| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Project Gunwalker: Mexico Still Waiting For Answers On Gun Program |
| 2011-09-21 |
| Richard A. Serrano is staying on this story Reporting from Mexico City and Washington-- Last fall's slaying of Mario Gonzalez, the brother of a Mexican state prosecutor, shocked people on both sides of the border. Sensational news reports revealed that cartel hit men had tortured Gonzalez, and forced him to make a videotaped "confession" that his high-powered sister was on the take. But American authorities concealed one disturbing fact about the case from their Mexican counterparts: U.S. federal agents had allowed AK-47 assault rifles later found in the killers' arsenal to be smuggled across the border under the notorious Fast and Furious gun-trafficking program. U.S. officials also kept mum as other weapons linked to Fast and Furious turned up at dozens of additional Mexican crime scenes, with an unconfirmed toll of at least 150 people killed or wounded. Months after the deadly lapses in the program were revealed in the U.S. media -- prompting congressional hearings and the reassignment of the acting chief of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- top Mexican officials say American authorities have still not offered them a proper accounting of what went wrong. Marisela Morales, Mexico's attorney general and a longtime favorite of American law enforcement agents in Mexico, told The Times that she first learned about Fast and Furious from news reports. And to this day, she said, U.S. officials have not briefed her on the operation gone awry, nor have they apologized. "At no time did we know or were we made aware that there might have been arms trafficking permitted," Morales, Mexico's highest-ranking law enforcement official, said in a recent interview. "In no way would we have allowed it, because it is an attack on the safety of Mexicans." Morales said she did not want to draw conclusions before the outcome of U.S. investigations, but that deliberately letting weapons "walk" into Mexico -- with the intention of tracing the guns to drug cartels -- would represent a "betrayal" of a country enduring a drug war that has killed more than 40,000 people. U.S. agents lost track of hundreds of weapons under the program. Much more at site Mexican leaders are under pressure to answer questions from their citizens, with very little to go on. "The evidence is over there [north of the border]," Morales said. "I can't put a pistol to their heads and say, 'Now give it to me or else.' I can't." |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #3 The headline could also have been: |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2011-09-21 17:10 |
| #2 So in the War on Drugs, they armed Team Drugs. In the War on Poverty, they armed Team Poverty. If I were a Mexican Agent charged with finding the source of all these new weapons and saw the purchasing end of Fast and Furious, it can be easy to see why Calderon would be pissed. Interesting what a person would think who risked arrest and general uncertainty fleeing to the very country whose government armed the bandits who made it too dangerous to live at home. Or as Barbara said... |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2011-09-21 14:40 |
| #1 With Bambi's crew in charge, hope they're not holding their collective breaths. :-( |
| Posted by: Barbara 2011-09-21 14:06 |