Mexican Diplomat Traded Secrets with Private Intel Firm Stratfor, WikiLeaks Documents Reveal

By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
August 9, 2012

Exchange of Sensitive Information Focused on the US/Mexican Operations in the Drug War

US soldiers are operating inside Mexico as part of the drug war and the Mexican government provided critical intelligence to US agents in the now-discredited Fast and Furious gun-running operation, a Mexican diplomat claims in email correspondence with a Texas-based private intelligence firm.

The emails, obtained and made public by the nonprofit media organization WikiLeaks, also disclose details of a secret meeting between US and Mexican officials held in 2010 at Fort Bliss, a US Army installation located near El Paso, Texas. The meeting was part of an effort to create better communications between US undercover operatives in Mexico and the Mexican federal police, the Mexican diplomat reveals.

However, the diplomat expresses concern that the Fort Bliss meeting was infiltrated by the “cartels,” whom he contends have “penetrated both US and Mexican law enforcement.”

The Mexican diplomat is referred to as “MX1” in the some of the emails obtained by WikiLeaks but also identified by name in others.

The description of MX1 in the emails matches the publicly available information on Fernando de la Mora Salcedo, a Mexican foreign service officer who studied law at the University of New Mexico, served in the Mexican Consulate in El Paso, Texas, and is currently stationed in the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix.

US, Mexican Officials Brokering Deals with Drug “Cartels,” WikiLeaks Documents Show

By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

August 20, 2012

Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla after his arrest in Mexico City

Revelation Exposed in Email Correspondence Between Private Intelligence Firm and Mexican Diplomat

A high-ranking Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization member’s claim that US officials have struck a deal with the leadership of the Mexican “cartel” appears to be corroborated in large part by the statements of a Mexican diplomat in email correspondence made public recently by the nonprofit media group WikiLeaks.

The Mexican diplomat’s assessment of the US and Mexican strategy in the war on drugs, as revealed by the email trail, paints a picture of a “simulated war” in which the Mexican and US governments are willing to show favor to a dominant narco-trafficking organization in order to minimize the violence and business disruption in the major drug plazas, or markets.

A similar quid-pro-quo arrangement is precisely what indicted narco-trafficker Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, who is slated to stand trial in Chicago this fall, alleges was agreed to by the US government and the leaders of the Sinaloa “Cartel” — the dominate narco-trafficking organization in Mexico. The US government, however, denies that any such arrangement exists.

Mexican soldiers arrested Zambada Niebla in late March 2009 after he met with DEA agents in a posh Mexico City hotel, a meeting arranged by a US government informant who also is a close confident of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia (Zambada Niebla’s father) and Chapo Guzman — both top leaders of the Sinaloa drug organization. The US informant, Mexican attorney Humberto Loya Castro, by the US government’s own admission in court pleadings in the Zambada Niebla criminal case, served as an intermediary between the Sinaloa Cartel leadership and US government agencies seeking to obtain information on rival narco-trafficking organizations.

According to Zambada Niebla, he and the rest of the Sinaloa leadership, through the US informant Loya Castro, negotiated an immunity deal with the US government in which they were guaranteed protection from prosecution in exchange for providing US law enforcers and intelligence agencies with information that could be used to compromise rival Mexican cartels and their operations.

“The United States government considered the arrangements with the Sinaloa Cartel an acceptable price to pay, because the principal objective was the destruction and dismantling of rival cartels by using the assistance of the Sinaloa Cartel — without regard for the fact that tons of illicit drugs continued to be smuggled into Chicago and other parts of the United States and consumption continued virtually unabated,” Zambada Niebla’s attorneys argue in pleadings in his case.