Mexican government shrugs off CBS News investigation on ‘walked guns’
- February 26th, 2011 11:28 am ET
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Despite corroboration by CBS News of allegations by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents that monitored guns were allowed to be smuggled into their country by agency managers, the Mexican government has chosen not to address any of the specific charges in its reaction to the report:
Ricardo Alday, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C. said Mexico intends to continue to work with the U.S. to enhance intelligence and information sharing, and that Mexico "will continue to encourage more aggressive interdiction efforts on the U.S. side of the border."
Why the public evasion? Especially since we can extrapolate that Mexican nationals have paid a price in blood for the “Project Gunwalker”* gun monitoring operation gone awry:
What we don't know yet, because the ATF and the Justice Department are unwilling to tell us, are the names of the faceless dead of other people in Mexico killed with rifles of similar provenance, provided them by SAC Newell and friends in the Phoenix ATF office.
“Mexican Government is hip to Bandidos Gabachos as long as they carry ATF badges, apparently,” Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars concludes.
And yet the Mexican government had been informed of the allegations long before the CBS News report surfaced, personally by Vanderboegh, who has issued follow-up information releases both to them as well as members of the Mexican press throughout his investigation of this story.
So why the deliberate indifference?
A Mexican army officer assigned to guard President Felipe Calderon leaked military intelligence to drug cartels, trained hit men and supplied military weapons to Los Zetas, according to a U.S. Embassy cable recently released by Wikileaks.
There’s another piece of the puzzle for that State Department tie-in mentioned the other day that could expand the Grassley Senate investigation.
As Charlotte Gun Rights Examiner Paul Valone pointed out in private correspondence, that U.S. Embassy cable is dated January, 2009, meaning that when, a couple months later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blamed violence in Mexico on "[o]ur inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals," she was well aware that the drug syndicates were not depending on the U.S. commercial gun market for their weapons.
So Hillary knew at the time that Calderon’s own inner circle was neck-deep in profiteering from cartel connections and military arms supplying. As did Calderon, of course, who still continued to demand a ban on semiautomatic firearms be imposed against United States citizens.
Information about Calderon’s inner circle being involved would also have been known by William Hoover, ATF’s Assistant Director for Field Operations and Anthony P. Placido, DEA’s Assistant Administrator for Intelligence Division, at the time of their statement before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommitee on Crime and Drugs, concerning “Law enforcement responses to Mexican drug cartels,” presented March 17, 2009 (over a week before Clinton’s statement on the situation).
Yet here is what Hoover and Placido told the subcommittee, while testifying "the greatest proportion of firearms trafficked to Mexico originate out of the U.S. along the southwest border":
Internationally, the Department enjoys a strong collaborative relationship with law enforcement and other government agencies within Mexico and throughout the world. The Department would not have achieved the success it has without the remarkable support and courageous actions of the Mexican government.
A few questions:
In re testifying about “a strong collaborative relationship,” will investigations find that a decision to keep the Mexican government uniformed about “gun walking” operations was already either under discussion or in practice (note that Jaime Avila, who purchased the weapons found at Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder scene, was documented as being under government surveillance in late 2009)?
Noting tie-ins not only with the highest levels in both the Justice and State Departments, as well as within his own government with its ruthless cartel connections, is it any wonder the Mexican spokesman didn’t want to say any more than he did?
Also see:
- A journalist’s guide to ‘Project Gunwalker' for a complete list with links of independent investigative reporting and commentary done to date by Sipsey Street Irregulars and Gun Rights Examiner.
*Note to newcomers to this story: “Project Gunrunner” is the name ATF assigned to its Southwest Border Initiative to interdict gun smuggling to Mexico. “Project Gunwalker” is the name I assigned to the scandal after allegations by agents that monitored guns were allowed to fall into criminal hands on both sides of the border through a surveillance process termed “walking” surfaced.
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