Newly Released Documents Trace “House of Death” Cover-Up to Upper Levels of the Justice Department
By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
source: http://narconews.com/Issue39/article1445.html
September 12, 2005
A dozen people were tortured and murdered between August 2003 and mid-January 2004 in a house in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
The murders were carried out as part of a criminal enterprise overseen by Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, who U.S. prosecutors claim was a top lieutenant in Vicente Carrillo Fuentes’ (VCF’s) Juárez drug organization.
The reason we know this is because federal agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in El Paso had an informant inside of Santillan’s criminal syndicate. The federal agents, along with a U.S. prosecutor in El Paso, were using the informant to snare Santillan.
The other reason we know this is that a high-ranking DEA agent, Sandalio Gonzalez, who served as the head of that agency’s field office in El Paso when the murders took place, blew the whistle on an alleged criminal cover-up in the ICE operation. Gonzalez exposed the fact that the ICE agents and a U.S. prosecutor knew their informant was participating in the homicides, yet allowed the murder spree to continue to assure the informant was not exposed – so they could continue to use him to make their case against Santillan.
The House of Death in Ciudad Júarez, Mexico
Photo: D.R. 2005 Klaas Wollstein
Narco News has been reporting on this story since April 2004. For those of you who have been following this ugly saga of the pretense called the war on drugs, the details of the alleged corruption are well known to you by now. However, some startling revelations have recently surfaced that indicate the cover-up in the House of Death mass murder case extends much further up the food chain in the Department of Justice than previously reported.
Gonzalez first spoke out against the corruption in the House of Death investigation in early 2004, within weeks of a DEA agent and his family being confronted by Santillan’s death squad, who had mistaken the agent for a competing smuggler.
In the wake of that confrontation, and after discovering that the ICE informant was a participant in the House of Death murders, Gonzalez sent an internal letter on Feb. 24, 2004, to the top ICE official in El Paso and to Johnny Sutton, the U.S. Attorney in San Antonio, Texas. In that letter, Gonzalez dropped the dime on the whole sordid tale.
But rather than investigate the charges, officials within the Department of Justice (DOJ) went after Gonzalez, seeing to it that he was reprimanded and his career tarnished with a negative job-performance review. Gonzalez also was ordered to remain silent on the whole matter.
According to Gonzalez, the retaliation he experienced after writing the whistleblower letter was initiated at the behest of Sutton, who wanted to bury the letter to avoid compromising a career-boosting death-sentence case against a major narco-trafficker. That means, according to Gonzalez, that a U.S. Attorney is now implicated in the cover-up of a U.S. government informant’s participation in mass murder.
When contacted by Narco News, Sutton’s office declined to comment on the allegations or the House of Death case.
However, Narco News recently obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (see links at end of story) that pull the dark shroud over the House of Death back even further. The documents were released by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an administrative body that adjudicates cases brought by federal employees who claim they have been retaliated against for whistleblowing activity. Gonzalez currently has a case pending before the MSPB that focuses on the House of Death cover-up.
Documents released as a result of Narco News’ FOIA request include internal Department of Justice e-mails concerning the House of Death case. In general, the FOIA documents are heavily redacted, based in part on alleged privacy-protection exemptions. However, Narco News has access to sources who were able to fill in some of the critical missing words.
As it turns out, among the items redacted in the e-mails are the names of the high-ranking DOJ officials who drafted or received the e-mails as part of performing their public duties – on the taxpayers’ dime. That has led some law enforcers to speculate that the cover-up may now extend into the MSPB itself.
Narco News has filed a FOIA appeal seeking the release of all the documents in Gonzalez’ MSPB case and has asked that all the names of public officials in those documents be “un-redacted.”
Well-placed law enforcement sources familiar with the House of Death case tell Narco News that the individuals who either wrote the e-mails or received copies of the e-mails included the following: Karen Tandy, Administrator of the DEA; Catherine M. O’Neil, Associate Deputy Attorney General; and the number two person at DOJ, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey – who earlier this summer took a job as general counsel for defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp.
read the rest: http://narconews.com/Issue39/article1445.html
By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
source: http://narconews.com/Issue39/article1445.html
September 12, 2005
A dozen people were tortured and murdered between August 2003 and mid-January 2004 in a house in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
The murders were carried out as part of a criminal enterprise overseen by Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, who U.S. prosecutors claim was a top lieutenant in Vicente Carrillo Fuentes’ (VCF’s) Juárez drug organization.
The reason we know this is because federal agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in El Paso had an informant inside of Santillan’s criminal syndicate. The federal agents, along with a U.S. prosecutor in El Paso, were using the informant to snare Santillan.
The other reason we know this is that a high-ranking DEA agent, Sandalio Gonzalez, who served as the head of that agency’s field office in El Paso when the murders took place, blew the whistle on an alleged criminal cover-up in the ICE operation. Gonzalez exposed the fact that the ICE agents and a U.S. prosecutor knew their informant was participating in the homicides, yet allowed the murder spree to continue to assure the informant was not exposed – so they could continue to use him to make their case against Santillan.
The House of Death in Ciudad Júarez, Mexico
Photo: D.R. 2005 Klaas Wollstein
Narco News has been reporting on this story since April 2004. For those of you who have been following this ugly saga of the pretense called the war on drugs, the details of the alleged corruption are well known to you by now. However, some startling revelations have recently surfaced that indicate the cover-up in the House of Death mass murder case extends much further up the food chain in the Department of Justice than previously reported.
Gonzalez first spoke out against the corruption in the House of Death investigation in early 2004, within weeks of a DEA agent and his family being confronted by Santillan’s death squad, who had mistaken the agent for a competing smuggler.
In the wake of that confrontation, and after discovering that the ICE informant was a participant in the House of Death murders, Gonzalez sent an internal letter on Feb. 24, 2004, to the top ICE official in El Paso and to Johnny Sutton, the U.S. Attorney in San Antonio, Texas. In that letter, Gonzalez dropped the dime on the whole sordid tale.
But rather than investigate the charges, officials within the Department of Justice (DOJ) went after Gonzalez, seeing to it that he was reprimanded and his career tarnished with a negative job-performance review. Gonzalez also was ordered to remain silent on the whole matter.
According to Gonzalez, the retaliation he experienced after writing the whistleblower letter was initiated at the behest of Sutton, who wanted to bury the letter to avoid compromising a career-boosting death-sentence case against a major narco-trafficker. That means, according to Gonzalez, that a U.S. Attorney is now implicated in the cover-up of a U.S. government informant’s participation in mass murder.
When contacted by Narco News, Sutton’s office declined to comment on the allegations or the House of Death case.
However, Narco News recently obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (see links at end of story) that pull the dark shroud over the House of Death back even further. The documents were released by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an administrative body that adjudicates cases brought by federal employees who claim they have been retaliated against for whistleblowing activity. Gonzalez currently has a case pending before the MSPB that focuses on the House of Death cover-up.
Documents released as a result of Narco News’ FOIA request include internal Department of Justice e-mails concerning the House of Death case. In general, the FOIA documents are heavily redacted, based in part on alleged privacy-protection exemptions. However, Narco News has access to sources who were able to fill in some of the critical missing words.
As it turns out, among the items redacted in the e-mails are the names of the high-ranking DOJ officials who drafted or received the e-mails as part of performing their public duties – on the taxpayers’ dime. That has led some law enforcers to speculate that the cover-up may now extend into the MSPB itself.
Narco News has filed a FOIA appeal seeking the release of all the documents in Gonzalez’ MSPB case and has asked that all the names of public officials in those documents be “un-redacted.”
Well-placed law enforcement sources familiar with the House of Death case tell Narco News that the individuals who either wrote the e-mails or received copies of the e-mails included the following: Karen Tandy, Administrator of the DEA; Catherine M. O’Neil, Associate Deputy Attorney General; and the number two person at DOJ, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey – who earlier this summer took a job as general counsel for defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp.
read the rest: http://narconews.com/Issue39/article1445.html