Author Archives: Denise Simon

Sunken Ordnance and Chemical Weapons, Re-think BP Oil Spill?

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It was April 2010, that the Horizon platform blew in the Gulf of Mexico where British Petroleum has been blamed resulting in one of the largest disasters in recent years, destroying much of the shoreline and salt water life.

BP took full responsibility for the disaster, but given the theories on the cause of the destruction of the pipeline and the drilling platform, was it really all BP’s fault? What did BP know, what did the oil producer not know and what was hidden that does reside on the sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico?

Redstone Arsenal, Alabama

Further information noted here.

In part from Maritime Executive: As time passes, more and more people are working on the seafloor and the chance of encounter with these bombs and other ordnance is becoming greater.”

With the ship traffic needed to support the 4,000 energy rigs, along with commercial fishing, cruise lines and other activities, the Gulf can be a sort of marine interstate highway system of its own. There are an estimated 30,000 workers on the oil and gas rigs at any given moment.

Bombs used in the military in the 1940s through the 1970s ranged from 250- to 500- and even 1,000-pound explosives, some of them the size of refrigerators. The military has a term for such unused bombs: UXO, or unexploded ordnance.

One huge problem is that record keeping of the military dump sites is incomplete and sketchy at best. It’s also believed that many of the munitions were “short dumped,” meaning they were discarded outside designated dumping areas by private contractors hired at the time.

“The real mystery is that no one knows what is down there, or where all of it is,” Slowey notes.

“Although most of these bombs do not  have triggers in them, some types of ordnance , such as torpedoes and mines, can become more unstable over time, so their case the chance of an accidental explosion is increasing.

 

“Because chemical weapons potentially pose environmental contamination risks, and because explosive material in many of the standard bombs and other ordnance  may still be viable, we need to determine exactly where they are and then have a plan for removing them or at least monitoring their condition,” Slowey says.

Forgotten hazards: Unexploded WW2 bombs and chemical weapons STILL pose serious threat to drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

  • After WW2 unexploded bombs were dumped in the ocean
  • 70 years later no one knows exactly how many were dumped and where
  • 500-pound bombs found 60 miles off Texas coast
  • At least one Gulf pipeline laid across a chemical weapon dump
  • Call for oil and gas industry to do more to address the problem

 

Millions of pounds of unexploded bombs dumped in the Gulf of Mexico by the U.S. government after World War Two pose a significant risk to offshore oil drilling, warn researchers.


It is no secret that the United States, along with other governments, dumped munitions and chemical weapons in oceans from 1946 until the practice was banned in the 1970s by U.S. law and international treaty, said William Bryant, a Texas A&M University professor of oceanography.
As technological advances allow oil companies to push deeper into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, these forgotten hazards pose a threat as the industry picks up the pace of drilling after BP’s deadly Macondo well blowout in 2010 that lead to the largest oil spill in U.S. history.  Unexploded ordnance has been found in the offshore zone known as Mississippi Canyon where the Macondo well was drilled.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will auction 38 million acres of oil and gas leases in the central gulf in March.
The U.S. government designated disposal areas for unexploded ordnance, known as UXO, off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico. But nearly 70 years after the areas were created, no one knows exactly how much was dumped, or where the weapons are, or whether they present a danger to humans or marine life.
‘These bombs are a threat today and no one knows how to deal with the situation,’ said Bryant.
‘If chemical agents are leaking from some of them, that’s a real problem. If many of them are still capable of exploding, that’s another big problem.’
Disposal zones were designated from Florida to Texas, said Bryant, who will discuss his research findings at the International Dialogue on Underwater Munitions conference that begins Monday in San Juan, Puerto Rico.


While the practice of dumping bombs and chemical weapons, including mustard and nerve gas, in the ocean ended 40 years ago some effects are just beginning to be seen, said Terrance Long, founder of the underwater munitions conference.
‘You can find munitions in basically every ocean around the world, every major sea, lake and river,’ Long said. ‘They are a threat to human health and the environment.’
The oil industry is no stranger to leftovers from the World War Two.
Last year, BP shut its key Forties crude pipeline in the North Sea for five days while it removed a 13-foot (4-metre) unexploded German mine found resting cozily next to the pipeline that transports up to 40 percent of the UK’s oil production.
BP discovered the mine during a routine pipeline inspection, then spent several months devising a plan to lift the bomb and move it far enough from the pipeline to safely detonate it.
In the Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for 23 percent of U.S. oil production and seven percent of domestic natural gas output, the hazards are known, but generally ignored.
In 2001, BP and Shell found the wreckage of the U-166, a German World War II submarine, 45 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River during an underwater survey for a pipeline needed to transport natural gas to shore.


Bryant said he and colleague Neil Slowey have documented discarded bombs and leaking barrels over the past 20 years while conducting research for energy companies in the Gulf of Mexico.
Records of where these munitions were dumped are incomplete and experts believe many dangerous cargoes were ‘short-dumped,’ or discarded outside designated zones.


Bryant said he has come across 500-pound (227-kgs) bombs about 60 miles off the Texas coast and other ordnance 100 miles offshore, outside designated zones. At least one Gulf pipeline was laid across a chemical weapon dump site south of the mouth of the Mississippi River, he said.
While the risk of an underwater bomb exploding may be small, environmental damage from chemical weapons, such as mustard gas, is worrisome and needs to be researched, Bryant said.
‘We would like to do a survey to be able to say if (this material) is harmful or not,’ he said. ‘The condition of these barrels is deteriorating, so does it affect anything or not? We ought to know.’

Congress Seeking Secret Obama Letters on Iran

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Shameful that members of Congress have come to know the cunning and covert actions of the Obama White House, while the silver lining is that they DO know and are forced to take pro-active measures. It also appears that some in government are on the right side and are helping expose the nefarious actions on the parts of the White House and the State Department.

Senators: Obama Admin Hiding Secret Iran Deal Letters

White House promising to be soft on sanctions if Iran violates nuclear deal

Two leading U.S. senators are calling on the Obama administration to release secret letters to foreign governments assuring them that they will not be legally penalized for doing business with the Iranian government, according to a copy of a letter sent Wednesday to the State Department and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) disclosed in the letter to the State Department that U.S. lawmakers have been shown copies of several letters sent by the Obama administration to the Chinese, German, French, and British governments assuring them that companies doing business with Iran will not come under penalty.

The Obama administration is purportedly promising the foreign governments that if Iran violates the parameters of a recently inked nuclear accord, European companies will not be penalized, according to the secret letters.

Congress became aware of these promises during closed-door briefings with the Obama administration and through documents filed by the administration under a law requiring full disclosure of all information pertaining to the accord.

The issue of sanctions on Iran has become a major issue on Capitol Hill in the weeks since the Obama administration agreed to a deal that permits Iran to enter the international community in exchange for temporarily constraining its nuclear program.

Iran will receive more than $150 billion in sanctions relief as part of the deal and many of its military branches will be removed from international sanctions designations.

“The documents submitted by the Administration to Congress include non-public letters that you sent to the French, British, German, and Chinese governments on the consequences of sanctions snap-back,” Kirk and Rubio wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry.

“These letters appear to reassure these foreign governments that their companies may not be impacted if sanctions are re-imposed in response to Iranian violations of the agreement,” they claim. “While Administration officials have claimed that this is not the case, we think it is important for the American public to be able to read your assurances to foreign governments for themselves as their elected representatives review this deal in the coming weeks.”

Kirk and Rubio are demanding that the Obama administration release these letters to the public so that the full nature of the White House’s backroom dealings are made known.

“We therefore request the Administration to publicly release these letters, which are not classified, so that the full extent of the Administration’s non-public assurances to European and Chinese governments can be discussed openly by Congress and analyzed by impartial outside experts,” they write.

“Given the conflicting interpretations hinted at by the deal’s various stakeholders, it would also ease congressional review of the deal if you were to receive assurances from the other members of the P5+1 about the guidance they will provide to companies about the inherent risks of investing in Iran due to Iran’s ongoing support for terrorism and use of its financial system for illicit activities and the potential for sanctions to snap back if Iran violates the nuclear agreement,” the letter states.

As Iranian companies and government entities are removed from sanctions lists, they will be permitted to do business on the open market. A number of governments, including the Russia and Italy, have already expressed interest in partnering with Iran.

U.S. lawmakers remain concerned that if Iran violates the nuclear accord, sanctions will not be reimposed in a meaningful way.

“The conditions under which foreign investment in Iran would proceed under the nuclear agreement remain unclear,” Kirk and Rubio wrote. “On July 23, 2015, Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that companies that have invested in Iran would ‘not be able to continue doing things that are in violation of the sanctions’ if sanctions snap back.”

“Foreign investment in Iran will involve long-term contracts in many cases, however, and some interpretations of the Iran agreement indicate these contracts might be protected from the snap-back of sanctions by a so-called ‘grandfather clause,’” they write.

Under the terms of the agreement, sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a paramilitary force known to commit acts of terrorism across the globe, will be lifted.

A multi-billion dollars financial empire belonging to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei also will be removed from sanctions lists, according to the parameters of the deal.

*** On the matter of Iran, the story goes on. Iran has job openings…

AP Exclusive: UN to let Iran inspect alleged nuke work site

VIENNA (AP) — Iran, in an unusual arrangement, will be allowed to use its own experts to inspect a site it allegedly used to develop nuclear arms under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.

The revelation is sure to roil American and Israeli critics of the main Iran deal signed by the U.S., Iran and five world powers in July. Those critics have complained that the deal is built on trust of the Iranians, a claim the U.S. has denied.

The investigation of the Parchin nuclear site by the International Atomic Energy Agency is linked to a broader probe of allegations that Iran has worked on atomic weapons. That investigation is part of the overarching nuclear deal.

The Parchin deal is a separate, side agreement worked out between the IAEA and Iran. The United States and the five other world powers that signed the Iran nuclear deal were not party to this agreement but were briefed on it by the IAEA and endorsed it as part of the larger package.

Without divulging its contents, the Obama administration has described the document as nothing more than a routine technical arrangement between Iran and the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency on the particulars of inspecting the site.

Any IAEA member country must give the agency some insight into its nuclear program. Some countries are required to do no more than give a yearly accounting of the nuclear material they possess. But nations— like Iran — suspected of possible proliferation are under greater scrutiny that can include stringent inspections.

But the agreement diverges from normal inspection procedures between the IAEA and a member country by essentially ceding the agency’s investigative authority to Iran. It allows Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence for activities that it has consistently denied — trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Evidence of that concession, as outlined in the document, is sure to increase pressure from U.S. congressional opponents as they review the July 14 Iran nuclear deal and vote on a resolution of disapproval in early September. If the resolution passed and President Barack Obama vetoed it, opponents would need a two-thirds majority to override it. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has suggested opponents will likely lose.

The White House has denied claims by critics that a secret “side deal” favorable to Tehran exists. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said the Parchin document is like other routine arrangements between the agency and individual IAEA member nations, while IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told Republican senators last week that he is obligated to keep the document confidential.

But Republican critics are bound to harshly criticize any document that cedes to Iran the right to look for the very nuclear wrongdoing that it has denied committing. Olli Heinonen, who was in charge of the Iran probe as deputy IAEA director general from 2005 to 2010 ,said he can think of no instance where a country being probed was allowed to do its own investigation.

Iran has refused access to Parchin for years and has denied any interest in — or work on — nuclear weapons. Based on U.S., Israeli and other intelligence and its own research, the IAEA suspects that the Islamic Republic may have experimented with high-explosive detonators for nuclear arms at that military facility and other weapons-related work elsewhere.

The IAEA has repeatedly cited evidence, based on satellite images, of possible attempts to sanitize the site since the alleged work stopped more than a decade ago.

The document seen by the AP is a draft that one official familiar with its contents said doesn’t differ substantially from the final version. He demanded anonymity because he isn’t authorized to discuss the issue.

It is labeled “separate arrangement II,” indicating there is another confidential agreement between Iran and the IAEA governing the agency’s probe of the nuclear weapons allegations.

The document suggests that instead of carrying out their own probe, IAEA staff will be reduced to monitoring Iranian personnel as these inspect the Parchin site.

Iran will provide agency experts with photos and videos of locations the IAEA says are linked to the alleged weapons work, “taking into account military concerns.”

That wording suggests that — beyond being barred from physically visiting the site — the agency won’t even get photo or video information from areas Iran says are off-limits because they have military significance.

IAEA experts would normally take environmental samples for evidence of any weapons development work, but the agreement stipulates that Iranian technicians will do the sampling.

The sampling is also limited to only seven samples inside the building where the experiments allegedly took place. Additional ones will be allowed only outside of the Parchin site, in an area still to be determined.

“Activities will be carried out using Iran’s authenticated equipment consistent with technical specifications provided by the agency,” the agreement says. While the document says that the IAEA “will ensure the technical authenticity” of Iran’s inspection, it does not say how.

The draft is unsigned but the signatory for Iran is listed as Ali Hoseini Tash, deputy secretary of the Supreme National Security Council for Strategic Affairs instead of an official of Iran’s nuclear agency. That reflects the significance Tehran attaches to the agreement.

Iranian diplomats in Vienna were unavailable for comment, while IAEA spokesman Serge Gas said the agency had no immediate comment.

The main focus of the July 14 deal between Iran and six world powers is curbing Iran’s present nuclear program that could be used to make weapons. But a subsidiary element obligates Tehran to cooperate with the IAEA in its probe of the allegations.

The investigation has been essentially deadlocked for years, with Tehran asserting the allegations are based on false intelligence from the U.S., Israel and other adversaries. But Iran and the U.N. agency agreed last month to wrap up the investigation by December, when the IAEA plans to issue a final assessment on the allegations.

Both Iran and the IAEA were upbeat when announcing the agreement last month. But Western diplomats from IAEA member nations who are familiar with the probe are doubtful that Tehran will diverge from claiming that all its nuclear activities are — and were — peaceful, despite what they say is evidence to the contrary.

They say the agency will be able to report in December. But that assessment is unlikely to be unequivocal because chances are slim that Iran will present all the evidence the agency wants or give it the total freedom of movement it needs to follow up the allegations.

Still, the report is expected to be approved by the IAEA’s board, which includes the United States and other powerful nations that negotiated the July 14 agreement. They do not want to upend their July 14 deal, and will see the December report as closing the books on the issue.

Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee chairman Lindsay Graham, a Republican presidential hopeful, last week asked for “any and all copies of side agreements between Iran and the IAEA associated with the Iran nuclear deal.” He threatened to cut off U.S. funding for the U.N. agency otherwise.

*** Last but never least, the Iran deal has triggered George Soros and his group MoveOn.org. Soros soldiers have been deployed.

WT: The effort to win congressional approval of the Iran nuclear agreement has brought a new intensity to peace advocates that hasn’t been seen since the Iraq War, including MoveOn.org, a group that helped President Obama win the White House but has seen its power wane in the last few years.

“We’ve been campaigning in support of diplomacy with Iran and against another war in the Middle East for years,” said Nick Berning, a spokesman for MoveOn.org.

When the 60-day clock for congressional review of the deal between six world powers and Tehran started ticking just ahead of lawmakers’ annual August recess, MoveOn.org launched a targeted campaign to deploy staff and grassroots activists to key states and districts to show up at town halls and demonstrate to their Democratic members of Congress that they support implementing the agreement. More details here.

 

The 2 Emails that Jumped the Hillary Server Investigation

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They destroyed the Blackberry Phones…what????

WashingtonTimes: The State Department destroyed the BlackBerry devices issued to two top aides of former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and never issued Mrs. Clinton a device at all, officials told a federal court Wednesday in a filing that raises still more security questions.

The filing came a day before officials will have to appear in court to detail the steps they took to try to track down Mrs. Clinton’s emails, and whatever computers or other devices she may have used to send them. For sure keep reading here.

If you don’t think Trey Gowdy of the Benghazi Investigation group in Congress is not on top of things, then you need to think again. Further, it must be noted, the co-chairman of the Benghazi Commission serving with Gowdy is Elijah Cumming of Maryland and to date, he has done nothing but obstruct the investigations.

Classified emails from Clinton aides kick-started FBI probe, candidate downplays controversy

FNC:

EXCLUSIVE: An email from a top Clinton adviser containing classified military intelligence information, and one from a top aide containing classified information about the Benghazi terror attack, were the documents that kick-started the FBI investigation into the mishandling of classified information, Fox News has learned.

The emails, among thousands on Hillary Clinton’s personal server, were released to the Benghazi select committee in May and have been widely discussed but Fox News for the first time has identified which Clinton aides sent them and the subject matter.

The revelation came as the Democratic presidential candidate and former secretary of state tried to brush aside the burgeoning scandal, joking at a campaign event when asked by Fox News whether she had wiped her private server clean, “What, with like with a cloth or something? I don’t know how it works at all.”

Clinton last week handed the FBI her private server, which she used to send, receive and store emails during her four years as secretary of state.

Fox News has identified two of the Benghazi-related emails on the server that were deemed to contain classified information at the time they were sent.

The first was forwarded by Clinton adviser Huma Abedin and contained classified material from military intelligence sources. The 2011 email forwards a warning about how then-Ambassador Chris Stevens was “considering departure from Benghazi” amid deteriorating conditions in a nearby city. The email was mistakenly released by the State Department in full, and is now considered declassified.

New details raise concerns over security of Hillary’s server
The second was sent by Clinton aide Jake Sullivan and contained classified information as well as sensitive law enforcement information on Benghazi. The partly redacted November 2012 email detailed how Libyan police had arrested “several people” with potential connections to the terror attack.

Abedin and Sullivan now work for the Clinton presidential campaign. A spokeswoman for the intelligence community inspector general confirmed to Fox News that the information was classified at the time it was sent.

But Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon says the information was not classified at the time the emails were sent. In maintaining this position, the campaign pointed to the fact that the State Department shared this judgment, as the Abedin email was released in full by the State Department on its FOIA website. The campaign spokesman acknowledged there is disagreement with the intelligence community inspector general.

A State Department spokesman said they shared Fallon’s stance.

The emails are now just a fraction of those under review by the intelligence community. On Tuesday, while Clinton joked about her server’s apparently missing contents, Fox News has learned the FBI is aggressively trying to recover the data.

An intelligence source familiar with the review told Fox News that FBI investigators are confident they may be able to recover some of the deleted files, a detail first reported by NBC News.

Yet at the contentious press conference on Tuesday, Clinton insisted anything she did with her email server was “legally permitted.”

In the press conference following a Las Vegas town hall meeting Tuesday, Fox News’ Ed Henry pressed the Democratic presidential candidate by pointing out that leadership is about taking responsibility.

“Look, Ed, I take responsibility,” Clinton replied. “In retrospect, this didn’t turn out to be convenient at all and I regret that this has become such a cause celebre. But that does not change the facts. The facts are stubborn — what I did was legally permitted.”

The FBI is holding Clinton’s server in protective custody after the intelligence community’s inspector general raised concerns recently that classified information had traversed the system.

Clinton told reporters she was “very comfortable that this will eventually get resolved and the American people will have plenty of time to figure it out.”

When asked whether she oversaw the process to wipe the server clean, Clinton said, “my personal emails are my personal business. Right? We went through a painstaking process and through 55,000 pages we thought could be worth relating,” she continued. “Under the law, that decision is made by the official. I was the official. I made those decisions.”

As she departed the room, a reporter asked whether the email scandal will ever end, Clinton turned to reporters shrugged and said, “Nobody talks to me about it other than you guys.”

Fox News’ Ed Henry and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

*** There is a history of Obama giving a pass to those in his administration when it comes to violating law and controlling classified material. There are some names missing in the story below such as Thomas Drake at the NSA but, you are encouraged to read the summary here and consider if the Obama White House will in the end give Hillary ‘executive privilege’ much as he did with Eric Holder over Fast and Furious. My vote is yes.

 

 

Cocaine/Narcotic Trafficking Routes into the United States

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‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s key role in the global cocaine trade is becoming clearer

BusinessInsider: Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel in Mexico is the largest drug-trafficking organization in the world, and its deep ties to Colombia are becoming more apparent.

According to a recent report from from Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, Sinaloa controls 35% of the cocaine exported from Colombia — the largest producer of the drug in the world. These drugs are coming into the US and effecting work-working Americans lives. Police are doing hardly anything to stop the drug cartle either and are making false arrests everywhere. If you have been accused of drug trafficking then you may want to contaxt someone like these philadelphia criminal lawyers to see if you can get legal assistance.

Sinaloa

Stratfor A look at Sinaloa’s operations in Mexico.

Now that El Chapo has escaped from a Mexican prison, Colombian generals who worked to bring down the notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar are reportedly hunting down the notorious Sinaloa cartel leader, too.

Born in the mountains of Sinaloa state on Mexico’s west coast, El Chapo’s cartel has expanded throughout the country and around the world over the last several decades.

According to Spanish newspaper El País, the cartel’s marijuana and poppy fields in Mexico cover more than 23,000 miles of land, an area larger than Costa Rica. It has operatives in at least 17 Mexican states and operations in up to 50 countries, Insight Crime reports.

A look at Sinaloa’s operations in Mexico.

In addition to its reported involvement in the heroin trade in the Middle East, it is active in Europe and in the US, where, according to the DEA in 2013, it “supplies 80% of the heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine — with a street value of $3 billion — that floods the Chicago region each year.”

The cartel is adept at sneaking the drug across borders and into the US. Cocaine has been found smuggled in frozen sharks, sprinkled on donuts, and crammed into cucumbers. The cartel is perhaps best known for the hundreds of elaborate smuggling tunnels it has built (the most recent allowing its boss to escape prison).

cartel drug mapBusiness Insider/Andy KierszA look at how drugs from Sinaloa have passed through the US.

Sinaloa’s second-in-command, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, reportedly directs the cartel’s Colombian business dealings through two Mexicans based in the country, “Jairo Ortiz” and “Montiel” — both aliases.

‘Lacoste,’ ‘Apple,’ and ‘Made in Colombia’

Documents from police and security forces seen by El Tiempo indicate the Sinaloa cartel works closely with criminal groups and guerrilla forces to run a trafficking network that exports more than one-third of the cocaine produced in Colombia.

Through an unidentified businessman, the Sinaloa cartel works with the criminal organization Los Urabeños, which was formed by remnants of right-wing paramilitaries in the mid-2000s, according to Colombia Reports.

This unidentified businessman works with Los Urabeños, its leader Dario Antonio Úsuga, and the cartel to coordinate shipments of drug cargos, labeled “Lacoste,” “Apple,” and “Made in Colombia,” to destinations in Europe and Asia, according to El Tiempo.

Los Urabeños, aka Clan Úsuga, is regarded as the most powerful of Colombia’s remaining criminal organizations and as the only one with a truly national reach.

Many of the Pacific and Caribbean smuggling routes are controlled by Los Urabeños, and its influence is so extensive that, over the last 18 months, 600 Colombian officials have been jailed for supporting the group.

The Sinaloa cartel has also formed an alliance with the left-wing guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

The Farc began peace negotiations with the government in late 2012 and agreed to suspend drug trafficking as a part of the talks. Sinaloa then began franchising drug operations from Farc rebels, allowing the cartel to expand its reach into the production stages of the cocaine trade.

The Mexican cartel reportedly works with two Farc leaders in southern Colombia and pays as much as $40,000 per shipment for cocaine that leaves the Pacific coast departments of Nariño and Cauca.

The Sinaloa cartel also works with “La Empresa,” a criminal group based in the Pacific port city of Buenaventura, to direct shipments. La Empresa has, according to Colombia Reports, allied with Colombian criminal group “Los Rastrojos” (with whom the Sinaloa cartel has also aligned) to fight off the Pacific coast expansion of Los Urabeños.

(La Empresa, El Tiempo notes, has been linked to the “casas de pique” — buildings in outlying areas of Buenaventura used to torture and dismember rival gang members.)

The Sinaloa cartel has also provided weapons and financing to the Oficina de Envigado, a Medellin-based crime syndicate that assumed much of Pablo Escobar’s operations after his death in 1993.

Sinaloa “retained the services of ‘La Oficina’ to support drug trafficking around the world,” the US Treasury Department has said.

According to El Tiempo, “the FARC, ‘los Úsuga,’ and ‘la Empresa’ are keys in Sinaloa’s strategy to control eight ports on the Pacific, from Mexico to Peru.”

“In Colombia, [the Sinaloa cartel] already directs 50% of the drugs that leave from [the ports of] Tumaco, Buenaventura, and el Urabá, which form a network with ports in Peru (El Callao and Talara), Ecuador (Esmeraldas and San Lorenzo) and Guatemala,” according to intelligence documents seen by El Tiempo.

Drugs are shipped by fastboat from Colombia, primarily to Guatemala’s Puerto Quetzal, which handles almost all of the cocaine coming out of Colombia.

A kilo of cocaine that reaches Guatemala is worth $10,000, according to El Tiempo. The price hovers around $12,000 to $15,000 at the US border, and a kilo can sell in the low six figures once it reaches the US.

‘A possible refuge’

The panoply of ties that the Sinaloa cartel has built throughout the Western Hemisphere lead many to believe El Chapo, the fugitive Sinaloa boss, could seek “a possible refuge” in Colombia.

In fact, on July 19, just eight days after El Chapo rode to freedom on a motorcycle through a mile-long, air-conditioned underground tunnel in central Mexico, El Tiempo reported that officials from the DEA and FBI had requested “all available information on the movements, personnel, and contacts of the Sinaloa cartel in the country.”

In the six months prior to El Chapo’s escape, the Mexican army captured nearly 2,800 kilos of cocaine — a 340% increase over the same period in 2014. The increase in seizures comes despite UN reports indicating that drug cultivation and trading in Colombia had stabilized.

The hunt for El Chapo has also drawn in several officials from the very country to which he may be headed. In late July, El Tiempo reported that three retired Colombian generals and six active police officials were headed north to assist with the search.

The Colombian generals — two former heads of the national police and the former chief of the now disbanded secret police — were selected because of their roles in similar mission: The effort to bring down the Cali cartel and Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel — two of the Colombian drug-trafficking organizations that ran roughshod over Colombian society in 1980s and 1990s.

The generals, who a Colombian police source called the “most effective three musketeers the country has against the narcos,” left Mexico in early August.

But, according to Michael Lohmuller at Insight Crime, whatever advice they left behind may not be enough to bring down Sinaloa’s drug boss.

The 22 years since the controversial killing of Escobar have seen marked advancements in the operations, sophistication, and evasiveness of drug cartels.

Moreover, modern-day Colombian police have failed to catch their country’s own most wanted kingpin: Dario Antonio Úsuga — the head of Los Urabeños and El Chapo’s ally.

Narcotic trafficking documentary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Broke the Law, But did you Know?

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Before you even get out of your driveway or leave the parking lot, how many laws did you break?

You’ve probably broken the law, and you don’t even know it

FreedomWorks: April 1790, the first Congress passed the Crimes Act, a law that established a criminal code in the United States. The Constitution listed only three crimes — counterfeiting, piracy, and treason. The Crimes Act codified those crimes and added a little more than a dozen others, including murder, larceny, and perjury. The list of federal offenses was short and easily defined.

Today, however, there are more than 4,500 federal statutes that carry criminal penalties. That is, at least, the best estimate. There has not been a full accounting of the number of criminal penalties since 2008. In 2013, the House Over-Criminalization Task Force asked the Congressional Research Service to, once again, take on this task. “CRS’ initial response to our request was that they lack the manpower and resources to accomplish this task,” Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), co-chair of the task force, said at a June 2013 hearing. “And I think this confirms the point that all of us have been making on this issue and demonstrates the breadth of over-criminalization.”

This onslaught of federal criminal offenses is relatively recent in the United States’ history. The American Bar Association, in a 1998 report, noted that “[m]ore than 40% of the federal provisions enacted since the Civil War have been enacted since 1970.” If this explosive growth in the federal criminal code was not jaw-dropping enough, it pales in comparison to the number of federal regulatory crimes.

A 1991 study, Does ‘Unlawful’ Mean ‘Criminal’? Reflections on the Disappearing Tort/Crime Distinction in American Law, noted that “there are over 300,000 federal regulations that may be enforced criminally.” Twenty-four years later, some estimate that there are as many as 400,000 regulatory offenses, many of which are punishable by fines and prison sentences.

It has long been said that ignorance of the law is not a defense, but the laws and regulations on the books in the United States are so voluminous that it is impossible to know when they are being broken. This is why, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you broke the law but did not realise until it was too late, you should get yourself a lawyer. Maybe you should take a look at someone like these Raleigh criminal defense lawyers to give you a better idea of how they could help you. Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties and criminal defense attorney, has, quite literally, written the book about the epidemic of over-criminalization. In his 2009 book, Three Felonies A Day, Silverglate, who offers several horror stories involving over-criminalization, theorizes that the average American commits, as the title suggests, a trio of felonies on a daily basis, often without ever knowing that a crime was committed.

These offenses can still be successfully prosecuted. Take the case of Alison Capo, for example. Her 11-year-old daughter, Skylar, saved a baby woodpecker from being eaten by a cat. Capo did not know that she ran afoul of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, under which the woodpecker is protected. She was fined $535 and threatened with jail time. The US Fish and Wildlife Service dropped the citation only after the case received publicity in the news.

“Kids should be able to save a baby bird and not end up going home crying because their mom has to pay $535,” Skylar told a local reporter. “I just think that’s crazy.” Indeed, it is crazy. Sadly, there are many more egregious examples of over-criminalization. The Heritage Foundation highlighted 21 specific instances from across the country in a publication, USA vs. You: The Flood of Criminal Laws Threatening Your Liberty, where the purported “criminal” broke laws or regulations that they could not have possibly known about.

Unfortunately, federal law and regulations often lack mens rea, or guilty mind, a requirement that derives from the common law tradition. Essentially, with mens rea, prosecutors would have to prove that the accused had criminal intent for them to be culpable for a crime. The criminal intent requirement has, however, been eroded in American law as the number of criminal offenses passed by Congress and promulgated by unelected bureaucrats have exploded.

A May 2010 report, Without Intent: How Congress Is Eroding the Criminal Intent Requirement in Federal Law, from the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers noted that of 57 percent of the 446 proposed criminal offenses in the 109th Congress (2005-2006) “lacked an adequate mens rea requirement.” Of the 36 proposed criminal offenses enacted by this particular Congress, almost 64 percent had a weak mens rea requirement or none at all.

Testifying before the House Over-Criminalization Task Force in July 2013, John Baker, a well respected and accomplished legal scholar who has written extensively on over-criminalization, explained how the American legal system came to such a perilous state that puts the liberty of the people at risk. “[W]hen we look at state criminal law, it is relatively easy, even though states have added many non-common law crimes, it is easy because the meat and potatoes of a local prosecutor, which I was, in murder, rape, robbery, theft, burglary, that is what we dealt with. And most juries do not have difficulty figuring out what those crimes are,” Baker told members of the task force. “Indeed, in most state prosecutions the issue is not whether there was a crime, the issue is whether the defendant is the person who did it.”

“In Federal law it is just the opposite. The issue is not whether the defendant did something; it is whether what he did was a crime. And we know with 4,500 statutes out there, there are plenty to pick from,” he said. “And it is easy to pick up one that has, if not a lack of mens rea entirely, a confused mens rea.” In his prepared testimony, Baker noted that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, under which Alison Capo was unnecessarily harassed, does not have a mens rea requirement.

“You know, at the state level we know that we found many people who are innocent in jail because they were factually not guilty,” Baker explained. “The problem in federal criminal law is that we have innocent people being convicted not because we have the wrong person, but because they really did not commit a crime” because they did not intend to do so.

In Baker’s view — as well as the view of most conservative, libertarian, and even some progressive legal scholars — is a default mens rea requirement. This would be applied across the board in federal offenses, providing some necessary relief for people who may unwittingly break some arbitrary statute or regulation enacted by Congress or promulgated by a federal agency.

Much of the focus of justice reform efforts in Congress has been on overhauls of front-end sentencing and back-end reentry. These efforts are vital because of the high costs of incarceration and the current approach to corrections, which essentially warehouses offenders, rather than rehabilitate them. But the need for default mens rea is another aspect of justice reform that Congress must consider due to the epidemic of over-criminalization that represents a threat to virtually every American.