U.S. Mission Mexico Flags at Half Staff

The U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez (photo from Reuters)






All U.S. Mission installations in Mexico flew their flags at half staff for three days, ending today, in mourning for Lesley Enriquez, the employee who was killed March 13th in Ciudad Juarez.

FBI: Ciudad Juarez Attackers Might Have Been "Confused"

The Associated Press is reporting tonight on the FBI's working theory about the dual attacks that killed three people connected to U.S. Consulate Ciudad Juarez. The FBI speculates the attackers might have been looking for two other white vehicles that were leaving another kid's party in Juarez that same Saturday afternoon. And, therefore, our employees weren't targeted due to their employment and this wasn't an attack on U.S. government interests.

That's an awfully big stretch of speculation that reaches a comforting conclusion.

From the AP story (FBI: No evidence Mexico hit men targeted Americans):

Confused hit men may have gone to the wrong party, the FBI said Tuesday as it cast doubt on fears that the slaying of three people with ties to the U.S. consulate shows that Mexican drug cartels have launched an offensive against U.S. government employees.

Gunmen chased two white SUVs from the birthday party of a consulate employee's child on Saturday and opened fire as horrified relatives screamed. The two near-simultaneous attacks left three adults dead and at least two children wounded.

The working theory, described to the AP by FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons, drives home just how dangerous Ciudad Juarez has become — and just how vulnerable those who live and work there can be, despite the Mexican government's claims that most victims are drug smugglers.

According to the line of investigation, the assailants — believed to be aligned with the Juarez drug cartel — may have been ordered to attack a white SUV leaving a party and mistakenly went to the "Barquito de Papel," which puts on children's parties and whose name means "Paper Boat."

"We don't have any information that these folks were directly targeted because of their employment by the U.S. government or their U.S. citizenship," Simmons said by phone from El Paso, just across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juarez.

Well, Special Agent Simmons also 'doesn't have any information' that the killers were just confused, does she?

The article goes on to quote a private analyst who doubts the cartels would have the huevos to attack U.S. government employees, because that would provoke a heightened response from both the U.S. and Mexican governments.

But why wouldn't the narcos be willing to strike directly at U.S. interest targets, especially soft ones? Aren't the narcos facing an "existential threat" from the U.S.-supported Mexican federal government's narcotics control campaign, as is stated on page 14 of the State Department's 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report that was released to Congress two weeks ago?

"We believe that the Mexican government's efforts are having a real impact. For the first time, trafficking organizations are facing an existential threat from the state, which they cannot win by bribery or intimidation."

The Mexican drug cartels are fighting for their survival at this point. Given enough provocation, such as news stories about the escalating levels of U.S. support for Mexico's campaign against them (see, for example, this WaPo report from February 24: U.S. to embed agents in Mexican law enforcement units battling cartels in Juarez), I think they certainly would strike at U.S. employees. What would they have to lose?

UK Warns Mexico Against Using Scam Bomb Detector

A few months ago the British government took action against a corporation that has been selling a notorious scam bomb detector known variously as the GT 200, the ADE 651, the Sniffex and the MOLE. Now the British are attempting to warn the Mexican government against using the ridiculous devices, which their military and police forces have purchased by the hundreds at the price of $20,000 each.

Good luck to the Brits. The U.S. government has so far been unable to convince the Iraqi government to stop using the thousands of GT 200s it purchased for $85 million. Evidently, the snake oil used to sell these things is particularly long-lasting and the victim doesn't come to his senses for years, if ever.

For their $20K, the Mexicans get nothing but an empty plastic box connected to an antenna and programmed with a deck of ordinary plastic cards. Really. That's all. See here and here for U.S. government test reports that document the bald-faced fraud that is the GT 200, ADE 651, et al.

From today's New York Times:

The British government has notified Mexico that a handheld device widely used by the Mexican military and police to search for drugs and explosives may be ineffective, British officials said. [TSB note: "may" be ineffective? That's British understatement. There's no maybe about it.]

Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat has spent more than $10 million to purchase hundreds of the detectors, similar to the “magic wands” in use in Iraq and Afghanistan, for its antidrug fight. Although critics have called them nothing more than divining rods, Mexican defense officials praise the devices as a critical part of their efforts to combat drug traffickers. At the military’s National Drug Museum, one of the devices is on display, with a plaque that describes its success in finding hidden caches of drugs.

-- snip --

As of April 20, 2009, the army had purchased 521 of the GT 200 detectors for just over $20,000 apiece, for a total cost of more than $10 million, according to Mexican government documents. Police agencies across Mexico have made additional purchases, records show.

“We’ve had success with it,” Capt. Jesús Héctor Larios Salazar, an officer with the Mexican Army’s antidrug unit in Culiacán, said recently. “It works with molecules. It functions with the energy of the body.”

Molecules? That quote must be a translation error. I think Captain Larios meant to say it works with magic, and it functions with the energy supplied by a body of money. Captain, please open your eyes. The only ones who have ever had any success with the GT 200 are the gringos who sold them to you.

What Would John Adams Do About the ACLU?

The Washington Times has a story today about an escalating conflict between the CIA and the Justice Department that was brought on by Justice's toleration of certain practices by legal supporters of Gitmo detainees. See Justice, CIA clash over probe of interrogator IDs.

The CIA and Justice Department are fighting over a secret investigation into a controversial program by legal supporters of Islamist terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay that involved photographing CIA interrogators and showing the pictures to prisoners, an effort CIA officials say threatens the officers' lives.

-- snip --

According to U.S. officials familiar with the issue, the current [CIA versus Justice Department] dispute involves Justice Department officials who support an effort led by the American Civil Liberties Union to provide legal aid to military lawyers for the Guantanamo inmates. CIA counterintelligence officials oppose the effort and say giving terrorists photographs of interrogators has exposed CIA personnel and their families to possible terrorist attacks.

This is the part I found most interesting:

The officials said the photographs of the CIA officers found recently at Guantanamo were obtained by a joint program of the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers called the John Adams Project.

The project, according to a Washington Post report in August, hired contractors to photograph CIA officers who were thought to have carried out terrorist interrogations. Those photographs were then to be provided to defense lawyers representing some of the Guantanamo detainees as part of an effort to identify the interrogators, for possible use as witnesses in military or civilian trials.

Joshua Dratel, a lawyer representing the John Adams Project, declined to comment directly on whether his group hired investigators to photograph CIA officers and supply them to military defense lawyers.

However, Mr. Dratel said in an interview that "none of the John Adams Project lawyers have done anything inappropriate or contrary to the protective order or any other rules that apply" to the prisoners.

ACLU spokesman John Kennedy also declined to comment on whether the project obtained photographs of CIA officers. However, he said none of the John Adams Project lawyers disclosed the identities of CIA officers to detainees held at Guantanamo.

The John Adams Project of the ACLU is so named because future President John Adams provided legal representation to British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre. Presumably, the Gitmo Bar thinks that is analogous to what they're doing. But, after reading today's Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Gitmo's Indefensible Lawyers, I'd say the ACLU is lucky they don't have to answer to the President Adams who signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. That guy would have put the Gitmo Bar away for a loooong time.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being Irish

St. Patrick's Day is almost here, and The History News Network has a post about the deeper meaning of that enjoyable, yet rather curious, cultural phenomenon of the St. Patrick's Day parade (see The Wearing of the Green).

According to Christopher Shannon, an Associate Professor of History at Christendom College:

Scholars of Irish American history who bemoan the reduction of Irish culture to the worst of nineteenth-century, stage-Irish stereotypes might do better to sit back and wonder at the simple, and almost miraculous fact of the continued existence of the St. Patrick’s Day parade—a private, ethnic religious holiday whose public celebration dwarves those of most official national state holidays.

Why the paucity of academic attention? Shannon's bottom line is that Irish-Americans have spoiled the fun for scholars of ethnicity by failing to conform to their preconceived ideas of what constitutes ethnic identity.

How Will Mexicans Perceive the Attack on U.S. Consulate Employees?

The attacks against our Ciudad Juarez consulate employees and their families were horrendous even by the contemporary standards of the Mexican border region. Murdering pregnant women and shooting into cars full of toddlers are acts likely to be particularly offensive to the Mexican public, maybe enough so as to provoke a reaction against the narco gangs that committed those atrocities.

Jose Rene Blanco Vega, the vicar general of the Diocese of Ciudad Juárez, is quoted in today's El Diario denouncing the murder of innocent people with specific reference to the murder of the three connected to the U.S. Consulate.

My translation of the article's key phrase:

"The point of view of the Church is that from the first moment of conception in the womb until the last moment of life of an elderly person, human life is sacred, nobody can touch it, nobody can destroy it, no one can take it away." This crime against any person, from the smallest or poorest to the highest official, will always be a grave offense, he said.

It makes me wonder whether Saturday's attacks might have the potential to be a turning point in the Mexican government campaign against the border's narco gangs. Talk about having the moral high ground. Even the gangs themselves are likely to be ashamed of the perpetrators of those attacks, since they do have their own moral codes, and moral codes are far more binding than laws in a lawless environment. Shooting women and children is not what Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of drug traffickers and mythic figure adopted by the narcos, would do.

U.S. Consulate Employee Killed in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

photo from el Diario







Correction, March 15:

The news media have often referred to the female victim of Saturday's attack as a U.S. citizen, however, she was - and, unless she was naturalized, remained at the time of her murder - a Mexican/Canadian citizen. Mexican news media is reporting today that she was born in 1974 in the state of Chihuahua and is the daughter of prominent Mexican businessman Manuel Jorge Enriquez Savignac and a Canadian mother. She was employed at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez since 2001, and resided in El Paso, Texas.

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Update at 8 PM, March 14:

The State Department just released Hillary's Clinton's Statement on the Murders in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

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The news media is reporting that an employee of U.S. Consulate Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was killed late Saturday, along with her U.S. citizen husband. The couple were shot by multiple gunmen while in their private vehicle and stopped at the El Paso International Bridge, the main border crossing point into El Paso, Texas. A child, reported to be under one year old, was unharmed in the back seat of the vehicle.

At roughly the the same time the U.S. couple were killed, a Mexican citizen who is married to a Mexican employee of the Consulate was shot to death at a separate location.

Some U.S. news outlets are reporting the names of the two U.S. citizen victims, but I've seen no official identification yet. Neither have I seen any official information concerning in what capacity the U.S. victim was employed at the Consulate.

According to the ABC News story today:

The U.S. State Department has authorized employees working in six Mexican border cities to move their families out of those areas because of security concerns.

The unprecedented move comes as authorities in Mexico investigate the murders of 3 people connected to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez.

Gunmen killed the victims late Saturday afternoon. In a brief statement Sunday morning National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer confirmed the murders.

"The President is deeply saddened and outraged by the news of the brutal murders of three people associated with the United States Consulate General in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, including a U.S. citizen employee, her U.S. citizen husband, and the husband of a Mexican citizen employee."

Local Mexican news outlets added some details today (report in Spanish), and the New York Times is adding more in a report dated March 15.

The State Department issued a new travel warning for Mexico today.

It's easy to speculate that the shootings were attacks by narcotics traffickers on U.S. interests, and the circumstances - multiple gunmen in broad daylight, and near-simultaneous attacks on related targets - supports that assumption. However, early reports are notorious for being wrong, and I'll wait for more information before drawing any conclusions about this sad incident.