by José de la Isla
Hispanic Link News Services
Mexico’s presidential election, coming up a year from now, could very easily have the U.S. gun policy, known as “Fast and Furious,” at the center of public debate.
Revelations about how the policy was implemented and its consequences are still developing, but the bullhorn of new disclosures tends to show it was crazy from the start.
“Fast and Furious,” as it now seems, was one phase of a caper managed out of Phoenix involving arms purchases destined to Mexican drug cartel members. The buys were known to U.S. government officials who were attempting to identify higher-ups in those organizations. More than 2,000 guns were sold, including those linked to the ambush killings of U.S Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and ICE agent Jaime Zapata.
ABC News reported in early July that Fast and Furious weapons were used in several crimes committed in Arizona.
But the “higher-ups,” who authorities were attempting to identify through the operation, were already known to other investigative agencies and may even have been paid informants. Kenneth Melson, the federal agency Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ acting director, said the others included the FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency, which kept his agency in the dark and he would not be the fall guy now that disclosures show what a deadly fiasco they were all engaged in. Had he known, Melson claimed, the ATF could have had a material impact on the Fast and Furious investigation as far back as late 2009 or early 2010.
Approximately 1,800 arms were allowed to slip by AFT agents into presumed organized-crime hands. One disgruntled agent was said to have reported that only 20 arms traffickers were detected during 14 months of the operation and no cartel was dismantled because of it. known as Z-7 of the originalOn July 3, Mexican authorities captured Jesús Enrique Rejón Aguilar, 14 principle leaders of the extremely violent Zetas drug cartel. He disclosed his belief that the U.S. government was involved in facilitating arms to a rival criminal gang, the Gulf cartel.
According Mexico City’s daily Excelsior, he stated to federal police that for a time buyers for the rival gang said even the U.S. government was selling arms and facilitating transport of them and there seemed to be some kind of agreement with the authorities. Fast and Furious may not have been an isolated matter.
According to Excelsior Mike Vanderboegh, who facilitated putting ATF informants before a House panel investigating the matter, about 5,000 arms reached criminals’ hands. One hundred and fifteen of the arms confiscated from cartel members were found to have originated from Texas.
The lawyer for gun dealers in Houston, Dick Deguerin, told Excelsior that his clients reported suspicious purchases of assault rifles, 9mm revolvers, and AK-47s. One chain store was told by ATF to continue providing them with information about suspicious sales and to continue selling arms to Hispanic purchasers of high-powered weapons who paid in cash. ATF took the information, said Deguerin, but his client never heard from the agency.
A third staging, in Tampa, Florida, was called “Castaway”. It apparently let arms flow to Honduras that later showed up at crime scenes in Mexico, according to Excelsior.
Novelist Larry Corriea blogged, “If I were to write a thriller in which a federal law enforcement agency knowingly allowed and even encouraged thousands of American guns to cross the border to arm Mexican drug cartels, in an effort to pad their stats to push for more gun control laws, even though innocent Mexican citizens and a U.S. Border Patrol agent were killed in the process and afterward there would be a huge cover-up that went all the way to the President,… some reviewers would say that my plot was silly.”
U.S. policy insanity is already severely criticized in Mexican civic society. Some Mexican senators have called for the extradition of responsible agents to answer for arms trafficking.
That does not sound so crazy anymore.
[José de la Isla, a nationally syndicated columnist for Hispanic Link and Scripps Howard news services.
