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Comment by ecommerceguy | Hacker News Reader

Makes me wonder if any factions of the US government is working in cahoots with cartels.

They definitely are. Drugs are not teleported to American consumers when they reach the border, there has to be an equally corrupt distribution structure in the American side, and that only works involving corrupt officers. A lot of money attracts a lot of scum, as we say in Mexico, "con dinero baila el perro".

There have been instances of law enforcement trafficking arms to the cartels, because "we're going to track the arms and arrest them": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

> There have been instances of law enforcement trafficking arms to the cartels

They didn't traffic arms.

They "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them".

Strategy that is a corner stone of law enforcement so it's surprising the outrage at it being applied in this situation.

Were they planning on grabbing the guns back before or after they were used to execute Brian Terry?

Seems like the criticism of this operation may be justified.

If anything, Terry's death was probably helpful to their goal of expanding gun control.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/documents-atf-used-fast-and-fur...

Allowed? No. Forced.

It's a dumb strategy considering they won't be able to track those arms when they cross to Mexico, those weapons won't make their way back to USA, Mexico smuggles drugs, USA smuggles military weapons.

Those grenades, machine guns, 50 cal rifles, etc. are going to stay in Mexico, and will be used to kill Mexicans for years.

That was the stated objective, but ATF emails showed another motive, which was to use cases created by gunwalking in order to justify new gun control regulation.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/documents-atf-used-fast-and-fur...

So they encouraged the sale of 2000 dangerous weapons (https://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/atf_investigation_01_1112...), which were then used in hundreds of crime scenes, didn’t make any major arrests, then turned around and said “Look how terrible these weapons are. Someone needs to restrict their use”. That’s pretty damning…

I guess the cartels are really just good Samaritans trying to encourage USA to legislate better drug laws. It's not a crime if your intentions are good!

Just logically, if you think of the scale that the Cartels are working in, there is a missing link in the narrative here. Mexican cartels are completely intertwined with the Mexican government. This is well known in Mexico, as is well known that the US is the greatest consumer of these substances.

Organizations at this scale have infrastructure that rivals a multi-national corporations. But in our collective imaginary, we never talk about who receives it in the US. The story goes cartels -> ??? -> small to medium street dealers. At the scale of this problem, we are simply dealing with a level of sophistication that requires connections in VERY high places of the US government.

> The story goes cartels -> ??? -> small to medium street dealers

The "???" is not a mystery. It's well known that they work with the many large gang groups in the USA.

That’s not really a mystery. The Latin kings, MS 13, and other large, Hispanic gangs are the key to bringing drugs into the US.

All the mexican cartels have known leadership with names and faces - who are the leaders of the gangs you mention ?

The US has cameras everywhere - what do they look like ? Where do they live ?

The US doesn't have cameras everywhere. I think you're thinking of the UK.

Have you been in any of the major American supermarkets recently? The number of cameras is ridiculous. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a similar number of cameras/person in the US. A town near me put up cameras on several intersections about 10 years ago, I was told they were for monitoring construction and traffic during the project but they are still all in place.

The US has private cameras all over the place, and spy sats looking at most things

In federal prison, those are prison gangs.

Can you link to a source?

insight crimecrime is a good source.

https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/mexico-cartel-us-gang...

Previous Mexican Presidents have been outed as CIA assets.

It’s certainly more of a situation where they play both sides. Do things for the cartels and the CIA, less of a playing your enemies against each other and more of doing the minimum to survive.

Nobody seemed to be playing the blame game, that just devolves into emotional appeals.

Most important to highlight the systemic structure of these problems.

I was curious which Presidents were CIA assets, and it's three (that we know of):

- Adolfo López Mateos (1958-1964)

- Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970)

- Luis Echeverría (1970-1976)

> The declassified U.S. documents reveal CIA recruitment of agents within the upper echelons of the Mexican government between 1956 and 1969. The informants used in this secret program included President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and future President Luis Echeverría. The documents detail the relationships cultivated between senior CIA officers, such as chief of station Winston Scott, and Mexican government officials through a secret spy network code-named "LITEMPO." Operating out of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, Scott used the LITEMPO project to provide "an unofficial channel for the exchange of selected sensitive political information which each government wanted the other to receive but not through public protocol exchanges."

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB204/

They were "Secretarios de Gobernación" which at the time were the heads of the Mexican intelligence apparatus and therefore responsable to manage the sharing of intelligence between Mexico and other countries.

> Scott used the LITEMPO project to provide "an unofficial channel for the exchange of selected sensitive political information which each government wanted the other to receive but not through public protocol exchanges."

Keep in mind that from the Mexican side the relationship with the US is very difficult to manage and has to be done carefully and sharing of intelligence is a way to keep the US at a healthy distance.

I wonder how many westerners who celebrate the anniversary of Tiananmen Square every year have never even heard of Tlatelolco.

It's a hienous part of Mexico's history. Although more recently also a bus of 43 students that went missing.

I'd say it's a firm "probably": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi....

https://narco.news/articles/the-shadow-war

https://narco.news/articles/funny-games

I heard on a Joe Rogan Podcast with a CIA 'influencer' that the Federal Reserve is now laundering cartel money through Colorado's legal pot dispensaries

Not in the way you’re thinking of. Growing, processing, and smuggling drugs on a thousand-mile route requires huge resources and sophisticated multi-decade operations that are openly visible to the government. Sneaking it over the border in San Diego in the trunk of a car does not. Distributing it inside the US also does not. Any idiot with a life expectancy of 5 minutes can complete those last two tasks while maintaining secrecy.

There have been persistent rumors about the DEA working with the same cartel (Sinaloa) as Luna. They were the big winners of the opioid crisis. There's no solid evidence though, and maybe some of the suspicious stuff was actually Luna passing intelligence back.

you wonder if anyone working in the US government is human?

I've worked for the US government and I can tell you we all are humans.

Look no further at all the drug-lord's bank accounts and how they are not frozen.

I don't think those accounts are in anyone's name.

The banks launder money for them.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/global-bank...

Say it louder for the people in the back.

When was the last time the Border Patrol / DEA / Coast Guard got into a shoot out with drug gangs ?

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