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# The Global Intelligence Files

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

## Re: MX1 on guns -- LONG

Released on 2012-08-09 05:00 GMT

Email-ID | 1704012
Date | 1970-01-01 01:00:00
From | marko.papic@stratfor.com
To | burton@stratfor.com, scott.stewart@stratfor.com, fred.burton@stratfor.com

Asking
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Fred Burton" <burton@stratfor.com>
To: "Marko Papic" <marko.papic@stratfor.com>
Cc: "Fred Burton" <fred.burton@stratfor.com>, "scott stewart"
<scott.stewart@stratfor.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 1, 2011 7:40:19 AM
Subject: Re: MX1 on guns -- LONG
Appreciate his detailed response. Very insightful.
ATF has always been a red haired step child hated by everyone to include
the NRA, FBI and Texas gun nuts. I interned at ATF while in college.
Their work can be very good but the FBI screws them every chance they can.
I would like his thoughts on why the MX govt are calling IEDs (bombs
carried in cars) VBIEDs ? I sense politics on that part of the MX govt
to solicit more Obama dollars.....
Marko Papic wrote:
> /Here is MX1 take. He will send numbers tomorrow if he can. I will try
> to get them to you, but note I only will have internet in afternoon. /
>
> I don't have access to any of the figures right now on numbers -- not
> at home -- but
> I can have them to you by tomorrow.
>
> Now, some comments and thoughts:
>
> - First off, and as a preamble as far as Mexico City is concerned,
> neither Mayor Bloomberg's undercover
> ops in Tucson nor the proposed Arizona Omnibus firearms bill will
> have a direct impact on gun trafficking toward Mexico.
>
> - As I have mentioned before, ATF agents that deal with southbound
> trafficking directly have stated that they believe it is not 90% of
> the weapons that come from the US. They think it's 95%. I don't know
> whether this is political or not, I think it may be. In that case it
> is ATF vs.
> states.
>
> - Based on our last assessment of global trafficking towards
> Mexico, the majority of weapons seized still enter through the
> US. However, 2010 saw an increase in seizures that could be traced
> back to Central America, South America, Caribbean and China. Many
> others were untraceable, in large part because they were never
> entered into E-trace or had scratched out serial numbers and deemed
> unfit to trace.
>
> - There is a major disconnect between Mexican and US authorities on
> the value of gun tracing. The way the average mid-management
> Mexican cop/police commander sees it, tracing is only good for the
> Americans. Rarely do we see the arrest or judicial value of
> tracing the guns. For the CISEN analysts, this information is very
> useful, but it is only shared with a few select Mexican individuals
> who guard the information closely. Therefore, the conclusion drawn
> by our assessment in the GC-Armas (Mexico's inter-ministerial
> working group on gun trafficking), is that little has been done to
> teach Mexican law enforcement the value of even using E-trace.
>
> - Like their narcotic brethren predecessors, we have seen gun
> trafficking rings adapt and use very, very advanced and creative
> techniques in smuggling southbound. As examples, Sinaloa cartel
> sought out armories that were closing (where any unsold goods
> automatically become part of private collections and are not
> subject to any checks) and offered to buy guns in bulk for a good
> sum. Also, we saw guns being smuggled in camouflage (as parts on
> bikes and in hoods of cars).
>
> - The most significant adaptation of the gun smuggling rings has
> been their uncanny ability to obtain guns from further north. They
> have been able to forge long-lasting and lucrative business
> partnerships with several gun stores that can account for an
> important percentage of seized guns. However, the alliances with
> private collectors and networks of people that launder money
> through gun show businesses are much greater in number, but nearly
> impossible for Mexican authorities to know about. An investigation
> into these networks requires inter-agency cooperation that has not
> been readily available for ATF. What we have been able to
> identify, however, are an increase in the number of movements and
> middle-men that recruit and handle straw purchasers.
>
> - Straw purchasing continues to be the mode of choice for cartels
> to obtain guns from the US. As for Central America, buying them
> from corrupt police, military and gangs is most popular. --> NOT
> FOR PUBLICATION: In the case of China, Sinaloa cartel again
> surprised us by having their own network within NORINCO. There is
> currently an international effort to shut this down. So yes, definitely
> non-American sources as well, but the U.S. is just so close and easy
> to tap. The narco traffickers already have great networks in the U.S.,
> branching out to get some guns while selling drugs is easy and not
> a stretch of imagination.
>
> - There is a worry by at least one SRE analyst that because of the
> higher number of non-US weapons seized, the American gun lobby will
> use those figures as an excuse to shut down Gunrunner and other
> programs, and say that Mexico lied about the problem all along.
> The concern here is that the point is not about statistics or even
> about where most guns come from. For this particular analyst, its
> about the fact that the US has the ability to do something about
> the flow of arms, while, for example, Belize, probably does not.
> Therefore, whatever can be done to stop even one gun from crossing,
> should be done. And that does have to start with our fucking law
> enforcement starting to use the E-trace.
>
> NEXT 3 BULLETS NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNLESS YOU CAN GET THE INFO FROM
> ANOTHER SOURCE AS WELL
>
> - An example of how sophisticated and widespread a network can be
> can be gleaned from recent operation "Fast & Furious", executed on
> January 25th. 20 people arrested and 34 total indictments. A big
> deal. The investigation started thanks to intel that we shared with
> ATF. The raw data from 195 seizures in Mexico and 372 in Arizona
> were shared with ATF. Over the course of many, many months, it
> became clear that the Lone Wolf gun store in Phoenix could be tied
> to an unusual number of crime gun traces in Mexico. Anyway, the
> cool stuff is not that many of these people were arrested. In
> fact, it will matter little, given that these crimes in the US are
> not only nearly impossible to prosecute, but extremely difficult to
> convict. I have not done any checking, but I am willing to bet
> most of the people arrested are already out or will be soon.
>
> - The really cool thing about F&F is the M.O. of the ring that ATF
> was chasing. The guy (still wanted in both countries) who is at
> the center of the ring is Manuel Solis Acosta. He went out and got
> 3 main straw purchasers. These 3 guys then went on to recruit (on
> average) 14 people each. They made contact with "El Compa" who
> runs a restaurant in El Paso immediately off I-10. At this
> restaurant, in the back, is a warehouse, where all of the guns were
> later sent to SINALOA. The traffickers KNEW that cars were being
> traced when they crossed southbound via Arizona because SEDENA and
> SRE knew that guns from AZ were mainly going to that state. Ergo,
> they ran their entire stash house in EP and then moved it by land
> and air to Sinaloa.
>
> - When things got hot in EP and some traces of suspicious vehicles
> started getting done there, they went back to AZ, but used the
> Tohono O'dham reservation. Less than a year ago, we intercepted a
> "Rodeo" van with 37 AKs, all traced back to Mr. Uriel Patino, a
> known straw-purchaser. Therefore, what we had was a complex
> organization with lots and lots of people involved, using various
> routes, purchasing weapons all over the place, and moving them
> anywhere they could. Needless to say, it is very difficult for law
> enforcement to track these people. As one ATF agent once told me:
> "Guns are hard because they are not like drugs. Drugs are always
> illegal. Whether a gun is illegal really depends. It can be legal
> one minute and illegal the next, and you can't do anything if it's
> legal."
>
> - Another important point to mention about Gunrunner and our joint
> efforts to combat trafficking is the high degree of symbolism that
> this had for Mexico. Even if Gunrunner has not lived up to
> expectations, we see a great deal of symbolism in seeing the US try
> to halt the flow of weapons into cartel hands. If there were no
> appearance of efforts made on the US side, I can assure you that
> any Mexican administration would have a hard time showing that we
> are fighting a war together and that there is "shared
> responsibility". Going after the guns, and the entire Merida
> Initiative, is more valuable to Mexico due to their symbolism than
> actual results. Results are also nice. But this is political in Mexico.
> Calderon needs to show that he got the Americans to do something
> because he asked them to. It is an ego thing, but also it is going to
> go a long way to explain to citizens that sacrifices at home are worth
> it when Americans are also sacrificing.
>
> A final point to make is that many many many officials on the
> Mexican side are very frustrated by what they are beginning to
> understand is a system that was never meant to hold any water. US
> gun laws are designed to be hard to prosecute and enforce. ATF
> funding is abysmal (could this be reason they say 95 percent).
> However, we have only recently begun true efforts to understand
> how gun laws and the system works in the US. Before, we just gave
> up and made a fuss. Threw a fit here or there. More and more, we are
> getting to understand the intricacies of the 2nd amendment and its
> incredible reach. If only we understood this in May of 2010,
> President Calderon would not have been so ill advised as to talk to
> Americans about their guns in his speech to Congress. That was
> stupid, but they did not let me write the speech (just kidding).
>
> Personal take:
>
> The figures and exact numbers are not important to me. However,
> there are some in the the gun rights lobby saying that no American
> guns cross the border to Mexico. That's crazy! If drugs can come
> north, guns can come south.
>
> We have drugs, you have guns! Cartels do not have to go to China
> for weapons? Why? They just ask cousin Jose in Chicago who knows a
> guy who knows a guy. So yes, I can see 95 percent figure being
> misleading. But I have no doubt that the U.S. guns are the
> majority. It's simple geography. They are right there. If cartels
> get their weapons from other places as well, its because they
> follow the same logic of expansion as they do with their drug
> distribution. You'd think that, at a time when the MX Gov is
> fighting you, you would not want to expand markets into Europe,
> LatAm and Asia. However, this is exactly what they have done.
> Accordingly, they will find other and new ways to obtain guns.
> Maybe in 10 years most guns will come from China. However, right
> now, most come from the US.
>
> At the working level, we have no desire to intervene or seen to be
> intervening in US domestic laws on the gun issue. We understand
> that touching guns would be like Americans telling us what to do with
> our Petroleum.
>
> As a final note, I would add and emphasize that this issue is not
> only about effectiveness and national security. It is also about
> domestic politics -- in Mexico. It is unfortunate and sad, but it is a
> big part of why the issue is so difficult to tackle.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Marko Papic
>
> STRATFOR Analyst
> C: + 1-512-905-3091
> marko.papic@stratfor.com
>
>
--
Marko Papic
STRATFOR Analyst
C: + 1-512-905-3091
marko.papic@stratfor.com