Conroy: DEA Corruption Intersects With FBI & CIA

Another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place in Bill Conroy's investigation of alleged massive corruption in the DEA's Bogota, Colombia office. Yet another document in the paper trail has come to light, this one nearly as explosive as the now-famous "Kent Memo" that Conroy revealed nearly two months ago. The document is the final report of the investigation by the DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility in response to complaints filed by a former Bogota chief against a Miami agent whose investigation threatened to expose the agency's wrongdoings in Colombia.

The new documents also show how the alleged corruption in the DEA intersected with covert FBI and CIA activity in Colombia. Conroy writes:

"In the late 1990s, Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante, one of the leaders of Colombia's North Valley Cartel narco-trafficking syndicate, became one of the targets of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation called Operation Cali-Man, which was overseen by a DEA supervisor in Miami named David Tinsley.

"In mid January 2000, Gomez Bustamante attended a meeting in Panama to discuss possible cooperation with the DEA. According to one of Tinsley's informants, during the course of that meeting Gomez Bustamante revealed that a high-level DEA agent in Bogota was on the 'payroll' of a corrupt Colombian National Police colonel named Danilo Gonzalez - who was eventually indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on narco-trafficking charges.

"The informant, an individual named Ramon Suarez, later told DEA internal affairs investigators that the U.S. federal agent identified by Gomez Bustamante as being on the "payroll" was Javier Pena, who at the time was the assistant country attache of the DEA Bogota Country Office in Colombia.

"When questioned by DEA internal affairs investigators in 2002, Pena denied the charge. However, he did concede he had a relationship with Colonel Gonzalez dating back to the early 1990s, when Colombian and U.S. law enforcers worked together to hunt down the notorious narco- outlaw Pablo Escobar.

"These remarkable revelations have surfaced in a document recently obtained by Narco News. The document also includes evidence that the DEA, FBI and CIA were each operating covertly in Colombian's narco- trafficking underworld, all using the same informant."

Read the full report, here, in The Narco News Bulletin:

http://www.narconews.com/Issue40/article1662.html

Also, in the Narcosphere, Conroy looks at a new report from the Dallas Morning News on a story he has extensively covered for two years: the "House of Death" in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The house in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, was the location of the torture and murder of at least twelve people over the course of several months. An informant in the pay of U.S. border agencies participated in the series of murders, and despite their knowledge of his activities, Justice and Homeland Security officials did nothing to stop him and later launched a major cover-up of the entire affair. The Dallas Morning News takes credit for many of the facts brought to light first in Narco News, and then completely disregards the existence of the cover-up in its story of the informant "Lalo's" supposedly immanent extradition to Mexico. Read Conroy's commentary here:

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2006/3/5/165154/1751

From somewhere in a country called America,

Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com

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