"Things are Curiouser and Curiouser" | Eastern North Carolina Now

    After Alice tumbled down the rabbit hole, she cried, "Things are curiouser and curiouser." I am starting to feel the same way when I try to make sense of the "Fast and Furious" scandal. As more information is disclosed, the more confusing it becomes because I just can't believe that our government is as corrupt as the evidence seems to indicate.

    We know from Congressional hearings that ATF agents were allowing weapons to be taken across the border into Mexico. They weren't smuggled because the ATF agents watched them do it, and at times protected them. The thousands of guns taken into Mexico were instrumental in the deaths of hundreds of Mexican citizens, as well as Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. At first it appeared that by letting the runs walk into Mexico, Eric Holder could point to the deaths in Mexico and use that as a lever to attack the Second Amendment. Eric Holder hates the Second Amendment and would do anything to get rid of it. He was instrumental in getting guns banned in Washington, DC, and we se how well that worked out. However, there is more to the story, as Paul Harvey used to say.

    Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla is in a Michigan prison awaiting trial on drug charges in Chicago. His court records make for some very interesting reading. He stated that the federal gun-walking operation known as "Fast and Furious" isn't what we think it is. It wasn't about tracking guns, it was about supplying them. It was part of elaborate agreement between the U.S. government and Mexico's powerful Sinaloa Cartel to take down rival cartels.

    Zambada-Nieble was the Sinaloa Cartel's "logistics coordinator," and a close associate of "El Chapo" Guzman who is the most ruthless criminal in the world. According to Zambada-Niebla, the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa Cartel in exchange for information that allowed the DEA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to take down rival cartels. The Sinaloa Cartel was allegedly permitted to traffic massive amounts of drugs across the U.S. border as long as the Intel kept coming. Zambada-Niebla was responsible for coordination all of the Sinaloa Cartel's multi-ton drug shipments into the United States. He used Boeing 747 cargo planes, narco-submarines, container ships, speed boats, fishing boats, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers and automobiles. The overwhelming success of the Sinaloa Cartel was largely due to the arrests and dismantling of their competitors and their booming business in the U.S.
In better days, Attorney General Eric Holder speaks to the NACo conference in Washington, DC, March 7, 2011: Above.     photo by Stan Deatherage
    The pending court case against Zambada-Niebla is being monitored by congress, and they expect legal ramifications after the trial. The trial is delayed until October 9th.

    "The Sinaloa Cartel was given carte blanche to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago. And they were protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels which helped Mexican and United States authorities capture of kill thousands of rival cartel members," stated a motion for discovery filed in U.S. District Court by Zambada-Niebla's attorney in July 2011.

    The claims that Zambada-Niebla has made seem to fall in line with the statements made by Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in Northern Mexico who said that U.S. agencies "don't fight drug traffickers, instead they try to manage the drug trade."

    U.S. officials have acknowledged working with the Sinaloa Cartel through another informant, Humberto Loya-Castro. He is a high ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel as well as a close confidant and lawyer of "El Chapo" Guzman. Loya-Castro was indicted in 1995 in the Southern District Court of California in a massive narcotics trafficking conspiracy (Case No.95CR0973). The case was dismissed at the request of prosecutors after Loya became an informant for the United States government. The United States government agreed to dismiss all charges against Loya-Castro, and not to interfere with his drug trafficking activities and those of the Sinaloa Cartel and not actively prosecute him or Sinaloa Cartel leadership.

    During his court proceedings, Zambada-Niebla stated that he was granted full immunity by the DEA. His legal council has requested records about Fast and Furious. The request for the records was denied on the basis of national security.

    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 Mexico and the United States. The Department of Justice's leadership apparently saw this as an ingenious way of combating drug cartel activities, but it was a disaster.

    The drugs from the Sinaloa Cartel make their way to Chicago-Obama's adopted home. And sadly, we see the result of "Fast and Furious" up close and personal in Chicago. As the result of gang violence over turf wars, shooting deaths are up 30% this year. That is 351 people killed because of drugs. There is no statistics for the wounded and the wasted lives of the users of drugs. The "toxic" drug war is laying waste to Chicago, and our own government must accept its share of the blame, but will they?

    A DEA Special Agent in Charge said that turf battles over drugs are turning parts of Chicago into Mexican border towns. One of the major cartels battling over the billions of dollars of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin in Chicago is the Sinaloa Cartel. Chicago is one of the Sinaloa Cartel's hubs. Chicago has easy access to a wide variety of transportation.

    The DEA Agent in Charge has had experience fighting the gangs in El Paso, so he is organizing strike force to combat the cartels and the gangs. Chicago is the new border town.

    The government's war on drugs has been an unmitigated failure by anyone's standard except the drug trafficker. The say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. In that case the government's drug war is insane. It is time to try a different approach, anything is better than what we have now.

    To highlight the absurdity of the Department of Justice's position with the "Fast and Furious" investigation/cover-up, two men in Texas received 80 months in prison for attempting to smuggle 147 assault rifles to Mexico to the Los Zeta cartel. Whereas, there have been no arrests of the smugglers of guns to the Sinaloa cartel, who were de facto agents of the government agencies that were tasked to stop the smuggling.

    Some ATF agents who were involved in "Fast and Furious" have been promoted and transferred to keep their silence. The corruption on this outrageous scandal starts in the White House and moves through the Department of Justice like a cancer that corrupts everything that it touches. There will be no arrests, no convictions, no demotions, because President Obama said so when he hid behind his executive privilege declaration.

    There will be no justice for the thousands of deaths and the ruined lives that was left in the wake of "Fast and Furious." The cry for justice will only be answered when President Obama and Eric Holder are no longer in power and can block the investigation. Will the cries of the dead be loud enough to engage voters in November to defeat the Obama administration? Only, then, will they rest in peace.