21st Century Statecraft: A Policy Blunder Gone Asunder

State Department press briefings are becoming more and more vague about activities in the middle east. The 21st century statecraft that the Obama administration continues to implement is backfiring in the face of the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ignoring the powder burns and lacking a coherent Middle East strategy the administration simply chooses to disregard the mess and carnage that they were instrumental in creating. The consequences of the Egyptian revolution are now coming to fruition. Cairo’s Tahrir Square is routinely filled with protesters calling for Sharia Law and brandishing signs that read  "Liberals and secularists are the enemies of Allah!", and chanting slogans such as "The solution is Islam!" Egypt’s radical Muslim groups are ratcheting up the rhetoric and the violence. Coptic Christians and Egyptian secularists are taking the brunt of the violence.

The Egyptian social media networks that the Obama Administration put so much stock in have been demonized by the Muslim Brotherhood. The implementation of Sharia will in all likelihood be included in the rewrite of Egypt’s Constitution thus outlawing any type of Internet activity. The U.S. State Department instituted a program for young Middle Eastern adults called the Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) and the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI).  In December 2008 AYM held a conference at Columbia Law School in New York for the express purpose of establishing a network of operatives. These operatives were to insight the public and facilitate the implosion of the Egyptian Government.The number of Egyptians with any access to social media tools is about six million. Egyptians that were registered with Facebook in the first quarter of 2011, the time when protests were spring up across Egypt  is only about 5% of the population. According to the Dubai School of Government’s Arab Social Media Report published in May. Twitter usage is even smaller, with only about 130,000 Egyptians registered.

The Obama administration has touted the democratization of the Egyptian state through “free and fair elections” as Secretary Clinton put it when she was in Egypt March, 15th 2011 

“I want to begin by saying very clearly and directly to the people of Egypt that this moment of history belongs to you, that this is your achievement and you broke barriers and overcame obstacles to pursue the dream of democracy, and the United States and President Obama and I will stand with you as you make this journey.”

A 2010 Pew Global Attitudes poll found surprisingly high support for the implementation of sharia law in Egypt. 82% of Egyptians support stoning for adultery, a practice most frequently directed at women, 77% were in favour of whippings and limb amputations as punishment for theft and robbery, 84% believed in the death penalty for people who leave Islam. At least half of Egyptians favour gender segregation in the workplace and in public.

Based on that Pew pole the upcoming elections will certainly not favor the interests of the United States. It is clear that the lack of vision and competency in the Obama administration has lead to the destabilization of Egypt and the Middle East. Unrest and murderous activity have become commonplace. A police station in the Sinai was attacked and Six people were killed and more than 20 were injured when armed men attacked on Friday, 7/29/2011. Muslim gunmen bombed the Sinai natural gas pipeline on Saturday, 7/30/2011 for the fifth time since the protesters first hit Tahrir Square.

As part of the Camp David Accords Israel receives about 40 percent of its natural gas from that pipeline, and having it out of order has reignited the debate over whether or not Israel should continue to purchase natural gas from Egypt. (Israel has recently discovered its own massive natural gas reserves of the coast and will soon be energy independent and may curtail it’s purchases of natural gas from Egypt putting one more nail in Egypt’s financial coffin. End Comment.)

Israel’s chief of military intelligence Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi sad recently that Iran has deepened its influence over the Middle East and is actively intervening in Egypt by specifically trying to prop up Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Iran is also taking advantage of the upheaval in the region to gain influence in other countries, such as Bahrain, Sudan, Yemen and Iraq. Kochavi also made the comment that Iran was also involved in planning two attempted infiltrations of Israel from Lebanon and Syria in recent months.

Iran’s spreading influence will no doubt play a role in the upcoming Egyptian elections. The radical Shia state is reaching out to Yemen and the Egyptian electorate with hopes of stealing away important allies from the United States. If successful Iran theoretically could garner influence over the Suez Canal and the Red Sea shipping lanes from the Gulf of Aden to Port Said. Iran continues to assert it’s influence in the Persian Gulf  and the Straights of Hormuz as was demonstrated in the recent “Great Prophet 6” exercise. This giving Iran incredible clout on the geopolitical stage and will directly threaten the energy security of the United States by manipulating maritime choke points used by oil tankers entering and exiting the region.

Iranian war ship in the Suez

The violent protests will  continue during Ramadan out of economic frustration and the governments perceived ambivalence toward the plight of the masses. Tahrir Square resembles a bustling Bedouin bazaar as it did on 2/11/2011 with protesters demanding a resolution to a myriad of issues from skyrocketing food prices and consumer goods  to religious unification. Food inflation in Egypt is rising at a rate of 19 percent over the same time last year.

The consequences of President Obama’s 21st century statecraft will become apparent after Egypt’s elections and will impose significant challenges to the next administration.

ATF; Puppets, Pawns, Patsies, All the Above?

Two corrupt presidents 

The people of the United States and the House  Oversight Committee debate the Fast and Furious gun walking scandal there is a much larger scandal going on. Just two doors down to the south. The lovely banana republic of Guatemala there is deep seated government corruption at the highest level.

July 3, 2011. the Mexican Federal Police arrested “Zeta 7” Jesús Enrique Rejón Aguilar of the Los Zeta drug cartel. During interrogation “Zeta 7” was asked about about the cartel’s cocaine connection and he replied that they do business with the Guatemalans not the Colombians. Seems that the Zetas do not trust the Colombians, he sad that the accountants handled the drug distribution and he was not part of that operation. This makes sense that the organisation is compartmentalized the US military and CIA does the same thing for security purposes.

Mexican law enforcement also reveled on June 22, 2011 that they have arrested  Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas the once top dog in the  La Familia Michoacana drug cartel “El Chango”  

In both cases the Mexicans released information garnered during the supposed interrogations. Both El Chango and Zeta 7 allegedly implicated the US in there procurement of weapons by saying the exact same thing. We buy our guns from the US sometimes from the “US government itself.” By leaking this information is the Mexican Government (President Calderon) attempting to build a case against the US in retaliation for condoning the illegal gun activity (Fast and Furious)?

The Los Zetas and other drug trafficking organisations “DTO” are the most active in Guatemala, where they seek to exploit the nation’s weakly guarded border with Mexico. Guatemala is struggling with entrenched corruption between DTOs and state officials skimming millions in US funding dollars Mexico hardly has an ally in Guatemala. In 2005, Guatemala’s head of the drug enforcement agency, his deputy and another senior official were arrested in the United States on charges of drug trafficking. Four years later President Alvaro Colom fired several of Guatemala’s top law enforcement officials including the the director general of the national police, his deputy and both the heads of investigations and operations, after a significant amount of drugs and cash went missing. Former combatants in Guatemala’s civil war a U.S. funded venture that resulted in the death of more than 200,000 people and the genocidal targeting of indigenous groups are increasingly offering their skills to the DTOs.

The Former President Alfonso Portillo was arrested last year  after U.S. prosecutors indicted him on charges of laundering money stolen from foreign donations meant to buy children's books. After finishing his term in 2004 and losing his immunity from prosecution. Portillo fled to El Salvador and then to Mexico in order to avoid charges.· Following a long legal battle, he was finally extradited to Guatemala in October 2008.An indictment unsealed in  New York federal court alleges that in a four-year scheme starting in 2000, Portillo embezzled $1.5 million in donations from Taiwan. the money was intended to buy school library books. Portillo is accused of endorsing checks drawn from a New York bank and depositing them in a Miami account; the money then was transferred to a Paris account in the name of his ex-wife and daughter. When Alfonso Portillo and two of his former ministers were first indicted by a federal court on embezzlement. Many hailed it as an opportunity to test the effectiveness of recent reforms to the Guatemalan justice system. However Guatemala failed that test. A three-judge panel dismissed two of the prosecution's key witnesses, claiming that they had lied under oath.

The failure is all the more frustrating for prosecutors because simply bringing the former president to trial took a herculean effort on the part of prosecutors but in Guatemala money talks an justice walks.

In May of this year President Alvaro Colom declared a state of emergency in the northern Guatemalan province of Peten, which borders Mexico and Belize, in response to the killing of 27 farm workers  of which 26 were beheaded by Mexico’s Los Zetas drug cartel. In  a radio interview the president was quoted as saying that “We are willing to work with these people.” Interesting???

New reports of collaboration between the DTOs and the GOG military are now coming to light and may explain the proliferation of weapons in  Mexico’s black market.

The  editor of el Periodico’s Guatemala's largest news paper, Jose Ruben Zamora, broke the story of the “Sleeper Cartel.” Zamora’s story shines the light on a network involving ex government ministers and military officials, who have “their own mafia organization of protection and silence.” This in fact is a shadow government operating simultaneously and for the sole benefit of the participants. The Sleeper Cartel as Zamora describes them dates back to president Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, who was in power from 1978 to 1982, The Sleeper Cartel  again gained power during the Alfonso Portillo administration (2000 to 2004).

Current President Alvaro Colom is no exception to this line of illicit power, which became clear from his radio statement that appeared to be bazaar at the time. Zamora states in his article that  army General Mauro Jacinto (who was later murdered) told him that, as a candidate, Colom had received large sums from local trafficking groups and from the Mexican based Zetas.

For the Los Zetas Guatemala is a candy store of goodies and the corrupt officials are the sales clerks. Brokering cocaine from Columbia, Peru, and Bolivia. As a result of the Civil war that lasted from 1960 to 1996 the country is chock full of military hardware that was Supplied by the U.S. Government through the CIA

.
As a result of the CIA’s involvement surplus WWII armament including air and watercraft was covertly funneled to the right wing factions in the country from as early as 1953. During the 35 year period of civil war and successive coups the US government continuously upgraded the weaponry flowing into the country. (E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame was one of the key players in the Anticommunist efforts in Guatemala. End comment)

As a result of continuous political instability the GOGs military being the only stable institution the the country infiltrated every sector of society. As a result officers from the top to the bottom acted with impunity and corruption was unimpeded. The Los Zetas and the Guatemalan military have formed an alliance of sorts. The Zetas buy cocaine and weapons such as machine guns fragmentation grenades land mines LAW rockets and ammunition, In return the military allows the DTOs such as the Zetas safe haven and travel across the frontier borders.

What the House Oversight Committee is doing with regards to Operation Fast and Furious is very important but by no means is it the real source of Mexico's black market weaponry. Fast and furious may even be a red herring in order to draw attention away from Mexico’s southern border. There is more going on hear! Those ATF pukes  could not organize a pantie raid in a whore house!

Christians are Screwed in Egypt

Christians and Jews in the Middle East are under attack from all sides. In Egypt there are laws limiting the rights of Christians making Islamic Persecution a daily occurrence. Egyptian Christians are killed, beaten, raped, kidnapped  and burned out of there homes and churches with impunity. The violence has increased since the so called peaceful revolution and the government seemingly is ambivalent to the plight of the Coptic Christians. Hear at home the silence is deafening. Where are all these race card playing politicians willing to invoke the name of Marten Luther King for the civil rights of a blood soaked gang member. I have not heard one word from any politician Dem. Rep. Conservative or Liberal about what is going on in the middle east.

Sect. Of State Hillary Clinton is globe trotting with her US Government checkbook handing  out our borrowed money to countries that support women's rights and not one word about the atrocities happening to Egyptian woman and young girls.  Muslim men follow the Christian girls from there schools and before making it home the girls are kidnapped, raped then sold into sexual slavery or forced to convert to Islam. Most of the time the parents never see there daughter again.

Islamic extremists set churches on fire during mass and shoot the congregation as they run from the flames. May 2011, 4000 Muslims descended upon the village of Soul, Atfif in Helwan Governorate, 30 kilometers from Cairo, The mob set fire to the village and The Church of St. Mina and St. George. The churches were ransacked burned and the priests and deacons were killed. The numbers of the dead are not clear but some say as many as 190 people were killed or wounded. The Islamic attackers blockaded the roads preventing the fire and rescue crews from entering the village the military and police never showed up.

What we are witnessing in Egypt 2011 is Germany 1939 or Bosnia 1992 and the Israelis know it they have documented proof that the Iranians are infiltrating and influencing the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military. The upcoming conflict in the middle east will not be about borders or territory but about religious cleansing. How many mass graves do we need to unearth before we realize that not all the people of the world are peace loving hippies.

Between 1933 and 1939, Jews in Germany progressively were subjected to economic boycotts the loss of civil rights, citizenship, and jobs. The escalation in antisemedic rederic lead to incarceration in concentration camps; and random violence. Following Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"), the state-organized pogrom of November 9-11, 1938, the German government confiscated most of the remaining Jewish-owned property and entirely excluded Jews from the German economy. Between 1992  and 1995 the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina marked the beginning of a genocide campaign to rid the region of Muslims and Croats. In the town of Prijedor and the surrounding area was one of the first places to witness the ethnic cleansing of more than 20.000 Muslims. The people became victims of massacres, deportations into camps, and displacement. Just a few months after the war had broken out, the Muslim population in Prijedor was reduced to a tenth of its original size. By the end of the war in 1995, about half of the 4.3 million inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina had been killed or became refugees and displaced persons.

All the indications are there for similar events in Egypt. With the involvement of Iran radicalizing the Muslim population the soring food prices and dwindling water sources the lack of policing and the international complacency makes Egypt a powder keg. As we did in 1939 and 1992 we will sit back and say ant that a shame as Coptics suffer the wrath of Muslim extremists.

The Obama Administration seemingly has no Middle East strategy that is cogent and inclusive of Israel. Because of that and the lack of US military in Iraq a quick response to escalating violence is out of the question. Once a multi-nation conflict breaks out in North Africa Egypt’s Christians will be at the epicenter of the conflict. The US politicians will be reluctant to intervene even after Israel is invaded from Gaza and across the Egyptian border. Assuming President Obama is still in Office the US wont be involved until Iran inserts itself by invading Egypt and or Iraq then blocks the Straights of Hormuz  cutting the flow of oil to the world.

Viva Obama Viva La Raza

Monday 7/25/2011 President Obama spoke at the national La Raza Convention. La Raza was one of Obama’s largest supporters in the get out to vote campaign. During the speech the President lamented that he was not able to give all the illegal aliens ligament citizenship. The crowd shouted at him “yes you can yes you can”.

In January 2009, President Obama named Cecilia Munoz to the position of Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. (What the heck is Intergovernmental affairs? Does that involve blue dresses and cigars? End comment.)  At the time of her appointment, Munoz was the Vice President for Research, Advocacy and Legislation for the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). Munoz also served on the boards of Center for Community Change (a liberal, pro-amnesty group), the Washington Office on Latin America, the Open Society Instituter's (George Soros funded organisation)U.S. Programs division, and Human Rights Watcher's U.S. advisory committee. In all of these positions, Munoz consistently advocated for liberalization of immigration policies and amnesty for illegal aliens.Since Munoz joined the White House, federal funding for La Raza has increased significantly. The NCLR received $2.8 million in federal grants in FY 2008 and $4.1 million in FY 2009. In FY 2010, the total skyrocketed to more than $11 million.


In May the Florida law makers were debating SB 2040 in the Senate and HB 7089 in the House, requiring a strong E-Verify (Electronic residence verification system) program with no exemptions. Twelve buses filled with illegal aliens came to Tallahassee to protest at the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee. What is more disturbing is the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR-Tampa) Jumped on the buses with the illegals. La Raza was the coordinator of this protest.

La Raza sent out an e-mail stating,

"You've heard all of the controversy surrounding Arizona SB 1070, how it is being challenged in the courts, how it has tarnished Arizona's image, and even how much of it has caused great financial burdens for the state. But did you know that Florida may be following in Arizona's footsteps? This week, the Florida legislature will be considering anti-immigrant, Arizona-style bills!"

This alliance is amazing considering that the President is supporting both of these organizations and that are involved in ongoing criminal criminal behavior. CAIR was involved in the Holy Land money laundering scam and was considered an un-indited co-conspirator. The only reason why CAIR was un-indited was that the holy land trial came at the end of the Bush Administration and Eric Holder at the request of the president was told not to pursue the case any farther.

This story is not about CAIR, La Raza is the focus. If your a drunk driver in a hit and run accident that kills someone and your a Mexican Just Call La Raza to play the race card and hide you out till you sober up. La Raza attorneys in California routinely are involved in activity such as this. According to La Raza every police office, ICE agent and BPA agent are raciest and this gives the Mexican criminals the justification to leave the scene of the crime. La Raza does not see the need for Mexicans to have a valid drivers license either, noting that the licencing procedure is discriminatory.

The La Raza San Francisco web site is advertising a illegal alien employment agency. So if you want to hire a handy man or a cleaning woman to work in your house just give them a call (415)252-5375. SanFran website http://techforpeople.net/~lrcl/

From there website http://sfdaylabor.org/howtohire.html

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This is totally unacceptable and extremely illegal. Mexico may not require a license to be a contractor but hear in the United States We do. The next time Mexico has an earthquake a quick survey of the damage will reveal that there is no building codes at all. If you live in San Francisco (an earthquake zone) do NOT hire an un-insured un-licenced Mexican to work on your house or a hundred miles from your house. The statement  Check your homeowners or renter's insurance for coverage. Is misleading because if you hire a person to install a ceiling fan in your house and that person is not a licenced contractor and there is no permit for the building department and your house burns down then you are HOMELESS and still have a mortgage.

Zeta 7 Second Capo to implicate ATF

One of the original members of the Los Zetas drug cartel, Jesús Enrique Rejón Aguilar aka El Mamito aka Zeta 7 was busted by the MexFeds. The arrest was ordered for drug trafficking and the attack on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents which occurred February 14 of this year in Santa Maria, San Luis Potosi, where ICE agent Jaime Zapata was murdered.

The Mexican Federal Police authorities released a portion of the interrogation that was conducted July 3, 2011. During the interview several revelations were uncovered. A short excerpt is included hear.
The investigator asked him about weapons and this exchange took place.

Interrogator: And where do you get your weapons?

Rejón Aguilar: From the United States. All weapons come from the U.S.

Interrogator: How are they brought here?

Rejón Aguilar: Crossing the river. We used to bring them through the bridge, but it’s become harder to do that.

Interrogator: Who purchases the weapons?

Rejón Aguilar: They are bought in the U.S. The buyers (on the U.S. side of the border) have said in the past that sometimes they would acquire them from the U.S. Government itself.

Interrogator: And nowadays, who distribute them to you?

Rejón Aguilar: It’s more difficult for us to acquire weapons nowadays, but we find ways. But it’s easier for the Gulf Cartel to bring them across the border.

Interrogator: Why?

Rejón Aguilar: We don’t know why, but they bring them (across the bridge) in the trunk of their cars without being checked (by Mexican Customs). One can only think that they must have reached a deal with the (Mexican) government.

Interrogator: How often are they smuggled?

Rejón Aguilar: Today it’s more difficult so it’s more sporadic, like every month, every 20 days, or every month and a half. It’s done when ever there’s an opportunity.

This interview is significant in the fact that El Manito mentions that the weapons come across the river not over the bridge because of resent difficulties. The next nugget of information is that the Gulf Cartel is involved and they have no trouble bring guns over the bridge and the mention of the Mexican and US government officials are involved.This means that there is a cross border conspiracy going on involving agents of both governments and that the Gulf cartel may have better logistics. El Manito as a member of the Los Zetas organization operated in North Eastern Mexico the same territory as the Gulf Cartel. 

Weapons acquisitions from the US buyers and the US Government, this indicates that ATF in Texas is implicated in Fast and Furious and that the F&F operation was not exclusive to the Phoenix ATF office. Zeta 7 is also the second cartel capo in a month that has mentioned purchasing weapons from the US Government. 

It is understandable that guns move across the river in a clandestine operation so as not to involve customs agents on ether side of the Rio Grand. For the guns to move across the bridge that would mean that the schedule of shipments would need to be coordinated with the personnel schedules on both sides of the border. From the cartel perspective the crossings at Progresso, Los Indios, and possibility Roma would be the softest egress points for money and weapons in to Mexico.

With the possibility of more than one ATF office in the South West being involved, will F&F operations be uncovered in the rest of the country? The drug distribution networks that are controlled by the cartels opens up the possibility of a nation wide strategy to funnel weapons into Mexico. If ATF allowed the gun walking strategy to take place in Phoenix then why not Ft Worth, Laredo, Knoxville, Atlanta, New Orleans or Tampa? How far reaching is this? Are there gun stores in Washington DC?

Money Talks And Barretts Walk

If your looking for a nice little plinker to do some can shootin (that’s Mexican shootin) this weekend then run right down to your local ATF store and pick up a Barrett 82A1. If your a Mexican Drug lord flush with cash that’s all you need to do.

Mexican law enforcement reveled on June 22, 2011 that they have arrested  Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas the once top dog in the  La Familia Michoacana drug cartel “El Chango”  as he is known gave himself up to Mexican police because he was in fear of his life. El Chango was banished from the La Familia organization in December of 2010 by his under-bosses who suspected him of treason. No longer a viable leader in the cartel business the black balled El Chango was on borrowed time.

There probably was a deal cut between the Mexican authorities and El Chango for information. The suspicions of the La Familia lieutenants was correct he was in league with the Gringos. So after deciding that being burned alive in an oil drum by his former colleagues was unacceptable. He opted to spill the beans about his involvement in Operation Fast and Furious. We may not learn of El Chango’s complete involvement in the conspiracy but what we do know is that he had ties to the ATF.

Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas was cornered and arrested in his his neighborhood by the Federalises under suspension of shooting down a Mexican Federal police helicopter in May. Under interrogation  he reveled that he was the pivot man in the Fast and Furious circle jerk. El Chango revealed that he was purchasing weapons directly from the ATF and the sniper rifle a .50 calber Barrettt 82A1 that he used to shoot the helicopter was supplied to him by the ATF.

The neighborhood in Apatzingan, Michoacán Mexico where El Chango was living is adjacent to a military base.

The questions that must be asked are. If El Chango was telling the truth about his relationship with the ATF and if the focus of the ATF was to entice the big cartel fish by letting guns walk.  Why is La Familia still in business?  Why was Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas aloud to walk? Is there some other kind of skulduggery going on?

ATF Gets Spanked From OIG

U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General Evaluation and Inspections Division
Review of ATF’s Project Gunrunner November 2010

The latest office of Inspector Generals report characterizing ATF’s weapons operations as incompetent and ineffective. What prompted The IG’s report that heavily criticizes the ATF’s performance and is filled with statements such as

“Despite the increased ATF activity associated with Project Gunrunner, we found that significant weaknesses in ATF’s implementation of Project Gunrunner undermine its effectiveness.”

and this.

“We also determined that intelligence personnel in ATF’s Southwest border field divisions do not routinely share firearms trafficking intelligence with each other.”

Was there a leak in ATF early on that generated this scathing portrayal of ineptitude?

The ATF field supervisors clearly were focused on the quantity of cases rather than the quality. The recent Fox News report about an ATF operation William La Jeunesse stated “That after thousands of man hours and millions of dollars spent, only one of the 20 suspects remains behind bars. Most were released within 24 hours of their arrest. In the end, all prosecutors got was one middle man and a handful of straw buyers.” Mr La Jeunesse tracked the “straw buyers” to there homes not jail cells.

The strategy that ATF has adopted in going after the small fries instead of the meat and potatoes of the cross border smuggler kingpins is not compatible with Homeland Security’s vision. The justification for this is that ATF is not willing to commit time and resources to larger conspiracy cases that involve logistics such as wiretaps and surveillance.  They can boost there arrest statistics by shuffling “straw buyer” cases through at a higher rate, thus increasing there overall success rate. ATF field supervisors claim that money is at the root of the problem and repeated attempts for increased funding have been rebuffed by DOJ or the White House. This was not washing with the IG investigators as they stated that.

“ATF increased the number of gun dealer compliance inspections along the Southwest Border by 133 percent and increased the number of compliance inspection hours worked by 102 percent.Gunrunner Impact Team initiative that increased the number of gun dealer compliance inspections conducted and cases initiated within the Houston Field Division area. Under this initiative, ATF deployed 100 agents, investigators, and support staff to the Houston Field Division for 120 days. ATF reported that the team conducted over 1,000 inspections of gun dealers and generated investigative leads leading to the seizure of over 400 firearms.”

(It seems as though ATF has the time and money to harass gunsmiths and sporting goods store owners but not the Los Zetas drug cartel. Who is the ATF considering the enemies hear? Quiet obvious it’s you and me: end comment)

The report states that the same ATF agents in the Southwest border field division who reported that they felt discouraged from pursuing complex conspiracy cases told investigators that field supervisors generally discouraged OCDETF (Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force) cases because “the supervisors favored faster investigations.” For example, an agent that was interviewed from a firearms trafficking enforcement group described “taking a lot of heat” for having taken a case to the OCDETF Program. The agent said that “ATF field management had previously turned down a number of cases that might have been proposed for OCDETF consideration.” The agent said that not using the OCDETF Program has resulted in agents not pursuing the “higher people in the food chain” of the trafficking rings.

Reading between the lines of the previous paragraph that was taken from the IG report. One can conclude that the agent that was being interviewed was saying that he was instructed to let the guns walk. It is hard to believe that the investigators did not follow up more with the field agents. If they did and found that in FACT guns were walking to Mexico at the instruction of supervisors then the office of the Inspector General is implicated in a criminal conspiracy as well as the Attorney Generals office.

In 2009, ATF reported to Congress that about 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico that ATF has traced were initially sold in the United States. The Southwest border states – Texas, California, Arizona, and to a lesser extent, New Mexico – are primary sources of guns used by Mexican drug cartels.

in response to a draft of this report ATF told the OIG that the 90-percent figure cited to Congress could be misleading because it applied only to the small portion of Mexican crime guns that are traced. ATF could not provide updated information on the percentage of traced Mexican crime guns that were sourced to (that is, found to be manufactured in or imported through) the United States.

How do you trust what a government agency is saying in response to an investigation when revelations like this come out. Clearly ATF was deliberately deceiving congress.

In July 2009 Stratfor decided to vet this statement and there results was.

the 90 percent number was derived from a June 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress on U.S. efforts to combat arms trafficking to Mexico. According to the GAO report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican authorities in 2008. Of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.
This means that the 87 percent figure relates to the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by Mexican authorities or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. In fact, the 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.

There where 15 recommendations that the IG specified in the report and number 8 was.

Focus on developing more complex conspiracy cases against higher level gun traffickers and gun trafficking conspirators.

Response by Kennith Melson ATF Acting Director

ATF concurs. ATF has and will continue to develop complex conspiracy cases. ATF will reinforce previously issued guidance including the National Firearms Trafficking Enforcement· Strategy and Implementation Plan and "Project Gunrunner -A Cartel Focused Strategy." ATF is working with the Department of Justice, Criminal Division and United States Attorney's Offices to bring prosecutors and agents from both sides of the border together to work on enhancing this effort.

Is this an admission of the ATF TOP SECRET program “Fast and Furious”