Attorney General Eric Holder Announces Resignation

United States Attorney General Eric Holder, who folds the dubious distinction of being the only attorney general held in contempt of Congress, announced that he would be resigning on Thursday.

Holder, one of the few Obama remaining appointments from the first term, is one of the longest-serving AG's in US history and the country's first black attorney general. His five year tenure was marked primarily by cover-ups, politically motivated prosecutions and overreach on the part of the DOJ.

In the summer of 2012, Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress when the DOJ refused to turn over documents pertaining to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Operation Fast & Furious, in which the agency allowed straw purchasers to buy guns in US border states and take them into Mexico without intervening. In December 2010, one of these guns was recovered from the scene of a shootout south of Tuscon, AZ where Mexican drug traffickers killed US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and Mexican officials have seized numerous guns traced to the gunwalking program from drug traffickers or recovered them from murder scenes south of the border.

Before Holder announced his resignation, a federal judge ordered Holder to hand over all the requested Fast and Furious documents to the House Oversight Committee by October 1st. This has led to some speculation that the withheld documents contain damaging or politically embarrassing details that would've generated bad publicity for the White House and Democrats a month before the midterm elections. Others believe Holder's departure could have been timed to allow President Obama's hand-picked replacement to be confirmed by the Senate in a lame duck session in the event the majority shifts back to the Republicans after the elections.

Early in his tenure, Holder also supported civilian trials for Al Qaeda terrorists captured on the battlefield and detained in Guantanamo Bay, although the administration later backed off of trying suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Federal court in New York.

As attorney general, Holder seemingly took every opportunity to inject race into the DOJ enforcing federal laws- his DOJ's Civil Rights Commission declined to press charges against members of the New Black Panthers Party who were videotaped clad in paramilitary uniforms and wielding nightsticks in front of a Philadelphia polling station in 2008. Claiming minorities were incapable of obtaining photo ID, Holder's DOJ also unsuccessfully fought newly-passed voter ID laws in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Texas.

Speaking out on the recent unrest in Ferguson, MO, Holder told an audience at New York University this week:

“As an African American man who has been stopped and searched by police in situations where such actions were not warranted, I also carry with me an understanding of the mistrust that some citizens harbor (toward police),"

Under Holder, the DOJ also aggressively went after e-mails reporters from the Associated Press and FOX News and seized the phone records of FOX News reporter James Rosen's parents in the name of national security.

Not surprisingly, holder said that the Department of Justice had no plans to investigate the Veterans Affairs clandestine wait-lists in which the agency deferred treatment to numerous veterans seeking care at VA facilities- with a number of them dying as a result of being denied care.

Blue State Graft Watch- California State Senator Who Authored Gun Control Laws Arrested on Charges of Weapons Trafficking, Ties to Organized Crime

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Fears of a Clown Borderline Psychosis Update- Former Baja Cartel Head Gunned Down By Clowns; Devices Linked to ATF 'Grenade-Walking' Used in Jalisco

JALISCO- Explosives used during a fierce firefight between state police in Jalisco and gunmen from the New Generation Jalisco cartel may have been provided by a fugitive arms trafficker who had been under US surveillance for nearly a decade and was part of a lesser-known 'grenade walking' operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The ATF began watching Kingery in "2004 related to AK47 purchases" he was believed to be trafficking to Mexico.

In 2009, ATF also learned Kingery was dealing in grenades; weapons of choice for Mexico's killer cartels. Documents show they developed a secret plan to let him smuggle parts to Mexico in early 2010 and follow him to his factory. Some ATF agents vehemently objected, worried that Kingery would disappear once he crossed the border into Mexico. That's exactly what happened.

Kingery resurfaced several months later in 2010, trying to smuggle a stash of grenade bodies and ammunition into Mexico, but was again let go when prosecutors allegedly said they couldn't build a good case. In 2011, Mexican authorities finally raided Kingery's factory and arrested him -- they say he confessed to teaching cartel members how to build grenades

According to local officials, local police in the city of Tepatitlan were responding to complaints of gunshots being fired in the air earlier this month when they came under fire from the gunmen before their assailants barricaded themselves in a nearby building.

According to the government account, the local police, while under attack, called state police for backup just before 7 p.m. The state police arrived to find the suspects holed up in a house, where, according to news reports and witnesses on Twitter, they kept up a gun battle with the police for three or four hours. Officials said the men threw a number of grenades at the officers.

Sometimes referring to themselves as the 'matazetas' [translates to 'Zeta killers'- NANESB!], the nascent Jalisco New Generation Cartel is one of Mexico's newest cartels, formed after a 2010 break with the Sinaloa Cartel.

BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR- A flamboyant narco who's crime family was reportedly the inspiration for the 2000 Steve Soderbergh film Traffic was gunned down at a children's birthday party in the resort town of Cabo San Lucas. However, what made the assassination of one of the heads of a cartel in decline newsworthy was the fact that the gunmen were disguised as clowns to get close enough to Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix- one of the three brothers that oversaw operations of the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix Cartel [what are the odds his dying words were "Gunned down by clowns in Cabo! *gurgle* The old fortune-teller was right....."?[NANESB!].

Two bands were entertaining the more than 100 guests, while some local newspapers reported that the party was attended by famous Mexican sports stars.

The gunmen, guests told police, approached him calmly then shot him in the head - with another bullet in the chest to finish him off.

"He was hit by two bullets, one in the body and one in the head," said Isai Arias, prosecutor for the Baja California region.

He was shot at around 8pm on Friday, in the Casa Oceano holiday resort complex, and relatives had identified the body, he added.

Photographs said to be of the scene showed a corpse covered in a blood-soaked sheet, lying on the floor of a grand dining room with tables covered in lurid blue satin. The gunmen, it is said, escaped in a waiting four-wheel drive vehicle.

Francisco Rafael, the eldest brother of the infamous Arellano Felix clan, which ran the Tijuana Cartel, was in his heyday head of the family that for 20 years controlled the most powerful smuggling route from Mexico into the United States. American authorities once described the seven well-dressed and well-spoken brothers as "dashing, multimillionaire, savage criminals".

Arellano Felix was one of 11 children born to a modest family in the Sinaloa region. Alongside his brothers he began by smuggling contraband into the US, before graduating to cocaine.

He also found time to form a band called Los Escorpiones – the scorpions – which played throughout the region. The animal became a symbol of Arellano Felix's, and he took to wearing a four-inch-long diamond-encrusted scorpion pendant around his neck.

To launder the funds through trafficking, he paid for theatre shows and cultural performances in Mazatalan, a sprawling coastal city in Baja California. He also ran what was billed as "the world's largest disco" – a club called Frankie Oh's, emblazoned with scorpion designs.

In an interview with El Noreste newspaper in 1992, he described himself as "a fearless businessman, who risks a huge amount without the fear of losing everything".

For decades, Arellano Felix was seen as untouchable – detained three times for drugs and gun offences, yet miraculously escaping each time. Many believed that the law enforcement officials were in his pay.

With his brothers Benjamin - the brains behind the cartel - and Ramon, the brawn of the organisation, Francisco Rafael was seemingly beyond the law.

He is thought to have masterminded the assassination of the Archbishop of Guadalajara, Cardinal Juan Posadas Ocampo, in 1993 – although authorities were never able to pin the high profile murder on him.

"Wanted by Mexican police since 1978 and on the run from the American law enforcement agencies since 1980, Arellano Felix rubbed shoulders with film stars, television personalities and radio songstresses," said a feature on the drugs capo in Mexican magazine Proceso.

Arellano Felix was eventually captured in 1993, and sent to prison. In 2006 he was extradited to the US, but was released two years later for good behaviour and repatriated to Mexico where he was thought to be living quietly.

In the meantime the power of the Tijuana Cartel had waned, with most of the Arellano Felix brothers either killed or arrested, and rival cartels taking over its territory.

Benjamin was arrested in March 2002, and extradited to the United States in 2011 - where he is currently serving a 25-year sentence. Ramon, the most ruthless of the brothers, had died in a shoot out in Mazatlan a month previously.

With the Tijuana cartel in decline thanks to the arrest and extradition of the Arellano-Felix brothers, the Sinaloa cartel eventually moved into northwestern Mexico to take over the lucrative smuggling routes.

Brothers Benjamin and Eduardo were extradited to the United States in 2012 to face charges of racketeering and conspiracy to launder money.

Panama Seizes North Korean Vessel Carrying Heavy Weaponry and Components

Panamanian Troops stand guard aboard the seized North Korean vessel Chong Chon Gang as police cadets prepare to search the ship's cargo hold for additional weapons and military hardware. Carlos Jasso photo

Authorities in Panama discovered a cache of Cold War era weaponry after seizing and boarding a North Korean cargo vessel that was approaching the Panama Canal. Panamanian authorities became suspicious when the vessel approached the canal with its maritime transponder shut off and believed the vessel was carrying drugs.

The captain of the North Korean-flagged dry-bulk freighter Chong Chon Gang reportedly had a heart attack and attempted to kill himself as Panamanian soldiers boarded the vessel while the crew resisted arrest before the vessel was redirected to the Caribbean port of Colon. A search of one of the cargo holds turned up Soviet-era surface to air missiles and guidance system components buried among tons of sugar. The ship's crew and captain were detained by Panamanian troops on charges of violating national security and transporting undeclared weapons.

The freighter was returning from Cuba and the government of Raul Castro claimed that the weapons found were Cuban and being sent to North Korea for refurbishment, despite an international arms embargo against the secretive Marxist regime. A further search of the Chong Chon Gang's cargo hold has also turned up two MiG 21 fighter jets in addition to 15 engines- also concealed among two tons of sugar. Officials estimate there are a total of 27 container under the sugar in the Chong Chon Gang's cargo hold and are awaiting the arrival of a team of UN inspectors to further examine the ship next week.

Under current sanctions, all U.N. member states are prohibited from directly or indirectly supplying, selling or transferring arms, missiles or missile systems and the equipment and technology to make them to North Korea, with the exception of small arms and light weapons.

It also lets countries inspect cargo destined for North Korea if a state has credible information the cargo could violate Security Council resolutions.

The discovery aboard the freighter Chong Chon Gang was expected to trigger an investigation by the U.N. Security Council committee that monitors the sanctions against North Korea.

If Cuba wanted to send the weapons for repairs and have them returned, it would have needed to get a waiver from the Security Council committee monitoring the North Korea sanctions.

According to maritime blogger Convenient Flags, North Korean merchant ships appearing in Panamanian waters is relatively rare, with a grand total of five traversing the Panama Canal since 2010. The Chong Chon Gang passed through the Panama Canal on its way to Cuba earlier with a load of sheet metal- Panamanian authorities inspected the vessel then. The seized freighter's route and ports of call were similar to that of the 2012 voyage another North Korean vessel made in 2012- only the O Un Chong Nyon Ho's voyage didn't attract as much attention at the time.

Cuba had told Panamanian officials that the outbound cargo on board the Chong Chon Gang was a 'donation' of sugar to North Korea and both North Korea and Cuba have called for the ship's release. Former Colombian president Alviro Uribe also speculated that the arms on board could be destined for a third party if they were on their way to being refurbished by North Korea- Uribe says he believes Ecuador or one of the nations that was part of Hugo Chavez's Bolivar Axis was a likely destination.

[I maintain that the ship's final destination was actually Mike Bloomberg's New York, and the contraband sugar would've been smuggled in by hiding them among the MiG jets and surface to air missiles- NANESB!]

Borderline Psychosis Update- Fast and Furious Gun Reportedly Used to Kill Police Chief in Jalisco; Narcos Carry Out Cross Border Abduction of Innocent Man in Texas

Aftermath of deadly ambush in Jalisco that killed the police chief for the town of Hostotipaquillo

JALISCO- About the only honest assessment from the Justice Department and Obama Administration during the 2011 Fast and Furious hearing on Capitol Hill was that the weapons that were allowed to 'walk' in the ill-advised ATF operation would continue surfacing at crime scenes on both sides of the border for quite some time.

Another weapon lost in the Obama administration's failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation has purportedly been traced to two more killings, including the fatal shooting of a police chief in Mexico.

The officer was killed Jan. 29 in the city of Hostotipaquillo when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire, according to Justice Department records obtained by The Los Angeles Times. The chief’s bodyguard was also killed and a second bodyguard and the chief’s wife were wounded.

The semi-automatic rifle that killed the police chief in central Mexico has been traced to the Lone Wolf Trading Company, a gun store in Glendale, Ariz.

The gun was purchased in February 2010 by 26-year-old Jacob A. Montelongo, of Phoenix, who purportedly bought more than 100 guns connected to Fast and Furious. He is now serving 41 months in prison on charges including making false statements and smuggling goods from the United States.

The murder weapon was identified as a WASR- a Romanian made semi-automatic variant of the AK-47. The gun was similar to another weapon that could be traced back to Fast and Furious in November 2012 when a Mexican beauty queen was reportedly used as a human shield by her narco boyfriend in a shootout between cartel gunmen and Mexican soldiers.

TEXAS- At a time when President Obama and DHS head Janet Napolitano assured us that the border with Mexico was safer than ever, Mexican cartel gunmen abducted an innocent man in Texas and smuggled him across the border before he was murdered in northern Mexico.

The abduction took place more than two years ago at a rural intersection in Mission, TX when Gulf cartel gunmen dressed as policemen abducted 35 year old Ovidio Olivares Guererro at gunpoint before tying him up and taking him to a nearby cartel stash house, then a ranch in Starr county before being smuggled across the border to Mexico.

Police believe his abductors had mistaken Olivares for his cousin, Gerardo Olivarez. The abduction was reportedly ordered by a Gulf Cartel underboss Miguel Villareal Jr- also known as 'Gringo Mike' who believed that Gerardo had stolen large amounts of cocaine from one of the cartel's nearby stash houses.

Court records show that the whole kidnapping plot began to unravel when Mission police busted a party inside a hotel room at the Hawthorn Suites off Plantation Grove Boulevard back in June 2011.

Mission police arrested 23-year-old Gerardo Villarreal on drug charges but investigators learned he participated in the kidnapping.

Villarreal told investigators that he got paid $1,000 dollars by a man nicknamed “Pecueka” to participate in the crew.

Federal court records show that Villarreal is expected to be sentenced in August but FBI agents identified five more suspects named in a second, but related case.

FBI agents arrested suspects Jose Lorenzo Davila, Roel Garza and Orlando Hernandez last week but the names of the two others suspects in their case remain sealed.

Records in both cases show that the intended target in the kidnapping was Guerrero’s cousin Gerardo Olivarez.

Olivarez could not be reached for comment on Wednesday but records show that the gunmen were hired to kidnap him.

Court records show that the gunmen knew Olivarez by the nickname “Lin” and they believed he stole a large amount of cocaine from a Gulf Cartel stash house in the Rio Grande Valley.

Villarreal told FBI agents that they had Olivarez’s Mile 8 North home under surveillance in the days before the kidnapping.

Court records show that the kidnapping was one of several ordered by Miguel Villarreal, Jr.

Villarreal was killed during a March 2013 gun battle in Mexico but at the time of the kidnapping, he was a Gulf Cartel plaza boss who went by the nicknames “Gringo Mike” or “El Gringo.”

FBI agents reported that Guerrero was taken from Mile 8 North and taken to a ranch owned by Villarreal at 1012 N. Trosper Rd. in Alton.

The gunmen questioned Guerrero and realized that he was not the right man.

Although the ranch was registered to a woman named Dominga De La Torre, court records show Villarreal was the owner.

The ranch was reportedly used as a Gulf Cartel stash house for drugs and other illegal activity.

Those who stayed at the ranch were charged with guard the drugs but a 100 kilograms of cocaine were stolen from there just two weeks prior to the kidnapping.

Villarreal had hired the gunmen to kidnap those who believed had stolen the drugs.

Once at the Trosper Road ranch house, the gunmen beat Guerrero but realized that he was the wrong man.

Court records show that Guerrero saw the face of a suspect whose name has not been released.

That unnamed suspect told the gunmen that they could not free Guerrero because they had seen his face.

Court records show that the unnamed suspect told the gunmen that Guerrero would be taken to Mexico.

They drove Guerrero to a home in Rio Grande City and then to the Rio Grande River where he was smuggled across to Mexico.

The gunmen delivered Guerrero to a man nicknamed “Mocho,” who was the plaza boss for the Gulf Cartel across from Rio Grande City in Camargo.

Court records show that “Mocho” delivered Guerrero to “Gringo Mike” in Reynosa.

One of the gunmen arrested in the case told FBI agents that he ran into another unnamed suspect in the case in Reynosa.

That unnamed suspect showed the gunmen a large amount of cash and told him that Guerrero had already been murdered.

FBI agents reported that Guerrero was a lawful permanent resident of the United States and had no involvement in the theft or sale of cocaine.

Guerrero has not been hear from or seen since the kidnapping. His body has never been recovered.

Ovidio's family reported his abduction after showing up at a local police station to find out more about his arrest, only to learn that he wasn't in custody.

CANADA- An internal assessment by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police indicates that at least 10 Canadians killed in Mexico since 2008 are suspected to have ties to organized crime  and were thought to be in Mexico to forge closer links to the Mexican cartels.

Some were known to be active in drug trafficking in Canada and all had extensive criminal backgrounds, says the RCMP analysis.

A copy of the May 2012 assessment, which takes a close look at the influence of corruption, and a related review of the implications for Canada — both heavily censored — were released to The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

The Mounties say global borders have become blurred with the proliferation of transnational organized crime.

As a result, Canadian criminal networks have expanded, conducting business on an international scale with illicit organizations in other countries.

“Canadian criminal groups are now dealing directly with Mexican criminals and crime groups in Mexico, a country struggling with corruption and brutal violence,” says the assessment by the RCMP’s criminal intelligence program.

In April last year, Thomas Gisby, a B.C. man with known gang ties, was gunned down in a Nuevo Vallarta coffee shop.

At the same time, interceptions of Canada-bound drug shipments “point to possible connections between Mexican and Canadian-based crime networks,” the RCMP says.

A recently released Canada Border Services Agency report cites Mexico as the largest transit point for South American cocaine destined for North America.

The RCMP assessment says competition among drug trafficking organizations has made corruption endemic in Mexican society, reflected in weakened governmental institutions, an ineffective criminal justice system, and a deep-rooted fear and distrust of authorities by the Mexican people.

At least five of the Canadians mentioned in the report have extensive criminal backgrounds and are said to be associated with the Hell's Angels or British Columbia-based UN Gang. A number of Canadian criminal enterprises are said to be forging closer links to the Mexican cartels to increase their profit margin by eliminating middlemen and third parties.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Mass Jailbreak in Coahuila; Brian Terry Murder Suspect in Custody? Spanish-Language Univision Airs New Information in Fast And Furious Investigative Report

COAHUILLA- More than 130 inmates charged with Federal crimes escaped from a prison in Piedras Negras earlier this month after constructing a tunnel and cutting through a chain link fence. The prison that the inmates escaped from is reportedly less than two miles from the border with Texas.

Authorities in Coahuila state discovered a seven-yard long tunnel, ropes and electric cables they believe were used in the break from the prison in Piedras Negras, according to state Attorney General Homero Ramos Gloria.

The prison's director and two other employees were detained for an investigation into the escape of 132 prisoners, Mr Ramos said. The prison houses roughly 730 inmates.

"The fugitives used the tunnel which had an entry and exit hole with a 4-foot diameter," he said. "They cut the chain-link material outside and one by one they got out to a piece of land."

Federal police units and Mexican army convoys were deployed to search for the inmates and authorities in Coahuila state offered rewards of up to $15,000 for information leading to the arrests of each prisoner. Visitors were kicked out of the prison but stayed outside waiting for news of relatives.

Mr Ramos said in a press conference that 86 of the inmates were serving sentences or pending trials for federal crimes, such as drug trafficking, and the rest faced state charges. He said police are investigating a deadly shoot-out 160 miles south of Piedras Negras after the prison break to determine if any of the four people killed were one of the fugitives.

The majority of the escapees were identified as members of the Zetas and reportedly coerced other inmates to aid them in the jailbreak to help replenish their ranks. Three women thought to be escapees were discovered in the visitor's area of the prison after the mass escape, claiming they were threatened by some of the escaping inmates.

Mass jailbreaks and collusion between incarcerated cartel members and their jailers has been problematic since President Calderon began a crackdown against Mexico's drug cartels in 2006. Some states that are supposed to incarcerate inmates convicted on Federal charges have complained there's a shortage of space in their prison systems as well as qualified corrections officers.

In July 2010, guards at a Durango prison were placed under arrest by Federal police officers after it was learned certian inmates were released from their cells and carried out contract killings using prison vehicles and rifles from the armoury.

In February of this year, the Zetas killed at least 40 members of the rival Gulf Cartel during a prison riot that was cover for the escape of some 30 high ranking members of Los Zetas. In December 2010, at least 141 inmates escaped from a Nuevo Leon prison. In 2009, a number of men dressed as police officers showed up at a prison in the state of Zacatecas and simply escorted 53 inmates- many of them high ranking cartel members- out the front door. Mass prison breaks have also taken place in the states of Tamaulipas and Veracruz in recent years.

UPDATE- 10/1: Mexico's Ministry of National Defense is reporting that seven more escapees were arrested in Nuevo Laredo on Sunday evening.

WASHINGTON DC- Not quite 10 days after the Department of Justice Inspector General's released its report on Operation Fast And Furious- which was basically the White House and Eric Holder stonewalling his own Justice Department- Spanish language TV network Univision has launched an investigative report on the ATF's gunwalking program. The Univison piece also has reportedly uncovered a number of murder victims and seized weapons overlooked by the House Oversight Committee investigation earlier this year.

In the report, Univision identifies a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation "Fast and Furious," and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings and other actions by Mexican hit men and drug cartels.

The report also reveals that the Obama administration may have indirectly played a role in the 2009 massacre, where 18 young men were killed at a rehabilitation center in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez. The massacre was reportedly ordered and carried out by Mexican hit men.

According to a Mexican army document obtained by Univision, three of the high caliber weapons used in the attack were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the ATF. The partial transcript obtained by Fox News did not specify whether this was Operation "Fast and Furious," or another similar ATF operation.

A number of websites have made a 9 and a half minute portion of the Univision report available online with English subtitles [see above]. In addition to Fast and Furious guns turning up at scores of crime scenes in Mexico, two weapons traced back to Operation Fast And Furious were found at the scene of the December 2010 murder of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in southern Arizona.

Aside from some investigative journalism from CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson [the first reporter to get an ATF whistleblower to come forward on the record- NANESB!] and local coverage in Arizona, the only time Fast and Furious received any mention in the American press was to either question the credibility of ATF whistleblowers and deflect culpability away from high-ranking Justice Department officials or call for stricter gun control in the United States while citing the ongoing violence in Mexico.

SONORA- Mexican Federal Police announced that they had arrested a suspect in the December 2010 slaying of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. On September 7th, Jesus Leonel Sanchez Meza was taken into custody in the state of Sonora.

Jesus Leonel Sanchez Meza is one of the five men charged with killing Terry in December 2010 during a shootout in Arizona near the Mexico border. One is on trial in Arizona and the other three remain fugitives. Sanchez was arrested Thursday in Sonora state.

In July, U.S. authorities made a rare disclosure linked to the botched gun-smuggling probe, revealing identities and requesting the public's help in capturing the four fugitives accused in the shooting death of Terry.

The release of the suspects' identities in an unsealed indictment came with the offer of a $1 million reward for information leading to their capture.

The FBI said it was seeking information related to Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, 31, Ivan Soto-Barraza, 34, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, 34, and a man identified as Lionel Portillo-Meza, which Mexican police said was an alias of the man arrested Thursday in Puerto Penasco, Sonora.

Portillo-Meza's age and birthplace were unavailable. The other three fugitives were born in Mexico, but their hometowns were not available.

All five men have been charged with murder. They also face charges of assaulting four federal agents.

FBI agents declined to discuss which fugitive is suspected of firing the shot that killed Terry. They also would not comment on whether the weapon was linked to an Operation Fast and Furious purchase.

The five men, plus another who faces lesser charges in the case, went to the U.S. from Mexico in order to rob marijuana smugglers, the indictment said.

Under the current extradition treaty with Mexico, despite being accused of a capital offense, Meza and the remaining fugitives cannot be extradited to the United States if any of them face the death penalty.

TEXAS- A Texas State University professor is accused of owning at least two houses that were purchased with laundered drug money, according to a lawsuit filed by the IRS in San Antionio this month.

Sindy Chapa, an assistant journalism professor at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX is also an ex-girlfriend of embattled former Tamaulipas governor Conrad Yarrington, who is accused by law enforcement on both sides of the border of laundering payoff money from the Gulf Cartel through real estate holdings in Texas.

Chapa reportedly owns a home in Kyle, TX worth an estimated $273,000 and another porterty in McAllen, TX worth $357,400. According to a public database, Chapa reportedly makes $58,000 a year as a professor. Although the IRS is seeking forefeiture of her two properties, she hasn't been formally accused of any crime.

The professor and former Yarrington beau did not show up for her Thurday night classes at the beginning of the semester, leaving a substitute to fill in.

SAN LUIS POTOSI- Mexico's Navy has taken advantage of  some infighting among the Zetas and captured a former high-ranking member nicknamed 'El Taliban' who had broken with the cartel in recent months.

Ivan Velázquez Caballero, 42, was dragged Wednesday evening from a safe house in a middle class neighborhood in the city of San Luis Potosi. Though accompanied by two bodyguards, Velázquez apparently was seized without a shot being fired. He and his two alleged accomplices were presented to the media early Thursday.

Mexico's government put a $2.5 million price on Velázquez's head last spring. He also faces a U.S. criminal indictment on drug-trafficking charges in the Houston-based Southern District of Texas.

Velázquez's arrest came hours after marines captured 18 alleged Zetas gunmen close to the border upriver from McAllen, an area that lately has been considered Gulf Cartel territory. But running battles also erupted later Wednesday between marines and gunmen in the center of Piedras Negras, which shares the Rio Grande with Eagle Pass and is considered to be under Treviño's sway.

Caballero had reportedly sought to work with the Knights Templar and Gulf Cartels- the latter being former benefactors for the Zetas until a very high profile and bloody split where the Zetas went into business for themselves around 2009. The Knights Templar is based primarily out of Michoacan and quickly stepped in to fill the void after the leaders of the cult-like La Familia Michoacana cartels were either killed or arrested by Federal Police last year.

Earlier this month, Mexican Marines arrested a top member of the Gulf Cartel in the Tamaulipas city of Altamira.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Nieto & PRI win Signals Shift? Abandoned Arms Cache Found in Arizona; ATF Sought to Punish Fast & Furious Whistleblowers

MEXICO- With nearly 100% of the ballots in Mexico's presidential elections counted, Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute has named the PRI's Enrique Peña Nieto as the winner in last weekend's balloting. Accusations of vote-buying from the PRI, which were circulating a month ago, increased shortly before last weekend's vote.

The count by the country's electoral authority will almost certainly become the target of legal challenges by leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who alleges Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, engaged in vote-buying that illegally tilted millions of votes.

The accusations began surfacing in June, but sharpened early this week as thousands of people rushed to grocery stores on the outskirts of Mexico City to redeem pre-paid gift cards worth about 100 pesos ($7.50). Many said they got the cards from supporters of PRI prior to Sunday's elections.

Simply giving away such gifts is not illegal under Mexican electoral law, as long as the expense is reported to electoral authorities. But giving gifts to influence votes is a crime, though is not generally viewed as grounds for overturning an election.

Although both leftist candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador and the former ruling PAN Party candidate have accused the PRI of vote-buying, PAN's Josefina Vazquez Mota stopped short of questioning the legitimacy of the election's outcome. While Nieto had an estimated 39% of the vote and Obrador followed up with 31%, Mota came in third with about 25% of the votes.

Until being defeated in the 2000 Mexican presidential election by PAN's Vicente Fox, the PRI had ruled Mexico for more than 70 years. Since then, the PRI operated as an opposition party, coming within 5% of a true majority in both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies only a few years of their 2000 loss of the presidential election.

However, in some states where PRI has retained power, governors, mayors and other PRI politicians have been accused of accepting drug money to allow certain cartels to operate with little to no police interference and some governors are accused of having cartel gunmen as part of their security detail. Tamaulipas is a particularly egregious example, with three of their former governors- all PRI- being investigated by Mexican federal prosecutors this year for corruption, accepting bribes and money laundering while in office. Some of the most high profile atrocities in Mexico's ongoing narcoinsurgency- such as the machine-gunning of more than 70 migrants on a rural ranch or more than 100 young men pulled off of intercity buses by masked gunment only to end up in a mass grave- have taken place in Tamaulipas within the last 2 years.

Without going into any specifics during his presidential campaign, Nieto promised a shift away from outgoing President Calderon's militarization of Mexico's anti-drug trafficking campaign. While the Beltran-Leyva and La Familia Michoacana organizations were effectively brought down on Calderon's watch the country has seen nearly 50,000 killed nationwide since 2006 and upstart organizations like New Generation and Caballeros Templar fill the void in territory once held by the defunct organizations.

Some observers have remarked that a PRI and Nieto victory is in fact a victory for the more powerful drug cartels. Prior to the election, there were theories that the PRI was going to embrace a 'most favored cartel' policy where a government crackdown on certain organizations would continue in exchange for one cartel providing intelligence and operational details on their rivals.

ARIZONA- A hiker in Southeastern Arizona's Coronado National Forest discovered a garbage bag filled with semiautomatic rifles last month. After receiving a report of the discovery on Wednesday, June 20, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office determined that the rifles were found in Santa Cruz County, and notified the local sheriff’s office.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputies then went to the site and recovered what turned out to be a stash of AK-47 assault rifles.

Lt. Raoul Rodriguez said the rifles were “badly rusted” and had “obviously been there for quite some time.” Four rifle magazines were also recovered.

Rodriguez said the weapons were taken to the sheriff’s office and secured.

It is unknown exactly how long the weapons have been there for or whether or not they were part of the ATF's disatrous Operation Fast and Furious gunwalking program.

ELSEWHERE IN ARIZONA- Arizona's former US Attorney and the author of the Clinton-era ban on semiautomatic weapons ban is also one of architechts of the ATF's Arizona-based Operation Fast & Furious.

Shortly after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on Dec. 15, 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder's deputy chief of staff, Monty Wilkinson, received an email from U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke telling him just that:

"The guns found in the desert near the murder(ed) BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store."

It is an email that helps demonstrate that Holder, despite his congressional testimony — as vague, contradictory and misleading as it was — could not have been ignorant about Fast and Furious and its deadly consequences.

It also brings to light the name of Dennis Burke, a seldom-mentioned Obama campaign donor who oversaw Fast and Furious and helped convert it from a gun-interdiction to a gun-walking program.

Burke, who resigned shortly after the scandal became public, has long been a gun-ban architect for the Democratic Party.

As a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was behind the ineffectual 1994 "assault weapon" ban that sunset in 2004. Burke was also the chief of staff for Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano for a number of years before she became the secretary of homeland security.

Burke also is an Obama donor, a prime consideration in the staffing of the Obama administration. Federal Election Commission records show that on Jan. 9, 2008, while working for Napolitano, Burke contributed $2,000 to Sen. Barack Obama's presidential primary campaign. Since 1997, according to FEC records, Burke has given $16,350 to Democratic candidates.

Burke would leave that Gov. Napolitano post to join the Obama transition team. He was soon rewarded for his many contributions, monetary and otherwise, when on July 10, 2009, the president nominated him to be the U.S. attorney in Arizona. The Senate confirmed him that Sept. 15.

In July 2010, Burke told the Arizona Capitol Times there had "clearly been direction provided already by President Obama and Attorney General Holder as to what they want to be doing."

That's an interesting statement, considering what Burke would do and how Holder and Obama would claim they were out of the operational loop.

The report bolsters some claims that the Department of Justice's gunwalking program that was repsponsible for hundreds of casualties in Mexico and the death of at least one Border Patrol agent was motivated at least in part by blaming the ongoing drug violence in Mexico on American guns to create public opinion in favor of more gun control.

In other Fast & Furious related news, excerpts from a House oversight memo dated May 2012 indicate that two ATF field agents turned whistleblowers were placed under the direct supervision of a senior ATF official who promised retaliation shortly after they went public.

When the ATF whistleblowers, Special Agents John Dodson and Pete Forcelli, went public last year, Scot Thomasson headed up ATF Public Affairs. According to an eyewitness, Thomasson stated "We need to get whatever dirt we can on these guys (whistleblowers) and take them down." Now, Grassley and Issa say the agents have been put under the charge of ATF's Scot Thomasson who is Division Chief of the Firearms Operations Unit.

Thomasson was also allegedly heard to have said "ATF needs to f__k these guys." And when asked if the whistleblower allegations were true, Thomasson purportedly said he didn't know and didn't care. The accounts are contained in a May 3, 2012 House Oversight memo attached to Congress' draft contempt report against Attorney General Eric Holder.

Dodson went public about the agency's controversial gunwalking tactics in an interview with CBS News in February 2011. He later testified before Congress along with Forcelli.

"It is difficult to understand why ATF leadership would put two of these courageous whistleblowers at the mercy of an individual who made such reckless, irresponsible and inaccurate comments about them 18 months ago," say the members of Congress in today's letter to the Inspector General. The letter also asks "what steps, if any, are being taken to ensure that Thomasson does not use his new position to engage in a campaign of retaliation along the lines he expressed a desire to conduct last year."

After ignoring the story for the better part of 18 months, a Fortune article released before last week's conetmpt vote in the House of Representatives attempted to depict Special Agent Dodson and other whistleblowers as disguntled malcontents and troublemakers.

House Oversight Committee Votes Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt Over DOJ's Fast & Furious Gunwalking

Despite a last-minute move by President Obama to invoke executive privilege over certain documents requested by the House Oversight Committee regarding a 'gunwalking' program from the ATF, the committee chairman went ahead with a vote to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.

The oversight committee, chaired by Congressman Darrel Issa [R-CA 49], had been investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Operations Fast & Furious where field agents were ordered to stand down as illegally purchased guns in Arizona made their way across the border to Mexico. In December 2010, US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed by a gang of heavily armed smugglers along the Arizona border. Two guns from Fast & Furious were recovered from the crime scene. Hundreds of guns from Fast & Furious have also been recovered at crime scenes across Mexico and by Holder's own admission, there are more than 1700 unaccounted for weapons from the ATF gunwalking program. These firearms will likely continue to surface at crime scenes in both the USA and Mexico.

Obama's 11th hour invocation of executive privilege on Wednesday came before the Oversight Committee was supposed to rule on whether or not to move forward with contempt of congress proceedings against Eric Holder.

While Attorney General Holder insists he's turned over all the documents that the committee has requested over the last 15 months, a number of the documents were heavily redacted and Holder has contradicted himself while appearing before Congress- Fast & Furious began in 2009 and Mexican officials weren't even alerted by the DOJ to the weapons being smuggled into the country.

On Wednesday afternoon, the panel voted 23-17 in favor of holding the Attorney General in contempt of Congress- with the vote being split along party lines. Democrats on the Oversight Committee claimed that the hearings are a politically motivated witchunt and that the Fast & Furious gunwalking happened under the Bush Administration as well- a claim that Holder himself eventually retracted.

However, Wednesday's vote does not mean that Holder is automatically in contempt of Congress- but rather a contempt motion goes before the rest of the House of Representatives. Speaker of the House John Boehner [R-OH8] and majority leader Eric Cantor [R- VA7] have indicated the contempt of congress vote is scheduled for sometime next week.

One Year After Uprising That Ousted Ghdaffi, Libyans Imprison Blacks in Zoo & Desecrate WWII British Cemetary, Missiles Recovered Near Algerian Border

Libyan rebels rounding up black prisoners suspected of working as mercenaries during last year's uprising against the Ghdaffi regime. Florent Marcie/AFP Photo

LIBYA-Footage showing several black detainees locked in a zoo-like enclosure with their hands bound and green flags stuffed in their mouths was circulating via youtube and a number of news outlets last week. As a crowd surrounding the enclosure jeers at the men inside, the photographer is heard shouting in Arabic to the captives "Eat the flag, you dog! God is great!".

While it's still difficult if not impossible to verify the authenticity of the video, it's widely believed it originated from Libya and that the black men in the video are accused of fighting for the fallen Ghdaffi regime as hired mercenaries.

Although Ghdaffi reportedly hired a number of African mercenaries to try and crush last year's uprising that ultimately toppled his regime, shopkeepers, migrant workers and construction laborers from sub-Saharan Africa have resided in Libya decades before the uprising.

With no formal court or police system in place throughout much of Libya after the fall of the Ghdaffi regime, it's thought that the revolutionary brigades still have nearly ¾ of their captives from the civil war still in custody. So far, the fledgling Libyan Ministry of Justice has taken charge of eight detention facilities thought to contain around 2400 inmates.



BENGHAZI- A British military cemetary housing the remains of some 1200 soliders and airmen outside the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi was vandalized last week. The spree was caught on video by one of the offenders as a crowd of men systematically knocked over about 150 headstones and smashed a large sandstone cross with sledgehammers.

The cemetery outside the Libyan second city, the headquarters of anti-Gaddafi forces during last year’s revolution, is the final resting place of more than 1,200 soldiers and airmen who died serving under Montgomery in the war in the desert.

Many of them were members of the 7th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats, who helped turn the tide of the war in their struggle for control of north Africa against Rommel’s forces between 1941 and 1943.

The vandalism, last week, is thought to be part of a wave of attacks on western targets across the Islamic world in apparent retaliation for the burning of Korans at an American military base in Afghanistan.

It is suspected that members of a Salifist militia, followers of an ultra-purist interpretation of Islam already responsible for destroying several tombs to Muslim holy men in Libya, were behind it. The transitional Libyan government has apologised and pledged to bring those responsible to justice.

The footage shows a crowd of young men wearing scarves, many of them in military-style fatigues with rifles slung over their shoulders, making their way along the rows at the cemetery kicking and wrenching headstones from their footings.

A voice behind the camera can be heard casually muttering “Allahu akbar” – meaning God is Great – as each headstone is dislodged.

At one point a man can be heard saying: "This is a grave of a Christian" as he uproots a headstone with a cross on it. The camera focuses on a Jewish serviceman’s gravestone, bearing a star of David and a Hebrew inscription, as it is attacked.

The desecration comes less than a year after Libyan rebel fighters had begged the outside world- including NATO and the United Kingdom- for military intervention as Ghdaffi's forces were preparing to crush the remaining rebel forces in Benghazi.

ALGERIA- Algerian security forces have reportedly discovered 43 anti-aircraft weapons that went missing after the fall of Ghdaffi's regime last year.

The weapons cache was said to have been buried in the sand near the Algerian-Libyan border and consists of SA-24 anti-aircraft missiles as well as the shoulder-fired SAM-7.

According to the U.S., Libya amassed some 20,000 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons, the largest such stockpile in a non-producing country.

In October, the U.N. Security Council urged Libyan authorities to do all they could from keeping their enormous stockpile of shoulder-fired missiles from falling into terrorist hands.

It is feared that terrorist groups might use the missiles to attack civil aviation.

Thousands of the weapons are believed to have gone missing when militias overthrew the Gadhafi and helped themselves to government stockpiles.

Algerian authorities have long warned that weapons from Libya’s civil war could call into terrorist hands, including the local branch of al-Qaida, which is active in northern Algeria as well as in the desert wastes straddling the borders to the south.

According to a French language Algerian newspaper, authorities acted on a tip from smugglers who operate in the region.

CYRENAICA- Tribal leaders in Eastern Libya have declared semi-autonomy from Tripoli at a meeting in Benghazi this week.

They say the move is necessary as the region, once known as Cyrenaica, has been neglected for decades.

But the move has caused tension with the governing National Transitional Council (NTC) in the capital Tripoli.

[T]he declaration has significant popular support among people in Benghazi, the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse in Libya's second city reports.

The document has no force in law but is a declaration of intent by the local leaders, our correspondent adds.

Hundreds of people attended the Congress of the People of Cyrenaica, held in a hangar on the outskirts of Benghazi.

The conference announced that it wanted to have its own parliament, police force, courts and capital - in Benghazi. Foreign policy would be left to the federal government in Tripoli, it said.

Under the Ghdaffi regime, residents of eastern Libya were resentful that Tripoli spent most of the money for develoment and infrastructure on the western part of the country while Benghazi was neglected. The Emirate of Cyrenaica was an independent nation recognized by the UK in 1949 before becoming part of what constitutes present-day Libya. Ahmed al-Senussi- the great-nephew of King Idris, Libya's only monarch- was announced as the head of Cyrenaica. Al-Senussi was arrested by the Ghdaffi regime in 1970 and not released until 2001.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Life Imitates Breaking Bad in NM; Key El Chapo Aide Killed in Durango Raid; Arrest Made in Tamaulipas Bus Slayings

Breaking Bad- Not just for Albuquerque high school chemistry teachers anymore!

NEW MEXICO: In a development that seemed like all it was missing was Agent Hank Schrader, the Albuquerque, NM office of the DEA announced a series of arrests in New Mexico stemming from an alleged marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine distribution network that included an Albuquerque fireman and two pecan farmers in Southern New Mexico.

[A]uthorities arrested nine people, including the owners of a southern New Mexico pecan farm, in connection with a trafficking and money laundering ring that involved cocaine and heroin.

Prosecutors said the owners and operators of Pettit Farms and Nursery in Anthony, N.M., and their two sons were among those arrested Thursday. They were identified as Oscar Portillo Sr., his wife Sandra Portillo and sons Matthew Portillo and Oscar Portillo Jr.

According to a 24-count indictment, the farm was used as a place to store and sell drugs.

A team of federal, state and local law enforcement officers arrested the defendants Thursday and executed four search warrants, including one at the farm and three others at residences in El Paso, Texas.

Federal prosecutors said the Portillos allegedly sold drugs to an undercover agent on five separate occasions.

The indictment claims the couple asked the undercover agent to pay for the drugs with money orders which they subsequently cashed and deposited into bank accounts in the name of the farm. The agent was provided with invoices asserting that the agent had purchased pecan trees.

Officials with the Drug Enforcement Administration said the investigation targeted a ring that agents believed was responsible for the transportation of cocaine and marijuana shipments from Chihuahua, Mexico, to the U.S.

Meanwhile, a 7 year veteran of the Albuquerque Fire Department was ordered to remain jailed until trial after being arrested by Federal Agents.

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - An Albuquerque firefighter charged as part of a ring dealing drugs and laundering money with connections to a Mexican drug cartel will stay behind bars until he goes to trial

Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrested Steve Chavez last week along with 10 others in a major drug trafficking and money laundering operation.

The indictment alleges Chavez's role included shuffling nearly $350,000 in drug money in and out of bank accounts over several weeks last summer.

The feds searched his home where they said they found several loaded guns in the attic. They also reported finding an Uzi-style gun in Chavez's car along with an ounce of cocaine.

The feds added Chavez was dealing because he tested negative for drugs.

The judge said he was concerned about the drugs and types of guns found.

He was also worried that Chavez and other defendants had been spying on DEA at their offices.

A DEA agent testified Tuesday that Chavez talked about that after he was taken in for questioning

Chavez's alleged double-life brings to mind the fictitious Walter White from the AMC TV show Breaking Bad. In that series, Bryan Cranston portrays a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque who begins cooking methamphetamine with one of his former students as a quick means of leaving money behind for his family after being diagnosed with lung cancer.


DURANGO: A top aide to fugitive Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman was shot and killed when a Special Operations unit of the Mexican Army raided a ranch in the state of Durango last week.

Mexican officials say members of an army special forces unit fatally shot a high-ranking aide to the country's most-wanted drug dealer in a gunfight in the northern state of Durango.

Army spokesman Gen. Ricardo Trevilla said Monday Luis Alberto Cabrera Sarabia was responsible for the operations of Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel in Durango and part of the neighboring state of Chihuahua.

The army says Sarabia is know as "The Architect," and was named to the role after the December arrest of his brother Felipe Cabrera Sarabia, or "The Engineer."

Sinaloa gunmen traded fire with troops during the operation to arrest Luis Cabrera Sarabia on Friday. One of the gunmen was slain and 11 others were captured. Four soldiers were hurt in the gunfight.

Guzman, who remains at large, also landed near the top the Forbes magazine 'Wealthiest People in the World' list.

Mass grave in Tamaulipas being unearthed last year.

TAMAULIPAS: Police in northern Mexico have arrested a member of Los Zetas who had reportedly confessed to murdering nearly 75 people in the northeastern state. Officials said the arrest was made on January 20, but authorities waited more than a week to make the announcement while details of Enrique Elizondo Flores' confession were being corroborated.

Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said that Elizondo also admitted to killing at least 36 passengers who were pulled off of buses at gunpoint by masked gunmen last year.

Domene said the 35-year-old suspect told investigators he had been working in the area at least three years and that he was in charge of killing members of the rival Gulf drug cartel heading to the towns of Cerralvo and General Trevino. He and other gunmen last January began pulling passengers off of buses as they arrived at Cerralvo's bus station, Domene said.

They are among at least 92 bus passengers that the Zetas are accused of killing in three attacks in January and March 2011. Many the victims were originally from the central state of Guanajuato and had arrived in Cerralvo from the border city of Reynosa, Domene said.

Elizondo distinguished himself ``for torturing, maiming and then killing his victims,'' Domene said.

Last year, Mexican investigators unearthed mass graves near the town of San Fernando, Tamaulipas containing more than 190 bodies- many of them identified as passengers pulled off of buses travelling through Tamaulipas between January and April 2011. Prosecutors say a motive for the mass abductions and killings remains unclear, although they believe that some of the abductions were an attempt to forcibly recruit new members by the Zetas.

A number of police officers from the town of San Fernando were also arrested on suspicion that they were working for the Zetas and complicit in the mass abductions and killings.

ELSEWHERE IN TAMAULIPAS: Federal prosecutors in Mexico said they have launched an investigation of high-ranking officials in the volatile border state.

The probe came to light after it was learned prosecutors asked transportation officials to keep track of when the officials entered or left the country and advise the Federal prosecutors office of their activities. One airport official in Tamaulipas reportedly overstepped his authority and drafted a memo instructing that the targets of the investigation not be allowed to leave the country.

Although the Attorney General's office declined to name the specific individuals under investigation, three former governors of the state of Tamaulipas came forward and told the media they believed they were the ones under scrutiny.

Eugenio Hernandez, who left office in 2010, told local media he did not know why he was under investigation, and denied any links to organized crime.

Tomas Yarrington, whose term ended in 2004, wrote in a Twitter account linked to his website that he had learned he had been named in the case, and said he hoped authorities would explain why.

Manuel Cavazos, who left office in 1999, called the investigation "suspicious ... coming in an election campaign," and suggested it might have political overtones. He denied any wrongdoing.

All the former governors are members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which held Mexico's presidency for 71 years until President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party won the 2000 presidential elections.

The PRI's de-facto presidential candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, currently leads in polls ahead of the July 1 elections.

Cavazos said "it would not be the first time that law enforcement has been used for political purposes, that has been done since 2000."

Cavazos is running for a seat in the Senate, and Pena Nieto was scheduled to visit Tamaulipas on Feb. 2, according to the PRI

In 2009, Federal officials arrested 12 mayors and 23 other public officials in the western state of Michoacan and charged them with protecting the La Familia cartel. All 35 were later acquited and released.

TEXAS: A Baytown, TX man received an 8-year Federal Prison sentence after being found guilty of selling weapons to the Zetas cartel, including an AK-47 variant that was recovered from the scene of the Feb 15th 2011 killing of US Customs and Immigration Enforcement Officer Jaime Zapata in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

Manuel Gomez Barba, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty. Barba admitting that he had an intermediary buy the gun from a Beaumont pawn shop, and he had the serial number obliterated before it was sneaked south of the border.

According to the plea agreement in Houston, Barba recruited "straw purchasers" to buy Century Arms WASR-10 semi-automatic rifles.

Buyers would hand the guns to Barba, who told them they would not be traced back to them because serial numbers were being removed. Barba was not able to legally purchase the guns because he was under deferred adjudication for felony drug charges in Harris County.

It was not disclosed if the rifles that Barba illegally sent to Mexico were part of the BATF's ill-advised Operation Fast & Furious, which involved field-level agents being ordered to let the weapons 'walk' to Mexico while under surveillance.

NEW YORK: A Texas perfume retailer has been convicted of laundering drug money for the Sinaloa cartel in Manhattan Federal Court earlier this month.

Vikram Datta, 51, an immigrant from India who started his perfume business in Manhattan, showed no emotion as the sentence was meted out by Judge Lewis Kaplan.

“The defendant has shown little or no contrition,” said Kaplan, who also ordered Datta to forfeit property and $40 million.

A jury found Datta guilty of using his La Versailles Fragance company to launder narcotics proceeds for the Sinaola Cartel.

“This was a successful businessman taking in a ludicrous amount of cash, tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, a day,” said prosecutor Peter Skinner.

Datta laundered Sinaloa drug money through what is known as the Black Market Peso Exchange, which became a favorite of Colombian cartels and traffickers beginning in the 1980s.

Even before the ascendancy of Pablo Escobar and the Colombian cartels, the Black Market Peso Exchange had been around for decades as a way to circumvent Colombian taxes and controls on foreign currency. Buying and selling dollars at the state-run banks in Colombia meant inviting several unwelcome questions on how those dollars were obtained or how they would be spent. The majority of the Colombian cartels' drugs were purchased in dollars, while the higher-ranking members of the cartels preferred to remain in Colombia- thus needing to conduct most business with Colombian pesos- the cartels and drug traffickers needed to find a way around these controls.

The cartels would eventually start selling the US Dollar-denominated drug money to various black market peso brokers at a discount. The broker would then take the dollars to a wholesaler in the USA and purchase quantities of electronics, appliances, cigarettes, liquor or luxury goods and import them to Colombia for the cartels. After the peso broker gets a cut for arranging the purchase and shipment of goods, the cartels then sell off the items at a slight markup in pesos, effectively laundering their drug proceeds and giving them the pesos they need to continue doing business in Colombia.

While Mexico doesn't have the strict control on foreign currencies that Colombia does, the cartels have adapted the methods of the Black Market Peso Exchange to launder their drug money.

Besides locations in Arizona, California and New York City, Vikram Datta sold perfume in the Texas border town of Laredo beginning in 2000. By 2009, Federal prosecutors allege that he was an experienced money launderer for the Sinaloa cartel. In 2010, Datta was introduced to a man who was identified as a perfume retailer in Baja California Sur but was actually an undercover Federal Agent.

Datta’s illegal transactions started slowly but quickly increased, court documents indicate. Transcripts from wiretaps over the next six months, which were admitted at trial, indicate that Datta accepted a $40,000 infusion to one of his stores in California and later agreed to wire $100,000 to customers in New York. According to court documents, over the course of a two-year government sting, he and other co-conspirators deposited more than $25 million of American currency in dozens of bank accounts.

At one point, prosecutors said, Datta told an undercover agent, posing as a perfume vendor, that his business was “just washing the whole money.” In a conversation that he had with the agent in New York in December 2010, captured on wiretap, Datta said that “a lot of cash is coming to me” and that he was “90 percent sure” that it was “all Sinaloa money.”

Datta was arrested in New York City in January 2011 while on his way to meet with the undercover agent. So far, 29 people have been charged in the Black Market Peso Exchange investigation- 20 have been convicted.

The Race Card- Never Leave the Beltway Without It

Attorney General Eric Holder attributed growing calls for his resignation over the Fast & Furious debacle to a "more extreme segment" that is motivated by racism in an interview with the New York Times that was published over the weekend.

In his Times interview, Holder again attacked the media who are covering the scandal. “Mr. Holder contended that many of his other critics — not only elected Republicans but also a broader universe of conservative commentators and bloggers — were instead playing ‘Washington gotcha’ games, portraying them as frequently ‘conflating things, conveniently leaving some stuff out, construing things to make it seem not quite what it was’ to paint him and other department figures in the worst possible light,” Times reporter Charlie Savage wrote in the front page Sunday Times story.

Holder has told the House Oversight Committee that he was unaware of the ATF's Operation Fast & Furious until earlier this year, despite e-mail records showing that his office was regularly briefed about the operation on an ongoing basis.

Fast & Furious allowed suspected straw purchasers to buy quantities of long guns legally on the American side of the border before smuggling them across the border into Mexico where they ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Field-level ATF agents in Arizona were ordered by their superiors to allow the guns to 'walk' across the border, where at least 300 of them have shown up at murder scenes- including the death of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry last year.

Well....lesser men would've no doubt copped to either incompetence or perjury, Eric "America is a nation of cowards on race" Holder decided to use his skin color to try and get himself one 'Get out of colossal fuckup free' cards, as though Holder and Obama's critics would be fine if it were a white Attorney General facilitating the transfer of American guns to the most dangerous criminal organizations in the Western hemisphere.

Holder's Justice Department has also taken the state of Arizona to Federal court last year over their statewide SB 1070 bill designed to curb illegal immigration, despite never having read the bill himself.

More recently, Holder's Justice Department has reportedly partnered up with the supposedly moribund ACORN to mount a series of legal challenges to the latest round of redistricting and recently passed voter ID legislation in Wisconsin or Texas.

Curiously, Holder and the DoJ didn't seem anywhere near as concerned about New York or Illinois' inability to send off absentee ballots to military personnel in time for last year's midterm elections.

Quickie Borderline Psychosis Update- Arms Sold to Mexican Police & Military Arming Cartels; Holder Appears Before House; DEA Laundering Drug Money?

Convoy of Mexican Federal Judicial Police Outside of Juarez

A CBS report has indicated that American firearms sold to the Mexican military and law enforcement in transactions approved by both the US State Department and Mexico's Secretariat of National Defense are ending up in the hands of drug cartels.

The problem of weapons legally sold to Mexico - then diverted to violent cartels - is becoming more urgent. That's because the U.S. has quietly authorized a massive escalation in the number of guns sold to Mexico through "direct commercial sales." It's a way foreign countries can acquire firearms faster and with less disclosure than going through the Pentagon.

Here's how it works: A foreign government fills out an application to buy weapons from private gun manufacturers in the U.S. Then the State Department decides whether to approve.

And it did approve 2,476 guns to be sold to Mexico in 2006. In 2009, that number was up nearly 10 times, to 18,709. The State Department has since stopped disclosing numbers of guns it approves, and wouldn't give CBS News figures for 2010 or 2011.

One weapon - an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle - tells the story. In 2006, this same kind of rifle - tracked by serial number - is legally sold by a U.S. manufacturer to the Mexican military.

Three years later - it's found in a criminal stash in a region wracked by Mexican drug cartel violence.

That prompted a "sensitive" cable, uncovered by WikiLeaks, dated June 4, 2009, in which the U.S. State Department asked Mexico "how the AR-15" - meant only for the military or police - was "diverted" into criminal hands.

And, more importantly, where the other rifles from the same shipment went: "Please account for the current location of the 1,030 AR-15 type rifles," reads the cable.

There's no response in the record.

The State Department's Direct Commercial Sales program would be completely separate from the ATF's Operation 'Fast & Furious', where field agents were ordered to allow weapons obtained in the USA by straw purchasers to cross the border into Mexico, where they would later turn up at crime scenes.

However, corruption and incompetence on the part of Mexican officials seems to have been pivotal in organized crime obtaining military and police-issue weapons.

Two years before I even started this blog, in response to gun control advocates using the increasing violence in Mexico as an excuse to further restrict the rights of law-abiding gun owners in the USA, I stated that a significant number of arms from military and police armories in Mexico were likely among the missing and arming cartel enforcers as police armorers or military quartermasters looked the other way. Cartels like Los Zetas- consisting largely of deserters from Mexico's special forces units- have likely used their military backgrounds to cultivate connections with the international arms markets as well as the black market. The Zetas have demonstrated in recent years that they are able to clean out entire arms depots in Central America.

WASHINGTON D.C.- In a House Judiciary hearing this week, Attorney General Eric Holder admitted that weapons allowed to 'walk' into Mexico would likely be turning up at crime scenes on both sides of the border for years to come.

"Although the department has taken steps to ensure that such tactics are never used again, it is an unfortunate reality that we will continue to feel the effects of this flawed operation for years to come," he said. "Guns lost during this operation will continue to show up at crime scenes on both sides of the border."

Holder faced the ire of skeptical lawmakers who are demanding accountability. Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner told Holder Thursday that he considers impeachment on the table if Holder doesn't figure out who's responsible.

A day before the House Judiciary Hearings, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had called for the resignation of resignation of Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer after recently disclosed e-mails showed that he was giving contradictory testimony before a previous Congressional committee.

Holder, for his part, vows that he won't be stepping down in the wake of Fast & Furious. Democrats in the House and Senate have also given the appearance of circling the wagons around Holder, using the Fast & Furious debacle to reiterate their calls for additional gun control laws or lavish praise on the Attorney General Holder for halting the ill-conceived program.

In fact, e-mails from ATF officials obtained by CBS news indicate that they were looking to use the gunwalking from Fast & Furious to make the case for stricter gun control regulations- particularly in border states.

The e-mails from July 2010 between the ATF's Phoenix office and the agency's headquarters discuss using the statistics from border states like Arizona to justify a regulation called 'Demand Letter 3', which would require licenced FFL dealers in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas to report to the ATF any transaction in which more than one long gun bigger than .22 caliber was purchased.

On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

"Bill - can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks."

The request for the demand letter came after the ATF encouraged liscenced dealers to go ahead with transactions to customers the dealer thought were suspect. The correspondence showed that the agency also sought to minimize or completely conceal their own role in facilitating straw purchasers obtaining the weapons.

DEA- A New York Times report last week alleges that the DEA is engaged in what some are saying is the money-laundering equivalent to Operation Fast & Furious.

Anonymous officials described an effort by U.S. agents to launder or smuggle "millions of dollars" in drug money in order to monitor the flow of cash to and from the cartels in Mexico. One official told the Times there was "close supervision." Another official said the Americans worked with Mexican agents on the investigation. Officials told the newspaper that the DEA tried to seize as much as they laundered, in part through arrests at pickup locations.

The article also described how officials had to obtain Justice Department clearance to launder more than $10 million at a time, something that was approved many times.

The DEA issued a statement Tuesday defending its operations.

"The DEA has well-established mechanisms for coordinating and approving activities associated with the fight against money laundering," the DEA said. "As a result of this cooperation, DEA has seized illicit transnational criminal organization money all around the world through our partnership with law enforcement."

The DEA said it had been working "collaboratively" with Mexico to fight money laundering "for years."

"As part of that collaboration, DEA works with Mexican authorities to gather and use information about these criminal organizations to counter the threats they pose to both of our countries," the DEA said, adding that the joint investigations "have led to important advances and detentions in each country. The cooperation between the United States and Mexico is based on principles of shared responsibility, mutual trust and respect for the jurisdiction of each country."

According to the New York Times article that ran on December 3rd, the DEA has successfully used similar tactics in other countries such as Colombia, but has only started to expand its use in Mexico over the past few years.