Narco-Parachuters?
Jun 2nd, 2009 | By Michel Marizco | Category: General News, Politics
THE BORDER REPORT
Somebody in the U.S. government thinks that Mexico’s drug traffickers will soon turn to the sciences of the U.S. clandestine services to move their drug loads across the border.
Using remote-controlled aircraft, the narcos will smuggle loads of narcotics over the fences and walls that divide both countries. And when that gets old, the narcos will strap 750 pound barrels of dope to their chests and parachute to the ground from ultra-light aircraft, Jason Bourne-style. Some day, somebody’s going to accuse me of writing fiction and making up stories. Sadly, they would be wrong.
The scenarios come from the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, a unit designed to gauge threats that was created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The group ran an observing mission in the San Diego and Tijuana area in early May, trying to define the methods used by the smugglers to move contraband, be it people or narcotics, across the border.
Some parts of the report, parachuting drug loads in for instance, read like the paranoid fantasies of your typical federal law enforcement agency in need of budget justifications. Others are so painfully obvious, I asked the agent who slipped the intel report to me what something like this must have cost to prepare.
“Looks like the government spent a lot of money for a report about what everybody that’s ever been to the border already knows,” he said. He paused. “Should have come to me, I could’ve used the money.”
The report noted two trucks “with a distance of approximately 100 meters between the two vehicles.” Hiding in plain sight, the two trucks pointed the way to a breach in the border wall.
Graffiti taggings on one building, but none on the surrounding buildings, must also be markings for breaches in the walls, the report surmises. Engineering tape caught in the brush and fluttering in the breeze, upright water bottles on the side of the road, bright yellow bumper stickers slapped on the border wall, all with the intention of helping to move loads across.
The reality is, they’re all true. I know one U.S. Border Patrol agent who amuses herself by moving those upright bottles to spots on the highway where she can watch them more closely.
The twenty-page report is also a little disappointing to read; I have no idea why the fact that drug smugglers will conceal dope inside gas tanks is still a novel idea to U.S. law enforcement. Or why tunnels are still exciting for the Feds. But what really caught my eye is what is not in the report.
Nowhere amidst the acronym-laden jargon, the photos, the graphics, or the high-minded language do you find even a whisper of what’s still the U.S.’s most difficult challenge: corruption.
We all know smugglers use binoculars and cellphones, great. And while it’s entertaining to learn that spotters hide in clusters of boulders because the heat the rock radiates at night foils infra-red scanners, it’s not so exciting to learn that that the driver of the tamale truck across the line is watching agents watching them.
My advice is that next time the U.S. Army visits the border, they train their binoculars a little less to the obvious goings-on to the south and a little more to the east and west. They may find a surprise or two.
Somebody in the U.S. government thinks that Mexico’s drug traffickers will soon turn to the sciences of the U.S. clandestine services to move their drug loads across the border.
Using remote-controlled aircraft, the narcos will smuggle loads of narcotics over the fences and walls that divide both countries. And when that gets old, the narcos will strap 750 pound barrels of dope to their chests and parachute to the ground from ultra-light aircraft, Jason Bourne-style. Some day, somebody’s going to accuse me of writing fiction and making up stories. Sadly, they would be wrong.
The scenarios come from the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, a unit designed to gauge threats that was created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The group ran an observing mission in the San Diego and Tijuana area in early May, trying to define the methods used by the smugglers to move contraband, be it people or narcotics, across the border.
Some parts of the report, parachuting drug loads in for instance, read like the paranoid fantasies of your typical federal law enforcement agency in need of budget justifications. Others are so painfully obvious, I asked the agent who slipped the intel report to me what something like this must have cost to prepare.
“Looks like the government spent a lot of money for a report about what everybody that’s ever been to the border already knows,” he said. He paused. “Should have come to me, I could’ve used the money.”
The report noted two trucks “with a distance of approximately 100 meters between the two vehicles.” Hiding in plain sight, the two trucks pointed the way to a breach in the border wall.
Graffiti taggings on one building, but none on the surrounding buildings, must also be markings for breaches in the walls, the report surmises. Engineering tape caught in the brush and fluttering in the breeze, upright water bottles on the side of the road, bright yellow bumper stickers slapped on the border wall, all with the intention of helping to move loads across.
The reality is, they’re all true. I know one U.S. Border Patrol agent who amuses herself by moving those upright bottles to spots on the highway where she can watch them more closely.
The twenty-page report is also a little disappointing to read; I have no idea why the fact that drug smugglers will conceal dope inside gas tanks is still a novel idea to U.S. law enforcement. Or why tunnels are still exciting for the Feds. But what really caught my eye is what is not in the report.
Nowhere amidst the acronym-laden jargon, the photos, the graphics, or the high-minded language do you find even a whisper of what’s still the U.S.’s most difficult challenge: corruption.
We all know smugglers use binoculars and cellphones, great. And while it’s entertaining to learn that spotters hide in clusters of boulders because the heat the rock radiates at night foils infra-red scanners, it’s not so exciting to learn that that the driver of the tamale truck across the line is watching agents watching them.
My advice is that next time the U.S. Army visits the border, they train their binoculars a little less to the obvious goings-on to the south and a little more to the east and west. They may find a surprise or two. 
