Jeremy Renner Ready To ‘Kill The Messenger’ In Film About CIA-Smeared Journo Gary Webb

[777man]

83. Billion-Dollar Narco Jr Cuts a Deal -SINALOA CARTEL HAD DEAL WITH DEA (3 YR OLD story on NARCONEWS)

Last edited Tue Aug 5, 2014, 05:56 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/04/vicente-zambada-niebla-a-billion-dollar-narco-junior-cuts-a-deal.html

A Billion-Dollar “Narco Junior” Cuts a Deal
Posted by Patrick Radden Keefe

Zambada.jpg

Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who is thirty-nine years old, is what Mexicans call a “narco junior”—a second-generation drug trafficker. His father, Ismael Zambada, who is known as El Mayo, has long been the No. 2 man in the dominant drug-trafficking organization in the Americas, the Sinaloa Cartel. In 2009, Vicente Zambada was arrested by Mexican authorities and promptly extradited to Chicago, where he was expected to stand trial for importing drugs to that city as a key logistics manager for the cartel.

But then the case took a turn: Zambada’s lawyers declared that he could not be prosecuted by the United States, because, they claimed, he had been secretly working as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, even as he smuggled tons of cocaine across the border. In fact, according to his counsel, Zambada had been assured by his contacts at the D.E.A. that, in exchange for providing them with intelligence about the drug trade in Mexico, he would be guaranteed immunity against prosecution for his own role in the business.

The news of this unorthodox defense strategy, which became public in 2011, contributed to the deepening cynicism on both sides of the border about the war on drugs. A flurry of filings in the federal court in Chicago revealed that Zambada had indeed met in Mexico City with representatives of the D.E.A., to whom he had been introduced by a Sinaloa consigliere-turned-informant. The Department of Justice acknowledged as much, but denied that any quid pro quo had been arranged. In any case, they explained, individual D.E.A. agents are not authorized to hand out irrevocable get-out-of-jail-free cards to men like Zambada. And so, with both sides sticking to their stories, it appeared that the truth would only come out when his case came to trial in 2012.

But the trial was delayed, and delayed, and delayed again. The case was so significant that at one point in 2011 officials expressed concern that Zambada would be assassinated before he could stand trial. As any revelation of the details of the case was postponed, theories proliferated. Earlier this year, the newspaper El Universal released a report, drawing on court documents, which claimed that the D.E.A. had knowingly allowed Zambada to smuggle “billions of dollars” of narcotics into the U.S. The newspaper contended that the conspiracy ran even deeper, alleging that the governments of both the United States and Mexico had, in effect, played favorites among the rival trafficking organizations, secretly colluding with the Sinaloa cartel in order to wipe out its rivals.

The notion of Zambada as a kind of Mexican Whitey Bulger, allowed to operate with impunity in exchange for passing along bits of information about his enemies, has a certain intuitive appeal—and no one could deny that the drug war entails plenty of devil’s bargains. But this particular conspiracy theory always struck me as too neat. For one thing, the D.E.A.’s use of informants in drug cartels is hardly a secret: for drug cops, snitches, along with wiretaps, are the primary tools to attack an organization, not signs of covert collusion. As an analysis of the Zambada case on the Web site InsightCrime puts it: “This is not some conspiracy to protect or favor certain groups—it is a tactic employed by the D.E.A. and other US agencies to allow them to focus efforts on priority targets.”

Still, the long delay in the trial amplified the suspicion that there were explosive secrets just waiting to spill out. Today, the Justice Department revealed that Zambada will not be tried at all, because he pled guilty and agreed to coöperate with the government—more than a year ago. In a secret plea agreement, which was unsealed on Thursday, Zambada confesses that he was a senior figure in the Sinaloa cartel and a “surrogate and logistical coordinator” for his father. He admits to having smuggled “multiple tons” of cocaine, using “private aircraft, submarines and other submersible and semi-submersible vessels, container ships, go-fast boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor-trailers, and automobiles.”

The deal establishes that Zambada will spend at least ten years in prison, with the possibility of a life sentence. But the most intriguing number in the case involves the value of the property and assets that Zambada has agreed to forfeit to the government. Several years ago, Zambada’s father granted a rare interview to the Mexican magazine Proceso. The interviewer mentioned that the head of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman, had been included on the list of billionaires published by Forbes, and asked whether Zambada had a similar fortune. “That’s just stupid,” the elder Zambada scoffed.

According to the plea agreement, however, the younger Zambada must surrender assets amounting to $1.37 billion—and Zambada did not contest the number. The extent of his property and other holdings in Mexico is unclear, and it would not necessarily be easy for the U.S. government to seize assets held in a foreign country. A D.E.A. spokesman said that Zambada could also possess property in the United States. “We might end up with a Marshals auction,” he said. Among close observers of the Sinaloa cartel, the extent of Chapo Guzman’s own wealth has been a subject of considerable debate. If Zambada’s forfeiture agreement is any indication, perhaps even senior lieutenants in Guzman’s organization merit inclusion on the Forbes list.

If Zambada pled guilty more than a year ago, why are we only finding out about it now? The authorities kept Zambada’s deal under wraps, even as rumors flourished about secret arrangements between the cartel and the D.E.A. The Department of Justice has not disclosed any reasons for the timing of the announcement, but it may have something to do with the arrest, in February, of Chapo Guzman. Within hours of Guzman’s capture in Mexico, U.S. officials announced that they would seek his extradition to face trial in Chicago. That seems unlikely to happen soon, as Guzman must first contend with a series of charges in Mexico. But, if he ever does stand trial in the Windy City, the prosecution will have, in Vicente Zambada, a formidable witness against him.

Above: Vicente Zambada-Niebla in Mexico City in March, 2009. Photograph by Daniel Aguilar/Reuters/Corbis.
(NOTE: NARCONEWS.com has been covering this story since 2011)








=====================
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2014/04/zambada-niebla-s-plea-deal-chapo-guzman-s-capture-may-be-key-unfolding-


Zambada Niebla’s Plea Deal, Chapo Guzman’s Capture May Be Key To An Unfolding Mexican Purge
Posted by Bill Conroy - April 12, 2014 at 6:55 pm

History and Court Pleadings Help To Connect The Dots Mainstream Media Is Missing

Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, the son of a powerful co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization, has agreed to tell the US government everything he knows about his alleged partners in crime, their operations and enablers, US authorities announced earlier this week.

The details of his cooperation are spelled out in a recent plea deal signed by Zambada Niebla, himself considered a key figure in the Sinaloa organization run by his father Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and the recently capture Joaquin Guzman Loera (aka Chapo Guzman).

The plea agreement, which can be read in its entirety at this link, rewards Zambada Niebla for his cooperation by reducing a potential life prison sentence to as little as 10 years (including time served he could be out in roughly five years) and by offering protection for his family members. However, the US government will only honor the deal if it deems Zambada Niebla is truthful and helpful in providing evidence that advances investigations and cases against the Sinaloa organization and its leadership.

The mainstream media has jumped all over this latest development in the Zambada Niebla criminal case — litigation that Narco News explored in-depth and exclusively as part of a 10-story package published some three years ago, long before US media credited a Mexican publication with breaking the same story this past January.

(excerpt)


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%


http://www.fbi.gov/chicago/press-releases/2014/high-level-sinaloa-cartel-members-guilty-plea-unsealed
High-Level Sinaloa Cartel Member’s Guilty Plea Unsealed
Zambada-Niebla’s Cooperation with U.S. Revealed
U.S. Attorney’s OfficeApril 10, 2014

Northern District of Illinois(312) 353-5300
#########################



Why aren't we putting US agencies on trial for financing El Chapo's drug war?

From Capone to Mexico's captured cocaine king, the villains we love to hate obscure the truth about America's secret support

Top Sinaloa cartel member cooperating with police in Guzman case
Gabriel Matthew Schivone
theguardian.com, Thursday 10 April 2014 15.14 BST



Washington allowed El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel to carry on business as usual while top Sinaola members, for their part, provided information on their rivals. DEA agents met with their informants more than 50 times, El Universal reported, as the agents offered their whisperers immunity.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/10/us-agencies-financing-el-chapo-drug-war

=====================

Tampa ‘Black Ice” drug operation tied to organized crime
Posted on April 1, 2014 by Daniel Hopsicker
Share via emailShare via email Share

Doug McClain learned the ins and outs of financial fraud while working for Robert Colgin Wilson, who—far more than “The Wolf of Wall Street”—exemplified the role of American organized crime in financial fraud during the last quarter of the 20th Century.

Emmert-ColvinWilson was no fly by night. His roots ran deep. When he was convicted of securities fraud in the mid-70’s, his lawyer during the trial and appeal was the same Dallas attorney, Emmett Colvin, who a decade earlier represented Jack Ruby during his trial for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

When the Tampa office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) partnered with McClain and other members of organized crime in a still-unexplained drug trafficking operation that brought tons of cocaine into the U.S. between 2003 and 2008, they were getting a known quantity.

http://www.madcowprod.com/2014/04/01/black-ice-organized-crime/


PART II

The Enterprise & Southern-style organized crime
Posted on April 1, 2014 by Daniel Hopsicker
Share via emailShare via email Share

RC WILSON The man who facilitated the purchase of several DC-9's for SkyWay Aircraft in St. Petersburg Florida was the company's largest shareholder, Doug McClain Sr.'s Argyll Equities. So how did he get such an important job in such a thriving Enterprise?
http://www.madcowprod.com/2014/04/01/robert-wilsons-enterprise/



##############################3




FROM MOLLY Malloy at the Frontera List:


I recommend this new story from WhoWhatWhy by Douglas Lucas. Also posted below from the frontera list archive is the interview from Proceso between Julio Scherer and El Mayo Zambada from 2010. It is referred to in the WhoWhatWhy post. molly


http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/03/10/deal-right-devil/

A Deal With The Right Devil
By Douglas Lucas on Mar 10, 2014
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada-Garcia

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada-Garcia

How do you replace an El Chapo? Insert an El Mayo. The thing about arresting a drug lord is, it rarely makes any difference.

If, as expected, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada-Garcia replaces Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera—the kingpin arrested February 22, as head of Sinaloa—the close relationship between the U.S. government and the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world seems likely to continue.

This relationship was revealed during the trial of El Mayo’s son, Sinaloa logistics coordinator Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla. Court documents show that, by the U.S. government’s own admission, a lawyer for the cartel served as an intermediary between the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Sinaloa leadership. For nearly ten years, that lawyer, Humberto Loya-Castro, provided the DEA with information the defense characterizes as intelligence on rival cartels.

The arrangement, according to the defense, gave the cartel’s leaders immunity and free rein “to continue their narcotics trafficking business in the United States and Mexico without interference.” Other evidence reported by WhoWhatWhy and Narco News lends credence to the possibility that such a deal was in fact reached.

Drug kingpins tend to become unpredictable troublemakers, and El Chapo’s arrest may have been a way to get a more cooperative El Mayo in power. El Mayo tried to arrange a deal with the DEA in January 2009. That’s when Loya-Castro told the agency El Mayo wanted his son to cooperate with them to work off his pending drug charges.

Indeed, the son, Zambada-Niebla, may take a settlement in the coming days, according to a recent Proceso report. He “agreed to produce information in order to avoid a potential life sentence,” the article stated in Spanish. In other words, Business as usual—intelligence on rival cartels for DEA, unimpeded smuggling for Sinaloa—may continue.

We asked one of the attorneys defending Zambada-Niebla, Fernando X. Gaxiola, for his perspective. He couldn’t comment on his client’s case directly, but his remarks on the drug war support the picture of a tangled DEA-Sinaloa relationship emerging from investigative journalists.

A Foothold in Latin America for U.S. Interests

Cooperation “is a policy that the U.S. has outlined, and that they used previously in Colombia,” Gaxiola told us. “Which is to eliminate all the smaller groups, concentrate all the power in one place, and then go back and hit that one place.”

He is right that such a policy would be nothing new. During the latter half of the twentieth century, the U.S. strategy in Colombia was one of counterinsurgency. The U.S. advanced favored players among the rivalrous local cartels and paramilitaries who would be conducive to its interests. For instance, the U.S. gave covert aid to anti-Communist guerrillas protecting the Medellín cartel’s coca fields from the radical leftist FARC militia—which resisted U.S. oil companies.

Once Medellín became the dominant player, its leader, Pablo Escobar, apparently ceased to be useful, and was shot to death in 1993 by Colombian police assisted by the DEA, the CIA, and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

Cocaine smuggling into the U.S. was not noticeably affected, for though Medellín collapsed, the Cali cartel gained strength in its wake. But the counterinsurgency efforts paid off: Colombia is now a foothold for U.S. interests in Latin America.

Operation Fast and Furious

The U.S. may be taking on Mexico as it did Colombia, for Sinaloa appears to have been a recipient of covert aid. In Operation Fast and Furious, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) allowed more than two thousand AK-47-style rifles and even 50-caliber guns, via illegal sales, to slip into Sinaloa territory.

Gaxiola told WhoWhatWhy he believes the ATF conducted Operation Fast and Furious in order to arm the cartel. “If you’re selling guns in Arizona, and they’re gonna go south,” Gaxiola said, “the first place they go is to Sinaloa. Doesn’t take a genius. If you want to send them to the cartel Gulf, you send them through Laredo; if you want to send them to Juárez, you send them through El Paso. They want to fortify the Sinaloa cartel to take out all the other cartels.”

In the past three years, U.S. military leaders have been publicly considering a counterinsurgency, a divide-and-conquer strategy for Mexico. They include General David Petraeus, as indicated by his comments in Small Wars Journal, and top leaders of the Northern Command as reported by the New York Times.

“The military is trying to take what it did in Afghanistan and do the same in Mexico,” one of the high-ranking officers, steeped in counterterrorism, told the Times, as they all pored over intelligence about Mexican drug cartels.

What is the Mexican government getting out of all this? President Enrique Peña Nieto’s efforts to woo money into his country—especially for sectors such as oil and gas and tourism—depend on making investors believe he has a handle on the drug war violence, which has shattered the country and led to more than 80,000 dead since 2006.

“The country’s out of control,” Gaxiola said. “Mexico is a country that is ungovernable in very big geographic sectors: Michoacán, Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, parts of Sinaloa. And in other parts of the country, they’re now governed by thugs. Peña Nieto absolutely looks like a fool.”

21

“An arranged thing to show Peña Nieto is in control”

That may be why El Chapo was arrested now (the question WhoWhatWhy recently asked). Indeed, the kingpin’s arrest came just days after TIME Magazine put Peña Nieto on its cover with the headline: “Saving Mexico.” His government paid Time-Warner a few months prior for a 14-page advertorial promoting the country as a tourist destination and hyping the president’s reform agenda.

“The political scene right now is that Peña Nieto is victorious, nobody’s looking at anything,” Gaxiola said. “The Mexican economy is in a dive, the country’s going to hell, and TIME Magazine tells the world Peña is saving México.”

The Mexican president’s need for a “win” was urgent. As WhoWhatWhy previously reported, using WikiLeaks documents, the U.S. apparently knew where El Chapo was on any given day, at least since mid-2010. Gaxiola agreed the authorities likely were aware of the kingpin’s whereabouts, and said, “They had no interest in arresting him before. When he was more useful arrested than free, then they arrested him.”

Hector Berrellez, a retired supervisory DEA agent and once the agency’s lead investigator for Mexico, told Narco News that El Chapo’s capture was no daring predawn raid, but “an arranged thing” to show Peña Nieto is in control of the chaotic country.

“Chapo was protected by Mexican federal agents and military, by the Mexican government,” Berrellez said. “He was making Peña Nieto look bad, and so the government decided to withdraw his security detail.”

So many former agents are disputing the official version of the arrest that the DEA issued a statement disowning their views.

“If the Mexican people knew…”

Besides the boost for Peña Nieto, Gaxiola racked El Chapo’s arrest up to DEA and Department of Justice “lust for Mexican blood” and greed.

“Their budget continues to grow thanks to the so-called ‘spectacular arrests.’ What is spectacular? They caught one guy, come on. Nothing happened. Nothing changed.”

That the three Sinaloa drug lords had warm relationships with each other, and thus probably shared an understanding about cooperation with the U.S., also suggests nothing will change.

In a rare, 2010 interview with the Mexican newsweekly Proceso, El Mayo referred to El Chapo and his son affectionately, calling each a compadre, or a close friend. Zambada-Niebla “is my first-born, the first of five,” the drug lord said in Spanish. “I call him ‘Mijo‘ [a contraction of mi and hijo, meaning 'my son'].” Asked about ‘Mijo’s’ legal battles, El Mayo said, “I weep for him.” As for the top kingpin, El Mayo said he and El Chapo talked on the phone frequently.

There are other possibilities, of course. Perhaps El Chapo’s arrest means the authorities are finally turning on Sinaloa, and that El Mayo is next to sit behind bars. Or the top kingpin’s arrest may mean the cartel’s financial interests take a back seat to fresh bad blood.

The picture may become clearer soon. Evidence of U.S.-Sinaloa cooperation seems to keep surfacing. If Zambada-Niebla takes that settlement, his case may stop being a source of answers. But additional revelations, from whatever places, could have a serious impact on U.S. policy. Gaxiola told WhoWhatWhy,

“If the Mexican people knew the motivation behind what the United States has done, their attitude of not giving a hell for Mexican lives, they would kick them out of the country, and understand what this ‘drug war’ is all about.”
- See more at: http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/03/10/deal-right-devil/#sthash.eIOAwca6.dpuf
#######################################


http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2014/01/14/reports-us-government-cut-secret-deals-for-years-with-mexico-sinaloa-drug/

Reports: U.S. Government Cut Secret Deals For Years With Mexico's Sinaloa Drug Cartel
1.14.2014
========================

THE Zambada Interview:


http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=106967


Proceso en la guarida de “El Mayo” Zambada
‘Si me atrapan o me matan... nada cambia’

Julio Scherer García
Agencia Proceso | 04-04-2010 | 00:17 | Nacional


Ismael Zambada (Foto: Agencias)

Distrito Federal— Un día de febrero recibí en Proceso un mensaje que
ofrecía datos claros acerca de su veracidad. Anunciaba que Ismael
Zambada deseaba conversar conmigo.


=================


OFF TOPIC----
Mike Ruppert Suicide April 14, 2014 (Sunday)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=780614