An immigration judge in the Twin Cities (the same Minnesota community recently traumatized by a deadly bridge collapse) today built a bridge to the truth in the House of Death.

The judge found in favor of Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, the U.S. government informant who played a key role in the House of Death carnage. The judge issued twin findings in Ramirez' deportation case that promise to be a major public-relations fiasco for the U.S. and Mexican governments. The judge’s ruling essentially implicates the government of Mexico in the narco-trafficking business and also keeps the spotlight focused on the U.S. government’s role in the House of Death mass murder in Juarez, Mexico.

Ramirez’ attorney, Jodi Goodwin, told Narco News that the case hinged on two critical questions. The first was whether Ramirez could “be reasonably located to another area of Mexico” outside of Juarez and the border region. The second was “whether or not the government [of Mexico] would acquiesce in the torture of Lalo [Ramirez’ nickname] by cartel figures.”

The Washington Times story on the House of Death published today, Oct. 8, contains a couple matters that require clarification because, as worded, they leave readers with an incomplete picture of events.

There also is one correction in order.

The times story refers to the “House of Death at 3633 Call Pardoners.” The actual address of the House of Death in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, is Calle Parsioneros 3633.

John Carman, a former federal law enforcer with some 25 years of experience, is now a convicted felon facing a long stint in federal prison.

Late last month a jury found Carman guilty of conspiring to kidnap a U.S. citizen in Mexico.

The case that led to Carman’s conviction is tangled in contradictions as Narco News reported previously.

Those contradictions were magnified recently when an FBI informant contacted Narco News and in so doing raised some serious concerns about the government’s case against Carman. Curiously, at the time the informant reached out to Narco News, the FBI claimed he was on the lamb and would not be available for Carman’s trial.

A key figure in exposing alleged U.S. law enforcement corruption in Colombia has just filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit that promises to be quite embarrassing for the U.S. government — and revealing to those of us who don’t quite buy our aloof leadership’s Plan Colombia vision.

In that lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., Baruch Vega claims that the U.S. government owes him $28.5 million for services he provided in an operation that helped the U.S. government net 114 Colombian narco-trafficking targets.

From Vega’s lawsuit, filed on Sept. 21:

In or about 1996 and 1997, [Vega] became a documented confidential informant for the United States of America, specifically, two federal law enforcement agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and later, for the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”). … Mr. Vega was not a traditional informant and his methodology was anything but parochial. Mr. Vega engineered a plan/program that proved to be innovative and very successful.

Mr. Vega would play and later, in fact did play, the role of an intermediary (or broker) between Colombian drug traffickers, some then unknown (and thus, unidentified) to U.S. law enforcement, others already identified (by their real names or nicknames as “suspects”) by U.S. law enforcement and, others already indicted, for drug trafficking and/or money laundering charges in various federal districts across the United States of America.

The Pentagon Papers, as you recall, were part of a classified government report leaked to the media in 1971 by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. The documents exposed the U.S. government’s efforts to deceive the public in its disastrous pursuit of the Vietnam War.

A similar report exists in the case of the House of Death mass murder in Juarez, Mexico — a bloody tragedy of the disastrous drug war. A document known as the Joint Assessment Team report, or JAT, was put together in the wake of a DEA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigation into the government’s role in the brutal murders — which nearly cost the lives of a DEA agent and his family.

The JAT continues to be a closely guarded document within the Bush Administration’s cover-up machine.

However, Narco News has recently obtained a new document that proves the JAT was provided to the office of U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton in San Antonio, Texas. That new document is a letter written by a high-level DEA official to the chief of the criminal unit in Sutton’s office.

Surprise, surprise…. The Department of Homeland Security is a mess.

That’s what a new government report says. But then Narco News predicted this outcome some three and a half years ago, not too long after the new mega-bureaucracy was rolled out in 2003 to protect the “homeland” in the wake of 9/11.

But back then, no one in the government, or the agenda-setting media, was listening. DHS was as American as apple pie, and so they were eating it up with the flag waving high overhead.

But today things are different: the president is a lame duck with lame ratings and the Congress has hopped from an elephant to a donkey. So now, more than four years into the mess that is DHS, we are finally starting to find that the pie was made from some bad apples.  

Hence, even the Washington Post is willing to print a story pointing out the obvious:

The U.S. government must surely be greasing up its spin machine in the wake of a federal judge’s recent ruling in a lawsuit filed by the families of the House of Death murder victims.

“We did nothing wrong, see,” will almost certainly be the message pumped out by the U.S. government to anyone in the media who seeks to avoid complexity or rocking the boat and is not averse to presenting talking points as news.

In fact, it would not be surprising for the government agents at the center of the House of Death controversy to now proclaim their innocence and decry their victimization and actively seek the spotlight — maybe even in the hope of cashing in on the House of Death bloodshed via book contracts and movie deals.

That is how the game is played in America.

Former DEA agent Richard Horn has chalked up a major victory in the fight to rein in the abuse of of national security.

Horn has been in a court battle with the U.S. government for the past 13 years in the wake of a run-in with the CIA and State Department.

Horn claims the CIA illegally spied on him, violating his constitutional rights, as part of an effort to thwart his poppy-eradication mission in the Southeast Asian country of Burma.

Sometimes it’s the little people that power seeks to squash like a mice, who, in the end, bring down the elephant.

In the case of the House of Death mass murder, it appears that “mouse” has begun to roar.

Renae Baros, a former low-level investigative assistant for the El Paso, Texas, office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has filed a lawsuit in federal court that reveals a pattern of alleged discrimination and integrity lapses on the part of two ICE supervisors who played key roles in the House of Death case.

Specifically, recent pleadings in the lawsuit, filed in El Paso, claim that one of those ICE supervisors falsified documents related to informant payments. The pleadings also assert that the supervisor demonstrated a callous indifference to the House of Death murder victims by referring to them as “just Mexicans.”  

The U.S. government is going to pay, literally, for its shameful efforts to silence Sandalio Gonzalez, the DEA field-office chief who exposed the House of Death cover-up.

The U.S. Attorney General (that would be Alberto Gonzales, the Comandante en Jefe of the Justice Department) has agreed to pay $385,000 of the U.S. taxpayers’ money to settle a discrimination lawsuit that Sandalio Gonzalez filed against the government in federal court in Miami. That lawsuit stemmed, in part, from the ignoble treatment Gonzalez received from his employer after he brought to light the U.S. government’s complicity in the House of Death mass murder in Juarez, Mexico.