More Insanity in the War on Drugs

First came “Operation Fast and Furious,” in which the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Justice Department orchestrated the transport of firearms across our borders into the waiting hands of drug cartels in Mexico. Now, we are learning that U.S. federal agents probably allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels.

The allegations surfaced in documents filed in a U.S. federal court as a part of the defense filings for Vicente Zambada-Niebla. A top lieutenant of drug kingpin Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman and the son of Ismael “Mayo” Zambada-Garcia, he is believed to be the brains behind the Sinaloa cartel.

While Fast and Furious allowed guns to walk across the border into Mexico, this latest bit of insanity allowed the Sinaloa cartel to bring drugs into the United States. Zambada-Niebla claims he was permitted to smuggle drugs from 2004 until his arrest in 2009. Not surprisingly, Randall Samborn, assistant U.S. attorney and spokesman for the Justice Department in Chicago, has declined comment. The federal court in Chicago has ordered the government to respond to allegations in Zambada-Niebla’s motion by September 11.

The El Paso Times reports that court documents reveal that Mexican lawyer Humberto Loya-Castro, yet another top-level Sinaloa cartel leader, had his 1995 U.S. drug-trafficking case dismissed in 2008 after serving as an informant for ten years for the U.S. government. Court documents also reveal that Vicente Zambada-Niebla allegedly supplied agents of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with information about other Mexican drug traffickers through Loya-Castro.

Humberto Loya-Castro himself continued his drug trafficking activities with the knowledge of the United States government without being arrested or prosecuted.

This latest episode of cross-border operations by the DEA, ICE, and BATF began in March 2009 when Zambada-Niebla voluntarily met with U.S. federal agents at the Sheraton Hotel in Mexico City, near the U.S. Embassy. Court records indicate the purpose of the meeting was, “provide information to the DEA and the U.S. government personally, rather than through Loya.” The plan was for “Loya-Castro to tell Mr. Zambada-Niebla that they wanted to continue the same arrangements with him as they had with Mr. Loya-Castro.”

Just five hours after that meeting, Mexican authorities arrested Zambada-Niebla and extradited him later to the United States. His father and Guzman are fugitives.

Zambada-Niebla’s motion seeks U.S. government records about the 2003 Juárez case involving an informant who participated in several homicides for the Carrillo-Fuentes drug cartel, while under ICE’s supervision. He has also requested records about the BATF’s “Operation Fast and Furious” that allowed weapons purchased illegally in the United States to be smuggled into Mexico, sometimes by paid U.S. informants and cartel leaders.

Documents in the Federal Court case state, “”It is estimated that approximately 3,000 people were killed in Mexico as a result of ‘Operation Fast and Furious,’ including law enforcement officers in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, the headquarters of the Sinaloa cartel. The Department of Justice’s leadership apparently saw this as an ingenious way of combating drug cartel activities.”

The Justice Department and other agencies continue to play both ends against the middle in tactics that continually fail and only further escalate the violence along our southern borders. All of this comes at the same time one border town in Mexico south of El Paso recently saw its entire police force resign, for the second time in less than a year, because violence there is totally out of control.

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