January 15, 2009
Drug money gives Mexican cartels inside line on U.S. intel
Yahoo News posted this story about the War on Drugs.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Corrupt officials inside Mexico's security forces have leaked U.S. anti-drugs intelligence directly to drug traffickers to help them escape raids, a senior U.S. law enforcement agent said.
A recent anti-corruption sweep showed the infiltration of Mexican police forces had reached alarming levels, with several high-ranking investigators and a presidential guardsman arrested for selling information to drug cartels.
Well, that's a problem. But one of the Feds tried to put a positive spin on the news that our Mexican allies in the drug war are passing our intel on to the bad guys.
The U.S. agent said the arrests were an encouraging sign that Mexico's government is serious about stopping drug gangs from getting their hands on intelligence, some of which comes from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA.
That's an extremely optimistic way of looking at the problem. I suppose you could say that this fellow's glass -- or his skull -- was 5 percent full.
"There have been occurrences where we have shared information and then found that the information we shared was compromised, given, provided, leaked to the very targets that were being investigated," the official told Reuters late on Wednesday on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. agent praised [Mexican President Felipe] Calderon for fighting the drug gangs head on but said some operations have been frustrated as cartels flush with cash can pay massive bribes for information or use violence to intimidate police.
"There is no infallible system when you are talking about a $65 billion enterprise. Money talks," he said, referring to the estimated size of Mexico's drug trade.
Among those arrested last year were Mexico's liaison to Interpol as well as the country's organized crime chief Noe Ramirez, who is accused of taking at least $450,000 to pass secrets to crime gangs.
Mexico is well on its way to becoming a failed state, thanks in small measure to its hostility to free-market capitalism, but mostly because of the corrosive and corrupting impact of the billions of dollars in drug money, cash that buys off privates and generals, beat cops and police chiefs -- and funds the assassins that murder public servants and journalists who refuse to sell their souls to the cartels.
It's nice to know that U.S. law enforcement agencies are sharing intel with the Mexican authorities -- as well as their paymasters, too.
Posted by Mike Lief at January 15, 2009 10:34 PM
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Comments
A couple of observations...
You cannot be critical of our government for having shared information with the Mexican Government. The bottom line is that if we are going to take any action in that sovereign country we have to share information with them. There have been some high profile arrests and prosecutions of extradited cartel members here in the UNited States. In order to pull that off cooperation has to occurr at some level.
My opinion of our ongoing drug war and the cartels in Mexico is that our government is clearly going about it the wrong way. They are treating the issue like a domestic criminal issue. We wait until the consumer has the drugs in their hand here and then try and prosecute them. It is easy, but ineffective.
The government needs to reclassify the problem as one of homeland security. The cartels are putting poison on our street that is just as dangerous as it would be if they were lobbing bombs over our borders. We should be very aggressive with Mexico that if their government will not or cannot fix the problem, our military will. While cartels are well financed, they are no match for our military. Along that line, the borders will have to be shut down-seriously shut down.
I suspect that if more lawmakers' children and wives were doing meth instead of prescription pills, they would be more concerned about it. Drugs continue to haunt the poverty stricken at a much higher rate than the rest of the United States.
Posted by: RW at January 16, 2009 06:21 PM