FREE PRESS INTERNATIONAL

NY TIMES

WASHINGTON — An internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency has found that the agency withheld crucial information from federal investigators who spent years trying to determine whether C.I.A. officers committed crimes related to the accidental downing of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001.

The August 2008 report by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.’s inspector general, could lead the Justice Department to reopen its investigation into the shooting, examining in particular whether senior C.I.A. officers obstructed justice or lied to Congress by burying details about the episode and the C.I.A.’s broader counternarcotics program.

Mexico investigates Interpol liaison

By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer

MEXICO CITY – A top police official who worked as Mexico’s main liaison with Interpol was placed under house arrest as part of an investigation into leaks of information to drug cartels, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The arrest of Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas — who served as director for International Police Affairs and Interpol at the Federal Investigative Agency — was the latest blow to Mexico’s police forces, which have seen a number of top officials linked to the nation’s powerful and violent drug gangs.

The investigation that netted Gutierrez Vargas also resulted in the detention of several other federal police officials in recent weeks on suspicion of leaking information to traffickers.

An Interpol Web site identified Gutierrez Vargas as head of Interpol’s Mexico National Central Bureau, or NCB.

BBC NEWS

Mexican Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino has been killed along with seven others when his ministry plane crashed in central Mexico City.

The Learjet burst into flames as it came down during rush-hour in the heart of the capital’s financial district at around 1900 local time (0000 GMT).

A former assistant attorney general, Jose Luis Santiago, and other senior advisers were also killed in the crash.

The Brunei Times

FPI - NOTICE HOW THE POLICE COMMISSIONER ESCAPES PROSECUTION.

ONE of Mexico’s top police officers has quit after an aide was accused of working for a leading drug cartel, the security ministry said on Saturday.

Gerardo Garay, acting federal police commissioner, has stepped down and said he will cooperate with an organised crime investigation, a ministry spokesman said.

One of Garay’s top lieutenants is being investigated by police on suspicions he was offering protection to the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s main drug gangs.

“I am resigning because in the bloody fight against organised crime, it is our duty to strengthen institutions, which means it is essential to eliminate any shadows of doubt regarding me,” Garay said late on Friday.

SFGATE

FPI - I DON’T BELIEVE IT.

(11-03) 04:09 PST KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) –

A U.S. military spokesman says Afghan and coalition troops have seized 40 tons of hashish during a raid in southern Afghanistan.

Lt. Cmdr. Walter Matthews says the drugs were found during the Monday raid in Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province.

Border police commander Abdul Raziq says the drugs were found in the basement of a compound in Nawa Kili village. He says American military helicopters were used during the raid.

Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, the main ingredient for the production of heroin. But the country also grows large quantities of cannabis, the plant used to produce hashish and marijuana.

Telegraph

An Interpol agent working in the US Embassy in Mexico City and at the international airport used his position to supply information on the Drug Enforcement Agency to the Beltrán-Leyva cartel.

Details emerged after the spy, codenamed Felipe, confessed to US authorities.

It came as prosecutors also admitted that two staff in the Mexican Attorney-General’s Office for Organised Crime - a government unit that fights the drug mafia – had been found to have been in the pay of the cartel for four years.

They received between $150,000 (£97,000) and $450,000 (£288,000) a month from the cartel for information on surveillance targets and potential raids.

It is regarded as the worst known case of law enforcement in Mexico being compromised by drug barons since the arrest in 1997 of General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, head of the country’s anti-drug agency.

“This doesn’t say much for US security – it’s as embarrassing as hell for this to come out and I suspect heads will roll within the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration],” said Bruce Bagley, an expert in Latin American drug trafficking, from the University of Miami in Florida.

The scandal came less than a week after Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, visited Mexico City to discuss the $400million Mérida Initiative, aimed at helping Mexican and Central American law enforcement agencies to fight organised drug crime.

UPI.com

FPI - NOTICE HOW THE ATTORNEY GENERAL SUFFERS NO CONSEQUENCES.

MEXICO CITY, Oct. 28 (UPI) — Mexico says it is cleaning house in its attorney general’s office after five anti-drug officials were arrested for secretly working with drug cartels.

The arrested officials came from Mexico’s elite organized crime unit and are accused of pocketing as much as $450,000 per month from the Beltran-Leyva cartel — one of the biggest transporters of Colombian cocaine — in exchange for secret law enforcement information, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

One alleged cartel informant worked for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and leaked Drug Enforcement Agency to organized criminals, Mexican officials said.

Mexico Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told the Times more people would be fired and leaders will undertake a major overhaul of the attorney general’s office in a effort to flush out other workers who are passing information along to drug traffickers.

The China Post

FPI - DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THESE DRUGS ARE DESTROYED?

BOGOTA –– Police in the Colombian port city of Barranquilla said they seized

10.5 tons of cocaine with a street value of US$1 trillion dollars.

The drugs were found in a truck hidden in cartons with plastic products that were to be loaded on to a freighter bound for Mexico. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, with an estimated 700 tons a year. This year, police have seized 105 tons of the drug.

VIDEO

FPI - THIS MOVIE IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY. IT SHOWS THE POLICE AND US. MILITARY RUNNING DRUGS. NOTICE THAT THE US MILITARY HAS NOT DENOUNCED THIS MOVIE. THE BEST PLACE TO HIDE THE TRUTH IS IN PLAIN SIGHT.