From today's Guardian:

...Luis Padilla, 29, father of three, had been kidnapped, driven across the Mexican border from El Paso, Texas, to a house in Ciudad Juarez, the lawless city ruled by drug lords that lies across the Rio Grande. As his wife tried frantically to locate him, he was being stripped, tortured and buried in a mass grave in the garden - what the people of Juarez call a narco-fossa, a narco-smugglers' tomb.

Just another casualty of Mexico's drug wars? Perhaps. But Padilla had no connection with the drugs trade; he seems to have been the victim of a case of mistaken identity. Now, as a result of documents disclosed in three separate court cases, it is becoming clear that his murder, along with at least 11 further brutal killings, at the Juarez 'House of Death', is part of a gruesome scandal, a web of connivance and cover-up stretching from the wild Texas borderland to top Washington officials close to President Bush.

These documents, which form a dossier several inches thick, are the main source for the facts in this article. They suggest that while the eyes of the world have been largely averted, America's 'war on drugs' has moved to a new phase of cynicism and amorality, in which the loss of human life has lost all importance - especially if the victims are Hispanic. The US agencies and officials in this saga - all of which refused to comment, citing pending lawsuits - appear to have thought it more important to get information about drugs trafficking than to stop its perpetrators killing people.

The US media has virtually ignored this story, which implicates officials from the Immigration and Customs Executive ("ICE," previously US Customs), the Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco, and the FBI, including officials very close to the White House.

Of course, why should the media cover it? We're not talking blow-jobs in the Oval Office or salacious texts to Congressional pages, but rather brutal kidnappings, torture and murder, all in the name of the "War on Drugs." (Remember that bastard, felonious progenitor of the "War on Terror"?)

More details below the fold on how the GW Bush administration has re-introduced morals to a White House. The facts are shocking, even to one who thought I'd moved beyond open-mouthed stupefaction when it comes to this administration.

Or complete story here.

When Lalo [Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, the US informant] arrived, two cops were already there. He went out to buy the quicklime and duct tape, and when he returned Santillan turned up with Reyes. The policemen jumped on the lawyer, beating him and trying to put duct tape over his mouth. Lalo, wearing his hidden wire supplied by Ice, recorded Reyes's desperate pleas for mercy. 'They [the police] asked me to help them get him to the floor,' reads a statement he made later. 'They tried to choke him with an extension cord, but this broke and I gave them a plastic bag and they put it on his head and suffocated him.' Even then, they were not sure Reyes was dead. One of the officers took a shovel 'and hit him many times on the head'.

When Lalo returned to El Paso on the day of Reyes's murder and told his Ice employers what had happened they were understandably worried. They knew that, if they were to continue using Lalo as an informant, they would need high-level authorisation. That afternoon and evening he was debriefed at length by his main handler, Special Agent Raul Bencomo, and his supervisor. Then he was allowed to go back to Juarez - Santillan had given him $2,000 to pay two cartel members to dig Reyes's grave, cover his body with quicklime and bury it.

Meanwhile the El Paso Ice office reported the matter to headquarters in Washington. The information went up the chain of command, eventually reaching America's Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John G. Malcolm. It passed through the office of Johnny Sutton, the US Attorney for Western Texas - a close associate of George W. Bush. When Bush was Texas governor, Sutton spent five years as his director of criminal justice policy. After Bush became President, Sutton became legal policy co-ordinator in the White House transition team, working with another Bush Texas colleague, Alberto Gonzalez, the present US Attorney General.

Earlier this year Sutton was appointed chairman of the Attorney General's advisory committee which, says the official website, 'plays a significant role in determining policies and programmes of the department and in carrying out the national goals set by the President and the Attorney General'. Sutton's position as US Attorney for Western Texas is further evidence of his long friendship with the President - falling into his jurisdiction is Midland, the town where Bush grew up, and Crawford, the site of Bush's beloved ranch.

'Sutton could and should have shut down the case, there and then,' says Bill Weaver, a law professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has made a detailed study of the affair. 'He could have told Ice and the lawyers "go with what you have, and let's try to bring Santillan to justice". That neither he nor anyone else decided to take that action invites an obvious inference: that because the only people likely to get killed were Mexicans, they thought it didn't much matter.'

In the days after Reyes's death, officials in Texas and Washington held a series of meetings. Finally word came back from headquarters - despite the risk that Lalo might become involved with further murders, Ice could continue to use and pay him as an informant. And although Santillan had already been caught on tape directing a merciless killing and might well kill again, no attempt would be made to arrest him.

[...]

Then, and on other occasions, Santillan told Lalo in advance he was going to hold a carne asada [code for a murder]. The deposition gives details of 13 murders, all but one of whose victims were later found buried at Number 3633. Each time Lalo crossed into Mexico his Ice handlers sought and obtained formal clearance from headquarters to allow their source to travel to a foreign country while working for a US agency. Throughout the period, Lalo says, he continued to talk to his handler Bencomo up to four times a day - usually in person, at the Ice El Paso office. He says his meetings with Santillan were all covertly recorded, while documents show that Ice had arranged for Lalo's phone to be bugged.

[...]

While Santillan and Lalo went on killing, Bencomo, his Ice colleagues and Assistant US Attorney Fielden were assembling their case. In December 2003 Fielden drew up a sealed indictment against Santillan. But although there was already some evidence of his involvement in killings, the indictment was only for trafficking, not murder. Before they could lure him to America and arrest him, they needed permission from the DoJ. They got it on 15 January, a day after Luis Padilla died.

But this did not bring the House of Death killings to an end. Under torture, one of Santillan's victims had revealed the address of Homer Glen McBrayer - a DEA special agent resident in Juarez who operated under diplomatic cover. At 6pm on 14 January, two men rang his doorbell continuously for 10 minutes. Afraid, his wife phoned him at work. McBrayer rushed home and ushered his wife and daughters into their car. As soon as they left the estate where they lived, they were stopped by a Mexican police car. Two civilian vehicles hemmed McBrayer's car in. Their occupants got out and waited while McBrayer talked to the cops. They were Santillan's men.

Having showed his diplomatic passport, McBrayer phoned a DEA colleague, who arrived within minutes. Unwilling, perhaps, to abduct two US agents, a woman and two children on a busy street, the cartel men backed off. As the standoff unfolded, Santillan twice called Lalo. He asked him to find out what he could about an American called Homer Glen - the corrupt police had not given McBrayer's surname. Santillan, claimed Lalo, said he thought he worked for the tres letras - code for the DEA - and intended to blow up his house.

The McBrayers were lucky to be alive, and the DEA, kept in the dark about the continued use of Lalo after the first murder six months earlier, reacted with fury. Even as Ice debriefed Lalo, it refused the DEA access to him and to recordings of the events of 14 January. Every principle governing informant handling and inter-agency co-operation appeared to have been flouted, and the Mexican government was not told of the carnage taking place on - and under - its soil.

[...]

The House Of Death suddenly seemed set to become a major national scandal. Bill Conroy, a reporter who works for an investigative website, Narconews.com, was about to publish an article about it. On 24 February, Sandy Gonzalez, the Special Agent in Charge of the DEA office in El Paso, one of the most senior and highly decorated Hispanic law enforcement officers in America, wrote to his Ice counterpart, John Gaudioso.

'I am writing to express to you my frustration and outrage at the mishandling of investigation that has resulted in unnecessary loss of human life,' he began, 'and endangered the lives of special agents of the DEA and their immediate families. There is no excuse for the events that culminated during the evening of 14 January... and I have no choice but to hold you responsible.' Ice, Gonzalez wrote, had gone to 'extreme lengths' to protect an informant who was, in reality, a 'homicidal maniac... this situation is so bizarre that, even as I'm writing to you, it is difficult for me to believe it'.

But Ice and its allies in the DoJ were covering up their actions, helped by the US media - aside from the Dallas Morning News, not one major newspaper or TV network has covered the story. The first signs came in the response to Gonzalez's letter to Gaudioso - not from Ice, but from Johnny Sutton.

He reacted not to the discovery of corpses at Calle Parsonieros, but with concern Gonzalez might talk to the media. He communicated his fears to a senior official in Washington - Catherine O'Neil, director of the DoJ's Organised Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Describing Gonzalez's letter as 'inflammatory,' she passed on Sutton's fears to the then Attorney General, John Ashcroft, and to Karen Tandy, the head of the DEA, another Texan lawyer.

Tandy was horrified by Gonzalez's letter. 'I apologised to Johnny Sutton last night and he and I agreed on a "no comment" to the press,' she replied on 5 March. Gonzalez would have no further involvement with the House of Death case and was ordered to report to Washington for 'performance discussions to further address this officially'.

Gonzalez was told that Sutton was 'extremely upset'. Gonzalez, who had enjoyed glittering appraisals throughout his 30-year career, was told he would be downgraded. On 4 May, DEA managers in Washington sent him a letter. It said that, if he quietly retired before 30 June, he would be given a 'positive' reference for future employers. If he refused, a reference would dwell on his 'lapse'. Gonzalez resigned, and launched a lawsuit - part of which is due to come to court tomorrow.

Complete story here.