US Officials Linked to Ciudad Juarez Mass Murder

by **proldic** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 4:34 pm

Narco News Bulletin September 12, 2005 FOIA Records Link U.S. Officials to Mass Murder in Mexico Newly Released Documents Trace “House of Death” Cover-Up to Upper Levels of the Justice Department By Bill Conroy A dozen people were tortured and murdered between August 2003 and mid-January 2004 in a house in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas. The murders were carried out as part of a criminal enterprise overseen by Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, who U.S. prosecutors claim was a top lieutenant in Vicente Carrillo Fuentes’ (VCF’s) Juárez drug organization. The reason we know this is because federal agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in El Paso had an informant inside of Santillan’s criminal syndicate... The other reason we know this is that a high-ranking DEA agent, Sandalio Gonzalez, who served as the head of that agency’s field office in El Paso when the murders took place, blew the whistle on an alleged criminal cover-up in the ICE operation. Gonzalez exposed the fact that the ICE agents and a U.S. prosecutor knew their informant was participating in the homicides, yet allowed the murder spree to continue to assure the informant was not exposed – so they could continue to use him to make their case against Santillan. ...For those of you who have been following this ugly saga of the pretense called the war on drugs, the details of the alleged corruption are well known to you by now. However, some startling revelations have recently surfaced that indicate the cover-up in the House of Death mass murder case extends much further up the food chain in the Department of Justice than previously reported. Gonzalez first spoke out against the corruption in the House of Death investigation in early 2004, within weeks of a DEA agent and his family being confronted by Santillan’s death squad, who had mistaken the agent for a competing smuggler. In the wake of that confrontation, and after discovering that the ICE informant was a participant in the House of Death murders, Gonzalez sent an internal letter on Feb. 24, 2004, to the top ICE official in El Paso and to Johnny Sutton, the U.S. Attorney in San Antonio, Texas. In that letter, Gonzalez dropped the dime on the whole sordid tale. But rather than investigate the charges, officials within the Department of Justice (DOJ) went after Gonzalez, seeing to it that he was reprimanded and his career tarnished with a negative job-performance review. Gonzalez also was ordered to remain silent on the whole matter. According to Gonzalez, the retaliation he experienced after writing the whistleblower letter was initiated at the behest of Sutton, who wanted to bury the letter to avoid compromising a career-boosting death-sentence case against a major narco-trafficker. That means, according to Gonzalez, that a U.S. Attorney is now implicated in the cover-up of a U.S. government informant’s participation in mass murder. When contacted by Narco News, Sutton’s office declined to comment on the allegations or the House of Death case. However, Narco News recently obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (see links at end of story) that pull the dark shroud over the House of Death back even further. The documents were released by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an administrative body that adjudicates cases brought by federal employees who claim they have been retaliated against for whistleblowing activity. Gonzalez currently has a case pending before the MSPB that focuses on the House of Death cover-up. Documents released as a result of Narco News’ FOIA request include internal Department of Justice e-mails concerning the House of Death case. In general, the FOIA documents are heavily redacted, based in part on alleged privacy-protection exemptions. However, Narco News has access to sources who were able to fill in some of the critical missing words. As it turns out, among the items redacted in the e-mails are the names of the high-ranking DOJ officials who drafted or received the e-mails as part of performing their public duties – on the taxpayers’ dime. That has led some law enforcers to speculate that the cover-up may now extend into the MSPB itself. Narco News has filed a FOIA appeal seeking the release of all the documents in Gonzalez’ MSPB case and has asked that all the names of public officials in those documents be “un-redacted.” Well-placed law enforcement sources familiar with the House of Death case tell Narco News that the individuals who either wrote the e-mails or received copies of the e-mails included the following: Karen Tandy, Administrator of the DEA; Catherine M. O’Neil, Associate Deputy Attorney General; and the number two person at DOJ, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey – who earlier this summer took a job as general counsel for defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp... ...Despite the allegations about a cover-up in the House of Death case, Attorney General Gonzales recently appointed Sutton to the post of vice chairman of his Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys, which plays a key role in determining DOJ policies and programs. ...So what exactly are these government officials trying to keep under wraps? The raw statistic – a dozen people murdered – doesn’t get beneath the skin like the truth.... Cover-Up Hatched In pleadings filed with the MSPB, Gonzalez, who retired from the DEA earlier this year, states that yet another ICE debriefing memorandum prepared on Aug. 6, 2003, “indicates the informant may have known ahead of time that [Reyes] would be killed on Aug. 5, 2003, because in a memorandum to the informant’s file authored by the ICE SAC [special agent in charge], it was reported that before going to the house where the victim would be killed, the informant ‘went to purchase duct tape and lime (a powder used to conceal odor).’”... ...“Following his meeting with ICE officials on Aug. 5, 2003, the informant was allowed to return to the house in [Juárez] to check the grave site and pay $2,000 to other co-conspirators for their role in the murder of [Reyes],” Gonzalez’ pleadings assert... ...So, in effect, ICE officials and the U.S. prosecutor in El Paso sat on their hands after the first murder...As a result, over the next six months, another 11 murders were committed at the House of Death in Juárez, with the informant present for at least five of them, according to FOIA records. The stench of the whole drug-war nightmare hit the open air on Jan. 14, 2004, after Santillan’s thugs, including a Mexican state judicial police commander named Miguel Loya Gallegos, mistakenly pulled over the car of a DEA agent and his family, thinking the agent was a dope smuggler who had crossed Santillan’s turf... From Gonzalez’ MSPB pleadings: The informant and the subjects under investigation by ICE were allowed to continue their illicit activities in Mexico following the August 2003 murder [of Reyes], and on January 14, 2004, DEA agents and their families stationed in [Juárez] were evacuated from their residences because hired killers that could and should have been taken into custody after the first murder in August 2003, tried to identify, through the informant [Lalo], two DEA agents under the ruse of a traffic stop. The informant had reportedly told his co-conspirators [Santillan and Loya] that he knew corrupt U.S. officials that could provide this information. This attempt at identifying the DEA agents occurred as a result of information received by traffickers during the torture and killing of three individuals that took place in Juárez earlier that same day [Jan. 14, 2004]... Following, obtained via the FOIA request, are several excerpts from a Timeline of Events report prepared by the DEA following that errant traffic stop. CS [the informant Lalo, an ex-Mexican Highway Patrol Officer] is considered a well-placed associated of significant targets within the VCFO [the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization]. CS’ principal relationship is with [Santillan], a high level cocaine and marijuana trafficker who operates within the Mexican states of [Chihuahua, Durango and Torreon] and directly impacts trafficking activity within the states of Texas, Illinois and elsewhere. [Santillan] also participates in enforcement of VCFO territorial control of the [Juárez]/West Texas corridor by coordinating drug rip-offs, kidnappings and executions of traffickers unauthorized to transit loads within the corridor... Investigation to date reflects that the referenced telephone calls and traffic stop [of the DEA agent] were, in fact, overt acts within a conspiracy between [Santillan and Loya] and others to identify and execute those responsible for the unauthorized transit or loss of approximately 4,000 pounds of marijuana. It is suspected that the conspiracy involved the kidnapping, torture and murder of three individuals on Jan. 14 [at the House of Death], which resulted in the subsequent identification and murder of a fourth subject occurring on January 16, 2004. … It is further suspected that the traffic stop of S/A [the DEA agent] was a misdirected attempt by co-conspirators to identify and located [another drug smuggler] and/or a related stash location. Vanished After it was clear to the DEA and the Mexican government that ICE agents and a U.S. prosecutor had allowed a dozen murders to occur, with their informant participating in many of them, an effort was launched to snare Santillan and Loya. With the informant’s help, Santillan was lured across the border and arrested. Eventually, though, as part of an apparent attempt to keep a lid on the scandal, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Antonio cut a deal with Santillan that involved dropping the murder charges against him – and the threat of a death sentence. The stonewalling, deal-making and cover-up strategy allegedly employed by ICE officials and the U.S. Attorney’s Office is all the more disturbing given that DEA officials wanted to arrest Santillan immediately after the first murder at the House of Death. However, ICE officials and the U.S. prosecutor overseeing the case in El Paso refused to cooperate... "...the prosecutor assigned to the case ignored, with no good reason, well-founded recommendations made by DEA agents to arrest the principal suspect [Santillan] and ‘take down’ the case, thereby allowing at least 13 other murders to take place in Juárez, in what can only be described as a display of total disregard for human life, and disrespect for the rule of law in Mexico,” Gonzalez asserts in his MSPB pleadings. “This was reportedly done to protect, what in comparison to murder, were relatively minor cases/prosecutions regarding drugs and a cigarette smuggling case in which the informant was a witness.” After the dirty little secret of the murders at the House of Death had surfaced within law enforcement circles, according to the FOIA records, ICE officials and the Assistant U.S. Attorney in El Paso, Juanita Fielden, allegedly continued to advance the cover-up by obstructing the DEA’s efforts to capture Mexican state police commander Loya, the ringleader of the House of Death hit squad. As a result, Loya and several of his goons vanished and remain at large –- though they likely suffered the same bloody fate as their House of Death victims... ...the U.S. prosecutor refused the repeated requests by DEA for direct access to the informant so that at least attempts could be made to resolve the alleged threat against the DEA personnel and their families stationed in [Juárez]. In fact the U.S. prosecutor stated that she had ordered ICE personnel to refuse DEA access to tape recorded conversations of the informant... Regardless of how the cover-up now plays out, the revelations contained in these new FOIA records are sure to raise even more questions, because the cobwebs of this horror story have been spun intricately through the U.S. Justice System.... “This is not about me,” Gonzalez says. “What happened to me is minor compared to the enormity of what took place here, and the fact that nobody is focused on it. “We need an independent investigation of this by someone outside the Executive Branch. And then we can let the chips fall where they may.” <a href="http://www.narconews.com/Issue39/article1445.html">www.narconews.com/Issue39...e1445.html</a>

by **robertdreed** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 1:54 am

Speaking as a fervent (and even intermittently activist) opponent of the Drug War for about 27 years running, I have to say that I've learned that some of these DEA guys have more integrity in their little fingernails than the entire upper hierarchy of the people they have to answer to. What's up with that?

by **proldic** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 2:10 pm

LA Times September 19, 2005 Anti-Drug Effort In Colombia Questioned Price, Supply In U.S. Seem Unchanged By HENRY CHU CARTAGENA, Colombia -- Every few days or so, a speedboat laden with a ton or two of cocaine launches from somewhere along this country's jagged Caribbean coastline, headed for a rendezvous in deeper waters. There, the cargo is transferred to a nondescript fishing vessel, which smuggles it into Mexico, Haiti or another foreign port. Then the drug hitches another ride, by sea or land, to its final destination: the streets of Los Angeles, New York and other U.S. cities, where customers shell out about $100 per gram... After several years and billions of American tax dollars spent fighting cocaine shipments, the drug is still making its way from Colombia to the United States in what appear to be hardly diminished quantities, throwing into question the efficacy of efforts by both countries to stem the flow... At the same time, a program that began five years ago to fumigate coca crops in Colombia, hailed by the Bush administration as a major success, appears to have had little effect on overall supply, judging by the availability and price of cocaine on the street.  "Puzzled" U.S. officials acknowledge that access to cocaine, its purity level and its street price remain virtually unchanged. The dismaying results come even as President Bush is requesting an extension for Plan Colombia, a five-year strategy to combat narco-trafficking, set to expire at the end of this year. The United States has already poured $3 billion into the project, money used primarily to augment Colombia's fleet of military aircraft and ships and to train soldiers and police. "The plan is producing results," Bush told reporters last month during a visit to his Texas ranch by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who again asked for more money and support for Plan Colombia during a visit to Washington last week.... American demand...has risen over the past decade, according to a national drug-use study published by the U.S. government last year. Colombia, where 75 percent of the world's coca is cultivated, remains the United States' single-largest source of cocaine. The beefed-up interdiction also has failed to translate into higher prices on the street, as would be expected if supply were becoming scarcer. Instead, a gram of cocaine now actually costs less, not more, than it did before Plan Colombia was introduced in 2000, according to the White House's own Office of National Drug Control Policy. U.S. drug czar John P. Walters...admitted that, in terms of cocaine, "we haven't seen yet the same changes." The stability of supply and price presents a conundrum for officials and experts in light of the trumpeted achievements of the coca fumigation program, which the United States has heavily funded and promoted. In June, the United Nations reported that aerial spraying had halved the area of land dedicated to coca cultivation in Colombia, from 400,000 acres in 1999 down to about 200,000 acres in 2004. latimes.com

US Officials Linked to Ciudad Juarez Mass Murder

US Officials Linked to Ciudad Juarez Mass Murder

the DEA

Price, Supply Unchanged Despite $3 billion+ Plan Columbia

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