And you thought arresting pot smokers – or, closer to home, using confidential informants of questionable credibility as the sole evidence to convict dozens of people for minor crack possession (as in Tulia or in Edna, Texas) – in the name of the (never-ending) War on Drugs was bad? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet: According to a report in London’s Guardian, fed-paid narco informant Guillermo Ramirez – a.k.a. Lalo – was given more than $220,000 by agents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (among other agencies) to infiltrate a Mexican drug cartel in Juarez. Worse, they actually listened in while CI Lalo participated in numerous cartel-ordered murders.
To top it all off, when details of the scandal finally made it up to Washington, D.C. – through Western District of Texas U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, and on to then Attorney General John Ashcroft, and DEA head Karen Tandy – the official reaction was merely a threat to fire a colleague, El Paso DEA Special Agent-in-Charge Sandy Gonzalez, if he refused to quit talking about the details of the feds’ deadly relationship with Lalo. Read and be disgusted.
This article appears in December 8 • 2006.