"The Greatest Organizational Threat to the United States"

That statement ought to be a wake-up call for every citizen and politician in America today. Even though the mainstream media has only recently pounced on this statement, you should know that it has been posted on the DEA website since 2005 where I found it while researching my “Drug Wars” documentary. The “greatest organizational threat” the Department of Justice is referring to are the men who make up the four primary cartels operating in Mexico and the United States today: the Gulf cartel, the Sinaloa cartel, the Juarez cartel and the Pacific cartel.

Now, it is important to understand that these organizations are primarily in the business of selling narcotics. You have to look at this the way they do–it’s like any other multi-billion dollar business, in that it seeks to make a profit on the manufacture and distribution of goods. The making, growing, selling, and delivery of their products are all part of their internal operations. Pretty much everything else they do is ancillary operations to support that end, and those are the operations they outsource. That includes most of their dirty work–the collections, kidnappings, torture, and assassinations–which they contract out to paramilitary gangs,which are put together piecemeal or recruited directly from gangs such as MS-13, los Zetas, and others.

Many people have asked me what is it that makes these cartels so different and so much more inherently dangerous than in previous years. One word: “organization.” As I go around the country and speak on the subject of narco-terrorism I always begin by telling my audiences, “these are not your daddy’s cartels.” It is, without a doubt, the biggest single mistake law enforcement and government officials make when they are trying to assess the situation along our border and how to deal with the drug cartels.

This is not drug dealing as usual. These organizations are so highly “organized” they rival their legitimate counter-parts at most major companies in America. Obviously it wouldn’t take much to jump over the bar set by GM, Chrysler and AIG these days but you have to remember even those companies are operating openly, in a world of free trade and legitimacy. What does it say about a company that has billions of dollars in revenue, no open accounting system, thousands of employees world-wide, and has never spent one dime in advertising and never lost money? They have managed to stay ahead of the entities they are at war with (rival cartels and law enforcement worldwide) in technology, operations, and weaponry through the worst of economic environments and at the same time grow their business.

Like any CEO of a Fortune 500 company, these drug lords have sought to expand their profitability and there are two primary ways to accomplish that end; decreasing expenses and increasing income.

The decreasing of expenses–Lead is cheaper than Silver

Through violence and public acts of brutality–using bullets and fear instead of hard cash when it comes to the corrupting of police, judges, and politicians.

The increase of income–Wholesale to Retail

In years past the cartels have worked in partnerships with American Street gangs to distribute large quantities of narcotics but now–be it through merger or murder, they are assuming more and more direct control over the retail sales of narcotics in the U.S. (the same wholesale market that is valued at $15-$40 Billion turned into $150-$200 Billion retail).

Taking these factors into consideration and adding the fact that once a DTO is in total control of the region they are fighting for, such as the Laredo corridor, they instantly move into extorting legitimate businesses to compliment their operations (trucking companies, customs brokerage firms, money exchange houses and car dealerships) and for money laundering (banking and real-estate).

They train their operatives with the finest military training available on the planet. The core group of men commanding Los Zetas, for example, is trained and outfitted with sophisticated weaponry: automatic assault rifles, heavy-caliber machine guns, bombs, and grenade launchers. They are experts in explosives, GPS technology, wiretapping, and counterintelligence and they have standing orders to kill anyone who interferes with the delivery of their loads.

I have the only interview of one the young men featured in AC360’s piece last week about young assassins who were recruited by the Zetas at the age of 13. Recruitment of young teenagers into gangs is nothing new, but giving them para-military training and state of the art weaponry is. This new wave of young recruits is giving the narcos in Mexico the best of operational circumstances and giving us our worst nightmare, a bumper crop of highly trained and highly motivated domestic terrorists that come from among our own families.

To see what we are up against, just combine the virtually unlimited financial resources of the drug lords with a group of killers trained in anti-drug warfare, and you end up with an efficient, well-equipped force that will stop at nothing to complete its mission.

For more please visit: www.drugwarsthemovie.com