It’s like the 1980’s never finished!
Rolling Stone… here’s a snippet. This is well worth a full read if you love the classic cocaine corruption narrative
After the crash, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General began to investigate allegations of “narcotics smuggling operations under the auspices of ‘Operation Mayan Jaguar,’” according to IG reports obtained by Rolling Stone. The alleged government smuggling took place “with the consent of special agents from the ICE office in Tampa [Florida].”
The reports show that ICE agents would draw “approximately 20 planes” into Operation Mayan Jaguar, including a Boeing 727. And according to testimony in the reports and the prosecutor in Malago’s case, ICE stopped none of them, while other governments thwarted some, without ICE — meaning the operation may have morphed into a FedEx for cartels. The Drug Enforcement Administration, convinced that traffickers controlled Mayan Jaguar, ordered ICE to shut it down, an ICE agent told the IG. ICE refused. “ICE Headquarters advised the agents … to continue working,” according to another agent’s IG testimony.
In court, Malago’s representatives would say that ICE trapped an innocent man in a turf war with the DEA. “Mr. Malago is stuck in the middle between the United States Government and alleged rogue governmental agents turned criminals,” Ratzan, his lawyer, wrote in court filings. The charges against Malago would eventually be dismissed, and no one else has been charged. ICE declined to comment.
But IG investigators gathered unsettling testimony that allows the full story of Mayan Jaguar to be told for the first time. Even inside ICE, they found disquiet. ICE’s own auditors had “identified significant control weaknesses which included ‘serious’ deficiencies in recording transactions,” according to an IG memo. “The operation was missing receipts or invoices for over $3 million in expenses related to the purchase and sale of airplanes.” An ICE agent under interrogation assured the IG that the audit for the final year, 2007, was “clean.” But why were ICE auditors “not provided information” about Donna Blue and its Gulfstream II for that “clean” audit? The agent “said he didn’t know.” ICE, it seems, hid the Gulfstream from itself.
Read the full article at
