Kilo Commander

Authorities say Estrada Omar Martin Luna, alias Commander Kilo has a psychological profile that described as a calculating, cold, narcissistic, and extremely violent, information was released after his capture, as it is identified as the mastermind of the massacres of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, which occurred in 2010 and 2011.

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the German town of Miguel, Tamaulipas was attacked by an armed group that sparked panic and terror among the villagers.

Shortly after 04:00 hours today, the German town of Miguel, Tamaulipas was attacked by an armed group that sparked panic and terror among the villagers.

The witnesses said gunmen riding in vans latest model, made ​​havoc in homes and businesses, burned a gas station, a lot of cars used , the Agency also torched Ford, Dodge Agency, Agencia Nissan , the Furniture Sepulveda, OXXO, the bank HSBC, the auto parts retailer AutoZone, among others.

Private vehicles were also bursts, the gunmen threw grenades fragmentation caused damage to private homes.

Police facilities were also attacked and killed by the armed group. Were more than three hours the offenders were taken to the damage.

It was not until 08:30 am that elements of the Mexican Army showed up, and when all was over, the delay was questioned by the people who lived hours of terror, as the military headquarters is located about 8 minutes from where the damage were greatest.


Yesterday afternoon elements of surprise SEDENA removed the roadblocks that were for some time at entrances and exits of Michael German.

For its part, the Gulf Cartel issued a message to the public about what happened in Michael German, then the full text:

" CITIZENSHIP IN GENERAL, ALL THIS HAPPENED TODAY NARCOTERRORISM IN THE MORNING THANKS TO BE DEBIO SEDENA CONTINGENT THAT CAME FROM THE NUEVO LAREDO, LES THEY OPENED THE WAY TO THE Z MAY NOT ENTER A GERMAN MIGUEL meet him GULF CARTEL , SO ALSO WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY IN CAMARGO the shooting, ESE CONTINGENT OF SOLDIERS OF LAREDO CAME WITH THE OBJECTIVE OF GETTING TO THE GULF CARTEL FOR RETURNING THE ZETACUACHES COBARDEZ MIGUEL A GERMAN AGENT, YOU AS A CITIZEN COMPLAINT DIRECTLY TO MEXICO NAVY . "

Reports indicate that the attack some people were executed, more details are expected shortly.

UPDATE

A few moments ago a statement was issued officially by the Eighth Military Zone, where he announced that the situation in Michael German, it was a clash between members of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel.

As the balance of the contest, it was possible the arrest of 11 gunmen, as well as a criminal was shot and killed a soldier.

" A group of assailants went to Ciudad Mier, while another remained in Michael German, died before these events an aggressor and won the arrest of 11 more, of which two were reported injured, including a man and a woman "the bulletin stated official .

During the fact achieved the assurance of 20 rifles, two handguns, four grenades, fragmentation, four grenades, 40 caliber, 307 magazines, more than seven thousand rounds of ammunition, radio equipment, cell phones, tactical equipment and four vehicles.

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Hanging drug mules in Singapore

Chun Yin, sits on death row in Singapore, convicted in 2010 of smuggling 2.7 kg of heroin into the country. It’s a harsh punishment for a first offender. But under Singapore’s laws, judges have little choice but to impose a mandatory death penalty. Anyone caught with more than 15g of heroin is presumed to be trafficking, and once found guilty, will almost certainly be hanged.

Chun Yin is not alone. A long string of drug mules have been strung up in the island republic. The issue has come to the fore now in particular in the wake of the prosecution of a British author, Alan Shadrake, for allegedly insulting Singapore in his book Once a Jolly Hangman for its eager use of the hangman’s noose in a way that casts doubt on its image as a strict but fair state.

It’s not clear how many drug mules Singapore sends to the gallows each year, since the government doesn’t publish figures. But the city-state and neighboring Malaysia have some of the most draconian drug laws in the world. Supporters say they are necessary in order to prevent what Singapore’s Law Minister K Shanmugum describes as an “unstoppable stream of people” from dealing drugs.

Opponents disagree. They say the law targets those low down in the supply chain – mules like Chun Yin who may or may not be aware of what they were carrying – while allowing the real culprits to go free. Cheong says Chun Yin was tricked by an acquaintance who had promised him a holiday in Burma and a nice bit of cash in exchange for carrying gold bars into Singapore. The father and son duo ran a small but profitable business selling DVDs across the strait in Johor Bahru and were not desperate for money. Cheong says he didn’t want Chun Yin to go but relented in the end.

“I told him to come back soon. Come back because I can’t run the business on my own.”

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Cocaine container busted in Jamaica was loaded, sealed

The container, in which $700M in cocaine was found among logs when it arrived in Jamaica, was loaded and sealed the day before it left these shores.

Reliable sources told this newspaper that while the logs were cleared for shipping by the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) quite some time before the March 16 bust, it was only on March 11 that the logs were loaded into the container at the Caribbean Resources Ltd (CRL) establishment in Houston on the East Bank. The container was then taken to the John Fernandes wharf the same day and it left on March 12 for Jamaica.

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Another suspect has been ensnared in the ever-widening investigation by local and federal authorities into an alleged Danbury area drug ring,

Another suspect has been ensnared in the ever-widening investigation by local and federal authorities into an alleged Danbury area drug ring, officials say.

Phillip Braun, 30, a local bodybuilder, pleaded not guilty at state Superior Court Wednesday to various drug charges, including conspiracy to possess marijuana, possession of narcotics and three counts of illegal sale of prescription drugs, court documents show. Judge Susan Q. Cobb set his next court date for May 6 during the brief hearing.

Braun's attorney, Eugene Riccio, of Greenwich, said he was not in a position to have a substantive conversation about his client's prospects as "we're still in a preliminary stage in this matter."

He declined to comment further on the case.

Police say Braun is a known associate of Mark Mansa, the Bethel man accused of heading a multifaceted criminal enterprise -- with ties to the Hells Angels and the Bonanno crime family -- which was the subject of a five-year investigation by local authorities and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

Mansa and his associates, investigators say, peddled marijuana and illegal steroids to a local clientele.

Braun wrote in a 2007 blog post that Mansa was "one of my best friends."

The bodybuilder was arrested March 28, when investigators swarmed his Pembroke Avenue condo, police said, and discovered a cache of drugs and steroids. Authorities said they found the testosterone, Deca-Durabolin, Halotestin and Proviron, and the prescription painkiller Percocet -- all in plain sight.

The warrant they were serving apparently stemmed from a September marijuana possession charge, according to court documents, though the arrest warrant affidavit has been sealed.

While there is no indication he was involved in the sale of drugs Braun's connection to Mansa has brought attention to his case.

Mansa is one of four men indicted last month on federal conspiracy charges.

One of his codefendants Richard Sciaccetano, of Stuart, Fla., is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport.

Another, Kevin Lubic, of Salem, N.Y., was released from custody last week on $5 million bond.

A Feb. 24 raid on two Brookfield homes belonging to Glenn Wagner, another Mansa associate, netted 40 pounds of marijuana, $23,000 in cash and a sawed-off shotgun, police said, and ultimately helped dismantle the drug ring.

Wagner pleaded not guilty to federal drug and weapons charges at U.S. District Court in Hartford last week.

Federal prosecutors say Mansa frequently boasted about having cultivated relationships with officers from several local departments, including New Milford and Danbury.

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Sony could learn a few lessons from Microsoft

A global IT security expert has this morning stated that "Sony could learn a few lessons from Microsoft" amid the current PSN crisis.
Phil Lieberman, CEO and founder of Lieberman Software issued a statement this morning in reaction to the PSN outage.
“Sony's strategy has triggered the 'nuclear option'.”
"Taking a baseball bat to a hornet’s nest is never an advisable strategy," Lieberman explained, "Sony’s strategy in defending its intellectual property was heavy handed and has triggered the “nuclear option” with those that it engaged. Perhaps Sony could learn a few lessons from Microsoft in how it has handled Xbox 360 and Kinect intellectual property."
The statement continues, "You can be sure that the CIO and CSO at Sony responsible for this situation will probably not be fired or held accountable for their poor decisions. Similarly, the auditor responsible for the Sony account will similarly (in all probability and looking at these situations historically) not be held accountable."
"The loss of your personal information will (not likely) be nothing more than a “cost of doing business” for this type of company-you will take the pain and they will take a hit to their reputation (maybe)."
Sony now expects PSN to be back up by 4 May.

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Newtown is known locally for its gang culture and high crime rate. Last year it accounted for 43 per cent of Sarasota’s armed robberies and 83 per cent of its murders.

As police continue to investigate what the men were doing there, and how they got there, Mr Cooper’s grandfather, Desmond Walton, said his grandson, a high flying tennis coach, would never have considered taking drugs.
He said: “He never did drugs. He did not even smoke - he hated people who smoked.
“He was a professional tennis coach. Taking drugs would be the last thing on his mind.”
His comments were backed up by a former girlfriend of Mr Kouzaris.
Liz Clare, who dated Mr Kouzaris, for three years, said: “I just can't understand why they were there. They're not stupid.
“I was with (James) for three years and he was so cautious. We used to call him Grandad because he was so cautious.
“My biggest fear is what people might think about why they were in a dodgy area. Some people are saying there might be a link to drugs but everyone who knows them both knows it would never be that.”
Detectives have also ruled out any drug link, but continue to be stumped by what exactly happened. They are working on a theory that having spent a night drinking in Sarasota they accepted a lift from someone and believed they were being driven 12 miles to their rented apartment in Longboat Key. Instead they were taken to Newtown and “ambushed” in a violent street robbery. Residents reported hearing between six and eight shots and it is possible there was more than one gunman.
“There is every indication that this was an attempted robbery,” said police spokesman Captain Paul Sutton.
“Their possessions were found on the floor, and that physical evidence shows us that is was most likely a robbery.
“What we still don’t know is why these two men ended up in that area at that time of night and how they managed to get there.”
Shawn Tyson, who lives on the estate with his mother, has been charged with double murder and faces the death penalty if convicted.
Tyson, a school dropout who has the street nickname of “Young Savage” and a tattoo bearing the same words, had been arrested earlier this month after allegedly shooting at a car, but was released from a juvenile detention centre after witnesses failed to show up to give evidence at a court hearing.
Sarasota Police defended releasing Tyson saying they were bound by law to set him free. Capt Sutton added: “He was bailed and the case was being proceeded with. Every person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Our laws are based on the laws of Great Britain.”
On Tuesday Mr Cooper’s parents, Stan, 58, and Sandra, 52, who were out in Florida with the men, flew home to Hampton Lucy, Warwick.
Neighbours said they would be rallying round the family, which has “shattered” the close knit community.
Police dismissed theories that Mr Cooper and Mr Kouzaris, from Northampton, who had been best friends since meeting at university, were lured to the area by women, or that they were the victim of a rogue taxi driver.
Having been forced to empty their pockets, they were running for their lives when they were shot several times in the back.
It was understood that the weapon allegedly used by Tyson was a TEC-9, a semi-automatic handgun.
Mr Cooper, a tennis coach who once played Andy Murray, and Mr Kouzaris, a town planner and leading amateur rugby player, had arrived in America last week for a three-week holiday. Mr Cooper was 25 three days before he died.
Newtown is known locally for its gang culture and high crime rate. Last year it accounted for 43 per cent of Sarasota’s armed robberies and 83 per cent of its murders.
At the peak of a recent crime wave, violence was so bad many residents stopped wearing jewellery in public for fear of being robbed.

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cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.

Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's "deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

The conclusion to the case was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the "legal" banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer.

At the height of the 2008 banking crisis, Antonio Maria Costa, then head of the United Nations office on drugs and crime, said he had evidence to suggest the proceeds from drugs and crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to banks on the brink of collapse. "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade," he said. "There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."

Wachovia was acquired by Wells Fargo during the 2008 crash, just as Wells Fargo became a beneficiary of $25bn in taxpayers' money. Wachovia's prosecutors were clear, however, that there was no suggestion Wells Fargo had behaved improperly; it had co-operated fully with the investigation. Mexico is the US's third largest international trading partner and Wachovia was understandably interested in this volume of legitimate trade.

José Luis Marmolejo, who prosecuted those running one of the casas de cambio at the Mexican end, said: "Wachovia handled all the transfers. They never reported any as suspicious."

"As early as 2004, Wachovia understood the risk," the bank admitted in the statement of settlement with the federal government, but, "despite these warnings, Wachovia remained in the business". There is, of course, the legitimate use of CDCs as a way into the Hispanic market. In 2005 the World Bank said that Mexico was receiving $8.1bn in remittances.

During research into the Wachovia Mexican case, the Observer obtained documents previously provided to financial regulators. It emerged that the alarm that was ignored came from, among other places, London, as a result of the diligence of one of the most important whistleblowers of our time. A man who, in a series of interviews with the Observer, adds detail to the documents, laying bare the story of how Wachovia was at the centre of one of the world's biggest money-laundering operations.

Martin Woods, a Liverpudlian in his mid-40s, joined the London office of Wachovia Bank in February 2005 as a senior anti-money laundering officer. He had previously served with the Metropolitan police drug squad. As a detective he joined the money-laundering investigation team of the National Crime Squad, where he worked on the British end of the Bank of New York money-laundering scandal in the late 1990s.

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How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.
The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.

Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's "deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

Read more »

US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs

10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.

Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's "deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

The conclusion to the case was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the "legal" banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer.

At the height of the 2008 banking crisis, Antonio Maria Costa, then head of the United Nations office on drugs and crime, said he had evidence to suggest the proceeds from drugs and crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to banks on the brink of collapse. "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade," he said. "There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."

Wachovia was acquired by Wells Fargo during the 2008 crash, just as Wells Fargo became a beneficiary of $25bn in taxpayers' money. Wachovia's prosecutors were clear, however, that there was no suggestion Wells Fargo had behaved improperly; it had co-operated fully with the investigation. Mexico is the US's third largest international trading partner and Wachovia was understandably interested in this volume of legitimate trade.

José Luis Marmolejo, who prosecuted those running one of the casas de cambio at the Mexican end, said: "Wachovia handled all the transfers. They never reported any as suspicious."

"As early as 2004, Wachovia understood the risk," the bank admitted in the statement of settlement with the federal government, but, "despite these warnings, Wachovia remained in the business". There is, of course, the legitimate use of CDCs as a way into the Hispanic market. In 2005 the World Bank said that Mexico was receiving $8.1bn in remittances.

During research into the Wachovia Mexican case, the Observer obtained documents previously provided to financial regulators. It emerged that the alarm that was ignored came from, among other places, London, as a result of the diligence of one of the most important whistleblowers of our time. A man who, in a series of interviews with the Observer, adds detail to the documents, laying bare the story of how Wachovia was at the centre of one of the world's biggest money-laundering operations.

Martin Woods, a Liverpudlian in his mid-40s, joined the London office of Wachovia Bank in February 2005 as a senior anti-money laundering officer. He had previously served with the Metropolitan police drug squad. As a detective he joined the money-laundering investigation team of the National Crime Squad, where he worked on the British end of the Bank of New York money-laundering scandal in the late 1990s.

Woods talks like a police officer – in the best sense of the word: punctilious, exact, with a roguish humour, but moral at the core. He was an ideal appointment for any bank eager to operate a diligent and effective risk management policy against the lucrative scourge of high finance: laundering, knowing or otherwise, the vast proceeds of criminality, tax-evasion, and dealing in arms and drugs.

Woods had a police officer's eye and a police officer's instincts – not those of a banker. And this influenced not only his methods, but his mentality. "I think that a lot of things matter more than money – and that marks you out in a culture which appears to prevail in many of the banks in the world," he says.

Woods was set apart by his modus operandi. His speciality, he explains, was his application of a "know your client", or KYC, policing strategy to identifying dirty money. "KYC is a fundamental approach to anti-money laundering, going after tax evasion or counter-terrorist financing. Who are your clients? Is the documentation right? Good, responsible banking involved always knowing your customer and it still does."

When he looked at Wachovia, the first thing Woods noticed was a deficiency in KYC information. And among his first reports to his superiors at the bank's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, were observations on a shortfall in KYC at Wachovia's operation in London, which he set about correcting, while at the same time implementing what was known as an enhanced transaction monitoring programme, gathering more information on clients whose money came through the bank's offices in the City, in sterling or euros. By August 2006, Woods had identified a number of suspicious transactions relating to casas de cambio customers in Mexico.

Primarily, these involved deposits of traveller's cheques in euros. They had sequential numbers and deposited larger amounts of money than any innocent travelling person would need, with inadequate or no KYC information on them and what seemed to a trained eye to be dubious signatures. "It was basic work," he says. "They didn't answer the obvious questions: 'Is the transaction real, or does it look synthetic? Does the traveller's cheque meet the protocols? Is it all there, and if not, why not?'"

Woods discussed the matter with Wachovia's global head of anti-money laundering for correspondent banking, who believed the cheques could signify tax evasion. He then undertook what banks call a "look back" at previous transactions and saw fit to submit a series of SARs, or suspicious activity reports, to the authorities in the UK and his superiors in Charlotte, urging the blocking of named parties and large series of sequentially numbered traveller's cheques from Mexico. He issued a number of SARs in 2006, of which 50 related to the casas de cambio in Mexico. To his amazement, the response from Wachovia's Miami office, the centre for Latin American business, was anything but supportive – he felt it was quite the reverse.

As it turned out, however, Woods was on the right track. Wachovia's business in Mexico was coming under closer and closer scrutiny by US federal law enforcement. Wachovia was issued with a number of subpoenas for information on its Mexican operation. Woods has subsequently been informed that Wachovia had six or seven thousand subpoenas. He says this was "An absurd number. So at what point does someone at the highest level not get the feeling that something is very, very wrong?"

In April and May 2007, Wachovia – as a result of increasing interest and pressure from the US attorney's office – began to close its relationship with some of the casas de cambio. But rather than launch an internal investigation into Woods's alerts over Mexico, Woods claims Wachovia hung its own money-laundering expert out to dry. The records show that during 2007 Woods "continued to submit more SARs related to the casas de cambio".

In July 2007, all of Wachovia's remaining 10 Mexican casa de cambio clients operating through London suddenly stopped doing so. Later in 2007, after the investigation of Wachovia was reported in the US financial media, the bank decided to end its remaining relationships with the Mexican casas de cambio globally. By this time, Woods says, he found his personal situation within the bank untenable; while the bank acted on one level to protect itself from the federal investigation into its shortcomings, on another, it rounded on the man who had been among the first to spot them.

On 16 June Woods was told by Wachovia's head of compliance that his latest SAR need not have been filed, that he had no legal requirement to investigate an overseas case and no right of access to documents held overseas from Britain, even if they were held by Wachovia.

Woods's life went into freefall. He went to hospital with a prolapsed disc, reported sick and was told by the bank that he not done so in the appropriate manner, as directed by the employees' handbook. He was off work for three weeks, returning in August 2007 to find a letter from the bank's compliance managing director, which was unrelenting in its tone and words of warning.

The letter addressed itself to what the manager called "specific examples of your failure to perform at an acceptable standard". Woods, on the edge of a breakdown, was put on sick leave by his GP; he was later given psychiatric treatment, enrolled on a stress management course and put on medication.

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Project Gunrunner, which got under way in late 2009, allowed straw buyers to illegally buy and export guns to Mexico

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa fired off a subpoena Friday to the Justice Department agency in the middle of a cross-border gun sales operation that has been blamed for a massive flow of arms to Mexican drug cartels and possibly the death of a U.S. border agent. 

Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, demanded the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives provide him documents related to "Project Gunrunner" after the agency failed to respond to questions by a Wednesday deadline.

"The unwillingness of this administration -- most specifically the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms -- to answer questions about this deadly serious matter is deeply troubling," Issa said in a written statement. "Allegations surrounding this program are serious and the ability of the Justice Department to conduct an impartial investigation is in question. Congressional oversight is necessary to get the truth about what is really happening."

Issa first requested the documents in a March 16 letter to Acting Director Kenneth Melson. Among the paperwork, he was seeking details on Project Gunrunner, its "Fast and Furious" component in Arizona and records related to the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a December 2010 shootout.

Project Gunrunner, which got under way in late 2009, allowed straw buyers to illegally buy and export guns to Mexico. The stated goal, according to ATF, was to track the flow of guns in order to bring down the entire trafficking organization. Instead, records show it allowed more than 1,700 guns, including hundreds of AK-47s and high-powered, armor-piercing .50-caliber rifles to be trafficked to Mexico.



U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry was fatally shot Dec. 15 north of the Arizona-Mexico border while trying to catch bandits who target illegal immigrants, the leader of a union representing agents said.
Whistleblowers say the guns were allowed "to walk," and ATF agents insisted federal firearms licensees participate even after they expressed grave objections to the plan.  

Last week, President Obama conceded that Fast and Furious may have been "a serious mistake," but he claimed, "I did not authorize it; Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. He's been very clear that our policy is to catch gunrunners and put them into jail."

In his statement Friday, Issa said the president did not specify whether Holder was aware of the policy or who did authorize it. 

"One of the questions we always ask is who is lying," Issa told Fox News earlier this week. "We lose our credibility if we don't come clean and make the changes necessary to save lives on both sides of the border." 

The subpoena orders ATF to provide documents to the committee by April 13 or face a contempt of Congress charge. 

Issa's order asks for any memos, communications or other reports about the genesis of the program, any complaints or objections from agents in the field asked to operate the program or failing to track federal firearms licensees ordered to sell to straw buyers, an inspector general's report issued in November 2010 and details about individuals authorized to to "walk" guns to Mexico.

Issa also asked for papers relating to communications between ATF and the federal firearms licensee who sold weapons to Jaime Avila, who was arrested in connection with Terry's murder. Two guns found at the Terry crime scene were traced back to Avila, who was tracked by ATF but whose guns reportedly were not. 

Issa said he wants information on any other weapons found at the Terry crime scene as well as communications between ATF and the special agent in charge of the Phoenix office, William D. Newell, assistant special agents in charge Jim Needles and George Gillette, group supervisor David Voth and any other case agents involved between Nov. 1, 2009, and the present.

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