FBI recants warning about “drug cartel” plot to nab federal agents.

The San Antonio Express News reported the following yesterday:

MEXICO CITY -- The FBI today did an about-face after relaying a warning to all federal agents that a Mexican drug cartel had massed 250 armed men on the border and was plotting to kidnap and murder two U.S. federal agents.

The FBI’s San Antonio office issued the bulletin to other law-enforcement personnel Friday, but backed away from it after a weekend investigation couldn’t find evidence to support the plot.

“Information was received, and after intense efforts to corroborate it, it was determined the information was not viable,” said Rene Salinas, FBI spokesman in San Antonio.

Salinas would not comment on how agents learned of the alleged plot or what actions they took to verify it.

“When the information was received, we wanted to make sure our brethren knew about it,” he said.

Well, one of those “brethren,” former FBI agent Lok Lau, who worked for the Bureau as a spy in China during the 1980s, claims the bulletin was never legitimate to begin with, adding, “There is some very deep agenda going on.”

“Do you remember what they did when (DEA agent) Enrique Camarena was killed (tortured to death in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1985)?” Lau asks. “They shut down the Mexican border for months. Why would narco-traffickers want that to happen?

“The cartels don’t need another Camarena case. It’s bad for business….”

Lau adds: “They could kill a thousand federal agents, and they would just hire more – just like the Marines in Iraq. You can’t stop it (drug enforcement) by killing the foot soldiers. That is an asinine theory and an insult to one’s intelligence.”

At any rate, Mexican authorities seemed pleased that it turned out to be an “asinine theory” as well.

More from the Express-News:

Agustín Gutiérrez Canet, international spokesman for Mexican President Vicente Fox, said he was relieved the plot was untrue.

“Thank God it was a false alarm,” he said. “As always, we will continue to cooperate with the American authorities.”

I wonder, though, if the FBI’s retraction will be picked up and played as big in the national press as the original "cartel plot" story. A search of Google shows that more than 74 newspaper across the country carried the original story – with blazing headlines like, “FBI warns agents of kidnapping plot along US-Mexico border,” “Alert cancels lawmakers' Mexico visit” and “FBI agents target of murder, kidnap plot.”

Anyway, I guess once you fire up the mighty Wurlitzer that loud, any encore performance will always be a second fiddle. That’s just show-biz hype in the mainstream media.