Welcome to the Drug War ... pick a card, any card

I’ll be the first to admit I fall into the same trap in this game. It’s very difficult, likely impossible, to know where the right cards are at any given time, and that is by design. The great outlaws of the narco-trafficking shadow lands, enigmatic figures like Vicente Carrillo Fuentes and Joaquin "el Chapo" Guzman, have attained notorious folk-hero status in Mexico and beyond for that very reason.

But another factor in the difficulty of following the cards is the reality that the alliances in the narco-trafficking business are constantly shifting, because so much is at stake — power, money and life itself. But there are some clues that can be examined to help us to better follow the dealers’ hands.
As the House of Death mass murder case and even mainstream press reports have documented, elements of the Mexican government are very active participants in the narco-trafficking trade. Corrupt politicians and law enforcement at all levels (federal, state and local) have thrown the force of law behind the criminal trade — whether that be police operating in Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana and Juarez or the military special forces defectors who gave rise to the Zetas.

On the U.S. side, it is no different, especially along the border. Stories of widespread U.S. law enforcement complicity in the drug trade are nothing new, if you’re willing to look outside the mainstream press. As evidence, there is this Narco News report on the Firestorm task force set up in Arizona in the early 1990s to investigate U.S. law enforcement corruption:

Among the initial cases on the Firestorm task force’s agenda centered on one of its own: Javier Dibene, special agent in charge of Arizona for the Department of Justice’s OIG —which is charged with investigating cases of alleged mismanagement and corruption within the Justice Department’s ranks.

Dibene, who was based in the Tucson office, was being eyed due to his alleged links to drug trafficking operations.

“I suspect that … Javier Dibene … (is) involved in narcotics activities,” states [John] Juhasz [who served as head of U.S. Customs Internal Affairs in Arizona] in a 1991 affidavit provided to a Treasury-OIG investigator.

The FBI had investigated Javier Dibene in 1990 and cleared him. However, the FBI agent on the case admitted, according to congressional records, that he had been given such narrow case parameters by his supervisors that the “investigation had no chance of success.”

As a result, nagging questions remained as to Dibene’s activities. Stephen McSpadden, senior counsel to the House Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee, draws out some of those concerns in testimony he submitted to the congressional body in July 1992.

“There was another incident of Dibene quashing or not pursuing an investigation. Rudy Molina is a Douglas, Ariz., INS inspector who is suspected of money laundering and drug trafficking. Dibene takes his resignation and closes the case against Molina. This was before the (Firestorm) task force came into existence.

“... (Juhasz) suspects that Dibene was looking for an easy way to get rid of this matter, and obtaining Molina’s resignation was the way to do it. There is no further investigation of Molina until the Firestorm task force opens another case on Molina….

“The task force becomes aware that Molina had become involved with Customs Inspector (Donald) Simpson and that they are actually importing narcotics into the country. Molina was involved in trying to import and deliver 500 pounds of cocaine. Molina was eventually convicted in this new case, together with Simpson. Molina was sentenced to 30 years and Simpson to life in prison.”

And then there is this from another Narco News report on the Firestorm task force:

Some clues as to what might have happened can be gleaned from an internal Customs memorandum, dated January 29, 1990. The memorandum was written by Juhasz and directed to Customs’ Southwest Regional Director for Internal Affairs.

“At the present time, it is an accepted fact among federal law enforcement agencies and the U.S. Attorney’s Office [Tucson] that law enforcement corruption in the border communities of Arizona has reached a crisis state,” the memorandum states. “It is the opinion of the SAC/IA (special agent in charge of Internal Affairs) Tucson that attacking only the Customs corruption is like putting a Band-Aid on cancer.

“The solution is the establishment of a multi-agency task force [later dubbed Firestorm], to be co-located with Customs Internal Affairs, Tucson, Ariz., to deal directly and immediately with all aspects of law enforcement corruption on the Arizona border.”

The memorandum then goes on to identify some potential targets for the proposed task force.

“Current investigative information in this office indicates heavy involvement in the corruption of two Customs employees by an organization in Cochise County (Arizona) which is believed to include law enforcement and court officials,” the memorandum states. “There are strong indications of the same type of activity in Santa Cruz County, which, like Cochise County, is adjacent to the Mexican border.

“Other Federal agencies in Arizona implicate the same organizations as being part of the drug smuggling problem. The members of these organizations include….”

Listed among the credits in the memorandum are a number of high-ranking police and judicial officers in Douglas and Nogales, Ariz.—including the Justice of the Peace in Douglas.

Allure of easy money

The participation of a U.S. government informant in the murders of a dozen people in the House of Death case — first exposed by a DEA memo — and the allegations of DEA agent complicity with narco-traffickers in Colombia brought to light in the Bogota Connection reports and the Kent memo demonstrate that this web of U.S.-based corruption has not abated with time.

So the allure of the narco-trafficking business seems to cross all lines, even borders.

But getting behind the scenes in this game is no easy task. That’s because the corruption seems to be woven into the very fabric of national drug policies in the United States and south of the border.

A big reason the corruption continues to thrive, it seems, is because there is no consequence in terms of serious government intervention. The Firestorm task force was eventually disbanded and most of its members retaliated against by the very U.S. government that ordered the task force to investigate the corruption. A similar fate befell the DEA commander, Sandalio Gonzalez, who exposed the U.S. government’s complicity in the House of Death mass murders. Likewise, the corruption allegations exposed in the Bogota Connection have been swept under the rug in the wake of a whitewashed investigation by DEA and the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General.

From a prior Narco News report about the Bogota Connection:

On Dec. 19, 2004, Thomas M. Kent, an attorney in the wiretap unit of the Justice Department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs Section (NDDS), sent off a memo to his section chief. Law enforcement sources tell Narco News that a number of other high-level officials within Justice and the DEA soon received copies of the same memo. In it, Kent raised a series of corruption allegations centering on the DEA’s office in Bogota.

Kent says his claims are supported by a number of DEA agents in Florida who the agency muzzled and retaliated against after they tried to expose the corruption. Specifically, Kent contends that the DEA’s Office of Professional Responsibility (or OPR, essentially the agency’s Internal Affairs department) and elements of DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) have worked to keep a lid on the corruption charges. According to Kent, these offices — which are supposed to serve as watchdog agencies that investigate corruption — sabotaged investigations being carried out by the Florida DEA agents and by one of the OIG’s own agents.

So it is no wonder that the most successful narco-traffickers manage to continue to evade the very governments supposedly charged with apprehending them in the so-called drug war.  

They have far more to fear within their own ranks and from their rivals, it would appear, than they do from any government — given the ease with which government players can be corrupted.

To the extent that these mythic outlaws can build alliances to reduce the risk of internecine fighting, their potential for greater control of the multi-billion dollar drug trade expands. At best, though, it has to be assumed that such alliances are held together with very weak glue, since treachery, deceit and distrust are always part of the mixture.

Alliances built on sand

But there is evidence that such an alliance is coming together in Mexico, and it is not without precedence elsewhere in the history of the narco-trafficking business.

The Bogota Connection is linked to the rise of the North Valley Cartel, an alliance of Colombian narco-traffickers who allegedly relied on help from corrupt DEA and Colombian law enforcement officials, in combination with U.S. government drug policy, to undermine the power of the rival Cali Cartel.

Despite Narco News’ prior beating up on Dallas Morning News’ failure to address the U.S. government cover-up in the House of Death case, reporter Alfredo Corchado, in an April 2007 story, does do an effective job of pulling back the curtain somewhat on what appears to be a similar alliance emerging in the Mexican narco-trafficking scene:

What's especially worrisome for law enforcement officials on both sides of the border is the alliance formed between two former rivals: Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, reputed head of the Juarez cartel [or VCF], and Joaquin "el Chapo" Guzman of the Sinaloa cartel. The two men are members of the so-called Federation, a powerful alliance of drug cartels that includes alleged leaders such as Ismael Zambada, the Beltran Leyva brothers and powerful families from the state of Durango, authorities say.

Carrillo Fuentes and Guzman have had a rocky relationship, authorities say. Even today, officials say, mistrust runs so deep that the two men prefer communicating via teleconference.

"This new alliance will return the Juarez cartel as the most powerful and most formidable enterprise in the history of drug smuggling," said a senior U.S. law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "You're combining two of the most brilliant criminal minds in the drug-trafficking business. The result will likely lead to more deadly drugs and new marketing schemes, like what you see in Dallas with cheese [essentially a mixture of heroin and Tylenol PM]."

What brought the two men together is control of a lucrative transportation route that cuts through parts of the "Golden Triangle," a region known for its drug production in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango, with easy access to Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Interstate 10 to Texas and California, and Interstate 25 north to Albuquerque and beyond.

But Corchado’s report leaves out one important name: Juan Jose Esparragosa-Moreno.

Esparragosa has a long association with the so-called Juarez cartel, or VCF, which is most associated with Vicente Carrilo Fuentes and his brother Amado — who is supposedly dead, though some might contest that fact to this day.

The following from a 2004 Associate Press report draws out the connections between these men, and also makes the point about alliances built on a foundation of treachery:

Guzman has been connected to the 1993 killing of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo in Guadalajara, Mexico, [FBI spokesman Art] Werge said.

He also is accused of killing Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes, the brother of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who was the leader of the Juarez Cartel until he died in 1997 during plastic surgery. [Or so they say.]

Another brother, Vicente, now shares power with Juan Jose Esparragosa-Moreno, according to Mexican authorities.

Esparragosa-Moreno and Ignacio Coronel Villareal, another Juarez Cartel leader, were indicted on drug trafficking charges by a U.S. federal grand jury in October [2004]. Vicente Carrillo Fuentes was indicted in 1998 on the same charges.

As previously reported, the DEA last year also told Congress about this emerging alliance, or “Federation.”

From DEA congressional testimony on Aug. 17, 2006:

Currently, the most powerful DTOs [drug-trafficking organizations] in Mexico are led by Ignacio Coronel-Villarreal, Joaquin Guzman-Loera, Arturo Beltran-Leyva, Juan Jose Esparragosa-Moreno and Ismael Zamada-Garcia. These leaders comprise the Federation (also known as the Alliance), a confederation of DTOs founded upon long-standing relationships among several of Mexico’s major drug kingpins.

Two other major DTOs also operate out of Mexico: the Arellano-Felix organization (also known as the Tijuana Cartel) and the Gulf Cartel. Although the Arellano-Felix organization and the Gulf Cartel have been weakened under the Fox Administration, they remain formidable organizations and continue to control the strategic border states of Baja California and Tamaulipas. Capitalizing on disruptions to the Arellano-Felix and Gulf Cartels, the Federation continues to wage a violent campaign of elimination against these rival cartels to gain control of these important transit corridors.

As you can see, the DEA does include Esparragosa in the credits.

But why focus on this one man?

Where’s that card?

Well, it seems Esparragosa was indicted in 2004 in connection with the investigation that led to the House of Death mass murder. This information recently surfaced as part of the federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the families of the victims of the House of Death murders.

The Assistant U.S. Attorney in El Paso who oversaw the House of Death case lays it all out in an April 2007 affidavit she provided under oath as part of that litigation.

From the affidavit:

In 2003, I was the Assistant United States Attorney assigned to a joint Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) initiative, Operation Sky High, which targeted high-level drug traffickers in Mexico. Each agency conducted a separate OCDETF investigation, but assisted the other agencies in their investigation. DEA agents stationed in Juarez, Mexico worked closely with both the El Paso DEA and ICE. The FBI investigation resulted in the indictment of Juan Esparragosa-Moreno, known as the “Godfather” of Mexican drug traffickers, and several members of his organization. The ICE investigation resulted in the indictment of Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, a high-level member of the Vincente Carrillo-Fuentes drug trafficking organization, based in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, as well as several other members of that organization. The DEA investigation, under the leadership of Special Agent in Charge Sandalio Gonzalez, was much less successful and resulted only in the indictment of a low-level transportation organization based in El Paso.

[Note: Fielden’s slam against Gonzalez, who helped to expose the U.S. government’s complicity in the House of Death murders, is very misleading, since the DEA investigation in Mexico was conducted by agents based in Juarez, who were overseen by DEA’s Mexico City office, not Gonzalez in El Paso. In addition, Fielden also fails to note that any investigation DEA might have had in play was likely severely compromised by the activities of ICE’s own informant.]

Fielden’s revelation about Esparragosa is interesting, particularly because he still has not been apprehended, if the U.S. government’s wanted poster is to be believed. So why is it that the FBI had gathered enough evidence to indict Esparragosa in 2004, but failed to track him down and arrest him? (Interestingly, Esparragosa’s indictment was issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Antonio overseen by Johnny Sutton — the same U.S. Attorney accused of helping to orchestrate the cover-up of U.S. government complicity in the House of Death murders.)

There is at least one documented clue to the dynamics at play in the Esparragosa case. That clue shows up in the only portion  of a joint DEA/ICE report on the House of Death case that has surfaced to date. Narco News obtained that document through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Following is the pertinent passage from the report:

Pertaining to the OCDETF [Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force] meeting of August 25, 2003: SAC [Sandalio] Gonzalez [the eventual House of Death whistleblower] attended this meeting with ASAC [redacted name]. SAC Gonzalez stated that this was a contentious meeting because the FBI was going off on their own and not advising the other agencies of enforcement actions in Spain. In particular, ICE Associate SAC [name redacted] had a heated discussion with the FBI Supervisor regarding their plan to arrest a mutual VCF-related target in Spain without notifying the other agencies involved with the investigation. ….

According to Narco News sources, the “mutual VCF-related target” being targeted in Spain by the FBI was Esparragosa. Former DEA Special Agent in Charge Gonzalez also confirmed that Narco News’ information is accurate on that count.

It is not clear how Esparragosa ultimately escaped the FBI’s snare. However, it is clear that ICE’s House of Death informant was allowed to supervise and even participate in multiple murders. And as a result of the informant’s activities in Juarez, a DEA agent and his family became the targets of VCF assassins in early 2004 due to an alleged case of mistaken identity.

In the wake of that fiasco, Fielden and ICE supervisors refused to allow their informant to assist DEA with the apprehension of other VCF targets who were believed to still pose a threat to federal agents. The stalling and delaying on the part of ICE and Fielden resulted in a number of violent criminals escaping the DEA’s dragnet.

And between ICE’s stonewalling and the press reports in Mexico about the House of Death murders (leaked allegedly by Mexican law enforcers while the DEA was still trying to apprehend suspects) the word undoubtedly spread through the streets of Juarez that the U.S. feds had snitches inside the VCF.

Might that have had anything to do with the FBI’s failure to capture Esparragosa? To be honest, that is not known at this time.

But there is one other little coincidence that cannot be overlooked, brought to us by the House of Death informant. In August 2004, several months after the House of Death murders in Juarez had been widely reported in the media on both sides of the border, an attempt was made on the informant’s life in El Paso while he was allegedly working yet another sting for his ICE handlers.

During the course of that operation, one of the informant’s friends, a man named Abraham Guzman, was gunned down in the parking lot of a burger joint in El Paso. The House of Death informant, a former Mexican cop named Guillermo Ramirez Peryo, is convinced that bullet was meant for him, and likely it was. But, according to Ramirez Peyro, his buddy, Guzman, had an interesting relationship with the FBI.

The following is from a jailhouse interview of Ramirez Peryo conducted in 2006 by a Dallas TV producer and Raul Loya, the attorney for the families of the victims of the House of Death:

RAMIREZ: Yeah, yeah. He never knows. He was — and this is the — something. He [Guzman] was loyal to me. He was an FBI informant [emphasis added]. He signed for that, yeah. But he never informant, nothing, at least about us.

I don’t know if – if they give information about other people, because about us, he never said that. He used to like stash drugs, drive. He was the one who got in contact, because that way, I don’t get in contact with the drugs, yeah? He was people who – who can go and do this – that kind of job.

So Guzman, an alleged FBI informant, winds up dead, and the FBI’s target, Esparragosa, winds up out of pocket.

Makes you wonder where the line is between the law and corruption, if such a line even exists anymore.

All I know is that only a fool believes he can pick the winning card in a game of three-card Monte — because, as we all should know by now, the game is already fixed.