A paid informant for a US agency participated in several murders with the knowledge and consent of senior administration officials. Reporting the story based on documents unearthed during several lawsuits surrounding the issue, The Guardian says that the US department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs office paid Guillermo Ramirez Peyro more than $200,000 to act as an informant within a Juarez drug cartel even though they knew he had participated in several murders — Peyro was wearing a wire during at least one of the murders, of a Mexican lawyer, so ICE had a recording of the proceedings — and had helped conceal several more. The decision to continue using Peyro as an informant was made by very senior Justice Department officials, some of whom later colluded with ICE and Drug Enforcement Agency officials to cover up the affair.
Among those involved is the US Attorney for Western Texas, Johnny Sutton, who served as the director of criminal justice for five years under Texas governor George W. Bush and as US Attorney was responsible for the El Paso jurisdiction in which the investigation was headquartered. When a DEA whistleblower threatened to hold ICE officials “personally responsible” for Peyro’s actions, Sutton reached out to Justice Department organized crime division chief Catherine O’Neil, who passed the agent’s outraged letter along to DEA chief Karen Tandy. Tandy summoned Sandy Gonzales, the DEA whistleblower, to Washington, told him in no uncertain terms that he was out of line and then demoted him. Some of the documents used by The Guardian in their story are products of the lawsuit Gonzales filed against DEA when he resigned.
To review: Senior US Department of Justice, Homeland Security and DEA officials were aware that a Customs informant had participated in at least one murder and had acted as an accessory to others but continued to use and pay him. They knew that the identities of many of the murder victims and they knew at least a dozen were buried behind a home in Juarez, but they declined to notify Mexican authorities and when the events threatened to come to light, they acted to suppress the whistleblowing DEA agent. One of the murder victims, whose body the informant helped dissolve with quicklime, was a lifelong US resident with no criminal connections.
To put it more bluntly, senior officials in two cabinet departments, along with a number of subordinates, conspired to keep a known murderer at large and in business, while others conspired to cover up the crimes. Although not as extensive as the FBI conspiracy which kept fugitive Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger in business and out of trouble for two decades, the decision to accommodate Peyro’s crimes is every bit as morally repugnant and unlike the FBI scandal, in which two field agents were the primary culprits, this one goes very near to the top of John Aschroft’s Justice Department and almost that high in the Department of Homeland Security.
I suppose it’s small potatoes in comparison to some of the Bush administration’s other crimes, in which tens or hundreds of thousands of people have died violent deaths in service to one or another delusionary adventure, but the similarities between the War on Drugs and the War on Terra® are unmistakeable: lots of people get killed for no good reason and the lines between the official good guys and the official bad guys are either hopelessly blurred or completely erased. The two Boston FBI agents were eventually brought to justice — sort of; one of them turned state’s evidence — so perhaps there’s hope that at least some of the bloody-handed Bush administration officials involved in this incident will either wind up in jail or have their careers and reputations wrecked. It’s probably a vain hope. So far, the only one to have paid a price is the DEA whistleblower.
I’ll have more to say soon, circumstances permitting, about the large segment of American officials and their civil society enablers who probably aren’t sociopaths but seem determined to behave like ones. It’s worth noting, as The Guardian does, that no US newspapers are covering this story.
What is implied here is that the U.S. government paid the informant to commit murder or help to commit a murder. The facts do not support that claim (nor is that claimed by the whistle blower).
Would these murders have occurred had the informant not been on the U.S. payroll? There is no reason to believe otherwise.
Are U.S. interests better served having the inside knowledge of the operations within drug cartels along and within our borders? Absolutely.
When President Clinton placed a ban on using people with ‘criminal associations’ or ‘human rights abusers’ as HUMINT sources, America was crippled in its very necessary collection of foreign intelligence.
“but they declined to notify Mexican authorities…”
It is common knowledge (even the Mexican government so acknowledges) that the drug cartels have corrupted the Mexican Federal and local police departments. While keeping police officials in the loop of such investigations that fall within their jurisdiction, it would clearly put their investigative means and methods at risk (including their confidential informant) which would undermine the entire effort. (Now that is typically what a U.S. government bureaucracy does, but when they for once do the right thing, let’s applaud their efforts!)
[...] Permanent Link BTC News – 11 hours ago a Juarez drug cartel even though they knew he had participated in several murders Peyro was wearing a wire during at least one of the murders, of a Mexican [...]
Of course they paid him to commit or assist in murders. They knew what he was doing and he continued to do it and they continued to pay him. Would he have done it without their money? Probably, but the US wouldn’t have been underwriting his actions. If this were a question of life-saving intelligence, you would have an argument. It wasn’t. Despite the tens of billions of dollars spent in the War on Drugs, the flow continues unabated. The whole enterprise is profoundly, damagingly stupid and to pay someone for committing murder in the midst of it is profoundly immoral.
See Glenn Greenwald, and a citation of a comment (by a long term police veteran) pointing out that Dallas Morning News reported on the matter.