A national organization representing government whistleblowers has stepped forward to back a former DEA official who is demanding a congressional investigation into the
House of Death mass-murder case.
Sandalio Gonzalez, a recently retired, high-ranking DEA agent earlier this summer called on Congress to investigate the role played by a U.S. Attorney in the cover-up of a government informant’s participation in the torture and murder of more than a dozen people at a house in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez. The murders at the House of Death were carried out between August 2003 and mid-January 2004 while the informant was under the watch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in El Paso, Texas.
Narco News has been following this story for more than a year because it sheds a bright light on the dark corners of the so-called war on drugs.
In a letter sent this week to congressional leaders, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, director of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), demands the following:
That the Committee on Homeland Security, or individual members of the Committee, request a confidential briefing from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas, and the Drug Enforcement Administration on the government actions surrounding the allegations by Mr. Gonzalez.
That the Committee on Homeland Security schedules a hearing on the actions concerning Mr. Gonzalez’ allegations of malfeasance and retaliation and subpoena appropriate witnesses to describe and explain those actions.
“Government employees should never be forced to choose between career and conscience when faced with agency wrongdoing,” Edmonds states in a press release issued by NSWBC. ”Universally respected and loved by the agents under his command, Mr. Gonzalez was retaliated against, forced into retirement, and took with him a vast amount of institutional memory and an extensive repertoire for securing our nation against its enemies. This is our country’s loss, thus congress must act.”
Gonzalez is pointing the finger squarely at Johnny Sutton, the U.S. Attorney in San Antonio, Texas. He claims that had Sutton taken action sooner in the House of Death case, more than a dozen people might still be alive today.
“Unless some Congressional committee subpoenas Sutton to answer questions about this, the cover-up will continue,” Gonzalez said, in an exclusive interview in July with Narco News.
When contacted by Narco News, Darryl Fields, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Antonio, declined to comment on the NSWBC letter to Congress or the House of Death case.
Gonzalez, who, until January of this year, served as special agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso field office, contends Sutton was clearly aware of the informant’s participation in the murders by at least Feb. 24, 2004. That’s when Gonzalez sent a letter to Sutton blowing the whistle on the informant’s role in the murders.
Sutton, however, was seemingly not impressed with Gonzalez’ background, or at least did not feel compelled to meet with him once he received the letter. Instead, Sutton’s reaction was to reach out to his high-level contacts within the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., to bring pressure to bear on Gonzalez, to shut him up and to ensure the letter was buried.
From a letter sent this week by the NSWBC to Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman, Susan Collins (R-ME)
Dear Senator Collins:
A member of our organization, Mr. Sandalio Gonzalez, the former Special Agent in Charge for the Drug Enforcement Administration in El Paso, has suffered retaliation for expressing concern that the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, along with federal law enforcement agents, aided, supported, and protected a confidential informant who they knew had “supervised” torture and murder of people and who they knew would engage in similar activity in the future. After discovering that the informant murdered at least one person, law enforcement agents and the U.S. Attorney’s Office allegedly stood by as he participated in, and aided and abetted numerous other killings. This informant was protected in order to preserve and prosecute cases made against drug traffickers and cigarette smugglers.
The actions alleged by Mr. Gonzalez also placed United States agents in Mexico at risk and resulted in the near abduction and murders of a DEA agent and his family in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. As a senior executive service manager in the DEA, Gonzalez rightly felt that it was his duty to speak up and attempt to insure that federal agencies conduct themselves according to law and stated policy. For this, Mr. Gonzalez, a thirty-three year veteran of law enforcement, was punished. Universally respected and loved by the agents under his command, Mr. Gonzalez was forced into retirement and took with him a vast amount of institutional memory and an extensive repertoire for securing our nation against its enemies. We would point out that Mr. Gonzalez did not blow the whistle in the normal sense; everything he did was in-house and not directed at the media or members of Congress.
Out of all the cases we run across we bring this one to your special attention because it involved multiple agencies and for the egregious consequences agency misbehavior may have had in this case. Arguably, as a result of the failure to follow policy and simple ethical practices at least one wholly innocent United States resident was abducted, tortured, and murdered, and numerous Mexican nationals were killed.
Stay tuned to Narco News on this developing story, as more revelations are about to unfold in the very near future….
