Reality Check: Was Operation “Fast and Furious” About U.S. Supporting a Mexican Drug Cartel? [video]

Posted by clnews _Featured_, Conspiracies, Videos Friday, August 10th, 2012

Ben Swann Reality Check takes a look at some stunning new accusations by a high ranking member of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel that Operation “Fast and Furious” was about the U.S. supporting one Mexican drug cartel while attempting to shut down others.

Justice department memos obtained by CBS prove that the feds planned to use the numbers from Fast and Furious to push for stricter gun laws in the U.S.  The attempt was to claim that the majority of guns heading into Mexico and being used by gun cartels were coming from the United States.  But, that is simply not true.

Today, TheBlaze.com began reporting excerpts from a soon to be released book titled “The Weed That Just Won’t Die” by Reed Williams.  Williams examined Federal documents surrounding the case of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla – known as the Sinaloa Cartel’s “logistics coordinator.” Zambada-Niebla was extradited to Chicago last year to face Federal drug charges.

For decades, Mexican drug cartels existed independently of each other.  They didn’t work together.  But, they did stay out of each other’s region.  Things changed in 2006.

If you to understand the drug wars in Mexico, then you have to understand how the Sinaloa Cartel works.  A man by the name of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is the head of this cartel.  In 2001, Guzman was being held in Mexican prison.  He escaped from that prison in a laundry truck.  Guzman went back and took control of the Sinaloa Cartel, and then began wars with all of the other drug cartels across Mexico. The goal was to create one super-cartel by wiping out all of the completion.

It has been long believed in Mexico that Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman got a lot of help.  That is the war that has been fought heavily since 2006.

Back to the “Fast and Furious” allegations.  Zambada-Niebla is reportedly a close associate of Guzman.

According to the report at TheBlaze.com:

Zambada-Niebla claims that under a “divide and conquer” strategy, the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa Cartel through Operation Fast and Furious in exchange for information that allowed the DEA, U.S. Immigration, and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies to take down rival drug cartels. The Sinaloa Cartel was allegedly permitted to traffic massive amounts of drugs across the U.S. border from 2004 to 2009 — during both Fast and Furious and Bush-era gunrunning operations — as long as the intel kept coming.

Based on the alleged agreement  ”the Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of defendant’s father, Ismael Zambada-Niebla and ‘Chapo’ Guzman, were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States and were also protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels which helped Mexican and United States authorities capture or kill thousands of rival cartel members,” states a motion for discovery filed in U.S. District Court by Zambada-Niebla’s attorney in July 2011.

What you need to know is that members of Congress from both parties should now demand to see every single file connected to Fast and Furious and Operation Gunrunner.  Republicans should not be focused only on the years when the Obama administration had control. Rather, they should go back to the beginning during the Bush administration. Democrats should be demanding to see exactly what the ATF has been doing – not just for the nearly 50,000 Mexican citizens who died in the drug wars, but for the thousands who have yet to die.