Bush-Era Drug Enforcement Agents Held Sex Parties Funded by Colombian Drug Cartels

Saturday, March 28, 2015

 

Colombia appears to be a popular spot for R&R among federal law enforcement agents. In 2012, 

Secret Service agents were found to have employed prostitutes in Cartagena while advancing a trip by President Barack Obama. Now an investigation has shown that Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents had parties with prostitutes in Colombia during the last half of the George W. Bush administration.

According to a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general, DEA agents participated in “sex parties”—in which the prostitutes were hired by Colombian drug cartels—from 2005 to 2008. The agents were also found to have allowed Colombian police officers to watch over their weapons and property during the parties.

“Although some of the DEA agents participating in these parties denied it, the information in the case file suggested they should have known the prostitutes in attendance were paid with cartel funds. A foreign officer also alleged providing protection for the DEA agents’ weapons and property during the parties,” the report said. “The foreign officers further alleged that in addition to soliciting prostitutes, three DEA SSAs [special agents] in particular were provided money, expensive gifts, and weapons from drug cartel members.”

The scandal involved 10 DEA agents, some of whom received suspensions of two to 10 days.

The IG’s report also noted that the DEA didn’t fully cooperate with the investigation. “We were also concerned by an apparent decision by DEA to withhold information regarding a particular open misconduct case,” the report states. “The OIG [Office of Inspector General] was not given access to this case file information until several months after our request, and only after the misconduct case was closed. Once we became aware of the information, we interviewed DEA employees who said that they were given the impression that they were not to discuss this case with the OIG while the case remained open.”

DEA supervisors had been aware of the misconduct for some time because they’d received complaints from the management of the Bogotá building where the parties were taking place, according to Politico.

House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has said he’ll begin hearings on the revelations. “We have to understand issue by issue what is happening. We need to understand how these people are being held accountable. There should be no question about the severity of the punishment,” Chaffetz said. “I don’t care how senior the person is, they are going to have to let these people go.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Steve Straehley

To Learn More:

DEA Agents Had ‘Sex Parties’ with Prostitutes, Watchdog Says (by John Bresnahan and Lauren French, Politico)

Report: DEA Agents Had ‘Sex Parties’ with Prostitutes Hired by Drug Cartels (by Sari Horwitz and Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post)

The Handling of Sexual Harassment and Misconduct Allegations by the Department’s Law Enforcement Components (Department of Justice, inspector general)

The CIA Double-Dip: Drugs, Fraud, & the JFK Assassination

We must have missed the follow-up stories on the justice trials how the DEA, Homeland Security, CIA, etc. criminals got the punishment the American people deserved. Guess we weren't paying close enough attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Daniel Hopsicker

A six-year long investigation into the drug trafficking operation in St Petersburg Florida that was exposed when two planes were busted in the Yucatan carrying a total of 10 tons of cocaine revealed the planes had all been “parked,” or “sheep-dipped,” in the names of straw owners to conceal the CIA’s involvement.

 
The composition of this group of straw owners, composed of a fascinating collection of people with often interlocking connections through various other enterprises, says a lot about the circles the CIA runs in.

Among the few who lent their names to the registration of more than one of these CIA planes is the granddaughter of Texas oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, who back in the 1930’s was known as the richest man in America. Hunt’s other singular distinction is having been accused by Russian newspaper Pravda of being behind the JFK assassination.

A disquieting discovery

The investigation uncovered incontrovertible, if unsurprising, proof of involvement in the operation by the Mob (in this case, the Chicago Outfit) by Texas oil interests, Saudi financiers,  and, of course, the CIA.

But unearthing new evidence about the CIA’s role in the drug trade for the past 50 years no longer provides much grist for the gossip mill. Time marches on. Gary Webb was right. Everybody knows it.
One sign of the times is that where once there was outrage over CIA involvement in drug trafficking, today many seem glad to see the Agency developing outside interests that don’t require access to a dungeon.

What is eye-opening however is the disquieting discovery that those involved in the enterprise,  like Adnan Khashoggi and his lieutenant Ramy El-Batrawi, both of whom have long histories in past CIA operations, also used their ability to operate with impunity—their get out of jail free card—to act like the worst sort of double-dealing flimflam men, bunco artists and grifters.
 
They were doing the CIA “double-dip.” Keeping one eye on incoming flights at St Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport for news of  a drug plane’s safe return to Florida, and one eye on the fine print in SEC filings.

Khashoggi and El-Batrawi used a slick financial stock scheme to game the system, and plunder hundreds of millions of dollars from investors and taxpayers in what became known as Stockwalk, which led to what was then (2004-2005) the largest brokerage bankruptcy since the Great Depression.

Khashoggi and El-Batrawi participated in the wide-spread looting  of the American economy. But they were far from acting alone.

Was the plundering systematic?

The sheer number of clearly CIA-connected entities engaged in massive financial fraud, for example, by stripping companies of their assets and using bankruptcy laws to walk away, that I encountered while pursuing links to drug trafficking in St. Petersburg was astonishing. A big question today: Was the plundering systematic?

But first,today, a brief explanation of the overt role in the drug trafficking operation played by the two Saudi men. Khashoggi lieutenant Ramy El-Batrawi supplied one of SkyWay’s twin DC-9’s.

Once I’d obtained the FAA registration records for the two DC-9’s, N900SA and N12ONE, it soon became obvious that both planes had been sheep-dipped through a number of owners of convenience to hide the identity of their true owners, the CIA.

Start here: Sometime in June of 2003 someone made the decision that SkyWay’s fleet of planes needed beefing up with a second DC-9.  

Khashoggi and El-Batrawi had one. But there was a problem. Given the controversy over the massive fraud involved in the bankrupting of Khashoggi and El-Batrawi’s GenesisIntermedia, by 2003 El-Batrawi’s aviation company, Genesis Aviation, was not exactly the CIA’s most discreet aviation front company.

How can you tell if a plane’s been sheep-dipped by the CIA?

READ MUCH MORE 

Plus our: ▶ How Crack Funded CIA War: Gary Webb Interview on Contras and Ronald Reagan (1996) - *vid*   

The bogus drug war: Meet me at Mena, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and the great US drug biz *video*

More videos like this

Things go better with coke

It's not a myth and it's not a conspiracy theory.

Grisly Crime Scene Photos Show the Result of Crime Committed With "Fast and Furious" Rifle

By Reagan Wilson on December 19, 2014

      

Grisly crime scene photos from Arizona have been released that show exactly the damage that “Fast and Furious” guns are doing.

Under the program, hundreds, if not thousands of guns, were not only allowed to be smuggled into Mexico from the United States, but the ATF actually encouraged gun sellers to sell to known smugglers.

The ATF hoped to track the guns to high ranking cartel members, but the firearms quickly disappeared. However, they didn’t stay gone long, dozens of the guns have turned up at the scenes of murders and gunfights.

Case in point, according to the Daily Mail:

The gun used in a 2013 gang-style shooting in Phoenix, Arizona has been traced to an ill-fated Obama administration program that tried in vain to track firearms across the Mexican border to drug kingpins, and grisly pictures released Thursday show the aftermath.

Carlos Rocha-Lopez and Jobani Flores were shot and left for dead by a criminal assailant who got his AK-47 rifle along with 39 other guns on a single day from a single store because the federal government instructed a gun dealer to sell them to him.

Judicial Watch, a center-right watchdog group, obtained the disturbing images through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice, whose Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran the failed ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ program that put the military-style rifle on the streets.

The group’s investigators matched up the serial number from the gun in crime-scene photos to a weapon the federal government allowed to ‘walk’ across America’s southern border.

So, in this case we not only have a gun that was allowed to be smuggled across the border to Mexico, but it was apparently smuggled back into the US before being used in a crime.

Perhaps the most notorious Fast and Furious gun used in the United States is the one that was used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry (pictured above).

Terry was killed by a Mexican national along the border while performing duties related to his job.

The gun used to kill Terry was one of the very guns that the ATF allowed to be taken into Mexico.

via controversialtimes

CIA Jet Crashed With 4 Tons Of Cocaine On Board

It's unfathomable how all these referred-to government law enforcement agencies can only respond with their characteristic "Duh, dunno, wha happened?" Only a brain-flushed fool buys this.

 

October 27th, 2014 | by hqanon

Intelligence

Written by: Tiobe

A Gulfstream II jet, aircraft # N987SA, allegedly used to transport Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) rendition prisoners from Europe and America to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba crash-landed Sept. 24, 2007 in Mexico carrying a cargo of over four tons of cocaine. It is suspected the Gulfstream jet ran out of fuel as it traveled from Colombia to the United States.
 
Federal Aviation Association records list the plane in question as belonging to Atef Hanna of Tarpon Springs Florida, but at the time of the incident, it was registered to Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc. of Coconut Creek, Florida. According to an article in The Tampa Tribune, Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc. was a front for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE claims it sold the aircraft to Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)-suspected drug smugglers as part of an undercover operation immediately prior to the crash in Mexico.

The ICE undercover agent who brokered the deal, former racecar driver Don Whittington, pled guilty to federal tax charges in 1987.

According to an affidavit accidentally unsealed then subsequently resealed, Whittington is currently under investigation for using a Colorado Springs resort and spa to launder profits from the sale of this and other aircraft used in smuggling busts.
____________________________________________________________________________________________ Sources: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/12/420107/-CIA-Torture-Jet-wrecks-with-4-Tons-of-COCAINE# http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/anonymous-cia-plane-crash-lands-with.html?m=1 http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=N987SA http://tbo.com/list/military-news/ice-sold-drug-smugglers-doomed-jet-20140115/ Image Sources: http://banoosh.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/plano3.jpg

The CIA/Drug Dealer Alliance: "CIA are drug smugglers." - Federal Judge Bonner, head of DEA

60 Minutes presses for the truth, and Robert C. Bonner, former federal judge and head of the DEA, calls the CIA "drug smugglers." This video is dedicated to all those lives lost in the War on Drugs, while the CIA betrayed us.  

Popular Allegations of CIA drug trafficking & Smuggling videos

1. "CIA are drug smugglers." - Federal Judge Bonner, head of DEA- You don't get better proof than this

   by michaellevine53
   3
   
   60 Minutes CIA Drug Smuggling Part 1 of 4

   by Levon Spradlin
   4
   60 Minutes CIA Drug Smuggling # 4

   by Daniel Stamper
   5
   Episode #417 - Bush-Clinton-Obama Are CIA Drug Smugglers. Period

   by GMN Telemedia
   6
   60 Minutes CIA Drug Smuggling # 2.avi

   by BlackOups
   7
   60 Minutes CIA Drug Smuggling # 2

   by Daniel Stamper
   8
   60 Minutes CIA Drug Smuggling Part 3 of 4

   by Levon Spradlin
   9
   The Mena Connection: Bush, Clinton, and CIA drug smuggling part 1/6

   by Kennedy1op
   10
   Gary Webb - CIA Drug Smuggling [2004]

   by Alexander Light
   11
   60 Minutes CIA Drug Smuggling # 3

   by Daniel Stamper
   12
   The Mena Connection: Bush, Clinton, and CIA drug smuggling part 5/6

   by Kennedy1op
   13
   Mena Connection of Clinton, Bush and the CIA, Drug smuggling Pt 6.avi

   by Thesimplethetruth3
   14
   The Dirty Secrets of George Bush: Blackmail, CIA Drug Smuggling and Trafficking

   by Othilia Bergqvist
   15
   60 Minutes CIA Drug Smuggling Introduction by DEA agents

   by Daniel Stamper
   16
   The Mena Connection: Bush, Clinton, and CIA drug smuggling part 4/6

   by Kennedy1op
   17
   Mena Connection of Clinton, Bush and the CIA, Drug smuggling Pt 2

   by Thesimplethetruth3
   18
   Past to Present: CIA Drug Smuggling

   by the1dutchmaster
   19
   The Dirty Secrets of George Bush: Blackmail, CIA Drug Smuggling and Trafficking

   by The Film Archives
   20
   The Mena Connection: Bush, Clinton, and CIA drug smuggling part 3/6

   by Kennedy1op
   21
   Detroit City Council Hearing on CIA and Drug Smuggling, Part 1

   by Leroy Pletten
   
   

 

BARRY THE DOPE DEALER (Obama), is Why His School Files are Sealed

WHY WASN'T THIS ALL ON THE NEWS IN 2008 WHEN HE WAS RUNNING FOR OFFICE ?????

and WHY ISN'T THE NEWS TALKING ABOUT IT TODAY ?????

What about this one?  Obama & His Ex-Lovers (may be offensive) *videos*

Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way that you can quickly understand them. This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. It was translated into English from an article in the Prague newspaper Prager Zeitungon on 04.28.2010:

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, 'merely a fool'. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their President."

Barry was quite the accomplished marijuana addicted enthusiast back in high school and college. Excerpts from David Maraniss' Barack Obama: The Story "Barry the Dope dealer" with the elaborate drug culture surrounding the president when he attended Punahou School in Honolulu and Occidental College in Los Angeles . He definitely inhaled, a hell of a lot of smoke.

1. The Choom Gang

A self-selected group of boys at Punahou School who loved basketball and good times called themselves the Choom Gang. Choom is a verb, meaning "to smoke marijuana."

2. Total Absorption

As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends. The first was called "TA," short for "total absorption." To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton's claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled.

3. Roof Hits

Along with TA, Barry popularized the concept of "roof hits": when they were chooming in the car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.

4. Penalties

When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning "numbing tobacco") instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around. "Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated," explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name who answered to Topo.

5. The Choomwagon[Choom Gang member] Mark Bendix's Volkswagen bus, also known as the Choomwagon. … The other members considered Mark Bendix the glue, he was funny, creative, and uninhibited, with a penchant for Marvel Comics. He also had that VW bus and a house with a pool, a bong, and a Nerf basketball, all enticements for them to slip off midday for a few unauthorized hours of recreation...

6. Interceptions

Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted "Intercepted!," and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.

7. Slippers

Choom Gang members often made their way to Aku Ponds at the end of Manoa Stream, where they slipped past the liliko'i vines and the KAPU (keep out) signs, waded into waist-high cool mountain water, stood near the rock where water rushed overhead, and held up a slipper (what flip-flops are called in Hawaii) to create an air pocket canopy. It was a natural high, they said, stoned or not.

8. Ray The Dealer

He was a long-haired haole hippie who worked at the Mama Mia Pizza Parlor not far from Punahou and lived in a dilapidated bus in an abandoned warehouse. … According to Topolinski, Ray the dealer was "freakin' scary." Many years later they learned that he had been killed with a ball-peen hammer by a scorned gay lover. But at the time he was useful because of his ability to "score quality weed."...In another section of the [senior] yearbook, students were given a block of space to express thanks and define their high school experience. … Nestled below [Obama's] photographs was one odd line of gratitude: "Thanks Tut, Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times." … A hippie drug-dealer made his acknowledgments; his own mother did not.

9. Pumping Stations

Their favorite hangout was a place they called Pumping Stations, a lush hideaway off an unmarked, roughly paved road partway up Mount Tantalus . They parked single file on the grassy edge, turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, and Stevie Wonder, lit up some "sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds" and washed it down with "green bottle beer" (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl).

10. Veto

One of the favorite words in their subculture revealed their democratic nature. The word was veto. Whenever an idea was broached, someone could hold up his hand in the V sign (a backward peace sign of that era) and indicate that the motion was not approved. They later shortened the process so that you could just shout "V" to get the point across.. In the Choom Gang, all V's were created equal.

11. Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud And Kona Gold:

In the Honolulu of Barry's teenage years marijuana was flourishing up in the hills, out in the countryside, in covert greenhouses everywhere. It was sold and smoked right there in front of your nose; Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud, Kona Gold, and other local variations of pakololo were readily available.

12. The Barf Couch

The Barf Couch earned its name early in the first trimester when a freshman across the hall from Obama [in the Haines Hall Annex dorm at Occidental College ] drank himself into a stupor and threw up all over himself and the couch. In the manner of pallbearers hoisting a coffin, a line of Annexers lifted the tainted sofa with the freshman aboard and toted it out the back door and down four steps to the first concrete landing on the way to the parking lot. A day later, the couch remained outside in the sun, resting on its side with cushions off (someone had hosed it clean), and soon it was back in the hallway nook.

13. The Annex Olympics

(The main hallway at Haines Hall was called the Annex,) home to the impromptu Annex Olympics: long-jumping onto a pile of mattresses, wrestling in underwear, hacking golf balls down the hallway toward the open back door, boxing while drunk. There were the non-Olympic sports of lighting farts and judging them by color, tipping over the Coke machine, breaking the glass fire extinguisher case, putting out cigarettes on the carpet, falling asleep on the carpet, flinging Frisbees at the ceiling-mounted alarm bell, tasting pizza boxes to the floor, and smoking pot from a three-foot crimson opaque bong, a two-man event involving the smoker and an accomplice standing ready to respond to the order "Hey, dude, light the bowl!

Resources:

1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/the-ch...

2. http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/10218-for-choom-the-bel...

3. http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/politics-...

4. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-and-his-po...

5. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2012/05/27/the_choom_gang_ob...

6. http://theweek.com/article/index/228490/the-choom-gang-9-juic...

7. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-top-headlines-about-barac...

8. http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/a-users-guide-to-smoking-pot-wi...

Source:  BARRY THE DOPE DEALER, that's why his school files are sealed

DOJ Demands Immunity for Anti-Iran Group UANI

Mark D. Wallace, standing, the chief executive of United Against Nuclear Iran, last year in the group’s office with its staff members, from left, Martin House, David Ibsen and Nathan Carleton. Credit Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times  

Will precedent place Israel lobby organizations above the law?

by Grant Smith, September 15, 2014

The U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal judge on Friday to throw out a lawsuit against the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., more popularly known as United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI). Greek shipping magnate Victor Restis sued UANI last year claiming the group’s false public allegations he aided Iran’s nuclear program had cost him billions in lost revenue. Mystery surrounds precisely how the U.S. Department of Justice decided to become involved in the civil suit. Clues may be found in its most court recent filing (PDF) demanding the lawsuit be shut down. On February 14, 2014 “the Government informed the Court that the United States wished to have an opportunity to determine whether the Government had an interest in this action.” According to the court docket (PDF) through that time UANI was losing a series of key battles to dismiss the Restis lawsuit and evade standard discovery motions that would have revealed its secret sources of funding and clandestine operations to obtain sensitive information. It is likely UANI called in the government to help get the case dismissed.

UANI clearly has a lot to hide. Its board of advisors includes the former head of a country’s foreign intelligence services in the top tier targeting the United States for economic and military secrets – Israeli Mossad’s former General Director Meir Dagan. The thinly-funded organization has premium office space in Rockefeller Center in New York. With a budget of only $1.8 million per year, UANI somehow manages to target timely satellite imaging while intercepting internal corporate communications it uses to launch private and public shakedowns of corporations it claims are not sufficiently adhering to the Israel-lobby driven Iran boycott. UANI resembles yet another in a long line of thinly-veiled Israeli cover entities more than a bona fide charity.

The U.S. government is asking the newly assigned judge, Kevin Nathaniel Fox, that the case be dismissed without U.S. attorneys having to reveal which federal agency’s secrets are in UANI’s possession, how UANI acquired and used them, and why there has not been a 1917 Espionage Act investigation of the group for possessing such information if it is unauthorized. If such a “state secrets privilege” is granted, Victor Restis will have no opportunity to clear his name or recover damages since allegations will never be litigated. UANI will have acquired a binding “license to smear” and operate beyond the law. The boards and staff of other Israel lobbying organizations, many with their own former U.S. and foreign government officials with access to classified information, may exercise expansive new powers. The legal precedent established by Restis v. UANI may formalize immunity from criminal and civil statutes that Israel lobbying organizations have slowly been acquiring since 1948.

In the 1940s an archipelago of Israel fronts posing as charities successfully avoided Arms Export Act and Neutrality Act charges by arguing that none of the tons of advanced weapons being smuggled out of the nation would be used against America. Scores of powerful American charities operating on behalf of Israel including the Zionist Organization of America, American Zionist Council/American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Jewish Committee (PDF) avoided the 1938 Foreign Agent Registration Act enforcement. Their key argument to the Justice Department was that FARA was designed to combat Nazism and communism, not the Israeli government’s propaganda campaigns, intelligence transfers and foreign seed money flows to groups like AIPAC.

Israel’s American nuclear weapons smuggling ventures, such as NUMEC, the Netanyahu/Smyth/Milchan ring and Telogy (PDF) have been covered up by successive presidential administrations afraid to reveal their inability or unwillingness to enforce the law whenever it could threaten political support or campaign contributions. In the 1980s, the Justice Department quashed an investigation in which classified information stolen by Israeli agents was given to AIPAC in order to pass an unfavorable U.S. trade agreement. The Justice Department’s more recent failure to prosecute AIPAC officials for espionage charges in 2005, and kid-gloves treatment of spies Ben-Ami Kadish and Stuart Nozette all foreshadowed the Obama administration establishing actual court precedents that “Israel lobbying crimes are above the law.”

Thanks to declassified documents and the disclosures from Edward Snowden, it is not difficult to imagine how Israel, its lobby and the Justice Department might engineer such immunity. Although most Americans never voted on it – and would likely never approve – current United States policy is that “the survival of the state of Israel is a paramount goal of U.S. Middle East policy.” Therefore no activities claiming to advance that policy can ever be criminally prosecuted, no matter how illegal. NSA intercepts have been given to the DEA, which then “recreates” a parallel evidence trail in drug cases, scrubbing away their secret origin. Israel is also in a good position to launder NSA intercepts or its own intercepts back into its myriad American front organizations to attack foreign adversaries (possibly even for purely commercial reasons). UANI’s stunning capacity to aim satellites for imaging and obtain internal corporate documents is more explainable if it is really a foreign or domestic conduit laundering intelligence rather than the originator. Protecting that laundering should not be the job of the Justice Department.

Continue reading

Citi, Deutsche Bank, Bank Of America Were Channels For Sending Drug Money To Colombia, Court Filing Shows

By Angelo Young@angeloyoung_
on September 14 2014 12:53 PM

Colombian police shows guns, watches and jewels seized in the house where Erikson Vargas, a.k.a. Sebastian, alleged drug gang leader of 'La Oficina de Envigado' was captured early this week, near Medellin on August 9, 2012. A year earlier, a sting operation in East Boston exposed a global narcotics ring and started a four-year investigation into how global drug money flowed through major banks and back to 'La Oficina,' where it was used, among other things, to buy these watches and guns. Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images

U.S.-based accounts at Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C), Deutsche Bank AG (ETR:DBK) and Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) were used to channel tens of millions of dollars’ worth of global drug money that was sent to shady Colombian currency brokerages, an affidavit from an undercover Massachusetts detective obtained recently by 100Reporters says. The revelation comes as the U.S. Justice Department has been laying down record penalties against some of the world’s largest financial institutions for trade-sanction and money laundering violations.

Representatives at the banks declined to comment to International Business Times. 

The affidavit by Jaime X. Cepero was filed in August 2013 as part of a four-year investigation by federal authorities in the wake of a 2011 Boston-area sting operation that exposed a global narcotics ring, netting $200 million and 20 suspects. The investigation led to the extradition of 12 suspects from Colombia and 15 guilty pleas. Cepero had been detailed to a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force that oversaw the operation. The affidavit was submitted as evidence last year as part of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. In some instances, he said, the banks had reported suspicious activity to the U.S. Treasury Department as required by law, but not in all instances.

The DEA offers this flowchart explaining how drug money makes it from the street back to the pockets of the Colombian traffickers. DEA

The document not only identifies the three banks by name but also offers a glimpse into the action-movie-like efforts narcotics traffickers used to channel global proceeds from the sale of cocaine and heroin through the United States. Couriers would sometimes stash heat-sealed bundles of currency in secret compartments of parked cars in suburban U.S. parking lots. Similar cash transfers took place on busy streets in major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Orlando, Florida. The affidavit says one transfer took place in Rome where the cash was covered in visible cocaine residue.

The money would then be deposited, in some cases by undercover anti-narcotics agents as part of the sting operation, into accounts held by Colombian brokerage houses at the three banks in Boston and New York. These front companies would then transfer the cash to local shell companies in Colombia in the local currency to be retrieved by the operative of La Oficina de Envigado, the drug cartel that emerged from the ashes of the Medellín Cartel, which collapsed in the early 1990s.

The Treasury Department issued a warning in 2006 that Mexican and Colombian exchange houses were at high-risk of being front organizations for money laundering operations. Like banks, these brokerage houses are often used to handle money transfer operations from expats sending money home. Banks have been subjected to record fines in recent years for allegedly laundering drug money and violating trade sanctions. Last year HSBC Holdings PLC (LON:HSBA) was slapped with a $1.9 billion fine for enabling drug cartels to launder billions of dollars. In June, BNP Paribas SA (EPA:BNP) agreed to pay $8.9 billion for transferring funds out of Sudan and other countries under U.S. trade sanctions.

In many cases banks are allowed to pay fines without admitting guilt, and individuals inside these banks rarely go to prison for enabling drug cartels and despots to move money around. 

View article

▶ How Crack Funded a CIA War: Gary Webb Interview on the Contras and Ronald Reagan (1996) - YouTube

Published on Sep 25, 2013

Facing increasing public scrutiny from the fallout after Webb's "Dark Alliance" series, the CIA conducted its own internal investigations. Investigative journalist Robert Parry credits Webb for being responsible for the following government investigations into the Reagan-Bush administration's conduct of the Contra war:

The Strange Case of a Drug-War Informant, a Ferrari and an Alleged Kidnapping

By Bill Conroy Wed., Sep. 3 2014 at 10:48 AM

Illustrations by Greg Houston

Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez-Peyro, a.k.a. Lalo, insists he's no longer the same man who participated in cartel murders. Missouri officials aren't so sure.

After a few long days visiting family in California, Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez-Peyro was now fighting off sleep behind the wheel of a cherry-red Ferrari. Transporting the exotic coupe — a $200,000 612 Scaglietti — back to New York was to be the highlight of the Christmas holiday out west. But in reality the vehicle's tight quarters and the brooding silence of his girlfriend — Kelly Schroer — were making for an uncomfortable last leg of the journey.

Ramirez-Peyro recalls that they were heading toward the southwestern border of Missouri when Schroer's phone began to vibrate.


"I saw the 1111111 [on the screen], and I knew it was the cops," he says. "I said, 'Hey, Kelly, the police is calling you.' She said, 'No, I don't want to answer.'

"And then they call once again, and she did not want to answer. And I don't even force her to call or not call or speak," continues Ramirez-Peyro, a soft-faced Mexican with wispy black hair.

The couple, both in their forties, would continue east on Interstate 44 for a few more miles without speaking. Schroer, a strawberry blonde from Ramirez-Peyro's new hometown of Buffalo, New York, considered her boyfriend too controlling. 

He, in turn, didn't trust her.

They met last summer in a Buffalo bar, and their relationship had been a prickly one from the outset. Within a few months of dating, Schroer accused Ramirez-Peyro of harassing and physically abusing her — a complaint that led a New York court to issue a "stay away" order of protection against Ramirez-Peyro in early December. That same month, police in the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda picked up Ramirez-Peyro for violating the order. He was soon released, and a few days later Schroer signed an affidavit, prepared by Ramirez-Peyro's attorney in Buffalo, stating that the allegations of harassment and abuse she made "are not true."

"He never physically hit or abused or hurt me, and I want to be able to spend time with him without there being a violation of a court order," Schroer wrote in an affidavit.

Now, alone in the cramped Ferrari, whatever reconciliation the two arrived at before setting out on their cross-country journey was gone. As they entered the city limits of Joplin, Ramirez-Peyro exited the highway and pulled the sports car into the parking lot of a La Quinta Inn. By 11 p.m. he was in bed and out cold. He awoke an hour and a half later to a pounding on the door. Schroer was gone.

Greg Houston

Ramirez-Peyro pulled himself together, slipped out of bed and opened the door. In front of him were several Joplin police officers with their guns drawn. While he had been asleep, Schroer had gathered up her possessions and quietly run off. She checked into a nearby Quality Inn and immediately called the front desk to ask the attendant to flag down a pair of cops she had seen conversing in their patrol cars in an adjacent lot.

Once the officers arrived, Schroer breathlessly launched into a story that seemed almost too outlandish to believe. Ramirez-Peyro, she told the patrolmen, was an extremely dangerous man holding her against her will.

"He has cartel contacts in the U.S. that will kill my family, and I'm afraid what's going to happen now. He's going to have them killed," Schroer told the cops, according to a probable cause statement.

Schroer then handed one of the patrolmen her smartphone, on which the officers could read for themselves the articles about how Ramirez-Peyro — better known by the nickname "Lalo" — had once been a police officer in Mexico before becoming a top lieutenant for the powerful Juárez Cartel. In that role Ramirez-Peyro had overseen multiple murders in a home, just across the El Paso, Texas, border, that came to be known as the "House of Death." And the story didn't end there.

This Lalo character — fast asleep in Room 365 of the adjacent La Quinta — was more complicated than that. 

According to the articles, while working for the cartel Lalo had also been an informant for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He later became an embarrassment to the American government when it got out that one of its own undercover operatives participated in gangland killings south of the border.

It's a hell of a tale, and, if Lalo's version is to be believed, includes a government conspiracy to discredit him. One thing is certain, though: The story of the alleged kidnapper and former cartel snitch in a Ferrari is one of the sexier cases to hit rural Newton County in a long time.

"This is really more intrigue than I'm used to dealing with. I'll tell you that," confirms prosecutor Jake Skouby. "Basically, I-44 runs through my district, and that's how I caught this case. That's it."

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next Page >>

DEA Paid Amtrak Worker $850,000 for Passenger Lists Available for Free!

Congressional Oversight still AWOL. But how can that be when there's never been any?  Isn't congress truly a mess themselves of non-compliance? This amount must be paid back from the DEA's next budget allotment with NO increase to replace it. What happens to numbskull DEA Michele Leonhart is up to congressional investigators(?). On the scene after the snafu, Sen. Grassley owns up to being the buffoon we know him to be.

---

Amtrak worker collected $854,460 selling passenger data to US Drug Enforcement Administration – and the government could have had the info for free

• DEA paid nearly $43k per year for 20 years to an 'informant' who was passing along private passenger data
• Amtrak's own police force would have shared the information with the DEA without cost
• Sen. Chuck Grassley is angry about the unnecessary spending
• The Amtrak secretary who pocketed the DEA's cloak-and-dagger money was allowed to retire instead of facing dismissal or other discipline

By Associated Press

Published: 02:48 EST, 12 August 2014 | Updated: 14:50 EST, 13 August 2014

 
The Drug Enforcement Administration paid an Amtrak employee hundreds of thousands of dollars over two decades to obtain confidential information it could have gotten for free, according to internal investigators at the railroad.

According to a report released Monday by Amtrak's inspector general, the DEA paid an Amtrak secretary $854,460 to be an informant. The employee was not publicly identified except as a 'secretary to a train and engine crew.'

Amtrak's own police agency is already in a joint drug enforcement task force that includes the DEA. According to the inspector general, that task force can obtain Amtrak confidential passenger reservation information at no cost.

Amtrak is not a federal agency but it runs its own police force -- which already partners with the DEA and shares information like passenger lists and cargo manifests

The office of Amtrak Inspector General Tom Howard declined to identify the secretary or say why it took so long to uncover the payments. Howard's report on the incident suggested policy changes and 'other measures to address control weaknesses that Amtrak management is considering.' DEA spokeswoman Dawn Dearden declined to comment.

Amtrak is officially known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp. and is not a government agency, although it has received tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies and is subject to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

Passenger name reservation information is collected by airlines, rail carriers and others and generally includes a passenger's name, the names of other passengers traveling with them, the dates of the ticket and travel, frequent flier or rider information, credit card numbers, emergency contact information, travel itinerary, baggage information, passport number, date of birth, gender and seat number.

Amtrak's inspector general said the secretary provided the passenger information without seeking approval from Amtrak management or police, but Amtrak's own corporate privacy policy expressly allows it to sell or share personal information about its customers and passengers with contractors or a category of others it describes as 'certain trustworthy business partners.'

It was not immediately clear whether the DEA has rules against soliciting corporate insiders to provide confidential customer information in exchange for money when providing that information would cause the employee to violate a company's or organization's own rules or policies.

The DEA does not publish on its website its staff manuals or instructions for employees.

+3

Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Michele Leonhart will face pressure after the revelation that her agency paid an Amtrak secretary $854,460 over nearly 20 years to obtain confidential information about train passengers

+3

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said the hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts were unnecessary, and demanded more information from the DEA

The report said the secretary was allowed to retire, rather than face administrative discipline, after the discovery that the employee had 'regularly' sold private passenger information since 1995 without Amtrak's approval, said the IG's summary.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the $854,460 an unnecessary expense and asked for further information about the incident in a letter he released Monday to DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart. Grassley said the incident 'raises some serious questions about the DEA's practices and damages its credibility to cooperate with other law enforcement agencies.'

It's not unprecedented for law enforcement to have professional people who are informants employed in transportation and other industries, said a federal law enforcement official who is familiar with the incident involving Amtrak. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak on the record.

The official said that years ago during the investigation of drug lord Pablo Escobar, an informant at a U.S. chemical company provided a major assist to law enforcement by informing authorities that thousands of gallons of acetone were being shipped to Colombia. Acetone is used to manufacture cocaine.