is still highly classified).

          There are real drug smuggling rings, often run by enemy governments that need to be brought out into the sunlight. Leave the urban myths in the garbage heap and deal with the realities of FARC, Red China, Taliban, etc.

          • Huh? The Kerry report said “On the basis of this evidence, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter.”

            In addition, in November 1996 a Miami jury indicted former Venezuelan anti-narcotics chief and longtime CIA asset, General Ramon Guillen Davila, who was smuggling many tons of cocaine into the United States from a Venezuelan warehouse owned by the CIA. In his trial defense, Guillen claimed that all of his drug smuggling operations were approved by the CIA.

            In 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of government of Panama, had been giving military assistance to Contra groups in Nicaragua at the request of the U.S.—which, in exchange, allowed him to continue his drug-trafficking activities—which they had known about since the 1960s. When the DEA tried to indict Noriega in 1971, the CIA prevented them from doing so. The CIA, which was then directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for his work in Latin America. However, when CIA pilot Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, documents aboard the plane revealed many of the CIA’s activities in Latin America, and the CIA’s connections with Noriega became a public relations “liability” for the U.S. government, which finally allowed the DEA to indict him for drug trafficking, after decades of allowing his drug operations to proceed unchecked. Noriega’s prison sentence was reduced from 30 years to 17 years for good behavior. After serving 17 years in detention and imprisonment, his prison sentence ended on September 9, 2007. He was held under U.S. custody before being extradited to French custody where he was sentenced to 7 years for laundering money from Colombian drug cartels.

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking

            BTW, judging from your comments, it appears your trying to get in to partisan politics. I’m neither a D, nor an R, nor an I.

  2. I’m sure they’re not doing this for free. Where are the considerable profits from the laundering operation?

  3. I never have always been a big believer in the notion that Government entities have always been a part of the drug trade for profit. From Vietnam, to Iran/Contra to Afghanistan and the cocke and crack epidemic of the 90’s to todays issues.

    It really doesn’t take anything more than a basic understanding of human nature, to figure out that there has always been way to much money involved over the years for various government entities to not take advantage whether personally or professionally/officially.

  4. “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
    The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
    wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
    they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
    it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
    And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
    warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
    resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
    to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
    in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
    time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
    It is its natural manure.”

    • The first step would be to stop providing these people with an air of legitimacy, and join the 47% of eligible Americans who didnt participate in elections.

      • I agree with denying Eric “My People” Holder legitimacy. But we can use the democratic process to achieve that. Crafting legislation like the Alabama law can do that. The Federals have two choices: accept or reject the legislation. By accepting it they yield power. By rejecting it they lose credibility in the eye’s of the people. At least, the people who voted for the immigration restriction. Obama only as 1/3 of the White vote. Let’s use this.

        • There is all ready plenty of legislation which would make this illegal. And what good is that legislation, if the people who are supposed to enforce the legislation are the criminals as with this case, Iran Contra, Afgahnistan or countless other incidents? If you or RF wanted to, you could even file a RICO suit.

          And not participating in the election process is part of the democratic process, its a vote of no confidence in the government. I always like to say, instead of going out to vote next year, go out to a adult store and buy a dildo. That way you can at least fuck yourself instead of waiting for the government to do so. You might even get off on it!

        • There is all ready plenty of legislation which makes this illegal. And what good is that legislation, if the people who are supposed to enforce the legislation are the criminals as with this case, Iran Contra, Afgahnistan or countless other incidents? If you or RF wanted to, you could even file a RICO suit.

          And not participating in the election process is part of the democratic process, its a vote of no confidence in the government. I always like to say, instead of going out to vote next year, go out to a adult store and buy a dildo. That way you can at least fcuk yourself instead of waiting for the government to do so. You might even get off on it!

          • Once again (or still) the government is involved in an activity for which they prosecute others. Check this out:

            By Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
            November 27, 2011, 7:16 p.m.
            Reporting from Mexico City—
            http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-money-laundering-banks-20111128,0,430982.story

            Money launderers for ruthless Mexican drug gangs have long had a formidable ally: international banks . . .

            Banking powerhouse Wachovia Corp. last year agreed to pay $160 million in forfeitures and fines after U.S. federal prosecutors accused it of “willfully” overlooking the suspicious character of more than $420 billion in transactions between the bank and Mexican currency-exchange houses — much of it probably drug money, investigators say.

            Federal prosecutors said Wachovia failed to detect and report numerous operations that should have raised red flags, and continued to work with the exchange houses long after other banks stopped doing so because of the “high risk” that it was a money-laundering operation.

            Wachovia was moving money on behalf of the exchange houses through wire transfers, traveler’s checks, even large hauls of bulk cash, investigators said. Some of the money was eventually traced to the purchase of small airplanes used to smuggle cocaine from South America to Mexico, they said.

            “Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” U.S. Atty. Jeffrey H. Sloman said in announcing the case last year, hailed at the time by authorities as one of the most significant in stopping dirty money from contaminating the U.S. financial system.

            Wachovia paid the $160 million in what is called a deferred-prosecution agreement; no one went to prison, and the fines represented a tiny fraction of the money the bank had filtered. In court documents cited by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Wachovia acknowledged serious lapses.

          • You’re missing my point entirely. We can use what’s left of democracy to get the message out. The Federals are the last group anyone would consider moral or helpful. That’s the point of putting forward legislation: to put the pigs in the national spotlight. I don’t have a lot of hope left for working class Whites and other marginalized groups. It’s just better to try than to give up.

            Working class Whites said “NO” to Rick Amnesty Perry. There are people who support border control. Only problem is that every System candidate refuses to represent them. If we can keep the fire burning we can force someone to represent us.

            Alternatives to your dildo metaphor exist. For me, sitting down and shutting up is not an option. Venting about the Federals is healthy but more needs to happen. I refuse to be a curmudgeon who won’t act.

            Dropping out only works when an organized and crucial body does it. When 47% of the lumpenproletariat and “rebels” drop out, who cares? When pilots, soldiers, writers, and professionals drop out it makes an impact. When the White working class as an organized body witholds support of the System, things will change.

            • You dont have to sit down and shut up, you just have to arm yourself, rabble rouse others, and stop providing the government to a sense of legitimacy.

              The political views of americans are too fragmented to have any particular group drop out. Look at strikes, there are always strikebreakers.

              • I can’t deny the truth in your statement. But some parts are temporary truths. Americans are too fragmented…now. But we can’t assume they’ll stay that way forever. They weren’t that way forever. Enough united in 1776, 1860, 1940,1964, 1975, and even 2001.

                Rabble rousers will remain rousers without basic ideological coherence, leadership, and a sense of belonging. We can give that to folks. We can build legitimacy outside of the System whilst using its resources for ourselves. We can wean them off of the System.

                As for your strike metaphor, I disagree. The Wobblies had tremendous power at one point. They struck fear into the hearts of plutocrats. Labor used to be a much more potent force than now. At one time strike-breakers had a lot to fear.

                The pendulum is swinging back in our direction. Tribalism and identity politics are gaining steam again. Let’s not waste this precious timeframe. We can work at creating conditions that foster dissent and build revolutionary conditions.

                There’s not much more I can say on the topic. The last post is yours if you so desire. I admire the tone and articulation of your comments even if o disagree with you on some. Best of luck out there.

              • Regarding 1776, a large number were loyal to the crown, and only 3% of americans were combatant revolutionaries. Wikipedia says there were 50k american crown-loyalist combatants and 85k american revolutionary combatants. 1860!?! There was a complete lack of unity there, and the divide from that era still exists somewhat today in the south. There were plenty of american isolationists in 1940. Not really sure what your referring to for 1964, Vietnam? Nor do I know what your referring to for 1975. For 2001, plenty of people blamed the American government, myself included, go look at my comments on the 9-11 aniversary article here. I almost got banned for what I said here.
                http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/09/brad-kozak/911-never-forget/
                Even for the US military there is a lack of unity, in 1932 Gen. MacAruther and Maj. Patton shot, bayoneted and gassed WW1 veterans who were protesting in Washington DC. Even after President Hoover personally ordered Gen. MacArtuher to stop his assault, he disobeyed a direct order from his commander and cheif because he belived the protestors were communists.
                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army#U.S._Army_intervention

                I personally dont agree with the idea that you can wean people off the system anymore than you can wean a addict off drugs. It might work for a few, but for the majority it will fail. At least from my experiences with my father’s drug addiction. And the closest you’ll get to unity would be along racial lines, and even then I have a hard time seeing that for whites.

                True strike breakers used to fear violence, and the IWW had power, but they dont anymore thanks to the corporations, governments, and the idea of a peaceful protest.

                I agree with your 4th paragraph, but we both have different ends. I’m an anarchist and you seem to favor democraticly elected government. Us anarchists used to have a good name, until the media dragged us thru the mud for the Haymarket police riots.
                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

                Its always fun to have a political conversation which doesnt resort to childish name calling.

  5. hundreds of millions of untraceable dollars sluicing through us government LEO hands. clearly they are bought and paid for. collecting their “commission” on all these transactions. corruption on this scale has to be sanctioned from the top.

  6. The “War against drugs” who are you kidding? The government makes money on drugs, weapons trafficking, prostitution and all other illegal acts. The politicians are doing insider trading at the market yet any one else would go to jail. Politicians are prostitutes of power. This and other crimes committed in the name of government. The Constitution gets taken out from under our feet first by “The Patriot Act” and now by a defence bill (so called) because it defends the criminal politicians. BTW no one particular individual can carry all of the blame its US we are the ones complacent in our peace.

  8. Skip the talk about the DofJ’s antics being great movie material. Eric Holder has provided enough saga to create a multi season drama series.

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