The El Paso Intelligence Center, launched in 1974 to identify drug traffickers south of the border, is all but a complete bust, the Justice Department’s Inspector General reported Tuesday.
The 86-page report was a virtual laundry list of seemingly intractable problems at the border intelligence post, opened by the Drug Enforcement Administration with great fanfare 36 years ago.
“EPIC could not produce a complete record of drug seizures nationwide because of incomplete reporting into the National Seizure System, which is managed by EPIC,” Glenn A. Fine, chief of the Office of the Inspector General, reported.
“EPIC had not sustained the staffing for some key interdiction programs, such as its Fraudulent Document unit, its Air Watch unit, or its Maritime Intelligence unit….” Fine added.
“As a result, EPIC’s service to users in these program areas had been disrupted or diminished for periods of time.”
Excellent May 31, 2010 New Yorker article by William Finnegan called Letter from Mexico, Silver or Lead which is unfortunately only available by subscription only (click here for link to abstract also pasted below) The most telling two words of the article = “state capture.”
ABSTRACT: LETTER FROM MEXICO about La Familia Michoacana and the pervasive power of drug traffickers in the country. Writer visits the hill town of Zitácuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacán. On the morning before his arrival, the dismembered body of a young man was left in the middle of the main intersection. It was an instance of what people call corpse messaging. Usually it involves a mutilated body and a handwritten sign. “Talked too much.” “You get what you deserve.” The corpse’s message—terror—was clear enough and everybody knew who left it: La Familia Michoacana, a crime syndicate whose depredations pervade the life of the region.
Mexico’s president, Felipe Calerón declared war—his metaphor—on the country’s drug traffickers when he took office, in December, 2006. It was a popular move. Although large-scale trafficking had been around for decades, the violence associated with the drug trade had begun to spiral out of control. More than twenty-three thousand people have died since Calderón’s declaration. La Inseguridad, as Mexicans call it, has become engulfing, with drugs sliding far down the list of public concerns, below kidnapping, extortion, torture, unemployment, and simple fear of leaving the house. The big crime syndicates still earn billions from drugs, but they have also diversified profitably. In Michoacán a recent estimate found eight-five per cent of legitimate businesses involved in some way with La Familia. Among Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations, La Familia is the big new kid on the block. It first gained national attention in September, 2006, when five severed heads rolled onto the dance floor at a night club in Uruapan, Michoacán. A senior American official in Mexico City told the writer, “La Familia is looking more and more like an insurgency and less like a cartel.” Mentions one of La Familia’s leaders, Nazario Moreno González, who is also known as El Chayo, or El Más Loco (the Craziest). Writer discusses La Familia’s activities with a local politician and relates how the cartel has, in some places, filled the vacuum created by public distrust of the police and the courts.
The overwhelming growth of organized crime in Mexico in the past decade is often blamed on multiparty democracy. Until 2000, the country was basically a one-party state for seventy-one years under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Drug trafficking flourished, but its practitioners enjoyed stable relations with officialdom. Describes how the election of Vicente Fox in 2000 changed the status quo between drug traffickers and government. Writer gives a survey of other significant Mexican drug cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel, and the Zetas, who had previously occupied Michoacán. Tells about the rise of La Familia in 2006 and its expansion into nearby states. Discusses U.S.-Mexico relations and the drug trade. Writer visits a drug-rehabilitation center in Zamora. Describes acts of kidnapping and extortion perpetrated by La Familia.
Phi Beta Iota: With a tip of the hat to Marcus Aurelius, this document is provided for information. On balance it is rich with insights that are not available elsewhere and consequently must be very highly regarded as a baseline for where US intelligence reform (and US intelligence) are today: dead, with a $75 billion a year casket that shows no signs of atrophy. Below are summary extracts both positive and negative.
(From Secrecy News) WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE OF CHARITY RULED UNLAWFUL
Warrantless surveillance of an Islamic charity in Oregon in 2004 violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a court ruled (pdf) on March 31.
In the culmination of a four-year lawsuit, Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of Columbia foundthat the government had unlawfully intercepted international telephone conversations of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation without a warrant, as required by the FISA for intelligence and counterterrorism surveillance. The government had contended that the state secrets privilege barred a resolution of the case, but the court found that the defendants were able to make their case without the use of state secrets.
At least by implication, the ruling means that aspects of President Bush's Terrorist Surveillance Program were illegal. Significantly, that determination was made by a court, based on a private complaint years after the fact, and not through congressional intelligence oversight. While Congress did enact the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which was the foundation of the court's ruling, contemporary congressional oversight alone would have left the Al-Haramain violation (and untold others) undiscovered and unpunished. Continue reading “Court Decision (NOT Congress Oversight) Declared NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Illegal”
I am sure they do see a threat. If the Pentagon were not engaged in such a broad spectrum of illegal and corrupt practices wikileaks would not be seen as such a threat.
Phi Beta Iota: We ran this story earlier, but now that the New York Times is running it, it merits emphasis in conjunction with the other two “OUT OF CONTROL” posts. The Pentagon is nuts on the inside and criminal on the outside” They have lost sight of their mission, their roots within the Republic, and their responsibility to be responsible. Wikileaks, in sharp contrast, is an non-profit organization funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public.
WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information that governments and corporations would prefer to keep secret, published an Army report about itself.
To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.
The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.
There is a new nation-wide movement striving to innoculate the National Guard as well as state and local police forces against illegal orders from the Pentagon and the White House. The basic loyalty to the Republic Oath elements are below. This comes in reaction to three distinct tangibles and one unverified but provocative intangible that are circulating with increasing urgency among those who fear the two-party tyranny and a blindly-obedient Pentagon:
1) Haliburton prison camps on US soil
2) FEMA discussions with various state and local law enforcement agencies about “federalizing” state and local police in case of a “national” emergency
3) Document said to be circulating within Washington on the prospects of an armed rebellion within the USA (we think secession and nullification much more likely, with armed resistance only if the federal government stupidly tries to use force against state and local resistance.
4) Unverified but from a Special Forces source with eyes on and unblemished integrity: multiple US military camps, one in Washington State and one in Alabama, among other locations, at which battalion size units of foreign troops (men without a country) have been kept in isolation, armed and trained, for contingency use within the USA. The same source says there is a long running PSYOP profiling program to identify for contingency need those US military personnel who would be willing to disarm US citizens if ordered to do so.
Never thought we'd get to this point. Visit the site above for a closer look. This is a movement Of, By, and For We the People, and it has very strong West Point, retired USMC, and National Guard support. In our view, the US military itself is beginning to realize the topsy-turvy nature of the morphing of the Global War on Terror (which is a tactic, not a target) into a War on Liberty right here in America. As we have long maintained, it is vital that our military personnel remember that Integrity is about loyalty to the Constitution, not to the chain of command.
OATH KEEPERS: ORDERS WE WILL NOT OBEY
1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.
2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people
3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies. 10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER, The New York Times (Syndicated)
Full Story Online
WASHINGTON — The nation's main counterterrorism center, created in response to the intelligence failures in the years before Sept. 11, is struggling because of flawed staffing and internal cultural clashes, according to a new study financed by Congress.
The result, the study concludes, is a lack of coordination and communication among the agencies that are supposed to take the lead in planning the fight against terrorism, including the C.I.A. and the State Department.
Excellent May 31, 2010 New Yorker article by William Finnegan called Letter from Mexico, Silver or Lead which is unfortunately only available by subscription only 
