More nasty reality from the drug wars. At least the NYT is covering it: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/world/americas/us-drug-agents-launder-profits-of-mexican-cartels.html?_r=1&hp
D.E.A. Launders Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels NYTimes / Ginger Thompson / 12.3.2011 WASHINGTON - Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington's expanding role in Mexico's fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials. The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are. They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents. The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency's effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests. Agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations. But Michael S. Vigil, a former senior agency official who is currently working for a private contracting company called Mission Essential Personnel, said, “We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren't laundering money for the sake of laundering money.†Another former agency official, who asked not to be identified speaking publicly about delicate operations, said, “My rule was that if we are going to launder money, we better show results. Otherwise, the D.E.A. could wind up being the largest money launderer in the business, and that money results in violence and deaths.†Those are precisely the kinds of concerns members of Congress have raised about a gun-smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious, in which agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed people suspected of being low-level smugglers to buy and transport guns across the border in the hope that they would lead to higher-level operatives working for Mexican cartels. After the agency lost track of hundreds of weapons, some later turned up in Mexico; two were found on the United States side of the border where an American Border Patrol agent had been shot to death. Former D.E.A. officials rejected comparisons between letting guns and money walk away. Money, they said, poses far less of a threat to public safety. And unlike guns, it can lead more directly to the top ranks of criminal organizations. “These are not the people whose faces are known on the street,†said Robert Mazur, a former D.E.A. agent and the author of a book about his years as an undercover agent inside the MedellÃn cartel in Colombia. “They are super-insulated. And the only way to get to them is to follow their money.†Another former drug agency official offered this explanation for the laundering operations: “Building up the evidence to connect the cash to drugs, and connect the first cash pickup to a cartel's command and control, is a very time consuming process. These people aren't running a drugstore in downtown L.A. that we can go and lock the doors and place a seizure sticker on the window. These are sophisticated, international operations that practice very tight security. And as far as the Mexican cartels go, they operate in a corrupt country, from cities that the cops can't even go into.†The laundering operations that the United States conducts elsewhere - about 50 so-called Attorney General Exempt Operations are under way around the world - had been forbidden in Mexico after American customs agents conducted a cross-border sting without notifying Mexican authorities in 1998, which was how most American undercover work was conducted there up to that point. But that changed in recent years after President Felipe Calderón declared war against the country's drug cartels and enlisted the United States to play a leading role in fighting them because of concerns that his security forces had little experience and long histories of corruption. Today, in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions, the United States is running numerous undercover laundering investigations against Mexico's most powerful cartels. One D.E.A. official said it was not unusual for American agents to pick up two or three loads of Mexican drug money each week. A second official said that as Mexican cartels extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations had grown as well. When asked how much money had been laundered as a part of the operations, the official would only say, “A lot.†“If you're going to get into the business of laundering money,†the official added, “then you have to be able to launder money.†Former counternarcotics officials, who also would speak only on the condition of anonymity about clandestine operations, offered a clearer glimpse of their scale and how they worked. In some cases, the officials said, Mexican agents, posing as smugglers and accompanied by American authorities, pick up traffickers' cash in Mexico. American agents transport the cash on government flights to the United States, where it is deposited into traffickers' accounts, and then wired to companies that provide goods and services to the cartel. In other cases, D.E.A. agents, posing as launderers, pick up drug proceeds in the United States, deposit them in banks in this country and then wire them to the traffickers in Mexico. The former officials said that the drug agency tried to seize as much money as it laundered - partly in the fees the operatives charged traffickers for their services and another part in carefully choreographed arrests at pickup points identified by their undercover operatives. And the former officials said that federal law enforcement agencies had to seek Justice Department approval to launder amounts greater than $10 million in any single operation. But they said that the cap was treated more as a guideline than a rule, and that it had been waived on many occasions to attract the interest of high-value targets. “They tell you they're bringing you $250,000, and they bring you a million,†one former agent said of the traffickers. “What's the agent supposed to do then, tell them no, he can't do it? They'll kill him.†It is not clear whether such operations are worth the risks. So far there are few signs that following the money has disrupted the cartels' operations, and little evidence that Mexican drug traffickers are feeling any serious financial pain. Last year, the D.E.A. seized about $1 billion in cash and drug assets, while Mexico seized an estimated $26 million in money laundering investigations, a tiny fraction of the estimated $18 billion to $39 billion in drug money that flows between the countries each year. Mexico has tightened restrictions on large cash purchases and on bank deposits in dollars in the past five years. But a proposed overhaul of the Mexican attorney general's office has stalled, its architects said, as have proposed laws that would crack down on money laundered through big corporations and retail chains. “Mexico still thinks the best way to seize dirty money is to arrest a trafficker, then turn him upside down to see how much change falls out of his pockets,†said Sergio Ferragut, a professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico and the author of a book on money laundering, which he said was “still a sensitive subject for Mexican authorities.†Mr. Calderón boasts that his government's efforts - deploying the military across the country - have fractured many of the country's powerful cartels and led to the arrests of about two dozen high-level and midlevel traffickers. But there has been no significant dip in the volume of drugs moving across the country. Reports of human rights violations by police officers and soldiers have soared. And drug-related violence has left more than 40,000 people dead since Mr. Calderón took office in December 2006. The death toll is greater than in any period since Mexico's revolution a century ago, and the policy of close cooperation with Washington may not survive. “We need to concentrate all our efforts on combating violence and crime that affects people, instead of concentrating on the drug issue,†said a former foreign minister, Jorge G. Castañeda, at a conference hosted last month by the Cato Institute in Washington. “It makes absolutely no sense for us to put up 50,000 body bags to stop drugs from entering the United States.†Two questions: If you dance with the devil,,who is the devil? How much money did we make for laundering their money?
""- You are smoking 1 gram total in both scenarios - You smoke 0.25 grams per bong hit - Your weed has a 15% THC content - Joints are 28% efficient at delivering THC - Bongs are 72% efficient at delivering THC Total Inhaled THC [Joint] = (0.28 absorption)(1.0g)(0.15 thc) = 0.042 g THC/joint Inhaled THC/Bong Hit = (0.72 absorption)(0.25g)(0.15 thc) = 0.027 g THC/hit # Bong Hits required to get as high as smoking a J = (0.042)/(0.027) = 1.56 Bong Hits"" your math ends too quickly,,,,no matter how you deliver the drugs through your lungs,you absorb appx 30% of your intake before exhaling the rest back into the atmosphere. Michael Sphinx might get 40% Eat that gram of cannabis on a firecracker and get 100% The above article sounds like an effort to clean up a mess we don't have all the info on,,,,yet.
Pfft. DEA claims everything is for "investigative purposes." They're just as greedy as the drug dealers. And guess what? Neither of those two would like to see drugs legalized. Funny, huh?
This shit really used to make waves not too many years ago. Nobody talks about it anymore. Guess the government just doesn't give a shit if it's being criminal anymore...fuckitall, they're rollin' in dough anyway, I guess that's their mentality now. And we the people are too enthralled with our iPhones and Jersey Shore to give a FUCK if our government is stealing our money and then fucking us with it. *sigh*
Everyday people just DO NOT understand how corrupt our entire government really is. Whenever I try to talk about the corruption/lies of our government, most people just give me that "look" which says "paranoid much?". It's pathetic, but it's the truth.
Followup: COngress opens an investigation http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/world/americas/lawmakers-to-open-inquiry-on-undercover-dea-operation.html?_r=1&ref=us Too bad this will likely only go as deep as it takes to find out whether there's anything the Reps can use to bash the Dems in the presidential campaign. Just like with the "Fast and Furious" ATF gun scandal, where once it became clear that it got hatched out of the Arizona field office, instead of the White House, the congressional investigators lost interest. Still it's worth hoping there are actually some legislators in Congress who don't realize how fucked up US drug policy has become. Maybe this opens some eyes.
Lawmakers to Open an Inquiry on Undercover Drug Operation NYTimes / Ginger Thompson / 12,5,2011 WASHINGTON - Congressional Republicans said Monday that they would open an investigation into undercover operations by the Drug Enforcement Administration in which agents have laundered and smuggled millions of dollars in drug money as part of an effort to help Mexico fight organized crime. The operations, which drug officials said had the support and cooperation of the Mexican government, have funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars across borders and moved millions more through shell accounts to help American agents identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and who their leaders are. Critics said the operations blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime, raising questions similar to those around a gun-smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious that involves agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The gun operation has been under investigation for months by Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In a letter on Monday to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Mr. Issa said he would expand that investigation to include the drug agency, describing its money-laundering investigations as “dangerous schemes†and adding that “the consequences have been disastrous.†Mr. Issa, Republican of California, asked Mr. Holder to provide a briefing on the undercover operations to his staff on Wednesday. He wrote, “It is almost unfathomable to contemplate the degree to which the United States government has made itself an accomplice to the drug trade, which has thus far left more than 40,000 people dead in Mexico.†Just as with the cocaine being smuggled all over the world by the CIA in the 80's and probably still done today,,it is all smoke and mirrors until they shut these out of control letter gangs down and rebuild them. We not only need to replace our legislators but the bureaucracies they have built.
Smuggling drugs? So what? What's that gotta do with Dancing With the Stars? The DEA is cool. They keep our kids safe from all the druggies. You guys bore the hell out of me with your drug conspiracies. I'm gonna crack a beer, pop some pills, and watch some internet porn now.
the unwillingness of our elected representatives to confront these bureaucracies makes a mockery of representative democracy. Both of the current political parties are fully complicit in this farce and so are we the citizens for not taking a stand.
read this a few days ago. how they can get away with this a no one calls them out on it is beyond me.
in all honesty, do we have the power to get this corrupt, shitty government out of office and replace it with people that are like US and know what it means to EARN an honest living? the countrys goin down the shitter and we can do much... can we? without bloodshed?
honestly, I very much doubt it. I doubt that the country has the stomach for it. The reality of revolution is not something to be taken lightly. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- there's blood in the streets it's up to my ankles, there's blood in the streets its up to my knees, there's blood in the streets the town of Chicago, there's blood in the streets it's following me.
Whatever works man, the problem today is that too many people are afraid of the government. It is supposed to be the other way around
you got to admit they have reason to be afraid. The government is better funded, has the kind of security forces that common dictators only dream of, they have courts and prisons and aren't afraid to use them, and when all else fails they can "rendition" you to another country for a wee bit o' torture. If you have been paying attention, 60 congressmen from BOTH parties signed on to treating American citizens like terror suspects, now bothersome lawyers or courts if they deem you a threat. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot American style.