Read Part One here.
Another reason for the spotty media coverage of the war along our southern border is manpower. Local media simply doesn’t have the resources to investigate and cover all of the stories in their area — even when they are aware of them.
The reliably liberal Mainstream Media has more resources, but is hamstrung by ideology. Amnesty proponents have spokesmen ready to downplay any news story that hurts their cause and the national media makes ample use of those spokesmen. The battles along the border don’t fit the MSM narrative.
Money and fear are the cartels’ big weapons–and they use them both. Journalists are a favorite target of the Mexican cartels. According to Reuters, they’ve already succeeded in silencing journalists along much of the Mexican side.
Hitmen from the Gulf cartel based over the border from Texas are paying reporters around $500 a month and showering them with liquor and prostitutes to intimidate and silence colleagues at radio stations and newspapers in towns near the Laredo-Brownsville area, journalists and editors say.
“Our newsrooms have been infiltrated by these reporters, they monitor what we write, they know where we live. With this system, the narcos have direct control over us,” said a local newspaper editor who declined to be named for safety.
Cartel money has also been showered on the U.S. officials for several years. The number of Border Patrol agents charged with corruption has seen a dramatic rise since 2007, according to a CBS News report. “The AP tallied more than 80 corruption-related convictions against enforcement officials at all levels since 2007. Even Mexican President Felipe Calderon is aware of the corruption on the U.S. side.
“To get drugs into the United States the one you need to corrupt is the American authority, the American customs, the American police – not the Mexican. And that’s a subject, by the way, which hasn’t been addressed with sincerity,” the Mexican president said. “I’m waging my battle against corruption among Mexican authorities and we’re risking everything to clean our house, but I think there also needs to be a good cleaning on the other side of the border.”
The cartels have many targets on both sides of the border. At the 7th Annual Border Security Conference, concluded this past week in El Paso, one speaker showed a video of cartels “overpowering a port of entry in Mexico” while another included remarks of the increasing violence — and the corruption — on both sides of the border. When drug cartels can’t buy silence or compliance, other means are tried.
Cochise Co. (AZ) Sheriff Larry Denver says there are areas “the Border Patrol will not allow their agents to work on the border because it is too dangerous.”
President Obama has largely resisted the calls of border state governors for troops to help restore order and protect U.S. citizens. The administration’s much-ballyhooed announcement of sending 1,200 National Guardsmen to the border? The 1,200 are to be split between the border states.
How effective is Obama’s move? As of last week, only 420 have been deployed or are in training. In addition, “once they arrive they are not to come in contact with any suspicious persons,” serving in administrative and monitoring roles only.
Other Obama efforts include warning signs and sending $270 million to Mexico for a mix of Clinton-era crime/pork: midnight basketball leagues, orchestras and art classes.
“This will surely create fear and horror in these gangsters. Students doing a Mexican hat dance will stop the cartels in their tracks,” quipped former New York narcotics officer Charles Santiago.
That the Obama administration has a stake in keeping many of these stories quiet is demonstrated by the Department of Homeland Security’s ignoring Judicial Watch FOIA requests on Mexican military incursions and media reports of federal officials being muzzled.”
“I don’t want to get him [the federal official] involved because it sounds like they’re going to fire him for saying the truth,” [Zapata County Sheriff] Gonzalez said of the officer.
If the federal government’s policy is not to protect or enforce the border, it’s hardly surprising that agencies are not only not cooperative with the media, but cracking down on federal officials who are. One reporter spoke of being contacted by the DHS solely “to learn the identity of an agent he [the reporter] had spoken to” for a story.
The FBI article referenced at the beginning of this piece referenced a crime spree by Los Palillos–the “Toothpicks.”
From 2004 to 2007, the San Diego street gang carried out a brutal crime spree in which 13 people were abducted and nine were killed.
“This level of extreme violence is very typical of the way the cartels operate south of the border,” Giboney said.
Unfortunately, Los Palillos is not an isolated case north of the border, either.
Until the U.S. southern border is secured, expect the fog of war to continue.
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