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> A former smuggler said García Luna shared a document containing U.S. law enforcement information about a 2007 seized cocaine shipment, the AP reported. NPR r
by l3mure 4y ago
> A former smuggler said García Luna shared a document containing U.S. law enforcement information about a 2007 seized cocaine shipment, the AP reported.
NPR really burying the lede here.
[1]
> But the story that most got me was when El Grande, or Sergio Villarreal Barragán, described how the traffickers got their seized cocaine back. He was talking about Mexico’s biggest ever cocaine haul, when the marines took down 23 tons off a ship from Colombia in the port of Manzanillo in 2007. I covered it at the time and it was a big deal, proof that President Felipe Calderón, the boss of García Luna, was taking on the cartels. The New York Times sent a correspondent to watch it burn, and he described the “pomp and ceremony” as the white cocaine morphed into a black cloud.
> But it was all a lie, according to El Grande. “We exchange fake drugs for the good drugs,” he told the court. “At a ranch where we trained our hit men, we created a small factory so that we could develop the bricks…We made a mixture of sugar and flour so that we could compress them. They were actually mixed with acetone and ether. And we had them dry out. Once they were dried, we would cover them with varnish so that they would look shiny. And we would package them as any other cocaine brick. And that's how we did it…We transferred them to the Manzanillo port, and I delivered them.”
> You caught speculations that cartels were pulling such stunts. But to hear it told in a U.S. federal court really drives it home. The destruction of drugs was a simulation. You could not trust what you saw with your own eyes. The Mexican government, or elements of it, had created a whole simulation it was fighting a war on cartels when really it was working with them.
[1] https://ioangrillo.substack.com/p/so-is-mexico-a-narco-state https://ioangrillo.substack.com/p/so-is-mexico-a-narco-state
(h/t https://twitter.com/ElParece/status/1628414077461573634 https://twitter.com/ElParece/status/1628414077461573634)
- serf 4y ago>We made a mixture of sugar and flour so that we could compress them. They were actually mixed with acetone and ether. And we had them dry out. Once they were dried, we would cover them with varnish so that they would look shiny. that sounds like one terrible fire to be anywhere near.
- viscanti 4y ago> that sounds like one terrible fire to be anywhere near. You think you're free basing smoke from a mountain of burning cocaine bricks and you end up inhaling something dangerous instead. Sounds like a big problem.
- cjbgkagh 4y agoFlower (and I guess sugar) can be explosive like a rudimentary fuel bomb. It has to be aerated first. If it’s tightly packed it’ll just smolder. If it’s aerated enough a shockwave will go through and oxidize it all at once. It’ll be one hell of an explosion. With cocaine you could probably be safe by standing up wind of the burn.
- notch898a 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Georgia_sugar_refinery_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Georgia_sugar_refinery_ex... If you work at a grain mill they'll probably show you the video.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoIs there some reason cocaine can't cause a dust explosion?
- cjbgkagh 4y agoMainly because I’ve never heard of one despite many large quantities of cocaine being burnt off after seizures (though maybe it was never cocaine). Cocaine melts (which I think is endothermic - chemistry class was a long time ago) and it doesn’t have as many oxygen atoms available in the molecule increasing the aeration requirement. Under ideal circumstances I’m sure just about anything that oxidizes could be made into a fuel air bomb but for it to happen accidentally it must be able to readily happen in much less than ideal circumstances. For things like flour particles can get drawn up into the smoke clouds mix with air in enough quantity to produce a shockwave and that explosion can cause more particles to get thrown into the air for secondary explosions.
- twelve40 4y agoThanks for sharing, I found that article pretty moving > that does not mean the entire Mexican state is illegitimate. School teachers get up every morning to teach millions of children from the roughest barrios to the southern jungles. Doctors and nurses save lives every day despite many hospitals being in dire need of repair. And rubbish collectors keep coming to my corner every morning to take away the endless garbage this metropolis of Mexico City churns out. I hope to god they find a way out of this, it's a great country that can really do better than this...
- AndyMcConachie 4y agoThe CIA did the exact same thing with KMT soldiers in Burma smuggling heroin in the 1970s. It's in The Politics of Heroin by Alfred McCoy. A great book if you want to understand the interplay between intelligence agencies and drug dealers. Then they exchanged heroin for fake heroin and burned the fake heroin for US journalists. There is nothing new under in the sun in our stupid war on drugs.
- l3mure 4y agoPeter Dale Scott recently published an old manuscript of his on the topic, as well as a couple podcasts with McCoy. It's fascinating stuff. https://americanexception.com/private-war-enterprise-in-asia-air-america-the-brook-club-and-the-kuomintang/ https://americanexception.com/private-war-enterprise-in-asia...