Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

December 3, 2007

Spin sets up Blackwater at border, while military smuggles drugs


By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

SOMEWHERE ON THE BORDER -- While the news media joins Bush Inc., to push for more hired guns at the border, Blackwater is ready to fill that role. After being outed in Iraq, Blackwater is poised and ready to start killing for profit at the US/Mexico border from its planned new base in Potrero, Calif:
CounterPunch/John Ross: Blackwater goes to Mexico:
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross11092007.htmlerpunch.org/ross11092007.html
Television news is ready to pump you up, and deliver the agenda.
Meanwhile, after writing about all the National Guardsmen rushing to smuggle cocaine from the Arizona border, there was a lingering question: "Why weren't any Border Patrol agents arrested?" Sure, Border Patrol agents have been charged with murder and rape at the border, but why weren't any Border Patrol agents caught smuggling drugs during the sting, Operation Lively Green?
Here's a list (below) of the agencies responsible for Operation Lively Green, which includes immigration officials conducting the sting.
There's another question, what happened with all those huge loads of cocaine delivered in Phoenix and elsewhere that were revealed in the sting, over the years?
A National Guard recruiter in Tucson public schools was allowed to continue recruiting in the schools for years while he was smuggling cocaine.
Operation Lively Green is the FBI sting that was shut down because so many National Guard and Air Force soldiers, along with a Nogales police officer and a Arizona prison guard, were eager to smuggle cocaine from Nogales, Ariz., to Tucson and Phoenix.
The FBI released a statement regarding the recent court sentencing of public officials caught in Operation Lively Green, which includes the agencies carrying out the sting:
The FBI said, "These cases are part of a joint investigation being conducted by the Southern Arizona Corruption Task Force ( SACTF ), which is comprised of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security, and the Tucson Police Department. Though not part of the SACTF, the Arizona Air National Guard, Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service are also participating in the investigation. The cases are being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Michael Ferrara, Andrew Levchuk, and Peter Koski of the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Public Integrity Section, headed by Chief William M. Welch II. The United States Attorney's Office for the Western District of Oklahoma has also secured the guilty pleas of 14 defendants in a related investigation, Operation Tarnish Star."
Read more ...
http://media-newswire.com/release_1057636.html

Photo: Near the border in Calexico, Calif., a white flag. Photo Brenda Norrell

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