theintercept--2020-01-26--Prosecution of Top Mexican Security Official Exposes the Facade of the Drug War

looked bewildered as he stepped into the brightly lit Brooklyn courtroom .
Once one of Mexico ’ s most powerful officials , with friends and associates across the upper echelons of the U.S. national security apparatus , the 51-year-old ’ s hands were shackled at the waist .
The dark suits he once wore as he paraded wanted men before the Mexican press were now replaced by loose-fitting khakis and a shabby gray sweatshirt .
The hearing was brief , with García Luna pleading not guilty to three counts of trafficking cocaine and a false statement charge .
The January @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a New York court since he was accused , a month earlier , of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from Joaquin “ El Chapo ” Guzman ’ s Sinaloa drug cartel for more than a decade , all while working hand in glove with U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies .
Federal prosecutors , citing his wealth and the seriousness of his alleged offenses , argued for his continued detention .
The judge granted the government ’ s request .
As García Luna was led out of the courtroom , he paused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sitting among the crowd of reporters .
He looked to them and pressed his fist to his chest .
His wife and two children rose to their feet and did the same .
When the door closed behind him , García Luna ’ s daughter broke down in tears .
An architect of the drug war under former Mexican president Felipe Calderón , García Luna parlayed his experience into the private intelligence world , relocating to Miami and starting a firm that included on its advisory board the former head of the CIA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accused of committing the very crimes he had ostensibly devoted his life to stamping out , his prosecution not only has serious implications for the man at its center , it also casts an unflattering light on his intelligence and law enforcement partners in the U.S. , while underscoring the grim legacy of a conflict that ’ s produced generations of trauma and bloodshed .
García Luna could face anywhere from 10 years to life in prison .
Regardless of the outcome , the very fact of his prosecution is historically significant , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book , “ The Cartels Do Not Exist.
” Zavala , a Mexican journalist turned professor at CUNY , argues that media and pop culture framing of Mexican drug trafficking has long distorted and erased the central role that national security officials like García Luna have played in shaping Mexico as it exists today .
That García Luna has now found himself in a U.S. court , he argues , suggests an opportunity to dispel tired and dangerous narratives .
“ I certainly think this is a very important development , ” Zavala @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a political event more than anything else.
” García Luna ’ s fall from grace began more than a year ago , in the same Brooklyn courthouse where he was arraigned , when a witness in Guzman ’ s criminal trial claimed to have paid off the former public security secretary with millions of dollars stuffed in suitcases .
While the current prosecution has received much less attention than that of García Luna ’ s more infamous counterpart , Zavala believes it is every bit as important , if not more so .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2006 , he explained , officials on both sides of the border needed a story to tell , one with good guys and bad guys .
Men like El Chapo and Genaro García Luna were slotted to play those roles .
“ One was the policeman , one was supposedly the enemy , the criminal , ” Zavala said .
“ The two of them set in motion the national security agenda that the U.S. propelled into Mexico starting in 2006.
” With that agenda in place , a new chapter in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that was bloodier than anything the country had seen since its revolution nearly a century earlier .
Over the past decade and a half , approximately 150,000 murders have been linked to drug war violence in Mexico .
Disappearances are endemic , with Mexican security forces routinely implicated in the crimes .
Just this month , the Mexican government acknowledged the disappearance of more than 61,000 people , with more than 97 percent having vanished after 2006 .
The Washington Post described it as evidence that “ Mexico is suffering one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Latin American history.
” Though homicides in Mexico remain at record high levels , President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has sought to break with the militarized drug war legacy of his predecessors .
And with that , Zavala argued , the value of men like Guzman and García Luna has shifted .
“ The system no longer needs them , ” he said .
For someone like El Chapo , Zavala said , the end was largely a foregone conclusion — death or prison .
For García Luna , it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lot more to lose , ” he said .
“ I ’ m not talking just about money .
I ’ m talking about relations , links , legitimate links to agencies in the U.S. , Mexico , and elsewhere.
” The fall of a man once hailed as a Mexican super cop was not entirely unexpected .
For years , journalists and State Department officials in Mexico City raised concerns that García Luna was at best negligent to the corruption around him and at worst guilty of precisely the brand of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of .
Despite those concerns , García Luna was granted lawful residence in the U.S. , setting up shop in Florida and revealing a level of wealth that raised more than a few eyebrows back in Mexico City .
Whether the prosecution will impact García Luna ’ s contacts in the U.S. law enforcement , intelligence , and private sector community remains to be seen .
“ A lot of people are paranoid right now , ” said Jerry Robinette , a former special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Texas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Others are confused .
“ I ’ m really befuddled by the whole thing , ” said Alejandro Hope , a former intelligence officer at CISEN , Mexico ’ s lead intelligence agency , now a security analyst in Mexico City .
“ The guy had access to many , many different forms of corruption that the U.S. does not give a damn about , ” he said .
“ The only thing that the U.S. cares about in Mexico is getting money from drug traffickers .
That ’ s it.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a man like García Luna , Hope argued , and so , “ why would he agree to receive — directly , personally , in public — a bribe from a major figure in Mexican organized crime ?
” And if García Luna did that , Hope went on to say , why would it take years for U.S. authorities to catch on ?
The U.S. intelligence community has had a relationship with García Luna for at least two decades , he noted .
“ They never found out ?
They never had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” When El Chapo eventually found himself in a U.S. court , the story that emerged through months of testimony was one many had come to expect : a tale of drug traffickers killing each other , narco cash , and tantalizing glimpses of his romantic life .
“ The stuff that makes a good Netflix show , ” Zavala said , or a bad one , “ but doesn ’ t really touch on real power.
” A García Luna trial could offer something different , he continued , a chance at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is right that the drug war in Mexico is a bundle of hollow narratives hiding the true shape of power in the country , then you would be hard-pressed to find a more fascinating and potentially illustrative example of that than Genaro García Luna .
To Zavala , García Luna ’ s story reflects a much deeper and longer story of how “ national security ” priorities defined by the United States are experienced by Mexico .
In the early 1980s , Zavala explained , “ most policemen in Mexico were , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if not productively working with the underworld in Mexico .
Not just drug trafficking — we ’ re talking all kinds of informal economies.
” The ground shifted in 1985 , with the kidnapping , torture , and murder of Enrique “ Kiki ” Camarena , an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration .
Before Camarena ’ s death , the illicit transportation of drugs in Mexico was largely controlled by a federation of traffickers , whose connections to the Mexican state ran deep .
“ We tend to remember them now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at corrupting policemen in Mexico , ” Zavala said .
“ But the way we should actually look at it is how they were actually used and instrumentalized by police agencies back then.
” The fallout from Camarena ’ s killing contributed to the dismantling of one of those agencies : the Dirección Federal de Seguridad , or DFS .
The premiere Mexican intelligence agency at the time , the DFS was implicated in Camarena ’ s murder and a pattern of human rights abuses during Mexico ’ s dirty wars of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CIA , the DFS was also linked to northbound drug trafficking from Central America during the 1980s , in support of the U.S.-backed campaign to oust the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua .
Coinciding with the end of the Cold War , the post-Camarena era marked a shift in U.S. national security priorities , Zavala argues , from a war on communists to a war on drug traffickers .
“ They ended up on the wrong side of the equation and became kind of the new domestic and international enemy in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the demise of the DFS , the CIA helped shape the creation of its successor : the Center for Investigation and National Security , or CISEN .
It was at this critical juncture in U.S.-Mexico security relations that a young CISEN officer named Genaro García Luna stepped onto the scene .
Hope , himself a former CISEN officer , said the former security secretary is best understood as a “ career spook.
” Still in his early 30s , with a background in a mechanical engineering and an interest in reshaping large institutions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ himself spearheading two interagency initiatives in the 1990s , one focused on kidnapping and the other on counterterrorism , which , according to Hope , “ was basically code for fighting left-wing guerillas.
” Following the 2000 election of Vicente Fox , García Luna was tapped to create a new federal police force , the Agencia Federal de Investigación .
AFI , as it was commonly known , was modeled after the FBI , with U.S. law enforcement officials on the ground working closely with García Luna in its creation .
Those ties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when FBI agents around the world were tasked with running down leads on potential follow-up plots , and the U.S. began its long march into the so-called global war on terrorism .
Though presented as a progressive step toward law enforcement professionalization , AFI , under the leadership of García Luna , was not without controversy .
In 2005 , agents under García Luna ’ s command staged the fake “ rescue ” of a kidnapped French national for TV crews , causing a scandal that rose to the Supreme Court .
Later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of an attorney general report , which found that nearly 1,500 of García Luna ’ s 7,000 agents were under investigation .
At the time the story was published , a group of AFI agents had just been arrested for kidnapping and murdering four alleged cartel hitmen .
Several of the agents were said to be working for Guzmán ’ s Sinaloa organization .
Despite the echoes of the past , when the DFS managed the Mexican drug trafficking scene , García Luna emerged unscathed from the controversies surrounding AFI and his close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on .
Appointed by Calderon to the cabinet-level position of secretary of public security in 2006 , he was among a handful of powerful Mexican national security officials who pushed a militarized effort to combat drug trafficking organizations .
His involvement was viewed positively among U.S. officials , who at the time were pulling together support for the campaign .
“ Garcia Luna has been a trusted liaison , partner and friend of the FBI since his days at the [ Federal Preventive Police ] , ” a December 2006 cable from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ While “ his personal reputation is very good , ” the cable went on to say , “ that of some of his underlings has not been as favorable.
” With the Calderon government in place , the Bush administration launched a billion-dollar security package , known as the Mérida Initiative , that opened up a level of coordination and cooperation between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement and intelligence agencies unlike anything in recent history .
García Luna was at the center of it all .
In some media accounts , the secretary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fight to the narco kingpins terrorizing the country .
A 2008 profile of “ Mexico ’ s top cop ” in the New York Times Magazine reported that with his “ square jaw , squat build and crew cut , ” García Luna was seen as “ something of a wunderkind ” during his early days in the intelligence services .
Later on , he was described telling a group of police officers that he would never protect a criminal organization .
Months after the profile was published , Proceso , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different picture , reporting that García Luna was in fact very interested in protecting drug trafficking organizations , and that he was actively doing so for the Sinaloa cartel .
It wasn ’ t just journalists raising concerns .
In November 2008 , as violence unleashed by the drug war continued to surge , the U.S. embassy in Mexico sent a cable detailing an anti-corruption campaign that had revealed “ narco-infiltration into the upper echelons of law enforcement community , ” with much of the focus trained on García Luna ’ s subordinates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this may be Garcia Luna , ” the cable noted .
While not personally implicated , the State Department reported , he would “ have to work hard to overcome the perception that he is either oblivious to what goes on around him or tolerates his underlings ’ less-than-savory activities.
” García Luna ’ s ability to weather controversies and corruption allegations extended beyond the Bush years .
In December 2009 , he met with John Brennan .
At the time , Brennan was President Obama ’ s chief adviser on homeland security @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as director of the CIA , where he had spent the bulk of his career , and go on to become one of the most influential national security officials of the Obama era .
“ Genaro Garcia Luna struck all of the right chords in his expansive survey of the challenges that face Mexico and the U.S. in combating organized crime , ” a State Department cable said of the meeting between the two men .
In the years that followed , the already growing collaboration between the U.S. and Mexico expanded to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and American civilian military employees ” setting up shop at a Mexican military base , and U.S. forces “ sending drones deep into Mexican territory to gather intelligence that helps locate major traffickers and follow their networks.
” In a move drawn from the war on terror playbook that would define much of the Obama-Brennan years , U.S. military and intelligence agencies supported a Mexican campaign to eliminate “ high value targets ” on Mexican soil .
By March 2011 , the New York Times reported that the joint operations had led to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least 20 high-profile drug traffickers.
” The so-called “ kingpin strategy ” would later come under withering criticism , as it fractured criminal organizations into warring factions , leading to increased violence and instability in communities across Mexico , while at the same time failing to reduce drug trafficking or threats to the general public .
Even as he enjoyed direct access to the most powerful officials and agencies in the U.S. , allegations of protection provided to the Sinaloa cartel continued to follow García Luna .
In 2010 , award-winning Mexican investigative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a bestselling book examining the thin line between the Mexican underworld and security agencies ; García Luna , and his alleged protection of Sinaloan cartel business , was a dominant thread .
That same year , an investigation by NPR found that members or associates of the Sinaloa cartel were significantly underrepresented in federal arrest records under the Calderón administration .
Earl Anthony Wayne , the U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2011 to 2015 , said that when he arrived in Mexico City , García Luna “ was presented as one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work with.
” The Mexican security secretary had been lauded for efforts to increase the institutional credibility of the federal police and bolster its ranks , Wayne told me , as well his creation of a massive database for tracking crimes and his general interest in promoting the professionalization of Mexican law enforcement .
At the same time , Wayne acknowledged , “ It is true that as we worked with him it became clear that there were certain groups he was more enthusiastic about going after than other groups , and so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would work with other partners to try to tackle some of the groups that the federal police didn ’ t seem so enthusiastic about going after.
” There were other issues as well .
In late 2012 , a pair of CIA employees were ambushed and wounded by gunmen as they rode in an SUV with diplomatic plates to a military shooting range south of Mexico City .
The shooters were Mexican federal police officers .
“ In that case , García Luna was very resistant to investigating the federal police who were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he explained , the embassy had to go through “ other channels ” to get García Luna to take the matter seriously , “ including his boss ” — the president .
Twelve police officers were eventually sentenced in the case in 2019 , nearly seven years after the fact .
The day after García Luna left government , in December 2012 , Proceso quoted an unnamed DEA agent who claimed , “ The intelligence services have a large collection of reports gathered in Mexico and the United States , that point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drug traffickers , ” and that American authorities had declined to act on the information , “ out of respect to [ Mexico ] and because he was the direct contact with the United States.
” The existence of “ possible ties , ” as the DEA source described them , reflected the kind of problem U.S. officials have long faced in dealing with the intersection of drug trafficking and the powerful Mexican officials they align themselves with .
While reporting and allegations swirled around García Luna , confirming facts sufficient to build @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simple .
This was a man who was “ a trusted interlocutor of the president , ” Wayne explained , who at least outwardly appeared to be taking steps to strengthen the institutions the U.S. government had thrown its support behind .
“ He was one of the partners we had.
” “ Tracking corruption of senior level Mexican officials is a challenge , ” Wayne went on to say .
During his tenure , the former ambassador said , the Mexican government had begun work on vetting lower and mid-ranking security officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the very top people in either administration on a regular basis.
” Having ascended from deep within the Mexican national security state over multiple decades , García Luna very much met the definition of a top Mexican official , Wayne noted .
“ He was around for a very long time.
” García Luna relocated to Miami following the changing of presidential administrations in Mexico .
The years of corruption allegations did not stop the U.S. government from granting its former drug war ally legal residence .
According to one former U.S. federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ García Luna was given a difficult-to-obtain visa reserved for immigrants with “ extraordinary ability , ” sometimes referred to as an “ Einstein visa.
” The extent to which the long-standing allegations against García Luna were examined before the visa was granted is unclear .
U.S .
Citizenship and Immigration Services declined to answer questions about his immigration status in the U.S. Wayne , the former ambassador , said that if there were concerns about García Luna ’ s desire to relocate to the U.S. , “ it was not an issue that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issue.
” “ It just didn ’ t come up as controversial to me , ” he said .
“ That does not mean some people did not object to it .
I just don ’ t know.
” Once in Florida , García Luna set up a private intelligence and security company called GL & Associates Consulting , or GLAC .
The heart of the venture was the GLAC Index , software designed to assess risks to posed nations or private sector entities .
Among the advisors listed on García Luna ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and intelligence officials from the U.S. , Colombia , and Spain , including Jose Rodriguez , the former director of the CIA ’ s clandestine service , known for his role in ordering the destruction of tapes depicting the torture of detainees in CIA custody .
Positions on the board were unpaid , Rodriguez told Reuters in December , adding in a statement that “ those of us who know Garcia Luna are shocked by his recent arrest.
” With some notable exceptions , García Luna managed to maintain a low profile while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year , when a Sinaloa cartel witness in Guzmán ’ s criminal trial claimed that he had given García Luna briefcases stuffed with at least $ 3 million .
García Luna denied the allegations .
Eleven months later , he was arrested in Dallas .
The indictment , which the New York Times reported was “ a direct result ” of the testimony in the El Chapo trial , claimed that on three occasions over the past 18 years , García Luna had conspired to traffic cocaine .
Then , in 2018 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. immigration officials about having never been involved in criminal activity .
In a December 11 letter to the court , prosecutors elaborated on the allegations against García Luna , claiming that “ several former high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel ” had “ provided a wealth of information about bribes paid ” to the former security secretary and that “ numerous other cooperating witnesses ” interviewed by the government had confirmed that García Luna had received “ tens of millions of dollars over several years.
” Financial records , government lawyers said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had amassed a personal fortune of millions of dollars that was inconsistent with a civil servant ’ s salary in Mexico.
” In a court hearing last week , García Luna ’ s attorney , Cesar de Castro , revealed that after his arrest in Texas , his client was moved to an isolation unit where he was held in 23-hour lockdown conditions .
He remained there for weeks before being flown to New York .
Once in New York , de Castro said , García Luna was again moved to an isolation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he went on to say , had made it nearly impossible for García Luna to communicate with his family or counsel .
What ’ s more , de Castro told U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan , the defense had recently learned that financial authorities in Mexico had seized García Luna ’ s personal and business accounts , making it difficult to provide financial information regarding his client .
Cogan , who presided over the El Chapo trial , granted a government request to designate the García Luna prosecution as a “ complex ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ financial records and protected national security information prosecutors plan to draw from .
The judge ordered the government to begin pulling together and turning over that evidence to the defense as soon as possible .
Standing outside court , de Castro told reporters that García Luna “ adamantly denies that he accepted any bribes 15 years ago ” and that “ he intends to go to trial.
” I asked how much of the government ’ s evidence he had seen so far .
“ The government has not produced a single document @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Mr .
García Luna has been in custody now for more than a month , and we don ’ t have any of the evidence.
” A potential glimpse at the case the government is building against García Luna emerged Friday , when the same prosecutors pursuing the former security secretary revealed charges against a man named Ivan Reyes Arzate for drug trafficking .
As the former commander of the Mexican Federal Police ’ s Sensitive Investigative Unit , Reyes Arzate “ was the principal [ sic ] point of contact for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enforcement personnel assigned to the SIU , ” prosecutors wrote .
In letter sent to the court Friday , prosecutors wrote that “ the government expects some of the evidence to overlap in [ the ] Garcia Luna and Reyes Arzate ” cases .
Reyes Arzate ’ s highly vetted and supposedly elite unit was implicated in a massacre in northern Mexico in 2011 .
Depending on the direction it takes , a García Luna trial could provide a rare glimpse into the murky world of U.S.-Mexico drug war collaboration , a world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kingpins and the lawmen who chase them .
“ I don ’ t think it will get to that point but if it does , my guess is the obvious legal strategy for him would be to try to put the U.S. intelligence community on trial , ” Hope , the former Mexican intelligence officer , said .
For Zavala , whose forthcoming book retells the history of drug trafficking through the language of national security used by the governments of the U.S. and Mexico , the entire episode feels like a depressing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that we are trapped in this loop , where we ’ re going to be condemned to this endless horizon of drug traffickers that rise and fall and their corresponding police officers that are heroes and then later on are crooks , ” he said .
Ending the prohibitionist policies that undergird the drug war would be step in the right direction , he said , but insufficient to break the cycle Mexico has found itself in .
“ The national security paradigm can shift again , and it has in many ways @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the state of migration politics in Mexico right now under the López Obrador administration , Zavala argued .
“ While they ’ re rejecting , rightly so , the outdated drug militarization , they ’ re embracing the anti-immigrant militarization .
And that , I think , is a tragic mistake because it plays right into the hands of this ongoing national security paradigm.
” “ The real answer , the only way that Mexico can undo or at least be able to undo the dominance of the national security agenda , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Zavala said .
“ We are not going to undo this by simply getting rid of the narrative of drug trafficking , while allowing the U.S. to tell us a new narrative .
”

Genaro García Luna looked bewildered as he stepped into the brightly lit Brooklyn courtroom. Once one of Mexico’s most powerful officials, with friends and associates across the upper echelons of the U.S. national security apparatus, the 51-year-old’s hands were shackled at the waist. The dark suits he once wore as he paraded wanted men before the Mexican press were now replaced by loose-fitting khakis and a shabby gray sweatshirt.
The hearing was brief, with García Luna pleading not guilty to three counts of trafficking cocaine and a false statement charge. The January 3 arraignment marked his first appearance in a New York court since he was accused, a month earlier, of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa drug cartel for more than a decade, all while working hand in glove with U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Federal prosecutors, citing his wealth and the seriousness of his alleged offenses, argued for his continued detention. The judge granted the government’s request.
As García Luna was led out of the courtroom, he paused at the doorway. His family was sitting among the crowd of reporters. He looked to them and pressed his fist to his chest. His wife and two children rose to their feet and did the same. When the door closed behind him, García Luna’s daughter broke down in tears.
An architect of the drug war under former Mexican president Felipe Calderón, García Luna parlayed his experience into the private intelligence world, relocating to Miami and starting a firm that included on its advisory board the former head of the CIA’s covert operations wing. Now accused of committing the very crimes he had ostensibly devoted his life to stamping out, his prosecution not only has serious implications for the man at its center, it also casts an unflattering light on his intelligence and law enforcement partners in the U.S., while underscoring the grim legacy of a conflict that’s produced generations of trauma and bloodshed.
García Luna could face anywhere from 10 years to life in prison. Regardless of the outcome, the very fact of his prosecution is historically significant, said Oswaldo Zavala, author of the book, “The Cartels Do Not Exist.” Zavala, a Mexican journalist turned professor at CUNY, argues that media and pop culture framing of Mexican drug trafficking has long distorted and erased the central role that national security officials like García Luna have played in shaping Mexico as it exists today. That García Luna has now found himself in a U.S. court, he argues, suggests an opportunity to dispel tired and dangerous narratives. “I certainly think this is a very important development,” Zavala told me, describing it as “a political event more than anything else.”
García Luna’s fall from grace began more than a year ago, in the same Brooklyn courthouse where he was arraigned, when a witness in Guzman’s criminal trial claimed to have paid off the former public security secretary with millions of dollars stuffed in suitcases. While the current prosecution has received much less attention than that of García Luna’s more infamous counterpart, Zavala believes it is every bit as important, if not more so. When Calderón sent troops into the streets in 2006, he explained, officials on both sides of the border needed a story to tell, one with good guys and bad guys. Men like El Chapo and Genaro García Luna were slotted to play those roles. “One was the policeman, one was supposedly the enemy, the criminal,” Zavala said. “The two of them set in motion the national security agenda that the U.S. propelled into Mexico starting in 2006.”
With that agenda in place, a new chapter in the story of Mexico began, one that was bloodier than anything the country had seen since its revolution nearly a century earlier. Over the past decade and a half, approximately 150,000 murders have been linked to drug war violence in Mexico. Disappearances are endemic, with Mexican security forces routinely implicated in the crimes. Just this month, the Mexican government acknowledged the disappearance of more than 61,000 people, with more than 97 percent having vanished after 2006. The Washington Post described it as evidence that “Mexico is suffering one of the worst crises of ‘the disappeared’ in Latin American history.”
Though homicides in Mexico remain at record high levels, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has sought to break with the militarized drug war legacy of his predecessors. And with that, Zavala argued, the value of men like Guzman and García Luna has shifted. “The system no longer needs them,” he said. For someone like El Chapo, Zavala said, the end was largely a foregone conclusion — death or prison. For García Luna, it’s different. “He really does have a lot more to lose,” he said. “I’m not talking just about money. I’m talking about relations, links, legitimate links to agencies in the U.S., Mexico, and elsewhere.”
The fall of a man once hailed as a Mexican super cop was not entirely unexpected. For years, journalists and State Department officials in Mexico City raised concerns that García Luna was at best negligent to the corruption around him and at worst guilty of precisely the brand of criminality New York prosecutors have accused him of. Despite those concerns, García Luna was granted lawful residence in the U.S., setting up shop in Florida and revealing a level of wealth that raised more than a few eyebrows back in Mexico City.
Whether the prosecution will impact García Luna’s contacts in the U.S. law enforcement, intelligence, and private sector community remains to be seen. “A lot of people are paranoid right now,” said Jerry Robinette, a former special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Texas who now works in private security consulting. Others are confused. “I’m really befuddled by the whole thing,” said Alejandro Hope, a former intelligence officer at CISEN, Mexico’s lead intelligence agency, now a security analyst in Mexico City. “The guy had access to many, many different forms of corruption that the U.S. does not give a damn about,” he said. “The only thing that the U.S. cares about in Mexico is getting money from drug traffickers. That’s it.” That fact would not be lost on a man like García Luna, Hope argued, and so, “why would he agree to receive — directly, personally, in public — a bribe from a major figure in Mexican organized crime?”
And if García Luna did that, Hope went on to say, why would it take years for U.S. authorities to catch on? The U.S. intelligence community has had a relationship with García Luna for at least two decades, he noted. “They never found out? They never had suspicion that this was going on?”
When El Chapo eventually found himself in a U.S. court, the story that emerged through months of testimony was one many had come to expect: a tale of drug traffickers killing each other, narco cash, and tantalizing glimpses of his romantic life. “The stuff that makes a good Netflix show,” Zavala said, or a bad one, “but doesn’t really touch on real power.” A García Luna trial could offer something different, he continued, a chance at “seeing real power.”
Members of Mexico’s Agencia Federal de Investigación, or AFI, work alongside Mexican army soldiers to guard a street during a raid on Juarez drug cartel members on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on June 14, 2006. Photo: Raymundo Ruiz/AP
A Trusted Liaison
If Zavala is right that the drug war in Mexico is a bundle of hollow narratives hiding the true shape of power in the country, then you would be hard-pressed to find a more fascinating and potentially illustrative example of that than Genaro García Luna. To Zavala, García Luna’s story reflects a much deeper and longer story of how “national security” priorities defined by the United States are experienced by Mexico.
In the early 1980s, Zavala explained, “most policemen in Mexico were, in one way or another, intimately familiar if not productively working with the underworld in Mexico. Not just drug trafficking — we’re talking all kinds of informal economies.” The ground shifted in 1985, with the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Before Camarena’s death, the illicit transportation of drugs in Mexico was largely controlled by a federation of traffickers, whose connections to the Mexican state ran deep. “We tend to remember them now as traffickers who were very much effective at corrupting policemen in Mexico,” Zavala said. “But the way we should actually look at it is how they were actually used and instrumentalized by police agencies back then.”
The fallout from Camarena’s killing contributed to the dismantling of one of those agencies: the Dirección Federal de Seguridad, or DFS. The premiere Mexican intelligence agency at the time, the DFS was implicated in Camarena’s murder and a pattern of human rights abuses during Mexico’s dirty wars of the 1960s and ’70s. Along with the CIA, the DFS was also linked to northbound drug trafficking from Central America during the 1980s, in support of the U.S.-backed campaign to oust the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Coinciding with the end of the Cold War, the post-Camarena era marked a shift in U.S. national security priorities, Zavala argues, from a war on communists to a war on drug traffickers. “They ended up on the wrong side of the equation and became kind of the new domestic and international enemy in the hemisphere,” he said.
With the demise of the DFS, the CIA helped shape the creation of its successor: the Center for Investigation and National Security, or CISEN. It was at this critical juncture in U.S.-Mexico security relations that a young CISEN officer named Genaro García Luna stepped onto the scene.
Hope, himself a former CISEN officer, said the former security secretary is best understood as a “career spook.” Still in his early 30s, with a background in a mechanical engineering and an interest in reshaping large institutions, García Luna made a name for himself spearheading two interagency initiatives in the 1990s, one focused on kidnapping and the other on counterterrorism, which, according to Hope, “was basically code for fighting left-wing guerillas.”
Following the 2000 election of Vicente Fox, García Luna was tapped to create a new federal police force, the Agencia Federal de Investigación. AFI, as it was commonly known, was modeled after the FBI, with U.S. law enforcement officials on the ground working closely with García Luna in its creation. Those ties tightened after the September 11 attacks, when FBI agents around the world were tasked with running down leads on potential follow-up plots, and the U.S. began its long march into the so-called global war on terrorism.
Though presented as a progressive step toward law enforcement professionalization, AFI, under the leadership of García Luna, was not without controversy. In 2005, agents under García Luna’s command staged a fake kidnapping “rescue” for TV crews, causing a scandal that rose to the Supreme Court. Later that year, Reuters obtained a copy of an attorney general report, which found that nearly 1,500 of García Luna’s 7,000 agents were under investigation. At the time the story was published, a group of AFI agents had just been arrested for kidnapping and murdering four alleged cartel hitmen. Several of the agents were said to be working for Guzmán’s Sinaloa organization.
Despite the echoes of the past, when the DFS managed the Mexican drug trafficking scene, García Luna emerged unscathed from the controversies surrounding AFI and his close working relationship with the U.S. government carried on. Appointed by Calderon to the cabinet-level position of secretary of public security in 2006, he was among a handful of powerful Mexican national security officials who pushed a militarized effort to combat drug trafficking organizations. His involvement was viewed positively among U.S. officials, who at the time were pulling together support for the campaign. “Garcia Luna has been a trusted liaison, partner and friend of the FBI since his days at the [Federal Preventive Police],” a December 2006 cable from the U.S. embassy in Mexico City reported. While “his personal reputation is very good,” the cable went on to say, “that of some of his underlings has not been as favorable.”
With the Calderon government in place, the Bush administration launched a billion-dollar security package, known as the Mérida Initiative, that opened up a level of coordination and cooperation between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement and intelligence agencies unlike anything in recent history. García Luna was at the center of it all.
In some media accounts, the secretary was cast as the hard-nosed enforcer taking the fight to the narco kingpins terrorizing the country. A 2008 profile of “Mexico’s top cop” in the New York Times Magazine reported that with his “square jaw, squat build and crew cut,” García Luna was seen as “something of a wunderkind” during his early days in the intelligence services. Later on, he was described telling a group of police officers that he would never protect a criminal organization. Months after the profile was published, Proceso, a Mexican news magazine, offered a much different picture, reporting that García Luna was in fact very interested in protecting drug trafficking organizations, and that he was actively doing so for the Sinaloa cartel.
It wasn’t just journalists raising concerns. In November 2008, as violence unleashed by the drug war continued to surge, the U.S. embassy in Mexico sent a cable detailing an anti-corruption campaign that had revealed “narco-infiltration into the upper echelons of law enforcement community,” with much of the focus trained on García Luna’s subordinates. “The real loser in all this may be Garcia Luna,” the cable noted. While not personally implicated, the State Department reported, he would “have to work hard to overcome the perception that he is either oblivious to what goes on around him or tolerates his underlings’ less-than-savory activities.”
Mexico President Felipe Calderón, center, followed by Genaro García Luna, left, shakes hands with Federal Police officers during a ceremony in Mexico City on June 2, 2011. Photo: Alexandre Meneghini/AP
Cops and Kingpins
García Luna’s ability to weather controversies and corruption allegations extended beyond the Bush years. In December 2009, he met with John Brennan. At the time, Brennan was President Obama’s chief adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism. He would later serve as director of the CIA, where he had spent the bulk of his career, and go on to become one of the most influential national security officials of the Obama era. “Genaro Garcia Luna struck all of the right chords in his expansive survey of the challenges that face Mexico and the U.S. in combating organized crime,” a State Department cable said of the meeting between the two men.
In the years that followed, the already growing collaboration between the U.S. and Mexico expanded to include “small numbers of CIA operatives and American civilian military employees” setting up shop at a Mexican military base, and U.S. forces “sending drones deep into Mexican territory to gather intelligence that helps locate major traffickers and follow their networks.” In a move drawn from the war on terror playbook that would define much of the Obama-Brennan years, U.S. military and intelligence agencies supported a Mexican campaign to eliminate “high value targets” on Mexican soil. By March 2011, the New York Times reported that the joint operations had led to the capture or killing of “at least 20 high-profile drug traffickers.” The so-called “kingpin strategy” would later come under withering criticism, as it fractured criminal organizations into warring factions, leading to increased violence and instability in communities across Mexico, while at the same time failing to reduce drug trafficking or threats to the general public.
Even as he enjoyed direct access to the most powerful officials and agencies in the U.S., allegations of protection provided to the Sinaloa cartel continued to follow García Luna. In 2010, award-winning Mexican investigative journalist and author Anabel Hernández, published a bestselling book examining the thin line between the Mexican underworld and security agencies; García Luna, and his alleged protection of Sinaloan cartel business, was a dominant thread. That same year, an investigation by NPR found that members or associates of the Sinaloa cartel were significantly underrepresented in federal arrest records under the Calderón administration.
Earl Anthony Wayne, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2011 to 2015, said that when he arrived in Mexico City, García Luna “was presented as one of the key government partners that we had to work with.” The Mexican security secretary had been lauded for efforts to increase the institutional credibility of the federal police and bolster its ranks, Wayne told me, as well his creation of a massive database for tracking crimes and his general interest in promoting the professionalization of Mexican law enforcement. At the same time, Wayne acknowledged, “It is true that as we worked with him it became clear that there were certain groups he was more enthusiastic about going after than other groups, and so people in the U.S. law enforcement structure would work with other partners to try to tackle some of the groups that the federal police didn’t seem so enthusiastic about going after.”
There were other issues as well. In late 2012, a pair of CIA employees were ambushed and wounded by gunmen as they rode in an SUV with diplomatic plates to a military shooting range south of Mexico City. The shooters were Mexican federal police officers. “In that case, García Luna was very resistant to investigating the federal police who were involved,” Wayne said. Ultimately, he explained, the embassy had to go through “other channels” to get García Luna to take the matter seriously, “including his boss” — the president. Twelve police officers were eventually sentenced in the case in 2019, nearly seven years after the fact.
The day after García Luna left government, in December 2012, Proceso quoted an unnamed DEA agent who claimed, “The intelligence services have a large collection of reports gathered in Mexico and the United States, that point to possible ties between Garcia Luna and drug traffickers,” and that American authorities had declined to act on the information, “out of respect to [Mexico] and because he was the direct contact with the United States.”
The existence of “possible ties,” as the DEA source described them, reflected the kind of problem U.S. officials have long faced in dealing with the intersection of drug trafficking and the powerful Mexican officials they align themselves with. While reporting and allegations swirled around García Luna, confirming facts sufficient to build a case against him was far from simple. This was a man who was “a trusted interlocutor of the president,” Wayne explained, who at least outwardly appeared to be taking steps to strengthen the institutions the U.S. government had thrown its support behind. “He was one of the partners we had.”
“Tracking corruption of senior level Mexican officials is a challenge,” Wayne went on to say. During his tenure, the former ambassador said, the Mexican government had begun work on vetting lower and mid-ranking security officials, “but they did not vet the very top people in either administration on a regular basis.” Having ascended from deep within the Mexican national security state over multiple decades, García Luna very much met the definition of a top Mexican official, Wayne noted. “He was around for a very long time.”
From left, defense attorney Cesar de Castro, Genaro García Luna, and a court interpreter appear for an arraignment hearing in Brooklyn federal court on Jan. 3, 2020, in New York. García Luna pleaded not guilty to charges that he accepted a fortune in drug money bribes from Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s Sinaloa drug cartel. Illustration: Elizabeth Williams/AP
A New Narrative
García Luna relocated to Miami following the changing of presidential administrations in Mexico. The years of corruption allegations did not stop the U.S. government from granting its former drug war ally legal residence. According to one former U.S. federal law enforcement official I spoke to, García Luna was given a difficult-to-obtain visa reserved for immigrants with “extraordinary ability,” sometimes referred to as an “Einstein visa.”
The extent to which the long-standing allegations against García Luna were examined before the visa was granted is unclear. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services declined to answer questions about his immigration status in the U.S. Wayne, the former ambassador, said that if there were concerns about García Luna’s desire to relocate to the U.S., “it was not an issue that rose to my level as a political issue.”
“It just didn’t come up as controversial to me,” he said. “That does not mean some people did not object to it. I just don’t know.”
Once in Florida, García Luna set up a private intelligence and security company called GL & Associates Consulting, or GLAC. The heart of the venture was the GLAC Index, software designed to assess risks to posed nations or private sector entities. Among the advisors listed on García Luna’s board were former ranking law enforcement and intelligence officials from the U.S., Colombia, and Spain, including Jose Rodriguez, the former director of the CIA’s clandestine service, known for his role in ordering the destruction of tapes depicting the torture of detainees in CIA custody. Positions on the board were unpaid, Rodriguez told Reuters in December, adding in a statement that “those of us who know Garcia Luna are shocked by his recent arrest.”
With some notable exceptions, García Luna managed to maintain a low profile while living in the U.S. That changed last year, when a Sinaloa cartel witness in Guzmán’s criminal trial claimed that he had given García Luna briefcases stuffed with at least $3 million. García Luna denied the allegations. Eleven months later, he was arrested in Dallas.
The indictment, which the New York Times reported was “a direct result” of the testimony in the El Chapo trial, claimed that on three occasions over the past 18 years, García Luna had conspired to traffic cocaine. Then, in 2018, he allegedly lied in a statement to U.S. immigration officials about having never been involved in criminal activity. In a December 11 letter to the court, prosecutors elaborated on the allegations against García Luna, claiming that “several former high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel” had “provided a wealth of information about bribes paid” to the former security secretary and that “numerous other cooperating witnesses” interviewed by the government had confirmed that García Luna had received “tens of millions of dollars over several years.” Financial records, government lawyers said, would show that García Luna “had amassed a personal fortune of millions of dollars that was inconsistent with a civil servant’s salary in Mexico.”
In a court hearing last week, García Luna’s attorney, Cesar de Castro, revealed that after his arrest in Texas, his client was moved to an isolation unit where he was held in 23-hour lockdown conditions. He remained there for weeks before being flown to New York. Once in New York, de Castro said, García Luna was again moved to an isolation unit. The strict detention measures, he went on to say, had made it nearly impossible for García Luna to communicate with his family or counsel. What’s more, de Castro told U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, the defense had recently learned that financial authorities in Mexico had seized García Luna’s personal and business accounts, making it difficult to provide financial information regarding his client.
Cogan, who presided over the El Chapo trial, granted a government request to designate the García Luna prosecution as a “complex” case, on account of the voluminous financial records and protected national security information prosecutors plan to draw from. The judge ordered the government to begin pulling together and turning over that evidence to the defense as soon as possible. Standing outside court, de Castro told reporters that García Luna “adamantly denies that he accepted any bribes 15 years ago” and that “he intends to go to trial.” I asked how much of the government’s evidence he had seen so far.
“The government has not produced a single document,” de Castro told me. “Mr. García Luna has been in custody now for more than a month, and we don’t have any of the evidence.”
A potential glimpse at the case the government is building against García Luna emerged Friday, when the same prosecutors pursuing the former security secretary revealed charges against a man named Ivan Reyes Arzate for drug trafficking. As the former commander of the Mexican Federal Police’s Sensitive Investigative Unit, Reyes Arzate “was the principal [sic] point of contact for information sharing between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement personnel assigned to the SIU,” prosecutors wrote. In letter sent to the court Friday, prosecutors wrote that “the government expects some of the evidence to overlap in [the] Garcia Luna and Reyes Arzate” cases. Reyes Arzate’s highly vetted and supposedly elite unit was implicated in a massacre in northern Mexico in 2011.
Depending on the direction it takes, a García Luna trial could provide a rare glimpse into the murky world of U.S.-Mexico drug war collaboration, a world often overshadowed by made-for-TV narratives of murderous kingpins and the lawmen who chase them. “I don’t think it will get to that point but if it does, my guess is the obvious legal strategy for him would be to try to put the U.S. intelligence community on trial,” Hope, the former Mexican intelligence officer, said.
For Zavala, whose forthcoming book retells the history of drug trafficking through the language of national security used by the governments of the U.S. and Mexico, the entire episode feels like a depressing rerun. “It seems to me that we are trapped in this loop, where we’re going to be condemned to this endless horizon of drug traffickers that rise and fall and their corresponding police officers that are heroes and then later on are crooks,” he said. Ending the prohibitionist policies that undergird the drug war would be step in the right direction, he said, but insufficient to break the cycle Mexico has found itself in. “The national security paradigm can shift again, and it has in many ways already,” he said. Look at the state of migration politics in Mexico right now under the López Obrador administration, Zavala argued. “While they’re rejecting, rightly so, the outdated drug militarization, they’re embracing the anti-immigrant militarization. And that, I think, is a tragic mistake because it plays right into the hands of this ongoing national security paradigm.”
“The real answer, the only way that Mexico can undo or at least be able to undo the dominance of the national security agenda, is to take it as a whole,” Zavala said. “We are not going to undo this by simply getting rid of the narrative of drug trafficking, while allowing the U.S. to tell us a new narrative.”


theintercept--2020-01-26--Interim Bolivian Government Taps the Same Lobby Firm Hired to Sell the Coup in Honduras

Jeanine Áñez , who came to power in November , has rejected claims that her predecessor , Evo Morales , was ousted in a coup — while cracking down on dissent and calling for new elections to solidify the rule of conservative opposition forces that seized control of the government in Morales ’ s absence .
As many critics have noted , the cycle bears a striking similarity to the coup d ’ etat that ousted Honduran President Manuel “ Mel ” Zelaya a decade ago .
The left-wing leader was whisked out of office by the military , only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ led by right-wing opposition forces that swiftly consolidated power through a controversial election process .
The parallels were apparently not lost on the Bolivia ’ s new rulers .
The Áñez government has retained the services of the same Washington , D.C. , consultants hired by the Honduran interim government to build American support .
In December , Bolivia inked an agreement with CLS Strategies to provide “ strategic communications counsel ” for new elections this year and other interactions with the U.S. government .
The lobbying firm , previously known as Chlopak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ provided remarkably similar work after Zelaya ’ s ouster , helping the interim Honduran government earn backing from American policymakers and media outlets as the country held new elections .
CLS Strategies did not respond to a request for comment .
in Bolivia mirrors the 2009 coup in Honduras in many ways .
Morales and Zelaya both forged ties with Venezuela , raised the minimum wage , expanded social services , and opposed the privatization of major industries .
The two leftist presidents faced mounting criticism over what looked like attempts to undemocratically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ referendum on whether he could pursue a second term in office , which was prohibited by the constitution .
Morales sought an unprecedented fourth term , raising questions over whether he was slowly bending Bolivia ’ s institutions into allowing permanent rule by his party .
The military also played a crucial role in the downfall of both leaders .
In the dead of night , on June 28 , 2009 , military officers forced Zelaya ’ s resignation at gunpoint , arresting him at his residence .
Morales fled Bolivia after the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for his resignation on November 10 , 2019 .
And in both cases , right-wing opposition forces seized power after the downfall of Morales and Zelaya , and sought international recognition to build legitimacy .

Interim Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez, who came to power in November, has rejected claims that her predecessor, Evo Morales, was ousted in a coup — while cracking down on dissent and calling for new elections to solidify the rule of conservative opposition forces that seized control of the government in Morales’s absence.
As many critics have noted, the cycle bears a striking similarity to the coup d’etat that ousted Honduran President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya a decade ago. The left-wing leader was whisked out of office by the military, only to be replaced with an interim government led by right-wing opposition forces that swiftly consolidated power through a controversial election process.
The parallels were apparently not lost on the Bolivia’s new rulers. The Áñez government has retained the services of the same Washington, D.C., consultants hired by the Honduran interim government to build American support.
In December, Bolivia inked an agreement with CLS Strategies to provide “strategic communications counsel” for new elections this year and other interactions with the U.S. government. The lobbying firm, previously known as Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates, provided remarkably similar work after Zelaya’s ouster, helping the interim Honduran government earn backing from American policymakers and media outlets as the country held new elections.
CLS Strategies did not respond to a request for comment.
The crisis in Bolivia mirrors the 2009 coup in Honduras in many ways. Morales and Zelaya both forged ties with Venezuela, raised the minimum wage, expanded social services, and opposed the privatization of major industries. The two leftist presidents faced mounting criticism over what looked like attempts to undemocratically remain in office. Zelaya, an opponent of term limits, sought a referendum to form a process to change the Honduran constitution, which limited presidents to a single term. Morales sought an unprecedented fourth term, raising questions over whether he was slowly bending Bolivia’s institutions into allowing permanent rule by his party.
The military also played a crucial role in the downfall of both leaders. In the dead of night, on June 28, 2009, military officers forced Zelaya’s resignation at gunpoint, arresting him at his residence. Morales fled Bolivia after the commander in chief of the military asked for his resignation on November 10, 2019.
And in both cases, right-wing opposition forces seized power after the downfall of Morales and Zelaya, and sought international recognition to build legitimacy.
After the coup in Honduras, then-Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., announced he would lead a group of lawmakers to the capital city of Tegucigalpa as a gesture of diplomacy with the new interim government. Initially, the Obama administration refused to provide military aircraft for the trip, and DeMint responded by unilaterally blocking Obama nominees. Eventually, the Obama administration relented, and DeMint was granted a plane to travel to Honduras.
Behind the drama, lobbying disclosures show the the firm now known as CLS Strategies played a part in the strategy. Juan Cortiñas, a partner at the firm, briefed legislative staff and served as DeMint’s personal translator with Honduran government officials. The team from CLS Strategies also attempted to place opinion columns, pitched reporters at major newspapers, and scheduled interviews on cable networks to promote the interim government’s opposition to Zelaya’s return.
The interim Honduran President Roberto Micheletti, from the right-wing National Party, suspended civil liberties, cracked down on protests, and blocked the transmission of several media outlets, including CNN, Telesur, Channel 8, and Radio Globo.
CLS Strategies again played a background role. After the coup, David Romero, a host with Radio Globo, known for its sympathies with Zelaya, went on an anti-Semitic rant that suggested Israel and Jews were to blame for the Zelaya ouster. Romero apologized, claiming he was caught up in the moment, but his hate-filled rant gave an opening to the Micheletti government, which shut down the radio station and confiscated his equipment. As international outcry grew over Micheletti’s censorship of many different media outlets, CLS Strategies circulated Romero’s comments and condemnation of Radio Globo in multiple press releases, refocusing attention on Romero’s rhetoric.
In the end, controversial new elections were held in Honduras that established National Party as the official party in control of government. The National Party, despite years of corruption scandals and growing evidence that leading figures in the party have been directly involved in drug cartel operations, has controlled the Honduran presidency ever since. President Juan Orlando Hernández sacked opponents on the Supreme Court and passed a change to term limits, the very issue that ostensibly led to Zelaya’s ouster. Hernández subsequently sent military police to violently suppress protests around the disputed results of the 2017 presidential election, which elected him for a second term.
In Bolivia, a similar story appears to be playing out. Áñez, former conservative opposition leader in Bolivia’s senate, took power after Morales’s ouster, and moved immediately to remake the government, replacing military and cabinet officials. She also announced her intention to prosecute Morales and members of his political party as terrorists. Several people who protested the Áñez government have been killed. The interim Bolivian government claims Morales supporters are plotting violence.
The haze of uncertainty around the future has left the public wary of whether the elections will truly be fair. In its registration statement, CLS Strategies indicated that it will reach out to public officials, government agencies, newspapers, and civil groups in the U.S. on behalf of the interim Bolivian government. Cortiñas, who served as DeMint’s translator, is now registered to represent the Bolivian government.
Update: February 11, 2020
This story has been updated to clarify that Zelaya introduced a process to alter the Honduran constitution, which could have been used to eliminate term limits.


theintercept--2020-01-26--With a Week Until Iowa, Bernie Sanders Campaign Tells Volunteers to Back Off Phone Calls

of Bernie Sanders has a new directive for its army of volunteers in the final week before the Iowa caucuses : Lay off the phone calls .
The new guidance was shared with top volunteers on Saturday , and provided by a volunteer to The Intercept , which independently confirmed its authenticity .
The move away from phonebanking comes as Sanders is surging in the polls in Iowa , New Hampshire , and nationally , and is explained in a detailed memo sent via Slack to campaign volunteers by Claire Sandberg , the campaign ’ s national organizing director .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in states that vote in March , which together make up more than half the country .
“ Up until now , you have heard us loud and clear that if you are not in Iowa , New Hampshire , Nevada , or South Carolina , the most important things are to : 1 ) get to one of those states and knock on doors and 2 ) if you can ’ t get there in person , phonebank , ” Sandberg wrote .
But , she continued , “ We have already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wanted to make for this weekend , ” citing volunteer participation that has exceeded targets and expectations .
“ This is definitely a great problem to have , ” she wrote , “ but this does mean we need to recalibrate.
” Sandberg , in the memo , urges volunteers to pivot either to door-to-door canvassing in their home state , or to friend-to-friend organizing through the campaign ’ s Bern app .
The app , covered in a previous Intercept article , allows a user to find friends in the voter file @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support or opposition to Sanders , and has shown promise to be more effective than phone calls as an organizing tactic .
Campaign phone calls and text messages , when the volume runs into the millions , can be expensive — and are certainly more expensive than using the app or door-knocking — which may also be contributing to a cost-benefit analysis .
In the final week leading to caucus day in Iowa on February 3 , Democrats there are bombarded with phone calls from pollsters , campaigns , and outside advocacy groups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spam , creates a cacophony that is hard for campaigns to break through .
It is far more effective , campaign leaders have argued , to have friends and relatives urge those close to them to come out to caucus than to carpet bomb phone lines , what is known as relational organizing .
The campaign ’ s original goal for phone calls before Iowa was 5 million , but volunteers have already surpassed 7 million .
The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment .
Moving away from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ practice that has become synonymous with volunteering and is ubiquitous on other campaigns .
So much so that on the same day Sandberg sent the new directive , Sanders ’ s twitter feed urged its followers : The tweet and the new guidance are not entirely in conflict , as people who live in states that vote in April or beyond will still be able to make calls into early primary states , but the clear emphasis is on friend-to-friend organizing and traveling to early states .
The March primaries will kick off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when voters in more than a dozen states will cast their ballots .
The New York Times-Sienna poll released on Saturday showed Sanders with his biggest lead in Iowa yet , at seven points , and national polls — one by Fox News and another by ABC — also show Sanders climbing at just the right time for his campaign .
His chief rival for the nomination , former Vice President Joe Biden , meanwhile , has been dealt a series of blows , failing to win endorsements from the New York Times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hampshire Union Leader , who variously endorsed Elizabeth Warren , Amy Klobuchar , or , in the Times oddball case , both .
( Biden still tops off the national ABC poll . )
Those papers were never going to endorse a democratic socialist , but benefited Sanders by not endorsing Biden , who had consistently led in the polls for the past year .
A Sanders event in Ames , Iowa on Saturday was jam-packed relative to the same time in 2016 , even though this event included Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brent Welder , who organized in Iowa for Sanders last cycle .
( Sanders , along with Warren and Klobuchar , is stuck in Washington for the Senate impeachment trial , and is relying on surrogates to campaign in the crucial lead-up to the Iowa caucus . )
Biden and Sanders have spent the last week-plus engaged in a lengthy debate over Biden ’ s record on Social Security .
It ’ s been damaging to Biden , and his supporters in Iowa are urging him to shift away from that fight and @ @ @ @ @ @ @

The presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders has a new directive for its army of volunteers in the final week before the Iowa caucuses: Lay off the phone calls.
The new guidance was shared with top volunteers on Saturday, and provided by a volunteer to The Intercept, which independently confirmed its authenticity. The move away from phone-banking comes as Sanders is surging in the polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, and nationally and is explained in a detailed memo sent via Slack to campaign volunteers by Claire Sandberg, the campaign’s national organizing director. The directive applies to volunteers who live in states that vote in March, which together make up more than half the country.
“Up until now, you have heard us loud and clear that if you are not in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina, the most important things are to: 1) get to one of those states and knock on doors and 2) if you can’t get there in person, phonebank,” Sandberg wrote. But, she continued, “We have already run through most of the calls we wanted to make for this weekend,” citing volunteer participation that has exceeded targets and expectations. “This is definitely a great problem to have,” she wrote, “but this does mean we need to recalibrate.”
Sandberg, in the memo, urges volunteers to pivot either to door-to-door canvassing in their home state, or to friend-to-friend organizing through the campaign’s Bern app. The app, covered in a previous Intercept article, allows a user to find friends in the voter file and enter information about their level of support or opposition to Sanders, and has shown promise to be more effective than phone calls as an organizing tactic.
It is far more effective, campaign leaders have argued, to have friends and relatives urge those close to them to come out to caucus than to carpet-bomb phone lines.
Campaign phone calls and text messages, when the volume runs into the millions, can be expensive — and are certainly more expensive than using the app or door-knocking — which may also be contributing to a cost-benefit analysis. In the final week leading to caucus day in Iowa on February 3, Democrats there are bombarded with phone calls from pollsters, campaigns, and outside advocacy groups. That, in addition to baseline spam, creates a cacophony that is hard for campaigns to break through. It is far more effective, campaign leaders have argued, to have friends and relatives urge those close to them to come out to caucus — known as relational organizing — than to carpet-bomb phone lines. The campaign’s original goal for phone calls before Iowa was 5 million, but volunteers have already surpassed 7 million. The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moving away from the dialer is a break with a practice that has become synonymous with volunteering and is ubiquitous on other campaigns. So much so that on the same day Sandberg sent the new directive, Sanders’s Twitter feed urged its followers:
We’ve got a long way to go. It’s going to be a tough fight and we can't take anything for granted. Knock on doors. Make phone calls. Do everything you can. https://t.co/Xl1lQHiLog — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 25, 2020
The tweet and the new guidance are not entirely in conflict, as people who live in states that vote in April or beyond will still be able to make calls into early primary states, but the clear emphasis is on friend-to-friend organizing and traveling to early states. The March primaries will kick off with Super Tuesday on March 3, when voters in more than a dozen states will cast their ballots.
The New York Times-Sienna poll released on Saturday showed Sanders with his biggest lead in Iowa yet, at 7 points, and national polls — one by Fox News and another by ABC — also show Sanders climbing at just the right time for his campaign. His chief rival for the nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has been dealt a series of blows, failing to win endorsements from the New York Times, Des Moines Register, and New Hampshire Union Leader, who endorsed Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, or, in the Times oddball case, both. (Biden still tops off the national ABC poll.) Those papers were never going to endorse a democratic socialist but benefited Sanders by not endorsing Biden, who had consistently led in the polls for the past year.
A Sanders event in Ames, Iowa on Saturday was jam-packed relative to the same time in 2016, even though this event included Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but not Sanders, noted former congressional candidate Brent Welder, who organized in Iowa for Sanders last cycle. (Sanders, along with Warren and Klobuchar, is stuck in Washington for the Senate impeachment trial and relying on surrogates to campaign in the crucial lead-up to the Iowa caucus.)
Now in Ames w @BernieSanders and @AOC. I came to an Ames Bernie rally right before the 2016 Iowa Caucus & there were 1/4 the people. I’ve been to prez events here since 2000 and I’ve never seen anything like this. There’s also a packed balcony above and overflow room with 500 ppl pic.twitter.com/tv8izeSZIP — Brent Welder (@BrentWelder) January 26, 2020
Biden and Sanders have spent the last week-plus engaged in a lengthy debate over Biden’s record on Social Security. It’s been damaging to Biden, and his supporters in Iowa are urging him to shift away from that fight and back to a conversation about electability.


theintercept--2020-01-27--Joe Biden Supported “Exceptionally, Exceptionally Tough Treatment” for Juvenile “Predators”

By that time , Biden had already become a face for tough-on-crime legislation , playing a critical role in the passage of a 1994 overhaul of the criminal justice system , the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act , which devastated low-income communities and communities of color for decades .
In 1996 , Biden , a longtime chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee , also co-authored and pushed a tough-on-crime bill that targeted juveniles .
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1996 would have permitted the jailing of repeat truants and runaways .
An editorialist for The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at “ literally making men and women out of children.
” “ There ’ s about 100,000 of them , if you want to be rhetorically extreme about it , who are the predators , ” he said .
“ There are 100,000 real bad apples out there , 100,000 of the kids you read about in the front page of the newspaper every day.
” In a 1998 speech , then-Sen. Joe Biden called 100,000 juveniles who had been arrested for violent crimes in the U.S. “ predators ” who “ warrant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — who spent decades championing tough-on-crime legislation that escalated mass incarceration — made the comments , which have not previously been reported , during an address to the National Association of Attorneys General conference in March 1998 .
In the 1998 address , he went on to give his support for the ability to try “ these 100,000 bad kids ” in the adult criminal justice system rather than a separate juvenile system .
( It ’ s not clear exactly where the 100,000 number came from , but in a 1997 press @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 3,000 kids were arrested for murder in 1995 , and a total of about 100,000 arrested for other serious , violent crimes — clearly these are the ‘ lost ’ children , all are not irretrievable , but plainly all must be subject to serious punishment.
” ) “ The second piece of this legislation goes out there and says , ‘ OK , we ’ re going to get these 100,000 bad kids , and we ’ re going to try them as adults , ’ ” he said .
“ Well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You want to try them as adults , I leave that to — we have what we call competency hearings in our state .
The court decides to try the kid as an adult .
Well , if you wan na do that , I clearly see cases where that ’ s warranted .
But that ’ s not my decision as a federal official .
I shouldn ’ t tell you under what circumstances you must do that.
” Several early polls show that Biden has been losing support in key primary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him as the frontrunner .
The former vice president ’ s decline has likely been fueled , in part , by his refusal to grapple with his past positions .
( In the case of his record on Social Security , he flat-out lied . )
Though Biden ’ s tough-on-crime rhetoric was in line with the panic of the 1990s , his use of the term , “ predator , ” even then , puts him at odds with a Democratic Party that largely denounces the language as racist .
During the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resurfaced Hillary Clinton ’ s 1996 use of the term “ superpredator ” to describe children involved in gangs .
Black Lives Matter activists confronted the candidate over her use of the term during a private fundraiser , demanding an apology .
And in an essay for The Nation , author and law professor Michelle Alexander called the comments “ racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals.
” At a Democratic primary debate in April 2016 , Sanders was asked why he criticized Clinton for using the word 20 years prior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ term , and everybody knew it was a racist term , ” Sanders responded to cheers .
Last May , Trump slammed Biden for his role in passing the overhaul , tweeting that anyone associated with the 1994 crime bill will not have a chance of being elected .
“ Super Predator was the term associated with the 1994 Crime Bill that Sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing , ” Trump followed up in a tweet .
“ That was a dark period in American History , but has Sleepy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump has still not apologized for calling for the executions of the Central Park 5 , five black teenagers who were falsely accused of rape of a female jogger in 1990 . )
Biden also used the term “ predator ” to justify aggressive sentencing in a 1993 speech , which CNN wrote about in March 2019 , when he warned of “ predators on our streets ” who were “ beyond the pale , ” arguing that the justice system did not know how to rehabilitate them .
He described tens of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of wedlock , without parents , without supervision , without any structure , without any conscience developing because they literally … because they literally have not been socialized , they literally have not had an opportunity.
” The Biden campaign did not provide comment .
But a campaign spokesperson told CNN in March that Biden ’ s strong rhetoric “ was in response to Republican critiques that past efforts had been too soft on crime , ” adding that he was referring specifically to violent crimes and not “ a kid stealing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time , Biden ’ s stance was seen as extreme .
“ In true bipartisan spirit , Sen. Fred Thompson , R-Tenn. , has joined Sen. Joseph Biden , D-Del.
, to sponsor what ’ s considered a mild bill .
Mild though it may be , it ’ s pretty awful , ” The Tennessean wrote in 1996 about Biden ’ s youth crime act .
“ In fact , their bill doesn ’ t target the most violent of juvenile offenders ; the legislation seems designed solely to make an example @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to lock up truants and runaways for up to three days in adult jails.
” Days before President Bill Clinton ’ s second inauguration , Biden said he wanted youth crime legislation modeled after his controversial 1994 crime bill .
( Sanders did vote for the 1994 bill , which enjoyed wide support at the time , but has since expressed regret for supporting “ a terrible bill.
” ) The punitive legislation , which passed Congress and was signed into law by Clinton , helped create an era of mass incarceration that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Ninety percent of what we ’ re proposing in this major Democratic initiative could be a Republican initiative , ” Biden said at a 1997 press conference .
“ Our thrust here is very straightforward : We want to continue the success on the 1994 Biden or Clinton crime law that is now in place.
” Biden also criticized a Republican crime bill he believed didn ’ t go far enough , saying in a press release from his office that “ we have some number of children who are tragic cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no choice but to get them behind bars and keep them there , for a long time .
”

In a 1998 speech, then-Sen. Joe Biden called 100,000 juveniles who had been arrested for violent crimes in the U.S. “predators” who “warrant exceptionally, exceptionally tough treatment.” Biden — who spent decades championing tough-on-crime legislation that escalated mass incarceration — made the comments, which have not previously been reported, during an address to the National Association of Attorneys General conference in March 1998.
“There’s about 100,000 of them, if you want to be rhetorically extreme about it, who are the predators,” he said. “There are 100,000 real bad apples out there, 100,000 of the kids you read about in the front page of the newspaper every day.”
By that time, Biden had already become a face for tough-on-crime legislation, playing a critical role in the passage of a 1994 overhaul of the criminal justice system, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which devastated low-income communities and communities of color for decades. In 1996, Biden, a longtime chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also co-authored and pushed a tough-on-crime bill that targeted juveniles. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1996 would have permitted the jailing of repeat truants and runaways. An editorialist for The Tennessean described the legislation as being aimed at “literally making men and women out of children.”
In the 1998 address, he went on to give his support for the ability to try “these 100,000 bad kids” in the adult criminal justice system rather than a separate juvenile system. (It’s not clear exactly where the 100,000 number came from, but in a 1997 press release, Biden said: “About 3,000 kids were arrested for murder in 1995, and a total of about 100,000 arrested for other serious, violent crimes — clearly these are the ‘lost’ children, all are not irretrievable, but plainly all must be subject to serious punishment.”)
“The second piece of this legislation goes out there and says, ‘OK, we’re going to get these 100,000 bad kids, and we’re going to try them as adults,’” he said.
“Well, that’s your judgment. You want to try them as adults, I leave that to — we have what we call competency hearings in our state. The court decides to try the kid as an adult. Well, if you wanna do that, I clearly see cases where that’s warranted. But that’s not my decision as a federal official. I shouldn’t tell you under what circumstances you must do that.”
Several early polls show that Biden has been losing support in key primary states, with Sen. Bernie Sanders surpassing him as the frontrunner. The former vice president’s decline has likely been fueled, in part, by his refusal to grapple with his past positions. (In the case of his record on Social Security, he flat-out lied.)
Though Biden’s tough-on-crime rhetoric was in line with the panic of the 1990s, his use of the term, “predator,” even then, puts him at odds with a Democratic Party that largely denounces the language as racist. During the 2016 Democratic primary, the Trump campaign resurfaced Hillary Clinton’s 1996 use of the term “superpredator” to describe children involved in gangs. Black Lives Matter activists confronted the candidate over her use of the term during a private fundraiser, demanding an apology. And in an essay for The Nation, author and law professor Michelle Alexander called the comments “racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals.” At a Democratic primary debate in April 2016, Sanders was asked why he criticized Clinton for using the word 20 years prior. “Because it was a racist term, and everybody knew it was a racist term,” Sanders responded to cheers.
Last May, Trump slammed Biden for his role in passing the overhaul, tweeting that anyone associated with the 1994 crime bill will not have a chance of being elected. “Super Predator was the term associated with the 1994 Crime Bill that Sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing,” Trump followed up in a tweet. “That was a dark period in American History, but has Sleepy Joe apologized? No!” (Trump has still not apologized for calling for the executions of the Central Park 5, five black teenagers who were falsely accused of rape of a female jogger in 1990.)
Biden also used the term “predator” to justify aggressive sentencing in a 1993 speech, which CNN wrote about in March 2019, when he warned of “predators on our streets” who were “beyond the pale,” arguing that the justice system did not know how to rehabilitate them. He described tens of thousands of young people as “born out of wedlock, without parents, without supervision, without any structure, without any conscience developing because they literally … because they literally have not been socialized, they literally have not had an opportunity.”
The Biden campaign did not provide comment. But a campaign spokesperson told CNN in March that Biden’s strong rhetoric “was in response to Republican critiques that past efforts had been too soft on crime,” adding that he was referring specifically to violent crimes and not “a kid stealing a candy bar.”
Even at the time, Biden’s stance was seen as extreme. “In true bipartisan spirit, Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., has joined Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., to sponsor what’s considered a mild bill. Mild though it may be, it’s pretty awful,” The Tennessean wrote in 1996 about Biden’s youth crime act. “In fact, their bill doesn’t target the most violent of juvenile offenders; the legislation seems designed solely to make an example. Their bill would allow juvenile judges to lock up truants and runaways for up to three days in adult jails.”
Days before President Bill Clinton’s second inauguration, Biden said he wanted youth crime legislation modeled after his controversial 1994 crime bill. (Sanders did vote for the 1994 bill, which enjoyed wide support at the time, but has since expressed regret for supporting “a terrible bill.”) The punitive legislation, which passed Congress and was signed into law by Clinton, helped create an era of mass incarceration that disproportionately hurt black and brown Americans.
“Ninety percent of what we’re proposing in this major Democratic initiative could be a Republican initiative,” Biden said at a 1997 press conference. “Our thrust here is very straightforward: We want to continue the success on the 1994 Biden or Clinton crime law that is now in place.”
Biden also criticized a Republican crime bill he believed didn’t go far enough, saying in a press release from his office that “we have some number of children who are tragic cases — so violent that we really have no choice but to get them behind bars and keep them there, for a long time.”