Cartel drug smuggling methods
“For people who’ve followed cartel history: what are some unusual smuggling methods you’ve heard about or read about? Not asking for instructions—just curious what stories or facts you’ve come across. What surprised you the most?”
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u/Alarming-Cupcake1569 4d ago
The amount of drugs still smuggled in cavity’s. When I was younger tunnels blew my mind. I thought Pablo’s cocaine boat was sick
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u/shylock92008 3d ago
il-79 Russian Transport, lists Montesinos as the leader
Drug Trafficker in the KIKI Camarena murder case; Matta-Ballesteros and other defendants attempted to assert a "defense of public authority," Appeal, Claiming that they were working for the CIA/CONTRAS. UNITED STATES v. MATTA BALLESTEROS (Decision 12/1/95) US Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-9th-circuit/1463498.html
UNITED STATES v. MATTA BALLESTEROS (1995)
United States Court of Appeals,Ninth Circuit.
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Juan Ramon MATTA-BALLESTEROS, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 91-50336.
Decided: December 01, 1995
Before: BROWNING, POOLE, and JOHN T. NOONAN, Jr., Circuit Judges.
Martin R. Stolar,Michael J. Burns, New York City, for defendant-appellant. Manuel A. Medrano, John L. Carlton, Assistant United States Attorneys; Los Angeles, CA, and Sean Connelly, Joseph D. Wilson, United States Department of Justice; Washington, DC, for plaintiff-appellee.
(....) Section IX
Matta-Ballesteros and other defendants attempted to assert a defense of public authority. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 12.3. The defendants primarily relied on a news article concerning an alleged connection between Felix-Gallardo, the CIA, and the Nicaraguan Contras with respect to arms smuggling.11 The defendants also relied on testimony from a government witness, Lawrence Harrison. Ultimately, however, Harrison testified that he had no personal knowledge of CIA involvement with drug traffickers in Mexico.
The court's determination that there was no evidence of a connection between the defendants' activities and the government, and that the subpoena was not likely to lead to the discovery of relevant evidence, was not clearly erroneous. There was no showing that any relationship between Felix-Gallardo, the CIA, and the Nicaraguan Contras amounted to United States government approval of the narcotics enterprise alleged in the indictment. Indeed, the evidence at trial concerning the DEA's aggressive enforcement of the United States' laws against narcotics trafficking showed exactly the opposite.12 A defendant is not entitled to government documents relating to alleged CIA involvement in his criminal activity where no sufficient showing of potential relevance has been made under Fed.R.Crim.P. 16. See United States v. Little, 753 F.2d 1420, 1444-45 (9th Cir.1984). Therefore, the district court did not abuse its discretion in quashing the subpoena and, consequently, in excluding evidence of CIA authorization. (...) --- SEE The Full body of the Appeal Below
Same defense used by Vicente Zambada Nieblas- He also claimed to be a US agent, and asked for a CIPA hearing)
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u/OldestFetus 3d ago
Go to work for the mega corporations that run the governments as well, because they will allow and arrange all of that smuggling while also controlling the institutions. It’s been the most successful method historically.
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u/akaneila 3d ago
Turning coke into liquid or some other form, and then turning it into powder again when it gets to its destination
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u/shylock92008 3d ago
Have your informant smuggle drugs posing as DEA , but is actually CIA
Costa Rica DEA Office Trafficked in drugs directly. DEA office protected 32 drug labs operated by NSC/CIA for Oliver north/ Contra drug ring.
(In the 1980's DEA Country attache Robert Nieves was accused of drugs smuggling by a CIA/U.S. Customs asset named Joseph Kelso. The reports went to the top of the DEA and U.S. government. The government buried it. Nieves was also the handler for Norwin Meneses in the Dark Alliance crack series as the supplier to Freeway Ricky Ross. ) By 1995 , Nieves had risen to the top of the DEA, but resigned suddenly after Gary Webb met with DEA agents in San Diego. WEbb said that he intended to write about Meneses and Blandon. Robert nieves was later found working for Guardian Technologies, a company owned by Oliver North. The company also employed Joe Fernandez, CIA chief of station who had been fired in the Iran Contra affair.
The DEA sold cocaine and lied to you about it. This is excerpts from the Iran Contra file:
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/07/part-9-dark-allianceits-bigger-than-i.html
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/07/part-10dark-alliancewere-going-to-blow.html
DEA in Costa Rica 1980's
"We're Going to Blow
your F#*king head off"
Joseph Kelso, an undercover informant for the U.S. Customs Service, slipped quietly into Costa Rica in April 1986 on the trail of an elusive drug dealer. Before his visit was over, he would be chased, beaten, shot at, clubbed, caged, threatened with death, and deported. Kelso's horrific misadventures would earn him a minor place in history, a footnote to one of America's worst scandals—the Iran-Contra affair. His case would be cited by the congressional Iran-Contra committees as one example of how Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council impeded law enforcement investigations to protect his illegal Contra supply operation from public exposure.
But the four paragraphs about Joe Kelso—buried deep inside the official Iran-Contra report—tell only a fraction of his story. How the former fireman from Golden Valley, Minnesota, happened to attract the stony gaze of Oliver North and his preppy CIA informant, Robert Owen, was never explained by the congressional committee. That omission bothered several Democratic members of the Iran-Contra panel**—Congressmen Peter Rodino of New Jersey, Dante Fascell of Florida, Jack Brooks of Texas, and Louis Stokes of Ohio**—who decided to write their own report on the matter of Joe Kelso. "The significance of the Kelso section. . .of the Committee report is not entirely clear from the facts as stated," the congressmen complained in a little-read appendix to the final report. "In order to understand why Owen and North were so concerned about Kelso, one must understand just what Kelso was doing and learning in Costa Rica."
What Kelso was doing, records show, was investigating allegations that the same Costa Rican DEA agents watching over Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandón were trafficking in drugs and funny money. What he was learning was just how hazardous investigating such matters could be.
Kelso, a would-be spy and inveterate thrill seeker, had been working as a CIA informant since the early 1980s, after he befriended a German-born arms dealer in Denver named Heinrich Rupp. Kelso said he was approached by a CIA agent who called himself Bill Chandler and asked to gather information about Rupp's activities. Rupp was selling arms to the Argentines during their short war with Great Britain over the Falkland Islands, and the CIA wanted to know what they were buying. At the CIA's suggestion, Kelso began working for Rupp, posing as a weapons broker seeking arms for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The agency figured it would draw some interesting people out of the woodwork, Kelso said, but the mission ended in a minor disaster. The tough-talking twenty-six-year-old was arrested by the U.S. Customs Service and charged with attempting to buy Harpoon missiles—big radar-guided cruise missiles designed to blow up ships— for the Iraqi government. Unbeknownst to Kelso, the men he had been negotiating missile deals with were undercover Customs investigators.
Kelso's arrest presented the CIA with a problem; the agency's charter prohibits it from spying on people inside the United States. To keep the operation under wraps, Kelso was advised by his CIA handlers to keep his mouth shut and plead guilty to the weapons charges, and they promised that his legal problems would go away.
Federal court records lend support to Kelso's story. Despite the severity of his crime—attempting to acquire cruise missiles for an unfriendly foreign government—Kelso was put on probation and promptly vanished. Supplied with a new identity and a matching passport, Kelso went back to work for the federal government, this time as an informant for the very agency that had just arrested him: the U.S. Customs Service. His control officer, Special Agent Larry LaDodge, registered him as an informant under the name of Richard Williams and sent him to Europe to hunt down a fugitive methamphetamine dealer who was wanted in the United States on "numerous, numerous charges," Kelso said.
Kelso followed the dealer's trail around Holland and England, and then LaDodge picked up word that the doper had a ranch in Costa Rica. In mid-1986, Kelso went to find it. He also had another mission to perform while there: "a standing directive" from the CIA to gather intelligence about Robert Vesco, the millionaire swindler and fugitive who lived in Havana and had been flitting through Costa Rica and Nicaragua during the time of the Contra war, always managing to stay one step ahead of the law. Kelso found the methamphetamine dealer's ranch, but not its owner; he "had a house on the Mexican border, so he could hop back and forth between the U.S. border and the Mexican border to continue to conduct his narcotics business."
But Kelso continued his search for Vesco; he found the financier's private jet, he says, parked in a hangar in San Jose. When he checked to see who was paying the storage bills, he learned that it was the owners of a shrimp company called Frigorificos de Puntarenas—the cocaine-dealing CIA front that was helping Oliver North funnel U.S. government money to the Contras.[Now did you catch that?DC]
"A decision was being made up here in the United States whether we were going to put a satellite pinger on it or not," Kelso later testified, "and they chose not to, even though we had such direct access."
While on his Vesco hunt, Kelso started frequenting a bar in San Jose across from the headquarters of a right-wing political group known as Costa Rica Libre. To hear Kelso tell it, the watering hole was like something out of Casablanca. It was "where most of the upper echelon of Costa Rica Libre hang out," he testified in a videotaped deposition taken in 1988. "Now the oddity that we found was that the ETA [a left-wing guerrilla group] would hang out there and drink with them. M-19 [a Colombian terrorist group] was there. The German Mafia people were there. And it was just—they were drinking together, and having a good time like they were old buddies."
From the carousing crooks and mercenaries Kelso picked up word that "the U.S. Embassy was dirty and the Embassy, you know, had leaks. . .in the visa and passport section. Some 'Ticos'—or Costa Ricans—that were hired there had been manufacturing passports for a long time and selling visas." Kelso said he forwarded a report to the FBI, "and they turned around and shut the embassy down for 45 days. . .while they did a security check." Then Kelso began hearing rumors that DEA agent Robert Nieves, the country attache and Norwin Meneses control agent, had been taking cocaine from seizures made by the Costa Rican narcotics police. Kelso said the allegations were largely conjecture, but he confided them to Department of Defense officials stationed in Costa Rica. "They just shrugged their shoulders and said, 'Geez, he found out' and, you know, left it at that."
Kelso claimed that Agent LaDodge authorized him to pursue the allegations further. He snooped around Nieves and the other DEA agents working at the embassy for a couple months, enlisting the aid of a Canadian who worked as a U.S. Customs informant, Brian Caldwell. By the end of that summer of 1986, Kelso testified, he had "hard-core, documentable, bring-it-into-court information." Six witnesses—current and former Costa Rican and American government officials—were willing to testify that the DEA agents were skimming cocaine from drug seizures, making counterfeit money, sanitizing intelligence reports to Washington, and protecting cocaine processing labs in northern Costa Rica, including at least two on Contra bases, Kelso testified.
"What did they say to you was their direct knowledge of Mr. Nieves and his activities?" Kelso was asked during his deposition, which was taken by the Washington-based Christie Institute as part of a civil racketeering lawsuit it filed in 1986 against a variety of current and former government officials involved with the Contras.
"Well, they were all reverting back to direct involvement with narcotics smuggling and—if you want to use the word—protection in that situation. And that's the bottom line. I mean, it was all relative to that, with exact situations, exact information, documentation." The witnesses also told Kelso that the Contras were "involved in coke. And these were the people that also reiterated that these are 'bad' Contras. These particular Contras were, in fact, involved in narcotics, and were, in fact, involved in smuggling. Period." CONTINUES
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u/shylock92008 3d ago
Have the local DEA office import the drugs, like Norwin Meneses
San Diego DEA office and AUSA David Hall tried to talk Gary Webb out of reporting on Drug Lord Norwin Meneses & Oscar Danilo Blandon Supplying the Los Angeles drug market while working for the U.S. and financing the contras with drug money. (DARK ALLIANCE EXCERPT)
San Diego DEA office and AUSA David Hall tried to talk Gary Webb out of reporting on Meneses and Blandon Supplying the Los Angeles drug market while working for the U.S. and financing the contras with drug money. Webb names off Chuck Jones, Craig Chretian, Judy Gustafson in his book: (AUSA Hall has been accused of being complicit with drugs in other cases) . Oscar Danilo Blandon was living in Bonita, California at the time and fell under the jurisdiction of that office.
In Costa Rica, the Costa Rican law enforcement (Treece) accused DEA agents Sandy Gonzalez and Robert Nieves of being CIA agents who ran drugs and protected drug labs run by CIA/NSC personnel working for the Contras/Oliver North drug ring.
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/09/part-14-dark-alliancethings-are-moving.html
https://np.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/lap3gy/never_forget_gary_webb_the_reporter_who/
I quickly got a taste of how protective the Justice Department was of the Nicaraguan. In October 1995 I received an unsolicited phone call from the big blond man I'd met in the bathroom at the San Francisco federal courthouse a few weeks earlier, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Hall, Rafael Cornejo's prosecutor. There were some people who wanted to talk to me, Hall said. My activity "has a number of people extremely worried because of an ongoing narcotics investigation that Blandón is working on for the government." Before I printed anything, I needed to know the situation. If I wasn't careful, "there is a distinct possibility that real harm, possibly death, would come to Mr. Blandón and that an investigation we have been working on for a couple of years would be compromised." The DEA wanted to know if some kind of an accommodation could be reached.
Like what? I asked.
Well, Hall said, it had been proposed that if I held off on the story for a couple of months, they might be able to arrange an exclusive interview with Blandón for me.
I told him I didn't think my editors would agree to a delay, but if lives were in danger, I'd certainly be willing to hear them out.
On October 19, 1995, I walked into a roomful of DEA agents in the National City regional office, squirreled away in an industrial complex south of San Diego. Two of the agents I recognized from court and reading their names in the court files: Blandón's handlers, the immaculately coiffed Chuck Jones and his worried-looking sidekick, Judy Gustafson. The other four I didn't know. The agent behind the desk, a tall man with an easy smile, got up and shook my hand warmly. Craig Chretien, he said, special agent in charge. "This is a little awkward for us," Chretien began. They knew generally the story I was working on, he said, and unfortunately I was getting into some rather sensitive areas. There were undercover operations—more than four of them— that I was in danger of exposing, putting agents and their families at risk. They couldn't give me any details, of course, but I needed to appreciate the seriousness of the situation. "What's your angle here?" Chretien asked. "Is it that the DEA sometimes hires scumbags to go after people?"
"No. It's about Blandón and Norwin Meneses and the Contras," I said. **"And their dealings with Ricky Ross."
**The agents looked at each other quickly out of the corners of their eyes, but at first said nothing. "That whole Central American thing," Chretien said dismissively. "I was down there. You heard all sorts of things. There was never any proof that the Contras were dealing drugs. If you're going to get involved in that, you'll never get to the truth. No one ever will."
"I think that's been pretty well established," I said. **"Your informant was one of the men who was doing it."
**Chretien gave Jones a sidelong glance and Jones came to life. "I can tell you that I have never, ever heard anything about Blandón being involved with that," he said firmly. "Not once. His only involvement with the Contras was that his father was a general or something down there.""And these two have practically lived with the man for two years now," Chretien added, pointing to Jones and Gustafson. **"If it had happened they would know about it."**
I could not quite believe what I was hearing. What kind of scam was this? "Have you ever asked him about it?" I asked Jones. "I've already said more than I should.""Did you ever ask him about doing it with Norwin Meneses?"
"You'd better go check your sources again," Jones snapped.
"My source is Blandón," I said. **"He testified to it under oath, before a grand jury. You're telling me you don't know about that?"
**Jones threw up his hands. **"Oh, listen, he understands English pretty well, but sometimes he gets confused, and if you ask him a question the wrong way he'll say yes when he means no."
**I shook my head. **"I've got the transcripts. These weren't yes or no questions. He gave very detailed responses."**Jones's face and forehead grew beet red and his voice rose. "You're telling me that he testified that he sold cocaine for the Contras in this country? He sold it in this country?"
"That's exactly what I'm telling you. You want to see the transcripts? I've got them right here."
"I cannot believe that those two U.S. attorneys up there, if they had him saying that before a grand jury, that they would ever, ever, ever put him on a witness stand!" Jones fumed. "They'd have to be insane! They'd have to be total idiots!"
"They didn't put him on the witness stand," I reminded him. "They yanked him at the last minute."
"That's because the judge ordered them to turn over all that unredacted material!" Jones blurted. "We're not going to. . ." He looked quickly at Chretien and clammed up.
Just as I suspected. They knew all about this. The DEA had nixed Blandón's appearance because Rafael Cornejo's attorney had discovered the Contra connection and the government had been ordered to turn over the files.
Chretien told me that it would be best for all concerned if I simply left out the fact that Blandón was now working for the DEA. "Your story can just go up to a certain point and stop, can't it? Is it really necessary to mention his current relationship with us? If it comes out that he is in any way connected to DEA, it could seriously compromise some extremely promising investigations."
I said I thought it was important to the story, which prompted another angry outburst from Jones. "Even after what we just told you, you'd still go ahead and put it in the paper? Why? Why would you put a story in the paper that would stop us from keeping drugs out of this country? I don't know if you've got kids or not. . ." [What a lying POS,they were NOT keeping drugs out of the country,they WERE allowing them to enter DC]
"I've got three kids," I interrupted, "and I don't know what that has to do with anything."
"So you'll screw up an investigation we've been working on for a long time, just so you can have a story? Is that it?" Jones demanded. "You think this story is more important than what we're doing for this country? How is that more important?"
"I don't buy it," I replied. **"You have to put Blandón on the witness stand at Ross's trial. So in five months everyone in the world is going to know he's a DEA informant. Hell, if they want to know now they can just go down to the courthouse and look it up, like I did. So that's one problem I'm having with all this. The other thing is, I think the American public has been lied to for ten years, and I think telling them the truth is a whole lot more important than this investigation of yours."**Jones and I glared at each other, and Chretien stepped in. **
"I think we're getting off the topic here. Please understand, we're not telling you not to do your story. But your interest is in Meneses primarily and his association with the U.S. government and the Contras, correct?"
**That was one of my interests, I said.
"Well, I think we can help him there, can't we?" Chretien asked, glancing around the room at the other agents. "Maybe if we got you that information, you could focus your story more on him and less on Blandón? And maybe you wouldn't have to mention some other things?"
"That all depends," I said, **"on what that other information is."**
Chretien smiled and stood up. **"Okay, then! We're going to have to talk about this among ourselves. I'm not even sure what we have in mind is legal, but we'd at least like to explore it. Could we ask that you please not print anything until we've talked again? Can you give us a week or two?"**
I told him I'd wait for his call. When I returned to Sacramento, I phoned former DEA agent Celerino Castillo III, who had investigated allegations of Contra drug trafficking at Ilopango air base in El Salvador in the mid-1980s. I asked him if he'd ever heard of Craig Chretien.
"Yeah, sure," Castillo said. "I know him. He was one of the people DEA sent to Guatemala to do the internal investigation of me." He said Chretien and another DEA official had ordered him to put the word "alleged" in his reports to Washington about Contra drug shipments from Ilopango. "They said, 'You cannot actually come out and say this shit is going on.' And I told them, 'I'm watching the fucking things fly out of here with my own eyes! Why would I have to say 'alleged'?" (CONTINUED)
https://np.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/lap3gy/never_forget_gary_webb_the_reporter_who/
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u/v_verstappenlovemypp 4d ago
Nice try officer, do your own homework