Leaked letter links U.S. Attorney Sutton to cover-up in House of Death

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/ ... 20548/3335
By Bill Conroy,
Posted on Sat Sep 15th, 2007 at 08:54:08 PM EST

The Pentagon Papers, as you recall, were part of a classified government report leaked to the media in 1971 by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. The documents exposed the U.S. government’s efforts to deceive the public in its disastrous pursuit of the Vietnam War.

A similar report exists in the case of the House of Death mass murder in Juarez, Mexico — a bloody tragedy of the disastrous drug war. A document known as the Joint Assessment Team report, or JAT, was put together in the wake of a DEA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigation into the government’s role in the brutal murders — which nearly cost the lives of a DEA agent and his family.

The JAT continues to be a closely guarded document within the Bush Administration’s cover-up machine.

However, Narco News has recently obtained a new document that proves the JAT was provided to the office of U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton in San Antonio, Texas. That new document is a letter written by a high-level DEA official to the chief of the criminal unit in Sutton’s office.

At the time Sutton’s office received the letter from DEA in April 2004, it was in the process of prosecuting the narco-trafficker who oversaw the House of Death murders. Sutton had returned an indictment against that narco-trafficker, Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, in February 2004 that included five murder charges stemming from the House of Death killing machine. At least one of the murder victims was a U.S. legal resident, Luis Padilla.
The House of Death murders were carried out between August 2003 and mid-January 2004 with the help of an informant on the payroll of ICE. High-level officials within both the Department of Justice and ICE (which is part of the Department of Homeland Security) approved the informant’s continued use after they became aware of his participation in the initial House of Death torture/murder. [See link.]

The April 2004 letter from DEA to Sutton’s office recently leaked to Narco News makes it clear that the JAT represented evidence that Sutton would have to make available under the rules of evidence to Santillan’s defense attorney. It was considered “exculpatoryâ€