THE BORDER REPORT

One rumor I'm hearing today is that U.S. Marines were present with the Mexican Navy last night during the gunbattle with Arturo Beltrán Leyva.

It may or may not be true. I have it tertiary from sources within the Sinaloa factions working here in the U.S. that I talk to from time to time. And of course, every time a significant arrest or killing is conducted in Mexico, there is a healthy suspicion that Americans were somehow involved. This of course, isn't helped by the fact that American federal agents have been spotted at some murder scenes, standing alongside their Mexican counterparts.

The use of Mexican naval forces instead of the vaunted Army or federal police forces is alone, very interesting.

Last week, the SIEDO raided several banks throughout Sinaloa, one belonging to the Mexican Army; Banjercito. The bank was specifically established in 1947 to provide banking and credit services to Mexico's armed forces. SIEDO discovered a network of accounts between El Mayo Ismael Zambada García and members of the Mexican Armed Forces. At a Banamex bank, they discovered one account belonging to Jose Maria Encines Elenes, an Army official appointed by Pres. Vicente Fox in 2001.

It gets a little better. An old intelligence report from last May led to this current bank investigation. In the May case, SIEDO arrested Roberto Beltrán Burgos, El Doctor. Beltrán Burgos had taken the role of intelligence gathering in Sinaloa on behalf of Joaquín Chapo Guzmán (Alfredo Mochomo Beltrán had the job before him, before the 2008 split). He'd been working with Vicente Zambada Niebla, captured last March.

Of course, SIEDO has its own credibility issues. In 2008, the elite agency of federal investigators had been found to be taking $450,000 monthly payments directly from Arturo Beltrán Leyva. The agency was in danger of being dismantled before the plane crash in October of that year that killed José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, the man who started SIEDO for the Fox Administration. After he died, the investigation into SIEDO seemed to just ... go away. For certain, no SIEDO official was ever publicly arrested.

Lots of names, lots of chismes. Lots of ties. You have SIEDO whose members have worked for the Beltrán Leyvas investigating SEDENA whose members worked for Chapo Guzmán and Mayo Zambada. It's small wonder the Navy got involved. That of course, is assuming the Navy doesn't have its own interests in all this.

And, por su caso, the U.S. Marines.