Thread: Univision report connects Operation Fast and Furious scandal to murders of Mexican te

Univision report connects Operation Fast and Furious scandal to murders of Mexican teenagers
By Matthew Boyle/Daily Caller
October 1, 2012

The Spanish language television news network Univision unleashed a bombshell investigative report on Operation Fast and Furious Sunday evening, finding that in January 2010 drug cartel hit men slaughtered students with weapons the United States government allowed to flow to them across the Mexican border.

“On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez,” according to a version of the Univision report in English, on the ABC News website.

“Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled.”

Citing a Mexican Army document it obtained and published, Univision reported that “[t]hree of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).”

That operation was Fast and Furious.

The “massacre,” as Univision described it, was not the only bombshell the network unveiled in its Sunday evening report.

“Univision News identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings, and at least one other massacre,” the Univision report reads.

The network also uncovered another Fast and Furious weapons “massacre.” On September 2, 2009, 18 young men were killed at “El Aliviane, a rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez,” according to the report.

Univision found many of these victims through “access to the list of serial numbers for weapons used in Fast and Furious” and the “list of guns seized in Mexico,” according to English subtitles on the Spanish-language video.

“After cross-referencing them both lists, it became clear that a least a hundred of them were used in crimes of all kinds,” the subtitles read. “We found 57 weapons that were not mentioned in [the U.S.] Congress’ investigation.”

Though Univision tracked many more victims down, it said that “the death toll that this free flow of weapons authorized by ATF had in Mexico has not been tallied.”

Univision held nothing back in its broadcast, airing images and video of bloodied, dead bodies. The network showed the faces of the dead and walked viewers through how cartel operatives hunted their victims down with the weapons President Barack Obama’s administration allowed straw buyers to traffick to them.

One photo, for instance, showed pools of blood in the streets of a Mexican town after a “massacre” committed by murderers armed with Fast and Furious weapons. Video footage showed where some of the victims were killed and how the cartels chased their helpless victims to their deaths.

The Univision broadcast implicitly suggested that Americans have no regard for the victims of violence American policy helps fuel — that is, until one of those victims ends up being an American.

It wasn’t until U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder prompted whistle-blowers to come forward to Congress to publicly voice concerns about ]he program that the Obama administration stopped allowing firearms to flow into Mexico.

One victim’s father, Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, told Univision he thinks “Americans are not often moved by the pain of those outside [their country].”

“But they are moved by the pain of their own,” Sicilia added.
“Well, turn around and watch the massacres.”

Univision says the Obama administration’s actions “inadvertently” helped fuel violence and a war between the cartels.

“In Mexico, the timing of the operation coincided with an upsurge of violence in the war among the country’s strongest cartels,” according to Univision.

“In 2009, the northern Mexican states served as a battlefield for the Sinaloa and Juarez drug trafficking organizations, and as expansion territory for the increasingly powerful Zetas. According to documents obtained by Univision News, from October of that year to the end of 2010, nearly 175 weapons from Operation Fast and Furious inadvertently armed the various warring factions across northern Mexico.”

An English-subtitled translation of one expert’s comments indicated that the weapons the Obama administration allowed to flow to the cartels through Fast and Furious were “capable of not only penetrating an armored vehicle but also a whole house from wall to wall.”

According to the Univision report, it wasn’t weak gun laws that made Fast and Furious possible, as some liberal commentators have suggested.

“If up to this point drug dealers could easily obtain and smuggle guns, the United States government made it easier,” English subtitles on one part of the report read.

“When Fast and Furious began in 2009, the ATF and Arizona prosecutors told [gun] store owners to sell weapons without restrictions to suspicious buyers.”

Univision also said that it was Phoenix ATF office leader Bill Newell who ultimately concluded that “the only way to track the guns was to wait for weapons to be recovered in crime scenes in Mexico.”

That charge, if true, would mean the Obama administration decided to allow cartel operatives to kill and injure people with the weapons it gave them, and to recover the guns only after criminals ditched them at brutal — often deadly — crime scenes.

Univision also found additional details about other gunwalking operations the Obama administration undertook.

“In Florida, the weapons from Operation Castaway ended up in the hands of criminals in Colombia, Honduras and Venezuela, the lead informant in the case told Univision News in a prison interview,” the network reported. The informant Unvision interviewed was “Vietnam veteran-turned-arms-trafficker” Hugh Crumpler.

“When the ATF stopped me, they told me the guns were going to cartels,” Crumpler said. “The ATF knew before I knew and had been following me for a considerable length of time. They could not have followed me for two months like they said they did, and not know the guns were going somewhere, and not want for that to be happening.”

Read more: Univision report connects Operation Fast and Furious scandal to murders of Mexican teenagers | The Daily Caller

One victim’s father, Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, told Univision he thinks “Americans are not often moved by the pain of those outside [their country].”

“But they are moved by the pain of their own,” Sicilia added.
“Well, turn around and watch the massacres.”

It is a pity that this man thinks so poorly of all Americans. This operation was hidden from the American people until Brian Terry was killed and it could no longer be concealed and even then it was covered by only a few news outlets. That ATF agents would supply high powered weapons to murders and wait to see which murders they turn up at is ,to me, disgusting and despicable. Univision journalists put a face on the victims of this travesty for all to see and they did a professional job.

We have many, if not all, of stories of the massacres that happened in Mexico here in the archives of ALIPAC. It took Univision, with their resources in Mexico, to tie them, and the guns that were used in those incidents, to Fast and Furious.

Univision told the truth instead pumping out politically motivated and slanted double talk designed to provide cover for the Obama adminisration like the MSM in this country has become the masters of. JMO

Perhaps Univision would like to have a second special but this time cover the violence committed by illegals in the U.S., especially the part about the Mexican government encouraging the poor, uneducated and violent to cross the border. They could talk to the families of citizens murdered by Mexican illegals, either through drug war violence or by drunk driving.

Originally Posted by ReggieMay

Perhaps Univision would like to have a second special but this time cover the violence committed by illegals in the U.S., especially the part about the Mexican government encouraging the poor, uneducated and violent to cross the border. They could talk to the families of citizens murdered by Mexican illegals, either through drug war violence or by drunk driving.

Great idea and one could only hope. Univison did a good job on this particular subject but I am sure there is an agenda. I heard a report yesterday that the Terry family wrongful death suit is being watched closely so that the families of the people killed with F&F guns in Mexico could bring suit also.

This is story that references the intent to sue.

'Furious' guns tied to 2010 Juarez massacre, other murders in Mexico


Published October 01, 2012


For the first time, Mexican victims of crimes tied to the botched Operation Fast and Furious are being identified, including teenagers killed in a 2010 massacre.

A new report finds dozens of weapons recovered in Mexico have been connected with the ill-fated and ill-conceived anti-gunrunning program. While some Mexican authorities estimate 300 of their citizens have been injured or killed by Fast and Furious guns, little has been known about those weapons south of the U.S. border until now.

Through the Mexican Freedom of Information Act, Spanish-language network Univision and Fox News obtained a list of 100,000 weapons recovered in Mexico in 2009 and 2010. The guns were then compared with the serial numbers of the 2,000 guns sold in Fast and Furious.

Univision identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings and other actions by Mexican hit men and drug cartels.

In an investigative special that aired Sunday, Univision revealed one such massacre that was later found to be linked with Fast and Furious.

It happened in January 2010 in Juarez, Mexico, where cartel members burst into a home killing 16 people -- mostly teenagers -- at a birthday party. While the gunmen were targeting members of a rival gang attending that party, some of the victims were innocent bystanders.

Family members of those killed have appeared before the Mexican government demanding to know what happened.

"They are waiting for an answer," said Gerardo Reyes, head of Univision's investigative unit. "They want to know what happened. And why they didn't stop these guns from leaving the U.S. and ending up in these crimes?"

"They feel helpless," added Reyes. "They don't know what to do. We interviewed one of them and they said ... 'Who's going to pay for this?'"

It might end up being the U.S. government, should the family of Brian Terry prevail in its wrongful death claim. Terry is the U.S. Border Patrol agent killed in December 2010 in the Arizona desert, and whose murder scene contained weapons linked to Fast and Furious.

"The people can go and sue in the United States with support of American lawyers and that will be a very interesting development certainly," said former Mexican prosecutor Samuel Gonzalez.

The report also reveals the botched operation may have played a role in a 2009 massacre, where 18 young men were killed at a rehabilitation center also in Juarez. The massacre was reportedly ordered and carried out by Mexican hit men.

According to a Mexican Army document obtained by Univision, three of the high-caliber weapons used in the attack were linked to a gun-tracing operation run by the ATF. The partial transcript obtained by Fox News did not specify whether this was Operation Fast and Furious.

The Fast and Furious program caught the attention of Congress and the rest of the country after weapons from the operation were found at Terry's murder scene.

One Justice Department official resigned and another retired after an inspector general report on the probe faulted multiple agencies for letting it get out of hand. Fourteen officials were forwarded for possible disciplinary action.

Republican presidential running mate Paul Ryan has also joined Republicans -- including Mitt Romney -- calling for Attorney General Eric Holder's resignation, with a spokesman telling The Daily Caller Holder should step down or President Obama should ask him to do so.
Fox News' William LaJeunesse contributed to this report.

Read more: 'Furious' guns tied to 2010 Juarez massacre, other murders in Mexico | Fox News

By Jerry Seper
The Washington Times
Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Univision report cited on birthday party massacre

Fourteen teenagers slaughtered at a birthday party in Mexico with weapons purchased during the now-discredited Fast and Furious gunrunning investigation are the faces of a “reckless” operation that allowed hundreds of illegally purchased guns to be transported south of the border.

“We have known for some time that weapons brought to Mexico from Operation Fast and Furious would contribute to significant death and carnage,” said Rep. Darrell E. Issa, who chaired a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation of Fast and Furious.

“Univision’s new findings add details and faces to what occurred as a result of a reckless initiative, mismanagement and lack of leadership within the U.S. Justice Department,” he said.

Mr. Issa’s comments Wednesday came in the wake of a report Monday by the Spanish-language television network Univision that Fast and Furious weapons were used by members of the Juarez cartel to kill 14 teenagers and wound 12 others at a birthday party during a commando-style raid.

The deaths correspond to concerns outlined last month in a report by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG), which concluded after a lengthy investigation that those in charge of overseeing Fast and Furious failed to “adequately consider the risk to the public safety in the United States and Mexico.”

Hundreds of weapons, including AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles, were allowed to flow into Mexico as part of Fast and Furious, finding their way to brutal drug smugglers.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s report said the Justice Department failed to make any effort to “disrupt a trafficking operation that continued to purchase firearms with impunity for many months.”

The report concluded that Fast and Furious was “seriously flawed and supervised irresponsibly” by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Phoenix field division and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona – despite knowing the purchases were financed by Mexican drug traffickers.

The report also said “questionable judgments” by Justice Department officials in Washington marred the department’s response to Capitol Hill inquiries.

Those failures, the report said, showed a disregard “for the safety of individuals in the United States and Mexico.”

Univision reported that at least 20 armed members of La Linea, the enforcer unit of the Juarez cartel, stormed the birthday party in Ciudad Juarez on Jan. 30, 2010, and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Citing a Mexican army document, Univision said three high-caliber weapons used in the shootings were linked to Fast and Furious.

“Univision’s story further confirms my fear that these guns, purposefully placed into the hands of violent criminals by President Obama’s Justice Department, are directly responsible for the deaths of countless innocent bystanders,” Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, said Wednesday. “Now we know that children are among the victims. It’s a tragedy and a travesty, and I will not relent in my pursuit to hold accountable those who oversaw this program.”

Mr. Cornyn has asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to make public any information the Justice Department has on the existence of federal gunrunning operations in Texas and to reveal the source of weapons found at the February 2011 killing in Mexico of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jaime Zapata.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who began the investigation of Fast and Furious, on Wednesday called Univision’s reporting “heartbreaking,” saying it “shows the tragic consequences on both sides of the border that resulted from allowing these guns to walk.”

“We knew that Fast and Furious guns were also used in Mexico, but the details in these new reports underline the importance of remembering the human costs of this operation,” he said.

ATF field agents working in Mexico testified in July 2011 during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing they were kept in the dark about Fast and Furious and had serious concerns about an alarming rate of guns found in violent crimes in Mexico that had come from Arizona, and predicted the Mexican people would suffer the consequences of narcotics-related firearms violence.

One Old Vet

Gunrunning

Why have ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored this shocking Univision report?

Big Three Nets STILL Ignoring Univision Fast & Furious Blockbuster

Warner Todd Huston (Bio and Archives) Thursday, October 4, 2012

U.S.-based, Spanish-speaking TV network, Univision, recently aired a shocking expose of the Obama administration’s Obama administration’s gun running program — called Fast & Furious — a policy that has ended up in the murder of hundreds of Mexican citizens. Despite this blockbuster report on Obama’s disastrous program and the new accusations that 16 teens were killed by Obama’s guns, neither ABC, CBS, nor NBC have yet said a word during their own news broadcasts about Univision’s report.

This news blackout is most surprising because the Univision report is so fraught with political repercussions both domestically as well as concerning foreign relations between the United States and Mexico. Yet neither of the big three nets seems interested to report on this story.

The most shocking incident of murder and destruction by narco-terrorists using Obama’s guns was the attack on a birthday party attended by dozens of teenagers.

On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled.

“Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers,” Univision concludes.

ABC’s refusal to air any of Univision’s report is doubly interesting. This is because ABC has actually posted a report on its own website about the Univision expose. But, even as it hosts a web-based report, ABC has ignored the Univision report in its own aired news reports.

The Univision report is in Spanish, of course, but there is a subtitled version.

Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames.

Why have ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored this shocking Univision report?

Video at the page link


Big Three Nets STILL Ignoring Univision Fast & Furious Blockbuster