Insight -- Honduran Weapons for Colombian Cocaine: The Paramilitary Trafficking Routes

"A court case involving one of Colombia's most powerful drug traffickers sheds light on how cocaine flowed to Central America in exchange for arms in the heyday of the AUC paramilitary force."

Honduras-based criminal groups would have been good trading partners for the AUC. Honduras lies on the way to the world's biggest cocaine market, the United States, and so it makes sense to send cocaine there before it made the journey north to Mexico and the U.S.

Honduras is also sandwiched between countries which, at the time of these deals, had recently come out of prolonged civil wars; Nicaragua in the 1980s, and Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1990s. The end of these Cold War-era conflicts left thousands of surplus military weapons in the region, many from the USSR, often in poorly-guarded military storage facilities.

The deals listed in the indictment against Sierra all involve the shipment of used, Russian-made, AK-47 rifles. The exchange rate for these seems to vary between three and eight kilos of cocaine per rifle. An AK-47 rifle cost around $200 in Honduras in the second half of the 1990s, according to World Bank data quoted by the Small Arms Survey 2007, while the wholesale price of a kilo of cocaine in Honduras in 2004 is estimated at almost $5,000. Taken together, this means Sierra's deals would have represented an extremely good deal for the AUC's partners in that country.

If the Honduran traffickers took the cocaine into the U.S., each kilo would have been worth almost $30,000.

It would also make sense for the paramilitaries, who had an abundant supply of the drug but were in constant need of arms, which deteriorate quickly in the semi-tropical regions where much of the fighting took place.

Praxis: John Robb's Standing Orders for Open Source Warfare.

Here's a tip, Obamanoids: Don't make us go there. We'll be better at it than you are with countermeasures.

LA Times: ATF sought to downplay guns scandal, emails show.

The cover-up began . . .

Two days after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry was killed in December, the top ATF supervisors in Phoenix said in internal emails that weapons found at the scene in Arizona came from a failed agency sting operation.

But nearly two months later, when U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) inquired about the origin of the guns, senior officials in Washington with the Justice Department and its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were evasive.

Grassley asked whether the guns were "used" in the killing. According to agency emails obtained by the Tribune/Times Washington bureau, the Justice Department response to Grassley said that "these allegations are not true." The response made no acknowledgement that the guns were even there.

DOCUMENTS: Read the emails

ATF officials, speaking not for attribution because the probe is ongoing, said they saw a distinction between the guns being found at the scene and "used" in the killing. They said the FBI had determined that neither of the two AK-47 semiautomatics was the one that killed the agent.

The parsing of the response to Grassley fit a pattern of ATF and Justice Department officials seeking to minimize the depth of the problems with the sting operation run by the ATF's Phoenix field office.

Can't be having any of that freelance gun smuggling, now can we?

Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics agent Francisco Javier Reyes, amateur gunrunner put out of business by the pros.

The DOJ doesn't like the competition.

Praxis: U.S. Military Field & Tech Manuals, free & on-line. Knowing how to find the ones you may be interested in. But if all you can afford is ONE.

Guidebook For Marines by the USMC Association. The latest (19th) Edition.

If the U.S> Military uses a piece of equipment, there is technical manual how to best employ and maintain it. If there is a subject of military knowledge related to skills, strategy or tactics, no matter how arcane, there is a field manual for that too.

Tech Manuals here.

Field Manuals here.

The Mystery of Manual Numbers.

A bit of explanatory info on

Military Manual Code Number Systems:

To anyone who has looked at Military manuals the code number systems which they are arranged under is bewildering. This is especially true for anyone who is trying to understand and follow the changes in manuals over the last hundred years. What I hope to do in this short essay is try to clear up some of the confusion, to simplify the discussion we be will only be concerned with U.S.Army manuals and only the essential points of the coding systems will be covered.
General

From the beginning one code number prefix title has been used consistently. Army Regulations (AR’s) which are concerned with the day by day running of the Army. Otherwise manual numbering systems have changed quite a bit. There are often many editions and changes to each manual number and there can be a great deal of difference between the manual editions. So manual FM 21-75 can have five editions covering 45 years of changes in doctrine. In reality each of the editions are more like five different manuals rather than one manual with a five series of changes.
Early Military Manuals

Until the 1890’s there were no army manuals in the current sense. Military manuals before the 1890’s were foreign imports or privately published manuals and textbooks, without any numbering. For all practical purposes they were simply books, with an author and title.

From the late 1880 until the end of First World War military manuals were either War Department Documents or Ordnance Department Documents. Both types of documents were numbered consecutively (1,2, 3, etc.) as they appeared with no variations concerning subject matter. But there was often a branch numbering system superimposed on the manual. For example War Department Document No.541 could also be Signal Manual No.3.

War Department Documents were approximately similar to modern Field Manuals with an occasional one concerned with a technical subject like signal communications and were usually hard covered books. Ordnance Department Documents were similar to modern Technical Manuals and could be either hard cover or paper backed.
After the First World War

Manuals began to be issued in loose leaf form designed to be placed in binders, numbering prefects including TR (Training Regulations), TM (Training Manuals), and TC (Training Circulars), with TR’s being the most common type. There Prefixes were followed by a two to four digit number then a dash followed by a two to three digit number. Like “TR 50-70 or TR 425-30”. The first set of numbers noted the subject while the second set noted the number of the book under the subject. The subject number system was fairly complex. Unfortunately too complex for the length of this essay.

The Technical subjects of the earlier Ordnance Documents were incorporated into the Training regulation system.
The Late 1930’S

The Training Regulations were merged into a series of branch Field Manuals, like Basic Field Manual, Cavalry Field Manual, etc. The Field Manuals of this period did not have a number system like current manuals. Instead FM 21-75 they are titled by subject like “Basic Field Manual, Volume I, Chapter 3”.
World War Two and After

The current U.S.Army manual number system was started at the beginning of the Second World War. The primarily types of manuals became either FM’s (Field Manuals), or TM’s (Technical Manuals), later followed by a bewildering arrangement of lesser Prefixes like TC (Training Circulars). ST (Special Texts), FC (Field Circulars), just to name a few.

Field Manuals were usually numbered by a one to two digit number followed by a dash followed by a one to two digit number, like “FM 21-75”, with the first series on numbers being the subject classification of the manual and the second series being the particular manual.

Technical Manuals were numbered at first like FM’s, but because they were vastly more of them by the early 1960’s, they began to be changed to a more complex system.

Early TM’s have numbers like “TM 9-2300”. The first number being the subject or branch of the Army. Number “9” means that it is an Ordnance Branch manual. The second series of numbers referring to the particular manual.

The many later TM’s, concerned with single pieces of equipment, especially Ordnance equipment, were numbered like “TM 9-1005-223-12”. The first number refers to the branch. The number “9” means that it is an Ordnance branch document. The second series of numbers refer to the subject type. The third series refers to the particular piece of equipment or subject. The four series on numbers refer to the level of maintenance which the manual is concerned with. With “10-12” being operator and organizational maintenance level, and with higher numbers concerned with a higher level, 20’s being direct support, 30’s being general support.

But, if all you can afford is ONE manual to cover a wide survey of military skills, organization and wisdom, get this.


Guidebook for Marines, 1967 edition.

Don't overlook older manuals either. I collect these puppies and have a small bevy of them, starting with a 1948 edition (which covers all the World War II equipment and doctrine for Marine light infantry) and a 1967 edition (which nicely takes in Korean and Vietnem War-era stuff).

They are relatively cheap and quite comprehensive from the perspective of the individual light infantryman.

And even if YOU know everything you think there is worth knowing about the subject(s), then having such primer can be very helpful training newbies.

FOX's latest -- Operation Fast and Furious: The Straw Buyers

Link here.

When the Operation Fast and Furious indictment was announced back in January, it was depicted as a big bust. Twenty suspects were charged with numerous counts of conspiracy, money laundering, gun running and drug trafficking. The defendants faced 5 to 20 years on a single count.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives(ATF) along with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix claimed to have dismantled a major weapons trafficking organization from top to bottom- from the end user of the weapons in Mexico to the money men, those who smuggled and transported the weapons from the U.S. into Mexico, and the buyers on our side of the border.

Yet after thousands of man hours and millions of dollars spent, only one of the 20 suspects remains behind bars. Most were released within 24 hours of their arrest. In the end, all prosecutors got was one middle man and a handful of straw buyers.

Fox News paid a visit to some of the straw buyers in the Phoenix Metro area last week. What we found were young men, many living with their parents, who were apparently just looking to make some quick money.

"A straw buyer is usually a kid who is 18-25, who needs a couple hundred extra bucks and knows somebody who knows somebody that has a way to make a couple extra bucks," said Adrian Fontes, an attorney for the accused ringleader of this Operation. His client, Manuel Celis- Acosta is the only one still in jail.

"The government wants a dramatic indictment, they want the conspiracy to sound like it's run out by highly sophisticated individuals who are involved with a particularly nefarious organization when the reality is it's just a bunch of kids," said Fontes.

Those "kids" purchased more than 1800 guns from stores in and around Phoenix. The straw buyers reportedly received about $100 per transaction. The gun stores say they were assured by the ATF and U.S. attorneys that the weapons would be tracked. Instead, agents say the weapons were allowed to "walk", they were not followed and many ended up in Mexico. Along with crime scenes south of the border, two were also found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Former U.S. Attorney Melvin McDonald says the defendants' release suggests that Operation Fast and Furious is not only a scandal, it was a failure.

" It's pretty scary," says McDonald. " You'd think a lot of people probably would not get out , they'd be detained because of the risk."

The parents of some of the straw buyers claim their sons just got caught up with the wrong crowd.

The mother of 18-year old Dejan Hercegovac, who bought more than 30 guns, said, "He didn't know anything.. he was just a kid."

The father of Erick Avila- Davila, a 25-year old who bought 12 guns, said he didn't know what his son was up to and only found out when he was arrested.

" When I ask him what he did, he just told me 'I'm sorry dad'."

Tickle the Wire's Inside Baseball analysis of latest Melson revelations.

ATF’s Melson May Have a Second Wind; Should FBI Have Used Violent Gun Smuggler as Informant?

Dan Freedman, anti-firearm flack for the gun confiscationist lobby, spins the Gunwalker Scandal for the Caspar Milquetoast liberals of C-Span.

Milquetoast

Caspar Milquetoast was a comic strip character created by H. T. Webster for his cartoon series, The Timid Soul. In 1912, Webster drew a daily panel for the New York Tribune, under a variety of titles—Our Boyhood Ambitions, Life's Darkest Moment, The Unseen Audience. In 1924, Webster moved to the New York World and soon after added The Timid Soul featuring the wimpy Caspar Milquetoast. Webster described Caspar Milquetoast as "the man who speaks softly and gets hit with a big stick". In 1927, Webster trained himself to draw left-handed in three months after a severe case of arthritis impaired the use of his right hand.

In 1931, the World folded, and that same year, Simon & Schuster published a collection of The Timid Soul reprints. Webster then went back to the Tribune, where he launched a Timid Soul Sunday strip. He alternated his various features throughout the week: Caspar Milquetoast was seen on both Sunday and Monday. Webster continued to produce this syndicated panel until his death in 1952, after which his assistant Herb Roth carried it on for another year. The character's name is a deliberate misspelling of the name of a bland and fairly inoffensive food, milk toast. Milk toast, light and easy to digest, is an appropriate food for someone with a weak or "nervous" stomach.

Because of the popularity of Webster's character, the term milquetoast came into general usage in American English to mean "weak and ineffectual" or "plain and unadventurous." When the term is used to describe a person, it typically indicates someone of an unusually meek, bland, soft or submissive nature, who is easily overlooked, written off, and who may also appear overly sensitive, timid, indecisive or cowardly. -- Caspar Milquetoast.

Caspar Milquetoast.

More sound and furor over ‘Fast and Furious’.

More, indeed, from Hearst's Cowardly Liar.


Dan Freedman's avid audience.

SHOWDOWN AT THE QUARTZSITE CORRAL

WND reports on a story that my friend Bob Wright has been on since the beginning: 'Nazi'-cop town 'firing' officers, stops paying mayor; Arizona opens probe as national interest into corruption heats up

Well, I'm sure THEY'LL fess up if these are Gunwalker weapons. Houston Field Division, are you missing something?

Border Patrol Finds Bag With Assault Rifles, Ammo in Starr County.

STARR COUNTY, Texas - The ATF will be examining the serial numbers on a load of assault rifles discovered near the Rio Grande in Starr County.

Border Patrol agents working near Fronton discovered a large duffel bag hidden in some brush. Inside the bag, agents found six assault rifles, 26 magazines and 360 rounds of ammunition.

The agents turned everything over to the ATF. The ATF will now look for serial numbers on the weapons to try and track where they came from.

Authorities have not made any arrests.

Of course, Starr County is in the Houston Field Division's area of operations, so they just can't be "walked" weapons from Phoenix, can they?

From David Codrea -- Exclusive: Story of central ‘Operation Castaway’ figure in his own words.

Remember, Castaway and the current Tampa gun walking allegations are not necessarily the same thing. Story here.

Via the Coalition of Willing Lilliputians Broadcast System. How to contact Vanderboegh while he is in DC.

-----Original Message-----
From: georgemason1776
To: Georgemason1776
Sent: Thu, Jul 21, 2011 10:40 am
Subject: Via the Coalition of Willing Lilliputians Broadcast System. How to contact Vanderboegh while he is in DC.

I am now deep behind enemy lines just across the river from Mordor-on-the-Potomac. Unfortunately where I am staying and working does not have cell phone coverage for my ghetto Boost Mobile phone. I will be on the net most of the time working when I am not consulting with my deep cover assets like Waldo, so if you need me, drop me an email. I will then call you back on another line. I will be returning to B'ham next Wednesday. Until then, I intend to wreak as much psychic havoc I can upon the Gunwalker conspirators and will be covering the Tuesday hearing in person. A lot of folks contributed gas money so I could get here and I intend to see that they get their money's worth.

Mike
III

"I aim to misbehave." -- Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity, 2005.

;-)

The bad joke that is the slow-rolling Office of Inspector General "investigation" of Gunwalker & whistleblower retaliation.

Commissioner Sir Charles Braithwaite: You must trust no one. The viper in our bosom could be anyone.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: I suspect everyone!
Commissioner Sir Charles Braithwaite: You will report only to me.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: And what makes you think I trust you? -- Inspector Clouseau.

Allan Lendel reports at the federal law enforcement blog Tickle the Wire that "Inspector Gen. Investigators in Phoenix for Fast and Furious Probe."

While Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley continue to attack the Justice Department in Washington over Operation Fast and Furious, investigators from the Office of Inspector General are in Phoenix looking into the matter.

According to one source, the OIG investigators are interviewing ATF agents and prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix.

Wow!

In short, the much-vaunted excuse of Eric Holder that we have to wait for the OIG investigation before anything else happens is now demonstrated to be, as the ATF whistleblowers predicted, just another part of the cover-up.

LATER:

Dave Workman reports here that

Thursday morning, NPR is reporting that the Justice Department's Inspector General is investigating possible retaliation against ATF Agent John Dodson, whose testimony before the House committee last month was devastating. The investigation is looking into posible attempts to smear Dodson. This new development got quick attention from Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), whose initial inquiries in January launched Capitol Hill investigations into the operation.

"I've warned the administration several times not to retaliate against the whistleblowers who speak to Congress. Unfortunately, there are indications that the administration leaked Privacy Act protected documents to the press in an effort to discredit Mr. Dodson with half-truths even though those documents had been withheld from Congress. It's a very serious matter that should be thoroughly investigated."—Sen. Charles Grassley, via e-mail to NPR

The NPR story can be found here.

ATF Whistleblower Case Triggers Retaliation Inquiry

The Justice Department's Inspector General has opened an investigation into possible retaliation against a whistle-blowing agent at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, according to two people briefed on the inquiry.

Watchdogs are examining whether anyone at the Justice Department improperly released internal correspondence to try to smear ATF agent John Dodson, who told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last month that he repeatedly warned supervisors about what he called a reckless law enforcement operation known as "Fast and Furious." . . .

Now, the Inspector General is looking into whether one of Dodson's memos, written last year, may have been shared with reporters in an effort to raise doubts about the extent of his involvement in the operation and to discredit him.

A spokesman for Acting Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar, and Dodson's lawyer, Robert Driscoll, declined comment to NPR Thursday.

Right. This is the same OIG that ignored Dodson's complaints in December and January. The OIG IS just one part of the cover-up.

The official announcement of Phase Two hearings.

TUESDAY JULY 26th

Operation Fast and Furious: The Other Side of the Border

Full Committee, Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, July 26th in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building.

This hearing will continue the Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Department of Justice's Operation Fast and Furious, a tragically flawed effort that is connected to deaths on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border.

Witness list:

Mr. Carlos Canino
ATF Acting Attaché to Mexico

Mr. Darren Gil
Former ATF Attaché to Mexico

Mr. Jose Wall
ATF Senior Special Agent
Tijuana, Mexico

Mr. Lorren Leadmon
ATF Intelligence Operations Specialist

Mr. William Newell
Former ATF Special Agent in Charge
Phoenix Field Division

Mr. William McMahon
ATF Deputy Assistant Director for Field Operations
(West, including Phoenix and Mexico)

This should be fun.

Snuck into Mordor-on-the-Potomac this morning at about 0200 hrs from the north.

Exhausted after vehicle trip B'ham to NYC to DC beginning 2200 on Tuesday.

Will be here through Phase Two hearing on Mexico aspects of Gunwalker Scandal on Tuesday, hobnobbing with sources, allies, Congresscritters and the like.

Sleep now, more later.

The Gunwalker Scandal and Mexican Presidential Politics

Jose de la Isla: The 'Fast and Furious' gun fiasco.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole Involved in 'Fast & Furious' Whistleblower Cover-up?

From Bea Edwards at Whistleblower.org.

David Codrea on The Devil and Daniel Webster.

This time, Daniel's arguing the case for the Devil.

Nice.

Look who Obama's hired for cybersecurity team: Ex-Clinton staffer 'lost' thousands of White House e-mails, booted by DHS for faking credentials

Excellent bit of guerrilla agitprop.

Agitprop, from Russian: агитпроп [ɐɡʲɪtˈprop]) is derived from agitation and propaganda. The term originated in Soviet Russia (the future USSR), where the term was a shortened form of отдел агитации и пропаганды (otdel agitatsii i propagandy), i.e., Department for Agitation and Propaganda, which was part of the Central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The department was later renamed Ideological Department.

The term propaganda in the Russian language did not bear any negative connotation at the time. It simply meant "dissemination of ideas". In the case of agitprop, the ideas to be disseminated were those of communism, including explanations of the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. In other contexts, propaganda could mean dissemination of any kind of beneficial knowledge, e.g., of new methods in agriculture. Agitation meant urging people to do what Soviet leaders expected them to do; again, at various levels. In other words, propaganda was supposed to act on the mind, while agitation acted on emotions, although both usually went together, thus giving rise to the cliché "propaganda and agitation". -- Wikipedia.

Hacked DOT Road Sign Reads "Impeach Obama"