"All the guns come from America"

A number of years ago in Jamaica, I was driving a car with some friends. We were stopped by police and told to get out of the car - the police had their guns drawn. As the driver of the car, I was of particular interest to the ranking officer. As he stood next to me asking me everything under the sun , he waved around, close to my head, a very large revolver.
He said to me "You seem nervous, what is wrong?"
I replied that I wasn't used to guns being waved around my head.
He quickly replied: "What? You are from America! All the guns come from America! You should be used to them!"

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It is very intriguing to me that American gun dealers sell AK-47s. Not that they shouldn't - just doesn't seem very patriotic to me.



ATF's tactics to end gun trafficking face a federal review

By James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 10, 2011; A04

A controversy over tactics used to break up an extensive Mexican gunrunning ring has prompted federal officials to reevaluate an aggressive law enforcement strategy to stop firearms trafficking.

The new scrutiny comes after two separate shootings in the past three months in which federal agents were killed and guns recovered by investigators were later traced back to people already under investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee has charged that ATF agents allowed hundreds of firearms to flow from gun stores in the United States to criminals in Mexico and elsewhere in order to build cases against more prominent gun traffickers.

In one of those cases, ATF agents in Phoenix were divided over when to conclude the investigation and arrest suspected traffickers. Some of those agents took their misgivings to Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) after two AK-47s traced back to a U.S. gun store were recovered near the site of an agent's killing.

The controversy highlights the difficulty ATF agents face in complex cases against increasingly sophisticated gunrunning rings. Many gunrunning cases end with little more than paperwork violations against buyers who procure guns for others. Such "straw purchaser" cases rarely amount to more than charges of lying on federal documents.

"There is no gun-trafficking statute," said James Cavanaugh, a retired ATF supervisor. "We've been yelling for years that we need a gun-trafficking statute, because these cases are so difficult to prove."

This means that agents who want to make bigger cases must sometimes watch guns travel to criminals who use them in more serious crimes, such as drug trafficking.

"Asking cooperating gun dealers to arm cartels and bandits without control of the weapons or knowledge of their whereabouts is an extremely risky strategy," Grassley said.

The Justice Department has denied that the case unfolded the way Grassley asserts, but ATF agents have acknowledged using aggressive tactics in an attempt to break up high-level rings connected to Mexican drug cartels.

The undercover operation's goal, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich said in a letter to Grassley, was "to dismantle the entire trafficking organization, not merely to arrest straw purchasers."

Weich added: "The allegation - that ATF 'sanctioned' or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico - is false."

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) have asked for a review by the Justice Department's inspector general, which last year criticized the ATF for failing to pursue high-level trafficking cases. Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson has asked "a multi-disciplinary panel of law enforcement professionals to review the bureau's current firearms trafficking strategies," the ATF said.

Known within the multi-agency federal task force as Operation Fast and Furious, the undercover investigation culminated in January with 34 people being charged in a 53-count indictment that included drug-smuggling and money-laundering allegations. When the Justice Department announced the arrests in January, it revealed that hundreds of firearms had been traced to crimes, including 195 weapons that were seized by authorities in Mexico.

Grassley's examination revealed sharp disagreement within the ATF field office. "ATF leadership did not allow agents to interdict the weapons in this case," Grassley said.

Stemming the flow of firearms to Mexico, where most gun ownership is outlawed, has been a priority of the Obama administration. "We are trying to work our way through more effective mechanisms to prevent straw purchasers from buying caches of weapons [and] transporting them across the border," Obama said last week in a news conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

But the administration was dealt a setback last month when the House voted to block an ATF plan to track bulk sales of assault weapons along the border.

The controversy came to Grassley's attention after border agent Brian Terry, 40, was gunned down in December while patrolling the border. Two assault rifles on an ATF watch list as part of Fast and Furious were found nearby, but both have been ruled out as the murder weapon, officials said.

The frustrations of agents began appearing anonymously on Web sites. Anti-ATF bloggers sympathetic to the militia movement picked up the allegations late last year, dubbing the scandal "Project Gunwalker" and alleging that ATF agents let guns "walk" to boost the numbers of U.S. weapons recovered in Mexico. The bloggers theorized that the ATF wanted high numbers to gain support for an assault-weapons ban.

Defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin said the controversy has had an impact on the criminal investigation into one of his clients, Carter's Country, a Houston area chain that had sold assault weapons to a gun-trafficking ring. DeGuerin said that Carter's Country was told by the ATF to go ahead with sales of assault weapons and then report the serial numbers later to the ATF. Last week, a prosecutor called DeGuerin to say the investigation was being dropped.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/09/AR2011030905584.html

Columbus, NM Mayor, Police Chief Accused By Feds Of Buying Guns To Illegally Export To Mexico

Indictment Accuses Mayor, Police Chief, Others Of Trying To Export Guns To Mexico Favored By Cartels

By ABC-7 Web Producer Leonard Martinez

POSTED: 9:06 am MST March 10, 2011
UPDATED: 5:41 pm MST March 10, 2011

EL PASO, Texas -- Editor's Note: Initial reports from Luna County Sheriff Raymond Cobos indicated the men were also detained on drug-related charges.

The indictment unsealed Thursday afternoon does not make mention of any drug charges, only firearms trafficking.The mayor and police chief of the Village of Columbus, N.M., were among 10 people arrested Thursday morning on allegations of buying firearms in the U.S. to illegally export to Mexico, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Mexico.

The defendants charged in the 84-count indictment include Angelo Vega, the Columbus chief of police; Eddie Espinoza, the mayor of Columbus; and Blas Gutierrez, a village trustee in Columbus.

Ten of the 11 defendants were arrested without incident Thursday morning by teams of federal, state and local law enforcement officers, and will make their initial appearances Friday in the federal courthouse in Las Cruces, N.M.

Ignacio Villalobos has not been apprehended and is considered a fugitive, according to the U.S. attorney's office in New Mexico. The officers also executed 10 search warrants at eight residences, one business and the Columbus Police Department office.

The indictment is the result of an intensive yearlong investigation initiated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and ICE Homeland Security Investigations, that later expanded to include the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Attorney's Las Cruces Branch Office.

The indictment alleges that, between January 2010 and March 2011, the defendants engaged in a conspiracy to purchase firearms for illegal export to Mexico. During this 14-month period, the defendants allegedly purchased about 200 firearms from Chaparral Guns in Chaparral, N.M., which is owned and operated by defendant Ian Garland.

According to the indictment, the defendants purchased firearms favored by the Mexican Cartels, including 40 AK-47-type pistols, weapons resembling AK-47 rifles but with shorter barrels and without rear stocks, and American Tactical 9 mm caliber pistols.

The defendants allegedly obtained firearms from Chaparral Guns by falsely claiming they were the actual purchasers of the firearms, when in fact they were acting as "straw purchasers" who were buying the firearms on behalf of others, according to the indictment.

Officers also seized 1,580 rounds of 7.62 ammunition and 30 high-capacity magazines from the defendants before they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. The indictment alleges that 12 firearms previously purchased by the defendants later were found in Mexico and were traced back to these defendants. As part of the investigation, every effort was made to seize firearms from defendants to prevent them from entering into Mexico, and no weapons were knowingly permitted to cross the border.

U.S. firearms agents estimate that around 80 percent of the weapons used by Mexican drug traffickers come from the United States, where cartel leaders are hiring Americans with clean records to make the purchases for them, according to an NBC News report in December. In the past four years, Mexican authorities say they have seized 90,000 weapons from their nation's drug war, according to the the NBC News report.

The Luna County Sheriff's Department has restricted the Columbus Police Department, which consists of four police officers, from using their radio frequencies and databases to maintain integrity, Luna County Sheriff Raymond Cobos said. Cobos was heading to the Columbus City Hall on Thursday morning to talk to the remaining city council trustee members about the situation.

"Violation of public trust is probably one of the most heinous crimes that can be perpetrated on the public," Cobos said. "I mean it's horrible....it affects everybody, everybody feels it. I know my officers feel it. The reaction I have and my department and probably other elected and public officials is the reaction of dismay. We're disheartened this occurred but basically what I have to do is make sure I reinforce the feeling that public safety is going to be maintained in Columbus regardless of whatever the circumstances are."

This is not the first time there has been trouble in Columbus.

Espinoza had placed Vega and another Village of Columbus employee on administrative leave Nov. 22 because of "budgetary concerns," according to a report in the Deming Headlight newspaper in November. In mid-January, Columbus trustees reinstated Vega as police chief while Espinoza was on a trip to Albuquerque because no action had been taken, according to an Associated Press article in January.

Columbus has had eight police chiefs since March 2006.

In 1996, when Vega was a Lincoln County deputy sheriff, he was indicted on charges of extortion and intimidating a witness. A plea agreement reduced those charges to a misdemeanor, and Vega was placed on probation.

Columbus, which lies just a few miles across the border from Palomas, Mexico, sees tourists attracted by Pancho Villa's raid on March 9, 1916 - 95 years ago Wednesday. The isolated town of about 1,800 is the site of Pancho Villa State Park, which houses exhibits about the raid and the U.S. Army's subsequent unsuccessful 11-month expedition into Mexico to chase down Villa.

Indictments

Summary of the Indictment Below (Read full indictment here. Count 1 of the indictment charges all eleven defendants with conspiracy to smuggle firearms from the United States to Mexico and with making false statements in connection with the acquisition of firearms. If convicted of this charge, each defendant could receive a sentence of five years of imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. Counts 2 through 42 of the indictment charge certain defendants with making false statements in connection with the acquisition of firearms; a conviction on any one of these counts carries a maximum penalty of five-years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. Counts 43 through 84 of the indictment charges certain defendants with unlawfully concealing and facilitating the transportation of firearms knowing that the firearms were intended for exportation from the United States. The maximum penalty for a conviction on any one of the exportation counts is ten years of imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

Charges Against Individual Defendants

Ignacio Villalobos, 24, of Columbus, NM, is charged in three counts of the indictment: conspiracy (Count 1) and two counts of firearms smuggling (Counts 78 and 82).

Blas Gutierrez, 30, of Columbus, NM, charged in thirty-seven counts of the indictment: conspiracy (Count 1); seventeen counts of making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms (Counts 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, 16, 17, 21, 22, 25, 26, 31, 35, 39 & 41); and nineteen counts of firearms smuggling (Counts 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 55, 56, 60, 61, 64, 65, 70, 75, 77, 80 & 83).

Eddie Espinoza, 51, of Columbus, NM, is charged in seven counts of the indictment: conspiracy (Count 1); three counts of making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms (Counts 19, 23 & 30); and three counts of firearms smuggling (Counts 58, 62 & 69).

Angelo Vega, 40, of Columbus, NM, is charged with conspiracy in Count 1 of the indictment.

Ian Garland, 50, of Chaparral, NM charged in eight counts of the indictment: conspiracy (Count 1); six counts of making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms (Counts 5, 7, 12, 15, 36 & 40); and one count of firearms smuggling (Count 81).

Alberto Rivera, 40, of Columbus, NM, is charged in nineteen counts of the indictment: conspiracy (Count 1); nine counts of making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms (Counts 9, 14, 18, 20, 24, 28, 29, 33 & 42); and nine counts of firearms smuggling (Counts 50, 54, 57, 59, 63, 67, 68, 74 & 84).

Miguel Carrillo, 30, of Columbus, NM, is charged in six counts of the indictment: conspiracy (Count 1); two counts of making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms (Counts 11 & 37); and three counts of firearms smuggling (Counts 44, 52 & 79).

Ricardo Gutierrez, 25, of Columbus, NM, is charged in seven counts of the indictment: conspiracy (Count 1); three counts of making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms (Counts 27, 32 & 34); and three counts of firearms smuggling (Counts 66, 71 & 76).

Manuel Ortega, 25, of Palomas, Mexico, is charged in two counts of the indictment: conspiracy (Count 1) and firearms smuggling (Count 72).

Vicente Carreon, 26, of Columbus, NM, is charged in two counts of the indictment: conspiracy (Count 1) and firearms smuggling Firearms (Count 73).

Eva Lucie Gutierrez, 21, of Las Cruces, is charged in two counts of the indictment: conspiracy (Count 1) and making false statements in connection with acquisition of firearms (Count 38).An indictment is only an accusation.

All criminal defendants are entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.The Associated Press contributed to this report.



http://www.kvia.com/news/27146962/detail.html

From The Northern Front - Monterrey, Mexico

Mexico’s drug war intrudes on Monterrey, a booming metropolis

By Nick Miroff and and William Booth, Thursday, March 10, 9:35 PM

When American baseball executives were looking for a place to move the struggling Montreal Expos franchise five years ago, Mexican investors brought them here, to this booming metropolis two hours south of the Texas border.

The case for Monterrey was a strong one then. Business journals ranked the city as Latin America’s safest, and hundreds of U.S. companies were setting up operations. Nothing would cement Monterrey’s reputation as a world-class city like a Major League Baseball team.

“It would have been a source of pride for all of Mexico,” said Roberto Magdaleno, general manager of the local club, the Sultans, as he looked out over his aging ballpark.

Instead, the Montreal Expos moved to Washington and became the Nationals. And the Zetas drug cartel moved to Monterrey and began dumping bodies.

As Mexico’s wealthiest urban area, Monterrey is a symbol of the country’s aspirations, with a well-educated workforce, leading universities, thousands of U.S. and other foreign business executives, and a per capita income twice the national average. But today the city is at the front of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s U.S.-backed drug war, and its future is clouded by lawlessness. As one top executive here said, “If Monterrey is lost, all is lost.”

Until recently, the city’s chic shopping plazas and shady streets filled with joggers seemed more like Houston than Ciudad Juarez, the gritty, low-wage manufacturing town along the Texas border that is being depopulated by eight homicides a day. But the same qualities that made Monterrey appealing to investors — good schools, exclusive neighborhoods, upscale restaurants — made it attractive to bosses of the Gulf cartel and its main rival, Los Zetas.

The two mafias are locked in vicious competition at a particularly inopportune time for Monterrey. With the U.S. economy rebounding and labor costs rising in China, the city is poised for another boom. But a surge in violence is putting the economy at risk.

“It could be devastating for Monterrey’s international image,” said Jesus Cantu, a professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico’s top university.

Homicides in the city and the surrounding state of Nuevo Leon more than tripled last year, to 828, state prosecutors said, and January’s tally of 144 killings was the highest on record.

Last month, the 60-year-old security chief of the local prison was snatched from his home, and his butchered remains turned up in a cardboard box. Ten days later, the corpse of the state’s top intelligence official was found in a burned-out car, one of more than a dozen police officers slain this year. In the past week and a half, assailants have attacked five Monterrey area police stations with grenades and automatic weapons.

Motorists travel in fear of having their cars commandeered for impromptu roadblocks set up by grenade-throwing gangsters. Gunmen stormed a seafood restaurant in a middle-class neighborhood Feb. 16 and held patrons hostage, robbing and beating them, then stripping and sexually assaulting several women.

“The city has changed,” said Carlos Miguel, a 42-year-old accountant shelling out $120 to buy his wife a 5,000-volt stun gun at a kiosk in a mall. “We don’t go out at night anymore.”

Scars amid growth

Local officials insist that Monterrey is not descending into the kind of criminal anarchy that has turned border cities into no-go zones. Despite the grisly headlines, the region added 95,000 jobs last year and pulled in $2.4 billion in foreign investment, a record amount. Construction cranes still sculpt the city’s skyline.

Scott Wine, chief executive of Minnesota-based Polaris Industries, stands by his decision to open a 420,000-square-foot factory in Monterrey this year, where his company will manufacture all-terrain vehicles. But when he attended a meeting that Calderon held last month to soothe jittery foreign investors, Wine said, business leaders asked tough questions about security.

“Monterrey is world class in manufacturing, but it needs to be world class in safety again,” Wine said.

Yet even Monterrey’s biggest boosters say their town’s reputation has been scarred. Helicopter maker Eurocopter announced last month that it was scrapping plans to build a $500 million facility here, opting for the central Mexico state of Queretaro, where drug violence has been minimal.

“We could grow a lot more if we didn’t have these security problems,” said Juan Ernesto Sandoval, Chamber of Commerce president.

Monterrey’s captains of industry have been drawn into the fight. Lorenzo Zambrano, chief executive of cement giant Cemex, assigned his top executives to help the state government carry out its rescue plan. He said leaders let cockroaches into the kitchen. “We have to work together to fight this plague,” Zambrano said.

Calderon said that he will send four additional army battalions to Monterrey and the border region, which Mexican newspapers have taken to calling the “northern front.”

Top state officials say they have a comprehensive plan to boost social spending, reform the judicial system and purge the police of corrupt officers. Salaries for starting officers will nearly double, from roughly $600 a month to $1,100, Lt. Governor Javier Trevino said.

“We are facing problems created by many years of social neglect,” Trevino said. “But it is no longer possible to live on little islands of security.”

In San Pedro Garza Garcia, the Monterrey suburb that is Mexico’s richest enclave, Mayor Mauricio Fernandez has tried to do just that, stoking his reputation as a “rudo,” one of the tough guys in the pantheon of Mexican wrestling.

“The more prepared you are for war, the less likely you are to be attacked,” said Fernandez, a scion of Monterrey wealth whose family made its fortune in paints and plastics. “If you pick a fight with me, you are going to lose.”

Fernandez has installed 2,000 security cameras, quadrupled the police force, established neighborhood watches with 1,000 residents and built his own intelligence service in a $65 million bid to “armor plate” the district. “I pay for information, just like the FBI or Scotland Yard,” he said.

But Monterrey’s affluent are skittish. At the Ferrari dealership, both of the $350,000 cherry-red models on the showroom floor had been bought and paid for, but the owners have been too fearful to pick them up, employees said.

Living with fear

In August, the U.S. consulate ordered its personnel to move their children out of Monterrey after two security guards were slain in a botched kidnapping attempt at an elite school attended by children of consulate staffers.

Nervous Mexican parents now keep their kids at home at night, and concerts by the Jonas Brothers, Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga have been canceled. Even Magdaleno, the baseball executive, said games have been moved up to 7 p.m. so fans can get home early.

The threats became too much for Alejandro Junco, publisher of El Norte, Monterrey’s largest newspaper, and the national paper Reforma.

Junco moved his family to Texas after someone dumped a corpse at his ranch, and the Zetas crime syndicate started demanding extortion money from the summer camp run by his daughter. Junco now commutes to Monterrey by private jet, then arrives on the roof of his newspaper offices by helicopter. He says he feels lonely.

“I loved my life here. I wouldn’t give it up for anything. But I did. I gave it up,” Junco said. “We had trouble before, but nothing like this, nothing.”

A representative of the Zetas demanded that Junco take down a Reforma Web site — called the Red Hot Border, Frontera al Rojo Vivo — because the cartel didn’t like the comments section. “They said we had 72 hours, or they would blow up our building,” Junco said.

The publisher took the site down, then later brought it back, without a comments section.

miroffn@washpost.com

boothb@washpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexicos-drug-war-intrudes-on-monterrey-a-booming-metropolis/2011/02/26/ABWS0ZQ_story_1.html

The Endangered Species Act Works

Daisy is taken off the endangered-species list after 25-year conservation effort

Monday, January 24, 2011; 9:02 PM

Let 162,993 flowers bloom

In 1985, when the Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Maguire daisy as endangered, the total known population of the species - a Western mountain perrenial with dime-sized flowers in white or pink - was seven plants.

Last week, the daisy became the 21st species to be taken off the endangered list. After a 25-year conservation effort, officials said they had tallied 163,000 plants in three Utah counties. "The delisting of the Maguire daisy shows that the Endangered Species Act is an effective tool not only to save species from the brink of extinction but also to recover them to healthy populations," said Tom Strickland, an assistant secretary of the Interior.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/24/AR2011012406306.html