Was A Pot Deal Made?

As Eric has noted, American politics is beginning to smell, badly.

And then commenter Frank brought up this little gem from Business Insider – Australia in light of my comment that Obama may be holding back raids on legal pot shops in Colorado and Washington in order to collect evidence on them for later prosecution. I thought that was true because Obama did many more medical pot shop raids than Bush. Frank thought the raids on “recreational” would happen after the November election. He made an ironic comment putting these words in Obama’s mouth: I never said you could keep your pot!.

Well back to the Business Insider – Australia. What is the headline?

CONFIRMED: The DEA Struck A Deal With Mexico’s Most Notorious Drug Cartel

Well nothing rotten at all about that. Much. It stinks of vomit and the blood of the dead.

An investigation by El Universal has found that between 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an agreement with Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organisation to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs in exchange for information on rival cartels.

Sinaloa, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S.

There have long been allegations that Guzman, considered the “world’s most powerful drug trafficker,” coordinates with American authorities.

But the El Universal investigation is the first to publish court documents that include corroborating testimony from a DEA agent and a Justice Department official.

If you read Spanish you will like El Universal – www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion-mexico/2014/impreso/la-guerra-secreta-de-la-dea-en-mexico. Which if my Spanish is any good (it isn’t) translates to: The Secret War of the DEA in Mexico. Very roughly.

And it gets better (or worse depending on your POV)

A few hours later, Mexican Marines arrested Zambada-Niebla on charges of trafficking more than a billion dollars in cocaine and heroin. Castanon and three other agents then visited Zambada-Niebla in prison, where the Sinaloa officer “reiterated his desire to cooperate.”

El Universal, citing court documents, reports that DEA agents met with high level Sinaloa officials more than 50 times since 2000.

Which may explain The Mexican-ization of American Justice.

The Boulis trial confirms the appearance on these shores of the kind of blatant immunity from prosecution that Mexican gangsters, politicians, drug cartel bosses and Generals—many of whom wear more than one hat—have long taken for granted in our neighbor to the South. Given the continuing devolution of the formerly-great superpower, this should not be considered an especially surprising development.

Maybe there was a secret deal with Al Capone to go after Bugs Moran’s North Side Gang on St. Valentine’s Day. No one was ever prosecuted for that. So how did we end the violence? It wasn’t by pitting the gangs against each other. Or by bringing down the kingpins with tax evasion charges. We legalized alcohol. There is a lesson for today in there somewhere.


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4 responses to “Was A Pot Deal Made?”

  1. Frank Avatar
    Frank

    Sinaloa, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area..

    A little close to home, boss.

  2. Neil Avatar
    Neil

    I’m not sure how much power the Obama Administration really has to stop the bureaucracy from doing something that is in its own best interest. The Democrats (both the Obama and Clinton wings of the party) depend on the bureaucracy’s support for the power. If they were to clip the DEA’s wings, other departments might get the idea that something similar could happen to them.

    At best, they might convince the DEA to hold off on a campaign until after November…

  3. Randy Avatar
    Randy

    And I would imagine that several highly placed DEA functionaries opened up some off shore bank accounts which have since received some rather large deposits. The drug war means big money, for the cartels and for the enforcers. DEA agents are paid quite well, as are prosecutors and judges. And many DEA agents and police officers supplement their incomes by skimming money taken in during drug busts. And then there is good, old fashioned corruption, where agents of the state are bribed directly.

    Drug warrior Kevin Sabet, in his ceaseless efforts to stymie reform, is trying to frighten Americans by claiming that MJ legalization will lead to Big Marijuana, an industry reliant on creating addicts. It doesn’t seem to bother Sabet that the justice/prison industrial complex is addicted to drug prohibition in order to maintain its much expanded bureaucracy. The WOD has led to increases in the number prisons built and operated at the state and federal levels and all sorts of other expenditures. The short of it is that a lot of government jobs are dependent on drug buyers and sellers being arrested and sent through the meat grinder we call our justice system.

    The drug war is a total failure and it lives only because there is so much profit in it for the cartels and so many jobs from it for the bureaucrats. Sickening.

  4. […] Randy made a comment that I think deserves a lot more eyeballs. It is nothing different from what Eric or myself have been saying about the Drug War. But Randy was en fuegpo with this one. […]