[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
MONEY, GUNS, AND DRUGS: ARE U.S. INPUTS FUELING VIOLENCE ON THE U.S.-
MEXICO BORDER?
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS
of the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 12, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-54
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.house.gov/reform
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York, Chairman
PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania DARRELL E. ISSA, California
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio JOHN L. MICA, Florida
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
DIANE E. WATSON, California JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
JIM COOPER, Tennessee LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
Columbia JIM JORDAN, Ohio
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas AARON SCHOCK, Illinois
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
PETER WELCH, Vermont
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
JACKIE SPEIER, California
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio
------ ------
------ ------
------ ------
Ron Stroman, Staff Director
Michael McCarthy, Deputy Staff Director
Carla Hultberg, Chief Clerk
Larry Brady, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland DAN BURTON, Indiana
PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire JOHN L. MICA, Florida
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
PETER WELCH, Vermont MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
BILL FOSTER, Illinois LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts JIM JORDAN, Ohio
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
Andrew Wright, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on March 12, 2009................................... 1
Statement of:
Selee, Andrew, Ph.D., director, Woodrow Wilson Center Mexico
Institute; Michael A. Braun, managing partner, Spectre
Group International, LLC, and former Assistant
Administrator/Chief of Operations, Drug Enforcement
Administration; Jonathan Paton, member, Arizona State
Senate; and Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst, Violence
Policy Center, and author, ``Making a Killing: The Business
of Guns in America''....................................... 19
Braun, Michael A......................................... 29
Diaz, Tom................................................ 40
Paton, Jonathan.......................................... 38
Selee, Andrew............................................ 19
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Braun, Michael A., managing partner, Spectre Group
International, LLC, and former Assistant Administrator/
Chief of Operations, Drug Enforcement Administration,
prepared statement of...................................... 31
Diaz, Tom, senior policy analyst, Violence Policy Center, and
author, ``Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in
America'', prepared statement of........................... 43
Selee, Andrew, Ph.D., director, Woodrow Wilson Center Mexico
Institute, prepared statement of........................... 24
Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Massachusetts, prepared statement of.............. 5
MONEY, GUNS, AND DRUGS: ARE U.S. INPUTS FUELING VIOLENCE ON THE U.S.-
MEXICO BORDER?
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign
Affairs,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John F. Tierney
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tierney, Lynch, Cuellar, Kucinich,
Flake, Burton, Mica, Duncan, McHenry, and Fortenberry.
Staff present: Elliot Gillerman, clerk; Alex McKnight,
State Department fellow; Andy Wright, counsel; Dave Turk, staff
director; Jennifer Safavian, minority chief counsel for
oversight and investigations; Frederick Hill, minority director
of communications; Dan Blankenburg, minority director of
outreach and senior advisor; Adam Fromm, minority chief clerk
and Member liaison; Seamus Kraft, minority deputy press
secretary; Tom Alexander, minority senior counsel; Mitchell
Kominsky, minority counsel; Dr. Christopher Bright, minority
senior professional staff member; and Glenn Sanders, minority
Defense fellow.
Mr. Tierney. Good morning. I want to thank all of our
witnesses for being here this morning and my colleague from
Arizona as well, other Members as they appear.
This subcommittee has recently held a number of hearings on
countries, chiefly Pakistan and Afghanistan, where terror runs
rampant and our national security interests are generally
perceived to be significant. Now I would like to paraphrase a
brief introductory paragraph in a recent article printed in the
Economist magazine. It says in recent months the people of a
certain country have become inured to carefully choreographed
spectacles of horror.
Just before Christmas, the severed heads of eight soldiers
were found dumped in plastic bags near a shopping center in the
capital of a state. Last month another three were found in an
icebox near a border community. The country's president states
that, ``Organized crime is out of control.'' He has pitted
450,000 army troops against the drug traffickers, but in 2008
more than 6,200 people died in the country in drug related
violence--more than twice the number killed in 2007. More than
1,000 people have died so far in 2009. Troops and police have
fought pitched battles against drug gangsters armed with rocket
launchers, grenades, machine guns, and armor-piercing sniper
rifles such as the Barrett .50.
The article does not describe Pakistan or Afghanistan. It
is a story about our neighbor to the south, Mexico, the world's
12th largest economy, the U.S.' second biggest trading partner,
and an important oil supplier. The former Drug Czar General
Barry McCaffrey says the picture there is dangerous and a
worsening situation that fundamentally threatens U.S. national
security. Last month Homeland Security Secretary Janet
Napolitano said, ``Mexico right now has issues of violence that
are a different degree and level than we have seen before.''
Some, most notably President Calderon, dispute such a grim
picture but few if any contest that matters are certainly
serious.
The Economist article notes that the drug industry is worth
some $320 billion a year, a figure I note some of our witnesses
agree with, and that the United States alone spends $40 billion
each year trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. Attorney
General Medina Mora is quoted in the article as noting that of
107,000 gun shops in the United States, 12,000 are close to the
Mexican border and their sales are much higher than average.
``Thousands of automatic rifles are bought for export to
Mexico, which is illegal.''
Now, when they are talking about exporting rifles out
there, they are talking about weapons such as the one we see on
the table there. And they are firing ammunition, this is what
we use when we are fighting, our troops are fighting in
Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what the gangsters and drug
people are using when they fight Mexican and U.S. police and
national security people down along the border. In addition,
cash is moving from America to Mexico.
So today this Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign
Affairs focuses on this increasingly urgent national security
challenge, one that is not half way around the world but one
that is quite literally at our doorstep, the increasing
violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. And that violence is
increasingly spilling over onto U.S. soil.
The U.S. Justice Department called Mexican gangs the
``biggest organized crime threat to the United States,'' noting
that they operate in at least 230 U.S. cities and towns.
Phoenix is now the U.S. capital of kidnappings with more than
370 cases last year. The city of El Paso, TX sits a stone's
throw away from Ciudad Juarez where more than 1,550 people were
killed in drug wars last year.
Border violence is receiving increased attention by the
U.S. Government, including by a number of committees in this
Congress. At those hearings, I am sure the Merida Initiative
will be discussed along with other efforts by the United States
to strengthen Mexican police and judicial institutions. I am
sure questions will be asked about what the United States can
do to ensure that this violence does not spread from south to
north. I am sure there will be calls for our southern neighbors
to get their house in order. But all of this is just one part
of the equation.
Today's hearing asks the central question: Are there laws
and activities on the American side of the border fueling this
violence in Mexico? According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, 90 percent of the guns
confiscated in Mexican organized crime originated in the United
States, 90 percent.
And we are not just talking handguns and hunting rifles.
William Newell, special agent in charge of the ATF station in
Arizona noted, for example, ``eighteen months ago we saw a
spike in .50 caliber machine guns heading south.'' According to
those AFT statistics, more than 7,700 guns sold in America were
traced to Mexico in 2008, twice the 3,300 recorded the previous
year and more than triple the 2,100 traced the year before
that.
And how do Mexican cartels get the money to buy those guns?
The Woodrow Wilson Center put it this way: ``Profits from drug
sales in the United States pump roughly $15 billion to $25
billion every year into illicit activities in Mexico.'' In
short, U.S. drug use creates billions in illicit profits that
are then used by Mexican cartels to buy U.S. guns. The profits
and the guns, and drug precursors in some cases, find their way
back across the border to Mexico and fuel the increasing
violence.
This is a vicious cycle that we simply must break. Our
kids, our schools, and our neighborhoods are quite literally at
stake. And U.S. national security and the stability of our
southern neighbor also hangs in the balance.
This subcommittee has conducted and will continue to
conduct extensive oversight into the volatile situation in
South Asia. But last month a Wall Street Journal article
concluded: ``Much as Pakistan is fighting for survival against
Islamic radicals, Mexico is waging a do-or-die battle with the
world's most powerful drug cartels. The parallels between
Pakistan and Mexico are strong enough that the United States
military singled them out recently as the two countries where
there is a risk the government could suffer a swift and
catastrophic collapse.''
Here are the words of our own U.S. military. They say: ``In
terms of worst-case scenarios for the United States Joint
Force, and indeed the world, two large and important states
bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse, Pakistan
and Mexico. The Mexican possibility may seem less likely but
the government, its politicians, police, and judicial
infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by
criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict
turns out over the next several years will have a major impact
on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico
into chaos would demand an American response based on the
serious implications for homeland security alone.''
As the Obama administration, the Congress, and the American
people increasingly pay attention to the violence in Mexico, my
hope is that we not only discuss the Merida Initiative and
other efforts to help our southern neighbor, that we not only
ask the Mexican Government to get its house in order, but that
we also look inside our own borders. I hope that we look to our
own drug consumption, to our own gun laws, and to our own anti-
money laundering initiatives and ask what more we can do, what
more we can do on our side of the border.
My hope is that this hearing will result in some concrete
recommendations for the U.S. Congress to consider. We will hear
from top experts who have examined and studied these issues.
And we greatly appreciate all of their presence here today.
U.S.-Mexico border violence can only be solved if we look
at all parts of the equation, if we examine everything that is
fueling the fire. Let us examine our gun laws. Let us explore
ways to cut down on U.S. drug consumption. Let us ask if we
need more resources to root out money laundering. The peace and
well-being of both of our countries and both of our peoples
depends upon it. And with that I yield to the ranking member,
Mr. Flake, for his comments.
[The prepared statement of Hon. John F. Tierney follows:]
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Mr. Flake. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As a Representative of
a border state, this subject hits a little close to home. So I
am glad that we have called this hearing and I look forward to
hearing the witnesses.
In recent years, Mexican towns bordering the United States
have experienced exponential growth in violence. The fighting,
chiefly the result of drug cartels warring with each other and
the Mexican Government, has cost 7,000 Mexican lives this past
year alone. President Calderon is making a concerted effort to
quell the violence. It does not appear, however, that the
hostility will cease in the near term. On the contrary, reports
indicate that this violence may be spreading.
Despite conflicting reports about how large these cartels
actually are and whether the violence has already spilled into
the United States, violence in Mexico is a serious issue that
is ripe for this subcommittee's review. The purpose of this
hearing is to examine ways in which the United States is
fueling the violence. In other words, we are looking at ways,
to explore ways, where we can be blamed.
The witnesses will testify that America's insatiable
appetite for drugs and accessibility with weapons are the
source of the violence. While I agree that cross-border sales
of guns and drugs play a part, I do not believe that stricter
gun controls on Americans and public service announcements will
solve the problem. Indeed, we need to open a discussion on a
broader spectrum of ideas.
First, the United States must focus on enforcing good laws
on the books. In my home State of Arizona, it is illegal to
directly or indirectly sell weapons to criminals, plain and
simple. The same is true under Federal law. Instead of
punishing law-abiding Americans with stricter controls, we need
to punish those who break the law today.
In fact, U.S. law enforcement has had tremendous success in
this regard. This Tuesday, a senior Immigration and Customs
Enforcement official testified before another congressional
committee. She said that in the last 3\1/2\ years, ICE has made
a concerted effort to focus on border security. In this period,
the agency has made 4,830 arrests, and seized nearly 170,000
pounds of drugs, and captured numerous weapons at or near the
border. State operations are also working.
Now, I believe that the enactment of comprehensive
immigration reform would also make it easier for the legitimate
movement of workers on a temporary basis as well as goods
between the United States and Mexico. This would free law
enforcement officials to focus their resources and to be more
direct on the pressing crimes that potentially endanger our
citizens.
We must determine the extent to which U.S.-funded anti-drug
programs are succeeding in Mexico. To date, we have spent
billions on that effort.
But instead of limiting the discussion to gun control and
treatment programs, we must have a broad discussion of ideas.
To that end, I have invited Arizona Senator Jonathan Paton to
testify today. He has come a long way, and I appreciate that,
with short notice. He is a seasoned legislator in Arizona and
he is a life-long resident of Arizona. He is thoroughly
familiar with these matters and a leader in promoting
legislative solutions to the cross-border issues. Thus, Senator
Paton provides a unique perspective about ways in which border
States such as Arizona are tackling these important issues.
We can agree that despite our best efforts to fight cartel
operations on both sides of the border, violence has gotten
worse. That said, serious dialog must take place between
lawmakers and experts about real solutions that bolster
security while protecting our rights. Anything less is
counterproductive. Sadly, this hearing appears to be more of a
discussion about stricter gun controls on Americans than it is
about punishing those who break the law.
In these discussions today, we need to take care to point
out that Mexico is not a failed state as national rhetoric
might suggest. I believe that such characterizations are
unhelpful at a time when our friends are going through tough
times. President Calderon has taken bold steps to rid his
country of corruption. I applaud his efforts and wish him every
success, and I think we all should.
And I thank the chairman for holding this hearing. It has a
great effect on my State of Arizona and also the security of
the United States. And I look forward to the witnesses.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much. This subcommittee will
now receive testimony from the panelists before us today.
As I mentioned in my remarks, there are other committees in
this Congress that are, of course, looking at this matter from
another perspective. People are dealing with the Merida
Agreement, cooperation between the countries, and what other
actions are taken on the national security/law enforcement
side.
This is a hearing on yet one more element and one view of
something additionally that can be done in cooperation with
Mexico. And it will be followed, we presume, by a hearing with
some of the administration's people on what is actually being
done and planned to be done by this administration.
We are going to receive testimony from three individuals
whose biographies I will read in brief right now, four
individuals, I should say.
Dr. Andrew Selee. Dr. Selee is the director of the Woodrow
Wilson Center's Mexico Institute, which recently published a
January 2009 report, ``The United States and Mexico: Toward a
Strategic Partnership.'' Dr. Selee is an adjunct professor of
government at Johns Hopkins University and previously taught at
George Washington University. He serves on the board of the
U.S.-Mexico Fulbright Commission and on the Independent Task
Force on Immigration of the Council on Foreign Relations. And I
am happy to note that he has also worked as a professional
staff member here in the U.S. House of Representatives
previously.
Mr. Michael A. Braun is the managing partner at Spectre
Group International and is a former Drug Enforcement Agency
Chief of Operations and Assistant Administrator. As such, he
was responsible for leading the worldwide drug enforcement
operations of the Agency's 227 domestic and 86 foreign offices.
In June 2003, Mr. Braun was detailed to the Department of
Defense and served on special assignment in Iraq as the chief
of staff of the Interim Ministry of Interior. Mr. Braun has
also served from 1971 to 1973 as an infantryman in the U.S.
Marine Corps.
Mr. Jonathan Paton is a member of the Arizona State Senate.
He founded a political consulting firm in Tucson called Paton
and Associates and has worked with numerous clients in State
and local races as well as on initiative campaigns. He also
volunteered for active duty in support of Operation Iraqi
Freedom from September 2006 until February 2007.
Mr. Tom Diaz is a senior policy analyst for the Violence
Policy Center and is author of ``Making a Killing: The Business
of Guns in America.'' His new book ``No Boundaries:
Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement'' will
be released later this year. Mr. Diaz has a distinguished past
including having consulted with the Justice Department and
having also worked in the House of Representatives as counsel
to the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal
Justice.
I want to thank all of you for making yourselves available
today. Mr. Paton, thank you for your travels at the last minute
and for sharing your substantial expertise.
It is the practice of this subcommittee to swear in all the
witnesses. So at this time I ask you to please rise, raise your
right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. The record will please indicate
that all of the witnesses answered in the affirmative. All of
your written statements, which have been introduced and read by
the Members already, will be put on the record in their
entirety.
So I welcome you to give whatever oral remarks you want to
give. We try to limit it within 5 minutes, if possible. We
don't have a trap door to make you disappear if it doesn't
happen that way. But we do like to keep it as close to 5
minutes as possible so Members will have an opportunity to
engage and ask questions and get more information in that
respect.
So if we can, Dr. Andrew Selee, we appreciate your
comments.
STATEMENTS OF ANDREW SELEE, PH.D., DIRECTOR, WOODROW WILSON
CENTER MEXICO INSTITUTE; MICHAEL A. BRAUN, MANAGING PARTNER,
SPECTRE GROUP INTERNATIONAL, LLC, AND FORMER ASSISTANT
ADMINISTRATOR/CHIEF OF OPERATIONS, DRUG ENFORCEMENT
ADMINISTRATION; JONATHAN PATON, MEMBER, ARIZONA STATE SENATE;
AND TOM DIAZ, SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, VIOLENCE POLICY CENTER,
AND AUTHOR, MAKING A KILLING: THE BUSINESS OF GUNS IN AMERICA
STATEMENT OF ANDREW SELEE
Dr. Selee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to
testify before this subcommittee. And thank you also for
choosing a subject that is both timely and an approach that I
think is very constructive. And let me also, if I can,
recognize the ranking member as someone who has taken a
courageous stand on a number of issues including immigration,
which you referenced in your remarks as well.
The issue of organized crime tied to drug trafficking in
Mexico is timely. We have seen in the past year over 6,000
deaths tied to drug trafficking in Mexico. This is something
that grabs headlines. It is something that is raising concerns
on both sides of the border. Granted, much of the killing is
going on in three cities in Mexico. A majority of killings are
going on and a majority of the killings are taking place among
people involved in drug gangs.
But the deeper issue that is going on is the presence of
organized crime undermining rule of law in Mexico. And that is
something that is very hard for a democratic society to
tolerate. It is something that is of great concern to Mexicans.
The Mexican Government has accurately defined this as the
country's greatest threat, and they have taken a valiant stance
against organized crime while also trying to strengthen police
and judicial institutions in Mexico. And I would argue that is
probably the longest term challenge in Mexico, is creating
judicial institutions and police forces that will really have
credibility with citizens.
This issue is particularly constructive the way that it has
been designed by this committee and by the chairman because
Mexico matters to the United States. And this issue,
particularly, in Mexico matters to the United States not just
because Mexico is our neighbor, which we have talked about.
There is no question when something happens of this
magnitude in a neighboring country, clearly it is important. We
have a 2,000 mile border together. It is not merely important
because Mexico is a strategic partner in the hemisphere, which
they are. It is our second largest market for exports. It is a
partner in a number of endeavors that we have around the world.
But it matters also because this is an issue where we are
deeply implicated, in which we are both deeply involved.
Organized crime does not know boundaries. Drug trafficking
is an issue that is bi-national and, indeed, multi-national.
Drug trafficking organizations in Mexico are nurtured by the
appetite for narcotics on this side of the border, as the
chairman has noted. U.S. drug sales account for as much as $10
billion to $25 billion each year that is sent back to Mexico to
fuel violence and to support the cartels. Some of these
proceeds are additionally used to buy weapons for drug
trafficking organizations, usually in U.S. gun shows and gun
shops.
And so when we see the violence across the border and its
deeper consequences for democracy and rule of law in Mexico,
one of the things we need to recognize is that our country
houses those who knowingly and many times unknowingly finance
and equip organized crime organizations that are behind it. And
that means we also hold the key to at least part of the
solution for this problem. Clearly much of the work needs to be
done in Mexico, but clearly we are implicated as well. And
there is much we can do to be supportive, and that we should be
doing.
Fortunately, law enforcement cooperation between the
governments of the United States and Mexico has increased
significantly in recent years. We are now able to track and
apprehend some of the worst criminals involved in the drug
trade as they move from one country to another, and to share
timely intelligence that helps disrupt the operations of drug
trafficking organizations.
This was not necessarily true 10 years ago. There is a
degree of cooperation that I think we would not have been
talking about if we had this discussion 10 years ago. The
approval by Congress of the Merida Initiative last year has
further deepened this cooperation by strengthening contacts and
building trust between the governments to address this common
threat together.
However, the most important efforts that the U.S.
Government could take to undermine the reach and violence of
these drug trafficking organizations need to be taken on this
side of the border. And I want to underscore that. Though there
is much we can do--the Merida Initiative is important; there is
much we can do to help Mexico--the ways we can be most helpful
are things we can do here that we will be talking about on this
panel. There are three sets of actions that we could pursue
more energetically that would be especially vital to
undermining the cartels. And they are all things that we are
doing now, but that we could be doing slightly differently and
much more energetically.
All of these actions are in our national security interests
because they will help stabilize the situation in Mexico and
prevent any spillover into the United States. But they are also
good domestic policy because they would make our communities in
the United States safer and more secure.
And I want to make reference to three things that come out
of this report. The chairman has already referenced it, ``The
United States and Mexico: Toward a Strategic Partnership.'' We
put it together with 100 specialists from the United States and
Mexico over the past year. And so these ideas as much belong to
other people as to me, but I will try and represent them here,
the three points.
First, we can do a lot more to reduce the consumption of
drugs in the United States. Demand for narcotics in this
country is what drives the drug trade elsewhere in the
hemisphere, including Mexico. There is no magic bullet to do
this. I mean, as much as we can say this, there is not a single
strategy that is effective in doing this alone.
And I also do not claim to be an expert on prevention and
treatment of addictions. Other people know this better than I
do. However, even a cursory look at recent Federal expenditures
on narcotics show that we have increasingly emphasized supply
reduction/interdiction while scaling down our commitment to
lowering the consumption in the United States.
Available research suggests that investing in the treatment
of drug addictions may actually be the most cost-effective way
to drive down the profits that drug trafficking organizations
get from their business by reducing the potential market. I
think it is positive to hear that the new director-designate of
ONDCP is also thinking along these lines, also talking about
things like alternative sentencing for first time nonviolent
offenders. These are the kinds of things that should be on the
table for discussion.
And although many drug prevention programs have marginal
effects on usage--which, to be honest, a lot of the things that
have been tried in the past to keep people out of drugs have
not always worked as well as they should--there is a lot that
we can learn from very successful campaigns recently against
tobacco use, which have been very effective. And it suggests
that this is a good time to take that knowledge and invest it
actively in prevention once again.
We cannot eliminate drug use or addictions. But it is worth
making a concerted effort to drive down demand, not only for
public health reasons, which would be enough, of course, but
also because it hurts the bottom line of criminal
organizations.
Second, we can do much more to disrupt the $10 billion to
$25 billion that flow from drug sales in U.S. cities back to
drug trafficking organizations in Mexico and fuel the violence
that we are seeing. The Treasury and Justice Departments have
done a great job of making it difficult to launder money in
financial institutions.
However, the drug trafficking organizations have now turned
to shipments of bulk cash, which have become the preferred way
of getting their profits back across the border. Currently, no
single agency is fully tasked with following the money trail in
the way the agencies are tasked with pursuing the drugs
themselves. CBP, ICE, DEA, FBI, Treasury, and local law
enforcement are all part of this effort currently but are all
primarily tasked with other responsibilities.
It is worth noting that it is both impractical and
undesirable to try to stop this flow only at the border,
something the ranking member will appreciate. Massive sweeps of
cars exiting the United States for Mexico would disrupt the
economic linkages between the border cities and probably yield
few gains since much of the cash is divided up and taken across
the border in small amounts.
The real challenge is developing intelligence capabilities
to detect the flow of money as it is transported from one point
to another in the United States as cash or when it enters
financial institutions as money transfers, foreign exchange
purchases, and bank deposits. We are much better at the second
than at the first. There are recent experiences in pursuing
terrorist financing that may be useful models for similar
efforts to pursue the finances of drug traffickers.
And third and finally, we can do much more to limit the
flow of high caliber weapons from the United States to Mexico.
And you will hear from Tom Diaz on this much more eloquently
than I can say it. But most of the high caliber weapons,
probably more than 90 percent, that are used by drug
trafficking organizations are purchased in the United States
and exported illegally to Mexico.
The first thing that is vital to do is to increase the
number of ATF inspectors at the border and to strengthen
cooperation with other law enforcement agencies which often
have relevant intelligence on this. The current prosecution by
Arizona's attorney general of a gun dealer who is knowingly
selling arms to drug trafficking organizations is a powerful
precedent, but it is only a first step. It shows the State of
Arizona is taking this very seriously, but clearly this is
something that needs a range of agencies to be supporting the
AFT and local law enforcement.
The Obama administration could also limit criminals' access
to inexpensive assault weapons by restricting importation to
the United States of some of the high caliber guns currently
favored by traffickers, which has driven down their price in
the market. There is much we can do to limit the access that
criminals' now have to high powered weapons without violating
the spirit of the second amendment or harming legitimate
interests of American hunters and gun enthusiasts.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. Mr. Selee, I am going to stop you
there only because I know the rest is just a windup.
Dr. Selee. Yes, exactly.
Mr. Tierney. And I hope you are aware that I appreciate
that.
Dr. Selee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Selee follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. And thank you for your comments.
We are going to go, if we can, to Mr. Braun. And you are
recognized, sir.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL A. BRAUN
Mr. Braun. Good morning Chairman Tierney, Ranking Member
Flake, other distinguished Members and staff. It is an honor
for me to be here this morning.
Although I entered the private sector on November 1st, I
spent 34 years in law enforcement, the last four of which were
as the Chief of Operations with DEA. As you know, DEA, ICE, FBI
have a lot of folks that are serving, a lot of employees that
are serving in Mexico, working shoulder to shoulder with our
counterparts.
And I lost a lot of sleep over the last 3 or 4 years as the
violence began to unfold and escalate throughout Mexico. And I
appreciate your interest in this subject. What I hope to do
today is answer three questions: What is really going on in
Mexico? What is causing it and what is behind it? And then
finally, and I think most importantly, can Mexico win?
What is going on? There is a real drug war playing out in
Mexico. You mentioned some of the numbers earlier. They are
appalling--over 6,000 homicides this past year. 530 law
enforcement officers, Mexican law enforcement officers, were
murdered in the line of duty in Mexico last year. 493 of those
were drug related homicides. For God's sakes, over 200
beheadings, many of those with messages attached--messages,
notes scribbled on paper stuffed in the mouths of those victims
or carved in the foreheads--basically warning police that they
needed to show more respect to the traffickers.
But what is really behind it? The cartels responsible in
Mexico for this violence were finally swept up in the perfect
storm beginning about 4 years ago. They began, which is not
untypical, it has happened many times in the past, but there
were some turf wars that flared up in various regions
throughout the country as they began fighting and vying for
lucrative plazas or lanes across our southwest border.
About 2 years ago, shortly after President Calderon took
office, he initiated his campaign to break the backs of the
cartels. I believe that not long after he took office, or
possibly even before, he and his advisors, security advisors,
determined very quickly that if they didn't take on the cartels
in a meaningful way, they were going to lose control of the
country, that the country was literally spiraling out of
control.
So that added even more pressure to the traffickers. They
are fighting amongst themselves. Now they have the government
on their backs and the government is relentless taking the
fight to them in a large way with over 45,000 military troops
supplementing the ranks of Federal law enforcement, local and
State law enforcement. It is a real fight going on.
About 5 years ago, DEA initiated what we refer to as the
Financial Attack Strategy. We began reverse engineering every
one of our cases. We did well for many years following the
drugs, but we mandated that agents reverse engineer every one
of their cases and begin following the money to tremendous
benefits. In 2007, I don't have the 2008 figures for you, but
in 2007 the DEA seized about $500 million in cash that was
destined for the southwest border. Of over $900 million cash
seized globally that year, much of it was tied to Mexican drug
trafficking organizations, adding more pressure on these
cartels.
Another strategy that was employed almost simultaneously
was the Drug Flow Attack Strategy, working very closely with
Admiral Jim Stavridis at SOUTHCOM, Vice Admiral Joe Nimmich at
JIATF/South. We started attacking the soft underbelly of the
transportation infrastructure within these organizations and
brought every possible piece of equipment to bear against these
groups as they moved their drugs north. Consequently, enormous
amounts of drugs have been seized over the last 3 years behind
that strategy. So when you add that revenue denied in, now we
are up to somewhere between $3.5 billion to $4 billion that we
are denying these guys.
All of this has caused the Mexican cartels to incur a great
deal of debt with the Colombian cartels that are providing all
of the cocaine to them that they are now responsible for
trafficking into the United States. And the Colombian cartels
basically over the past year have denied time and time again
drugs on consignment. They are now demanding money. The bottom
line is the cartels in Mexico have never experienced this level
of persistent, sustained pressure. It is well into its 4th year
now and really, in a meaningful way, the last 2 years.
So the question is can Mexico win? There is no doubt Mexico
can win. And I use Colombia as an example thanks to you and
your colleagues through sufficient funding to Colombia. You
know, Colombia just a few years ago was facing the same levels
of violence in that country that Mexico is facing today. With
funding from the United States and expert advisors that are
working with our Colombian counterparts, they have turned the
tide. If you look at what has happened to Colombia in the last
3 years, their numbers of all their indexed violent crimes have
plummeted: their kidnappings for ransom, their homicides, their
home invasions, their armed robberies. It is a success story.
There is still a great deal of drugs flowing out of
Colombia. Quite frankly, it hasn't slowed down one single bit.
But the truth of the matter is, in Colombia, the government now
has solid control of that country. And I am convinced that the
Mexicans can experience the same thing if they don't throw in
the towel, if they hang in and continue to fight.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Braun follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Braun. Senator Paton.
STATEMENT OF JONATHAN PATON
Mr. Paton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee. I want to thank you for inviting me today and a
special thanks to Congressman Flake for having me come here
today.
Besides being in the State Senate, I am also the chairman
of the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee. I represent the
Tucson sector, which is considered to be the most trafficked
portion of the border with Mexico. I represent that I-19
corridor in east Tucson, Green Valley, and Sierra Vista.
When Congress began sending us more Border Patrol agents
and customs officers to Arizona, it helped slow some of the
illegal immigration activity. But unwittingly, however, it also
created a backlog of Federal immigration cases. Those
immigration cases quadrupled. And what that means is that ATF,
which has been diligently investigating gun related crimes
which are already on the books such as straw purchases and gun
smuggling into Mexico, has been unable to bring many of those
cases forward.
The U.S. Attorney's Office is swamped with misdemeanor
immigration cases. And there are not enough prosecutors,
judges, agents, and jails to handle what is coming before them
already. How can we expect them to handle new laws? The bottom
line is, in the words of a Federal agent that I spoke to this
past week in Arizona, the U.S. Federal court system in Arizona
is crumbling. And new laws will hasten that process, not help
it.
The solution? Give us more agents, more prosecutors, more
jail cells, public defenders. In short, give us the
infrastructure to handle the problem. The laws on the books can
be investigated and prosecuted. We can go after gun related
crimes now that are seriously impacting Mexico's gun problem.
Besides the fact that the actions being taken by gun smugglers
are already illegal, many of the weapons themselves are illegal
as well.
I wasn't able to bring my own prop today because I couldn't
make it through the airport with it. But had I done so, I would
have brought grenades that were produced in South Korea; I
would have brought AK-47s; I would have brought M-16s. These
are weapons, ammunitions that are already illegal in the United
States that are being smuggled into Mexico from outside of
Mexico.
Mexico's gun problem is primarily a Mexican border security
problem. Let me describe to you the process to get into the
United States from Mexico. You go through a long line at the
port of entry in Nogales. You wait in that line. Finally a
customs official meets you. He talks to you, looks at your car,
looks at the sides of the vehicle, etc. Finally, you get
through. You go all the way through that checkpoint and 20
miles up the road at I-19 you have to go through another border
checkpoint with the Border Patrol.
In order to get into Mexico, I go down to Nogales, I park
at a McDonald's, and I walk through a turnstile. Essentially,
we have an entire border security infrastructure on our side of
the border and they have the same technology that you would use
to get in to see your local movie at your movie theater. Mexico
needs to have their own similar infrastructure that mirrors the
United States as much as possible.
And the reason I bring this up is that the smuggling
problem in the United States, our people smuggling problem, is
their gun smuggling problem. The same people that are bringing
people and drugs into the United States are the same ones that
are bringing cash and guns into Mexico. This ultimately means
that we need to focus on our own border security problems not
only to guard against those entering the United States
illegally, but to interdict those going into Mexico. As long as
traffickers can move freely into the United States, they can
easily go back into Mexico as well.
To show how interrelated this problem is, I just want to
refer to the auto theft problem in Arizona as a perfect
example. Auto theft in Arizona is one of the biggest per capita
crimes for auto theft in the United States. We are finding that
a lot of these cars were going south of the border into Mexico,
so much so that the attorney general in Sonora called our
attorney general and said, you know, we've got all these cars
littering our roadsides that are abandoned from the United
States, from your State. We'd like to get records on them to
repatriate them back to the United States.
And the reason why is that the Mexicans would steal the
cars in the United States, they would use them to haul drugs or
haul cash and guns into Mexico. They didn't do this because
they liked the American cars. They used them simply as
transport for their own smuggling operations back into Mexico,
whereupon they would simply leave them there.
If you want to know what we can do, we can increase the
license plate readers on I-19 that go into Mexico, as an
example. When they did that, they found that a lot of these
cars were stolen. They were able to stop them at the border and
when they looked at the cars, they found money and they found
guns inside those cars. The other thing we can do is look at
comprehensive immigration reform as has been advocated by
Congressman Flake, which will allow us to focus on the real
problem at hand, which is the smugglers and not the people that
are trying to find gainful employment in the United States.
I sit on the Counsel of State Governments Border
Legislative Conference and I recently returned from Tampico,
Tamaulipas Mexico last weekend. The Mexican Government is
undergoing a complete and total transformation of their
judicial system. They are going from their present system into
an adversarial system of justice like we have in the United
States with a prosecution and a defense. And this means that
they will be following the rules of evidence and criminal
procedure.
And as they do that, they will need corresponding crime
labs, ballistics tests, etc., that we use in the United States.
The United States is uniquely situated to train emerging
leaders in Mexico's nascent justice system on forensic science.
These efforts will pay off not only in terms of giving the
Mexicans the ability to go after gun traffickers in their own
country, but more importantly, it will give us access to those
data bases and intelligence of who these people are that we can
use.
Criminal cartels do not respect borders. They simply use
these borders as a sanctuary from one government over the
other. And they game that system in order to continue their
trade. I want to close by telling you this story. I recently
had a chance to visit a drop house in Phoenix. And you will
notice that it is a drop house in the neighborhood simply
because it is the only place on the block that has razor wire
around the perimeter of the fence. Having visited one, I would
have to say that it is the modern, land-borne equivalent to a
slave ship. Forty people are shackled in a room big enough to
be a child's bed chamber. They sit naked on the floor so they
can't run away. The room next door is a room used to torture
and rape Mexican citizens to extort more money from them.
This is not a drop house problem, however, it is not a drug
problem and it is not a gun problem. It a fundamentally a
border security problem. Both America and Mexico must secure
the southern border. And to do that, we need to enforce our
existing gun and immigration laws. We need to provide a
workable guest worker program. We need to give our law
enforcement the resources to effectively prosecute existing gun
laws. Finally, we need to help Mexico develop a criminal
justice system that follows the rule of law.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Senator.
Mr. Diaz.
STATEMENT OF TOM DIAZ
Mr. Diaz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and other members of the
committee for allowing me to present the views of the Violence
Policy Center, which is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group working
to reduce the effects of gun violence in America. The hearing
today posed the question, Money, Guns, and Drugs: Are U.S.
Inputs Fueling Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border? And I think
the testimony of the witnesses who preceded me indicate that
the short answer to that question is yes.
Firearms from the U.S. civilian gun market are fueling
violence on both sides of our border with Mexico. If one wanted
to design a system to pour military-style guns into criminal
hands, it would be hard to find a better one than the U.S.
civilian gun market. The only better way would be openly
selling guns to criminals from the loading docks of
manufacturers and importers.
The U.S. gun market doesn't just make gun trafficking in
military-style weapons to drug cartels and their criminal
associates, including criminal street gangs in the United
States, it doesn't just make trafficking in military-style
weapons to them easy. It practically compels that traffic. Lax
regulation of the U.S. gun market and the gun industry's
ruthless design choices fit like gloves on the bloody hands of
the drug lords and their criminal gang associates.
The results are beyond debate. In February 2008, ATF
Assistant Director William J. Hoover told another subcommittee,
the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee in the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, and I am quoting excerpts from his
testimony, ``Mexican drug trafficking organizations have
aggressively turned to the U.S. as a source of firearms. The
weapons sought by drug trafficking organizations have become
increasingly higher quality and more powerful. These include
the Barrett .50 caliber rifle, the Colt AR-15 assault rifle,
the AK-47 assault rifle and its variants, and the FN 5.57
caliber millimeter pistols known better in Mexico as the `mata
policia' or the `cop killer'.''
It is not a coincidence that gun smugglers come to the
United States for these military-style weapons. Guns like these
are so easily available in such quantity that today they
actually define the civilian gun market in America.
I would like to talk a little bit about regulation. The gun
lobby and its advocates often say that the gun industry is
heavily regulated. In fact, the gun industry in the United
States is lightly regulated. The most important Federal burdens
on the gun industry are exercises in mere paper oversight, pro
forma licensing, and rare inspections.
Most States do not regulate dealers at all. The few that do
rarely conduct regular inspections. In fact, ATF rarely
conducts regular inspections. Gun sales themselves are subject
only to the cursory background check under the Federal Brady
Law. And that is only required when the sale is made through a
federally licensed gun dealer. We know, however, that 40
percent of all gun transfers in the United States, 40 percent,
are made through what is known as the informal market. That is
not through a federally licensed dealers, over the back fence,
through the newspaper.
The major weakness of the U.S. effort against gun
trafficking is its total reliance on after the fact law
enforcement action. If, as some claim, traffickers indeed use a
stream of ants to move guns to Mexico, it would seem to be more
effective to make it more difficult for the ants to get the
guns in the first place. That means looking upstream. And if we
are going to have a broad discussion of ideas, that is an idea
we suggest. Look upstream to the gun industry to find ways to
keep guns out of the hands of traffickers and their agents
before they break the law.
Now I have made reference to the military-style designs
that today define the gun industry, the American civilian gun
industry. The U.S. gun industry has been in serious economic
trouble for decades. We at the Violence Policy Center have
written about that at length and I wrote the book, ``Making a
Killing,'' about it. As the gun business publication,
``Shooting Industry,'' which is an industry publication put it,
``More and more guns are being purchased by fewer and fewer
consumers. In short, the markets are stagnant.''
The industry's principal way to jolt its weak markets has
been to heavily push increasingly lethal gun designs to hook
jaded gun buyers into coming back again to purchase something
that is essentially utilitarian and never wears out. Because of
these design and marketing decisions, the gun industry today is
defined by military-style weaponry. Another industry
publication, The New Firearms Business, wrote recently, ``The
sole bright spot in the industry right now is the tactical end
of the market where AR and AK pattern rifles and high tech
designs are in incredibly high demand.''
Now one effective thing that could be done today without
legislation, without new gun laws would be for President Obama
and Attorney General Eric Holder to direct the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to strictly enforce its existing
statutory authority to exclude from importation all semi-
automatic assault rifles as non-sporting weapons pursuant to 18
U.S.C. 925(d)(3). That is a provision of the 1968 Gun Control
Act. It has been on the book for 40 years.
I might point out that President George Herbert Walker Bush
was the first president to use that provision to restrict the
import of certain types of assault weapons and that President
Clinton expanded that approach during his term. The latter
President Bush, George W. Bush, under his administration, the
ATF has apparently weakened this to allow the import of
firearms like the type on page 2 of my submitted statement:
semi-automatic rifles and assault rifles seized in a gun
smuggling case by ICE or from Romanian imports known as WASRs.
This strict approach would stop the flow of assault weapons
from countries like Romania. Many of those weapons move into
criminal hands in the United States--the same WASR-type gun has
been used to kill U.S. law enforcement in Miami and elsewhere--
and then across the border to Mexican cartels. This restriction
could also be applied to other dangerous non-sporting firearms
such as the FN 5.7 handgun, the 5.7 millimeter handgun
specifically designed in Europe for use by counter-terror units
against terrorists wearing body armor, now freely marketed in
the United States and known in Mexico as a ``mata policia'' or
the ``cop killer.''
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am happy to answer any
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Diaz follows:]
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Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Diaz. Thanks to all of the
witnesses for your testimony.
We are going to now engage in the question and answer
period, about 5 minutes per Member. And we will do as many
rounds as we can all tolerate and you have time for as
witnesses.
On that, let me begin by asking about the money on this
because I think Mr. Braun mentioned follow the money. As a way
that people generally think of this, $8 billion to $25 billion
of bulk money traveling, I suspect, throughout the United
States first before it then goes over to fuel this situation.
When many of us think of money laundering, we think of
electronic wires and of a lot of work that Senator Kerry and
others did years ago about the banking system. And I hear what
you are telling us today is that now, to counteract all of the
advances made there, they are just going back to cold cash and
trying to bring that over.
So I have a number of questions. One is are they doing that
in much the same way as people say they are carrying the guns
over, an army of ants a little bit at a time, or are they
bringing it over in huge truckloads? Mr. Braun.
Mr. Braun. It will be a bunch of smugglers here on both
sides of the border. There are Mexican money laundering or
financial cells that collect remittances from distribution
cells all over the United States. They oftentimes cache that
money in places like Atlanta, Chicago, hubs where they pull
that money into. They will repackage it, conceal it in
vehicles, in vans, in automobiles.
Sometimes they won't conceal it at all. Sometimes they will
simply stuff duffel bags full of money and send it south toward
the border. Oftentimes, though, that money, once it reaches the
southwest border of the United States in places like El Paso
and Del Rio and places in Arizona, all along the southwest
border, oftentimes it will be cached in homes, safe houses, for
the final count before it is moved across the border.
But as the Chief of Operations with DEA, just to kind of
put this into perfect perspective, every morning I started with
an 8:30 command meeting in our command center and was briefed
on what had taken place during the previous 24 hours. There was
never a week in the 4-years that I served as Chief of
Operations that I can remember when there were not a number of
million dollar, multi-million dollar cash seizures throughout
the United States. DEA, ICE, and FBI just took down Operation
Accelerator. You probably heard about it a few weeks ago. Over
$63 million, mostly in cash, was seized in that investigation.
One thing that I would like to mention is that many of the
seizures that are made are generated by judicial wiretaps that
DEA is conducting across the United States involving tremendous
forms of evidence gathering ability as well as intelligence
gathering. But Federal law enforcement is struggling with what
I believe to be some antiquated legislation and policies that
deal with Federal law enforcement's ability to conduct judicial
wiretaps. I am not talking about the FBI FISA-type stuff. But
with the ever-emerging technologies, the FBI, DEA, we are
having a tough time keeping up with all of this and staying up
on the phones that we need to be on.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. We will explore that further when
we have the administration witnesses in as to what we might do
with regard to that. But Mr. Selee was suggesting about this
upstream activity that we had to improve the capabilities and
intelligence on matters on the law enforcement side.
But you also mentioned, Mr. Selee, that right now the
Border Patrol, ICE, Drug Enforcement Agency, FBI, and Treasury
all have a piece of this action. Your recommendation was that
somebody be put in charge, somebody be tasked with actually
coordinating all of that. Who would you or Mr. Braun recommend
be that person or that agency? Is there a preference there or
does it just matter somebody do it?
Mr. Braun. I agree with Mr. Selee that we most definitely
need to continue to follow the cash. The problem, and we may
not differ because we whispered back and forth a few minutes
ago and I think I may have turned Mr. Selee around. I'm not
sure.
But here is what interests me or what concerns me about
putting one agency in charge of conducting kind of the
financial investigative aspect of global drug trafficking. We
would never think of separating the FBI's global war on
terrorism responsibility. We would never think for a minute of
separating the financial aspect and taking that away from the
FBI and having them only focus on terrorism. So why in God's
name would we consider doing that with respect to global drug
trafficking?
Mr. Tierney. I guess I was misreading it there, because I
didn't read it as a recommendation that it be separated and
given to one but only that one be put in charge of coordinating
it.
Mr. Braun. Oh, OK.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Selee, did I read it wrong?
Dr. Selee. No, no that was the point. And I think it is
more a question of coordination. I mean, clearly DEA is the
lead in most things that involve drug trafficking other than
when you get into money laundering where Treasury gets highly
involved.
But the question is more of coordination. And this is the
kind of thing that lends itself very well, I think, to, first
of all, incentives. I mean, to what extent is the
administration concerned about this as a key element in sending
that message to key agencies.
But second, what are the interagency mechanisms that allow
intelligence to be shared? CBP knows a piece of this. I mean,
there clearly is a border, as Mr. Jonathan Paton has pointed
out, there clearly is a question of border security here. CBP
clearly plays a role there. ICE plays a role in this as well.
DEA is perhaps the lead. FBI quite often knows pieces of this
as well. Part of the question is how do we get these agencies
talking to each other about this.
Mr. Tierney. Right, and who would you think, what agency do
you think would be the appropriate one to take the lead on
that?
Dr. Selee. I think it is a good question to ask the
administration. My sense is that DEA is the lead on this, de
facto, and they probably should keep that. But I think that is
a good question to ask the administration.
Mr. Tierney. My time is expired. I yield 5 minutes to Mr.
Flake.
Mr. Flake. I thank the gentlemen; I thank the witnesses.
Mr. Selee, you mentioned three things: consumption of
drugs, flow of money, and limit weapons coming into the United
States to be exported to Mexico. You mentioned them one, two,
three. Is that the order of importance you think they are in
terms combating what we are seeing there? Would you rank them
for me, for us?
Dr. Selee. Congressman, I would actually, I would
personally rank them that way. I am not sure if other
colleagues who participated in our report would have the same
ranking. And let me tell you why I would rank them that way.
Consumption, from what we know from academic studies,
reducing consumption is probably the most cost-effective way of
reducing the overall market, disrupting the activities of drug
cartels. We have the greatest bang for the buck. So I would
start there as a key area. That said, nothing that we do,
whether it is prevention programs or treatment programs, is
going to reduce the market more than a percentage. I have heard
people talk about 10 percent; I have heard 25 percent. But
clearly it is not a solution in and of itself.
Second, I think interrupting the money flow is perhaps the
most global, we are talking about cartels. Let us just put this
in perspective--$15 billion to $25 billion. And no one knows
the exact amount. But these are numbers we put together sort of
talking to a number of agencies, $10 billion to $25 billion.
The Mexican Government's budget for security, for organized
crime, is about $3.9 billion a year. About $7 billion if you
look at the global budget for law enforcement at the Federal
level in Mexico. This is a huge number.
So disrupting that, and again, you are never going to
disrupt more than a percentage of the money flow. But beginning
to disrupt that is a key element of at least leveling the
playing field here.
And the third is the arms. And I agree there is a border,
Mexico can do much more on their side with the arms. But in the
same way that we have always expected Mexico to step up with
drug traffickers that are trying to get drugs into this country
on their side of the border, I think they have a legitimate
right to look at us and say, you know, we should be doing our
part on our side to make sure those arms are not getting
exported. Clearly they have a responsibility at the border but
we should do our part as well. And we don't want them turning
around and saying, hey, the drugs are your problem. You are
letting them, they are getting by the border.
Mr. Flake. Thank you. Mr. Paton, I appreciate your
testimony. What I mentioned in my opening statement was that
there are a lot of other things that we need to consider. And
you raised some of those in terms of numbers or the burdens
that are already there in terms of what our U.S. attorneys have
to deal with. I will ask you kind of the same question that I
asked Mr. Selee. Those items that you listed--ensuring that we
enforce our laws in terms of those entering Mexico, burdens on
U.S. attorneys, and the other issues--how would you rank them
for us? I mean, it is our responsibility to allocate money and
resources because, as we all know and Arizona is painfully
aware, the border, most of the issues dealing with the border
are Federal issues. And so what can we do here? What is most
important in your view?
Mr. Paton. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Flake, I think that
really the biggest thing that we can do as I said before, my
No. 1 ranking, I guess, would be that we should focus on the
infrastructure that goes along with the border interdictions.
And I mean the prosecutors, the judges, the defense attorneys,
that entire infrastructure that was left out when we added more
Border Patrol agents. We have existing laws. We have straw
purchase laws. It is illegal to export guns that are illegal in
Mexico into Mexico. We have those things put in place. We
simply don't have the ability to prosecute and jail those
offenders because of all these other things. That would be the
first thing.
I would also want to say that locally, because we have been
waiting for the Federal Government to act, we have been trying
to take matters into our own hands. And we have found that the
Department of Public Safety works quite well, our State level
police work quite well with ATF and other agencies. And the
more that we empower them to do some of these things, that is
another set of resources that we can utilize that won't cost
the Federal Government really that much more. We are trying to
do that already.
In our Senate Judiciary Committee, I am working with
different groups to try to help enforce some of these existing
gun laws. And I think that, first of all, is something we need
to take care of before we do anything else.
Mr. Flake. Thank you. Mr. Diaz, you talked about the
importance of new gun laws, I guess, or new classes of weapons
to make illegal. What about the argument that Mr. Paton puts
forward that we have difficulty with the resources and the
funding and everything to enforce current laws on the books?
Wouldn't it be more difficult to outlaw another class of
weapons? Would that help at all?
Mr. Diaz. Thank you for the question, Mr. Flake.
First, with respect to enforcing existing laws, I think the
record demonstrates that is not enough. We are talking about a
comprehensive solution. For example, the straw purchaser law,
the Federal law--and I know Mr. Paton believes or at least has
said publicly that maybe there should be also a State law which
is a new gun law in the State itself--the straw purchaser law
even in its best circumstances--if we said everybody obeyed the
straw purchaser law just as if we would hope everybody would
obey the laws against consuming illegal drugs, let us assume
that happened--that still leaves a very broad range of venues
where firearms can be legally purchased without even worrying
about straw purchasing.
That is the 40 percent, the informal market I talked about.
That is the gun show problem. That is the sales across the back
fence problem. That is the Internet advertising problem. And
the Internet problem, some would say, well, in the case of an
Internet sale you have to go through a dealer. That is not
necessarily true. In a State as big as Texas, for example, you
could do an in-trust State sale consummated through the
Internet. So I think, yes, we do need a comprehensive approach.
The point I am trying to make today is that there is a
reason drug lords and terrorists want the specific kinds of
firearms that the ATF trace data says they want. There is a
reason they want them. The first reason is they do the job they
want, which is killing police officers and killing each other,
to a large extent.
The second is they are readily available in the United
States. These semi-automatic assault weapons that come from
Romania, the WASRs and so forth, the SKSs, are cheap guns. It
is ideal for their traffic.
So if you are asking me, would I like to see those guns
outlawed, a new class of weapons outlawed, you bet I would. But
what I am suggesting today is there is a way to stop that
traffic. The President could do it, the attorney general could
do it, by asking ATF to do what it has done in the past.
Mr. Flake. Thank you.
Mr. Tierney. Mr. Lynch, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you and
the ranking member focusing on this issue. It is one that has
not in recent times received proper attention. And I want to
thank the panelists as well. You have a great group here.
I have been Googling phrases like, ``mayor assassinated in
Mexico'' or ``police chief assassinated in Mexico.'' The
lawlessness in Mexico, and I realize this hearing is to look at
our side if the border as well, I can't help but compare--I
have spent a fair amount of time in Iraq and Afghanistan, but
especially Iraq--the lawlessness and chaos that was there from
2003 and coming forward, there are some definite parallels
here. And I know Mr. Braun you have had experience there as
well.
It would seem that at least as a threshold matter we need
to have a situation in Mexico where the rule of law, their
legal system allows the local population to have some
confidence that with the proper application of the law the bad
guys can be taken off the street. And I am not so sure, you
know, just seeing the history here, that exists.
And it would seem that at some point we have to have a buy-
in from the local communities there--the towns, villages, and
cities--that they step up and cooperate like the population did
in Iraq in taking the bad guys off the street. They need to
have that confidence. Do we have that on the Mexican side of
the border in any large degree?
Mr. Braun. Right now, I don't believe we do have it. And I
don't believe there is a community in Mexico right now where
the citizens have confidence in their law enforcement and other
security personnel. I think that one of the most important
things that needs to be done with respect to the Merida
Initiative, and the way that I believe a great deal of that
money should be spent, is to focus on building strong, lasting
professional judicial institutions, fully vetted. In a place
like Mexico where corruption has permeated virtually every
level of government, it is the only way that this can be turned
around.
So by fully vetted judicial paradigms, what I am talking
about is, look, you can have the best trained and best vetted
cops that money can buy. But as part of the judicial process,
if one or more prosecutors are corrupt, it all falls apart like
a house of cards. And if you have vetted and trained well your
prosecutors but you have corrupt judges, to take it another
step, corrupt penal institutions, it simply won't work. So you
literally have to start from scratch and build a fully vetted
judicial paradigm in Mexico.
I have talked to Attorney General Medina Mora many times
about this. He is in full agreement. He and Genaro Garcia Luna,
the head of public security who has the largest uniformed
Federal law enforcement agency, they are both in full
agreement. They have started on their agencies and their plan
is to then take it to local and State law enforcement agencies
after they have cleaned up, you know, after they have cleaned
up their own houses.
Mr. Diaz. Can I add a point of fact to that, please? There
is existing through the State Department a very small but real
program to develop exactly what you are talking about. And it
is operating in Mexico. It operated in Colombia and I believe
it actually operated in Sicily with the several different mafia
factions. And it is specifically to build community support for
rule of law.
I don't want to go on with the details. But this program
does exist. You can find it through AID; they would be happy to
put you in contact with specific people doing it. And it may be
an area where more support would make this program work better.
Thank you.
Mr. Lynch. Yeah, it must be pretty nascent. I realize my
time has expired.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much, Mr. Lynch. Mr.
Fortenberry, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Fortenberry. I will yield to Mr. Mica.
Mr. Tierney. Then he will yield back to you.
Mr. Mica. Thank you. I appreciate your yielding, too.
I did have the opportunity to chair from 1998 to 2000 the
Criminal Justice Drug Policy Committee which was eliminated
during the last Congress. Unfortunately, the other side of the
aisle hasn't paid much attention to this issue. I think Mr.
Kucinich was the chair of the subcommittee. I guess it was
Domestic, it got bounced to Domestic Policy. Lack of attention
by this committee is not acceptable. I appreciate the new Chair
starting this. And this should only be the beginning. We need
to haul in Homeland Security, the ICE people, the CIA, and FBI.
One of the last appointments in this administration is a
Drug Czar. And we need a Drug Czar appointed and confirmed. We
need a full court press because our neighbor to the south is
about to lose its sovereignty. When I went down there, I went
under heavy police guard as the chairman, met in Mexico City,
and I gave a speech to some of them. And I said you are losing
your, you are going to lose your damned country. I used that
expression. It was behind closed doors.
I was briefed by the CIA; I was briefed by the FBI and
others before I got there about the level of corruption from
the cop on the street to the president's office. And you hit it
on the head, Mr. Braun. The place has been corrupt and they are
paying for it. You have to have, Mr. Diaz said, the rule of
law.
And we have to provide our friends to the south, our
neighbors--we have millions of incredible Mexican Americans, I
have some in my family--who are just disgusted with what is
going on, and it is not just about guns, you know, and they
have tried to do some things, but we have to provide them the
resources to do this.
Colombia lost control. We put Plan Colombia in and we gave
them the resources. We worked with Pastrana. He sang Kumbaya
and danced around. Uribe came in and was tough. They killed
thousands just like they are killing in Mexico. But we have to
help them regain control with a plan and a policy of that
country. It is totally out of control. It is a slaughterhouse
and it is on our borders and it is spilling into our cities.
So I am hoping this President, Congress--again I applaud
you--but I want another hearing. And I want those people in
that are going to run these programs and a plan to help the
Mexicans regain control of that country.
And it is not just about guns. And I have been with the gun
route folks. I am telling you that the world is, Mexico's
borders are a sieve and if they don't get them from the United
States--and it is not that we don't need enforcement and we
shouldn't have export or transport of weapons laws--but we, you
can't just control it on that.
Part of it is education of people in the United States. Cut
down the demand. The talk of legalization and the people, the
biggest trafficking is still marijuana. Isn't that true, Mr.
Braun?
Mr. Braun. Yes.
Mr. Mica. And the rest of it is transit. They don't produce
any cocaine in Mexico that I know of. But there is an increase
in heroin, Mexican. But that is U.S. market-based. So we have
to have a better education program to stop the demand.
Everybody agrees with that?
[Witnesses respond in the affirmative.]
Mr. Mica. Just ``yes'' for the record instead of a nod.
Dr. Selee. Yes.
Mr. Mica. Well, Mexico is turning into a narco-state. And
we have to have in place zero tolerances. Let me give you an
example about enforcement. If they don't do it in Mexico and we
don't do it, tough enforcement of existing laws and, if we need
it, other laws, what happens? I dare you to go out here to
First and C Streets right near the Metro stop--I think it is
First and C--and jaywalk when Officer Thompson is there.
Have you ever seen Officer Thompson? He will write you a
damned ticket. He will hold you accountable. So nobody when he
is there violates the law. Rudy Giuliani, working with him, New
York City is still a safe venue because of zero tolerance.
So we have to do everything we can to work with the Mexican
officials. They have taken some steps and I applaud them. They
put the military there. And these pigs that would slaughter the
military, I don't know if you read this story about a month
ago--they killed seven of the military and then, they didn't
use a gun, they used a knife to decapitate them, and then they
put their heads in plastic bags, clear plastic bags, and dumped
them in a mall to set an example for others who cooperated what
they would do--these are the lowest scum of the Earth. And they
are killing, they are letting the drugs that come in and kill
our people on our streets. So we have to have a plan.
Mr. Chairman, I request our side will send you a letter
this week----
Mr. Tierney. You were late. If you had been here at the
beginning of the hearing, you would have heard that we have
these things already planned.
Mr. Mica. Again, we need to bring in whoever it takes--but
we don't have any plan--to develop a plan and to follow through
with that plan. I haven't seen the President's budget and his
items, but we will work with him and work with whoever. I
appreciate you all coming in today. And I appreciate again the
chairman beginning the highlighting of this, taking this back
under control. I don't think I remember one single hearing on
this issue during the last 2 years. But it is time we get
engaged. And again I applaud you for doing that and will work
with you. I yield back.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much.
Mr. Fortenberry, now you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing.
Gentlemen, thank you for appearing today. Should National
Guard troops be sent to the border?
Dr. Selee. You know, I think the good thing that is
happening right now is the cooperation between the United
States and Mexico. We are seeing for the first time a real
scaling up of the kind of dialog, and I think the hearing today
is one of the examples, us talking about our responsibilities
on our side. The Mexican Government has in a way that we have
never seen before picked up their responsibilities and said,
this is our issue, not because we want to stop drugs coming to
the United States but because it is a security issue for us.
Sending the National Guard to the border I think sends the
wrong message to Mexico. And I think it would be seen----
Mr. Fortenberry. You said wrong, wrong message?
Dr. Selee. The wrong message. I think it would be seen as
moving against the cooperative spirit that we have right now.
It would probably reduce some of the very productive engagement
we have.
One of the reasons, and this goes to something that Mr.
Braun just said, one of the reasons why you are not seeing the
killings going on in the U.S. side of the border is that
Mexican cartels knows that they have very little chance of
being thrown in jail for what happens on the Mexican side. The
long term solution to this is creating a judicial system and
police forces, critically at a State and local level, that are
capable of making sure that the traffickers have the same
concerns on the Mexican side, that they are as careful as they
are on this side about not getting on, not doing anything that
calls the attention of the authorities.
But in the short term, we have a government in Mexico right
now which is trying to do the right thing, which is working
very closely with the U.S. Government. And I would say this
cuts across party lines in Mexico. I mean, this is something
that Mexicans have decided is a critical issue. This is
President Calderon but it is also a variety of parties. And
anything that we do that is unilateral, seen as a unilateral
step, is likely to undermine that.
And if I could just say something on general situation in
Mexico--I spent a lot of time in Mexico--it is worth saying the
country is not exactly in flames. I mean, there are three
cities that really are in a very serious problem. Most places
you are not worried about being killed when you walk out on the
street. That said, you are worried about the fact that if
something happens to you, you don't necessarily have police
forces or a judicial system that is going to back you up, that
you trust.
And that for a democracy--and Mexico has, you know, 9 years
as a democracy--is a critical question. And the question of
whether this succeeds is a question of whether you build those
institutions. The Mexican Government is trying to do it. There
is judicial reform. There is police reform. There are some real
efforts here. But it is the kind of thing we need to get
involved in and do what we can do on our side as well.
Mr. Paton. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, I would say yes and
no. We have had the National Guard on our border in Arizona. We
had some Guard units from Utah and elsewhere that were there.
They serve in an auxiliary capacity; they assisted the Border
Patrol. And I think they were very effective in doing what they
did. I don't think it is a good idea to have U.S. soldiers
patrolling with M-16s and the rest. We need them elsewhere. And
as a soldier myself in the Army Reserve, I can tell you that
many of those units are already deployed somewhere else. But we
can certainly use them in an auxiliary capacity and we have
done that effectively. And I think that it has affected our
State dramatically when those Guard troops were pulled.
Mr. Fortenberry. Maybe the question is a little too broad.
And going back to what you said, Mr. Selee, and combined with
what you are saying, Senator, there are three significant areas
of difficulty as you pointed out. Backup capacity until some of
the ideas that you are discussing today, using the National
Guard as backup capacity until sufficient local resources,
national resources are augmented to bring the trouble spots
under control, is that, perhaps, a better way to think through
preventing an emergency-type crisis that would spill over into
the United States?
Mr. Paton. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, I would say that it
would be effective to have them in an auxiliary capacity. But
the other problem, like I have said before, is they are going
to be catching people as they go through. They are going to be
stopping shipments of drugs and the like as they go through.
The problem is, once again, that infrastructure that goes along
with it of prosecuting, convicting, jailing the offenders.
Mr. Fortenberry. All right, well, let us move to that
question because that is the second part of my question. What
are the common sense, simple initiatives--and, Mr. Braun, you
can answer both of these if you like--that can be implemented
quickly and would have the most impact that are not currently
being implemented? You made reference to one, how we don't scan
license plates to see if they are stolen vehicles or not. Now,
that would be, in my mind, at least a very simple thing to
implement quickly and be a part of a broader book, one chapter
of a broad book of solutions.
Mr. Paton. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, I would say that in
that process, there has to be better coordination between those
license plate readers and Customs officials at the border and
the Border Patrol officials. A lot of times, they are going
down I-19, they scan them but they don't have enough lead time
to let them know to catch the bad guys as they go through. I
think, though, that is the right idea.
And I think if was tried massively, the whole point is that
we should be paying as much attention to people leaving the
country as we are paying attention to people entering the
country. Because they are largely the same people. And we, when
we interdict them leaving, we are also finding that they have,
they pop up on our system for drug smuggling, other offenses,
murders, rapes, etc. We can catch them then. And a lot of them
are skips. They have committed crimes in the United States, and
they are fleeing the country to evade crime or prosecution.
Mr. Fortenberry. Mr. Chairman, has my time expired?
Mr. Tierney. It has expired, but we are going to do another
round.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you.
Mr. Tierney. And it won't be very long before we get to you
again.
Mr. Burton, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Burton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't know how many
hearings I have been to in my political career about this
issue. I would imagine 100, 150.
Mr. Tierney. And yet you come again. This is wonderful.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Burton. Yes, I come again because, you know, because I
really would like to find an answer. And when you take an 18 or
19 year old kid and he is driving a brand new Corvette with a
gold dash and a wad of money in his hands that is maybe $10,000
or $12,000 in a city in the United States and somebody arrests
him or knocks him off and there are 10 guys waiting to take his
place, it makes you wonder about how you deal with that
problem. I think, and I hope, Mr. Chairman, we will go down to
the Mexican border. I would love for you to have a hearing down
there; I would love to go with you down there and check some of
the things that are going on first hand.
But let me just ask a couple questions. Senator, you were
talking about the turnstile down there, how people could just
walk across the border coming from the United States. They
could smuggle stuff in, which is more difficult, and then they
take the money and just walk across the border. So it is very
easy for them to continue their business activities. Do you
think that it would be wise for the President to say, OK, we
are going to send the National Guard and/or the military? He
could suspend, if he wanted to, to send the military down
there. I know that is a dangerous thing and most Americans
don't want that to happen. But do you think that in certain
parts of the Mexican-American border we ought to do that?
Mr. Paton. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, I would say that to
some extent, but as I said before, I think in more of an
auxiliary capacity to assist the Border Patrol that is already
kind of familiar with the area and the terrain. I think that
would keep our soldiers from getting into bad situations, that
they might do things like they would do in Iraq but they might
not be able to do here in the United States. I think that
furthering, encouraging Mexico to do something about their
border security issue would assist us dramatically. Because
like I said, our people smuggling and drug smuggling problems
are their gun smuggling problem.
Mr. Burton. Let me just say, Mr. Chairman, over 70 percent
of the people in prison in the United States, according to law
enforcement officials, are there for drug related crimes. It is
costing $35,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year to keep each one of
those people incarcerated. It is absolutely breaking many
States because there are so many people and they can't keep
track of them all, can't keep them incarcerated. They are
letting them out because they are overcrowded. And it is all
drug-related crime.
And I would just submit to you, I think drugs are the
scourge of the Earth. I think that anybody that deals in drugs
ought to be put in jail permanently or killed. That's how bad I
think drugs are. But as long as you can make the exorbitant
amounts of profit, you are going to be able to bribe police,
you are going to be able to bribe the public officials. You are
going to be able to do all kinds of things. And unless the
United States and Mexico and other countries are willing to
make a complete commitment like they have in some other
countries in the world and put these people away permanently,
we are never going to solve the problem.
I have been in government at the State and local level
since 1967. And as I said before, I have been to over 100 of
these hearings. And every time, I hear the same thing, you
know, what we have to do. We have to put more money into law
enforcement. We have to have more help from our neighbors. We
have to police the Mexican-American border. And nothing ever
changes except it gets worse.
And so we in the United States have to come up with a plan
that is so onerous that we scare the hell out of the drug
dealers. And if we are not willing to do that, we are never
going to solve the problem. And I am talking about if they are
arrested once, we give them a penalty. And if they are arrested
twice, they spend the rest of their life in the slammer. And if
they do something that involves somebody's life, we kill them.
Now if we are not willing to do that, I my opinion, we are
never going to solve this problem and it is going to continue
to get worse. And until we really realize that, until we really
come to grips with this, the problem is just going to get worse
and worse and worse.
And any time we have a hearing, Mr. Chairman, and we listen
to our witnesses, I have had--when I was chairman of this
committee--I had the highest law enforcement people in the
United States before this committee and asked them a number of
questions, one of which was this: If you took the profitability
out of drugs, what would happen? And they said, well, they
wouldn't sell them. They said, you are not talking about
legalizing them, are you? I said, no, of course not. I want
anybody dealing with drugs to be punished to the full extent of
the law and even more so.
But the point is as long as you can take something that
costs $100 and sell it for $10,000, you have a big problem
because there are more and more people that are going to jump
into it and it is very difficult to get rid of them. And so I
would just like to say that we in the United States have to
make a complete commitment to dealing with the drug problem,
and I mean severe commitment: putting people away, giving them
the death penalty, life imprisonment after a second offense not
a third offense. And until we are willing to do that, in my
opinion, we are never going to solve the problem.
And I hate to get emotional about this, Mr. Chairman, but
when I see people I know and their kids dying because of drugs
and going to jail because of drugs because somebody got them
into it, it becomes a personal thing. And we really have to
make a very committed effort to deal with the problem. And just
doing what we are doing right now will never solve it, in my
opinion. But I do hope we hold, have hearings down on the
border.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. We will. And, you know, I am going
to ask a question that emanated from reading the Economist this
week. I don't know if people read it or not, about taking the
profit out of it. And if you are still here, I would love to
get your reaction to that.
But at this point let me say, you know, it is sort of a red
herring here. Whenever we try to narrow down and focus on just
a couple of issues--this one being the money that is being
brought over, hard cash, the idea of maybe trying to lessen
demand through education or whatever, or even deal with some of
the high powered weapons that are really giving them the power
to force corruption on people or to scare them into it--some
people want to say, oh geez, like we are just focusing just on
that and there is a bigger problem. We understand there is a
bigger problem. There are other committees dealing with other
parts of it. And we will deal with other parts of it. But we
need a comprehensive approach. And the things we are talking
about today, I think, are significant. I guess you do, too, or
you wouldn't be here talking about them. But I don't think we
just dismiss it by saying oh, it isn't guns or it isn't money
or it isn't lessening demand. It is those things as well as
addressing the corruption, as well as the rule of law
questions, and the infrastructure that Senator Paton I think
rightfully brings up here. And they are some things I hope our
Judiciary and Appropriations Committees listen to, and we will
share that with them. It is also controlling the border and
enforcing existing law and also interdicting trans-shipments
and things of that nature. But it also is the things we are
talking about today, including, you know, the high powered
weapons that are being used. The intimidation is a big factor
in getting the corruption. Would you agree, Mr. Braun?
[Witness responds in the affirmative.]
Mr. Tierney. And several of you have served over in Iraq or
Afghanistan. This is what you get to go over there and fight
terrorism, the extremists and things of that nature. This is
what you get. I don't know the justification for having a
civilian arms market selling to civilians this kind of weaponry
and that kind of a gun. This isn't for, you know, for civilians
to fight a war. This is, what, for hunting or for sport? Mr.
Diaz, Mr. Paton, I mean, maybe Mr. Paton you want to start
because the first thing you were talking about was, oh, we
don't need more laws, we don't need to control. Why don't we
need to keep this from the civilian market?
Mr. Paton. Mr. Chairman, in answer to that question, I
guess I would ask the same question about grenades and M-16s
and AK-47 and other things that are already illegal----
Mr. Tierney. As would I. Feel free to answer on.
Mr. Paton. And they are still, Mr. Chairman, they are still
being sold and bought in Mexico. Mexico has all of these laws
that have been talked about; they have done them no good. But
they have 15 years----
Mr. Tierney. That is because 90 percent of them are coming
from this country.
Mr. Paton. Mr. Chairman, Mexico has a 15 year sentence for
possession of some of these weapons and they have not been able
to stop them. And I don't understand how we can stop them as
well.
Mr. Tierney. But we have talked about the problems that
they are having with their law enforcement. We all admit that
they need to have enhanced law enforcement, that they have
trouble with the judiciary system, trouble with corruption,
trouble with all of that. We are talking about this country.
Why is it that it is so easy for them to come to this
country and buy something of this size and bring it back over
there? Mr. Diaz, why don't you give it a shot?
Mr. Diaz. I think it is an ideal subject to talk about this
comprehensive problem. Mr. Paton brought up several times the
question of what we would call military armament--stuff that is
already illegal not only in Mexico but in the United States--
fully automatic machine guns, hand grenades, rocket launchers.
Those things are indeed showing up in Mexico. There was a big
raid in Raynosa back in, I guess, last November and yeah, there
were grenade launchers, LAW rocket launchers, 278 grenades.
But here is where the integration comes to this: Seven
Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles--fully legal in the United
States--the Barrett sniper rifle, the gun that fired that kind
of ammunition--and the one on display out here is simply a
knock off; it is an AR-50; people said, oh, Ronnie Barrett has
a great idea here, let us make our own--that is a civilian
weapon. It is very attractive to the gun runners. The so-called
mata policia, the Hearst-style handgun also showed up in this
raid. So the point is they want both. They want the military
weaponry and they want the civilian weaponry.
Now what ties them together? I would make the argument that
what allows criminals to exercise force, and here I am talking
about the gang problem in the United States, is firearms.
Whether it is a running gun battle that went for two blocks in
the city of Los Angeles with a drug gang, guns give the power
of force to these criminal organizations. Now we know that,
from reports published by the National Gang Intelligence
Center, that one source of these military-style weapons that
are showing up in illegal traffic are gang members in the
military.
My point is that this is all a related problem. I
understand it is not only firearms, but firearms are the force
leverage that we talk about. They make gangs, the street gangs
like MS-13--Mara Salvatrucha--and 18th Street that are heavily
integrated into these drug organizations, they give them the
power to control neighborhoods in the United States. They give
them the power to control corridors. They give them the power
to be the foot soldiers for these people. So it is an
integrated problem. It is not just military weaponry or
civilian weaponry.
These .50 caliber rifles that do the job, in my opinion,
they should not be available for unfettered sale to civilians.
Now, what the Violence Policy Center has recommended is let us
treat them as the weapons of war that they are. Let us bring
them under an existing law, which is called the National
Firearms Act, under which machine guns, fully automatic
weapons, hand grenades, rocket launchers, and other weapons of
war are regulated. It is a stricter regimen. They are harder to
buy.
It took me about 6 hours to legally buy that gun and
register it in the District of Columbia after I found it on the
Internet to make the point that in the Nation's Capital, where
there are so many high profile targets, it could legally be
purchased. Not only could that gun be legally purchased, but
armor-piercing and incendiary ammunition for that gun could
legally be purchased and shipped through ordinary parcel post.
Now the law in the District of Colombia has been changed and
that gun has about a 3-year life span before it has to be
gotten rid of.
But the point is some civilian military-style weaponry,
which has become the focus of the American civilian gun market,
now is every bit as deadly, every bit as desirable, every bit
as power-enhancing as the military stuff. And it is a lot
easier to get. Why wouldn't you come to the United States and
go to a gun show and buy one of these? You can go to any gun
show in America, I guarantee you, and see something like this
on the table. And probably not being sold by a dealer, which
means you don't have to worry about the so-called straw buyer,
you don't have to worry about the background check. You walk
out in the parking lot and say I like that, I want five more of
them.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Diaz. Mr. Flake.
Mr. Flake. Thank you. Mr. Selee, I am sorry, Mr. Braun, you
mentioned that the Mexican Government can win this war on the
cartels. What kind of timeframe are we looking at here? You
mentioned that it is kind of a perfect storm now with
everything going on that is causing the violence.
If the Calderon government had just said we are going to
take the position that the last government did and not confront
these cartels, would we be seeing this level of violence? How
much is this a result of the stepped up enforcement actions on
the part of the Mexican Government? And then, as far as a
timeframe when do you think this can be won? Or is it going to
require more cooperation from us like we have in Colombia?
Mr. Braun. Congressman, look, it is going to take a lot
more cooperation from us and help in the way of both funding
and expert advice, guidance, mentoring, and that kind of thing
not only to Mexican law enforcement personnel but their
military forces as well. You know, I wish I could answer the
first question as to when is this going to all end. If I could
do that, our newly formed company could probably go from the
red into the black very quickly. But I honestly believe that it
is going to get worse before it gets better, just as it did in
Colombia. But I believe wholeheartedly that Mexico is already
beginning to turn the tide. But, you know, they have another
probably year and a half, 2 years minimum that there is going
to be a lot of conflict going on. I don't know if it is going
to be as bad as it currently is, but there is a lot to unfold
yet.
With that said, the second part of your question--had this
gone unchecked--I am telling you based on what I know and the
high level folks that I have talked to from Mexico, President
Calderon, after being advised by his security advisors and
others, came to the same decision that a lot of other high
level folks in Mexico did. If they didn't take this on, Mexico
was going to devolve into a narco-state before the next decade.
And General McCaffrey's report recently on his study came to
that same conclusion.
So, you know, as hard as this is to grasp, as hard as it is
to stomach, and as hard as it is for me to say, I believe what
we are seeing here with all of this carnage is really a product
of the success of the strategy. The cartels have never been
pressed and never been pressured like they have been over the
past 2 years. And they will ultimately fold if we help our
Mexican counterparts. If we don't help them, there is a chance
they could lose this. And if they lose it, it is going to, you
know, our mistake will cut deep into both sides of the border,
into our national security, into our economies, into our
cultures.
Mr. Flake. Mr. Paton, I was interested in your discussion
of going down to Mexico and looking at some of these
cooperative agreements that we have there. Is it your view that
the Mexican Government is anxious to cooperate with us and
anxious to welcome our assistance in these areas? A lot of
people are under the mis-impression that we give foreign aid to
Mexico. Our aid to Mexico is in the form of drug interdiction
and cooperation and other things. Is this working? Have they
been cooperative enough with us in that regard?
Mr. Paton. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Flake, my visit with
the Mexican officials--and we are also trying to put on our own
field hearing of our Judiciary Committee, which has never been
tried before, but we want to actually hold a committee hearing
in Nogales, Sonora on this very issue--they are very interested
in working with us. I think they have been extremely courageous
to stand up and fight the cartels as they have. Some of them
are obviously suffering from corruption and the problems that
go on there.
But I think that rather than just looking at it as foreign
aid, I would say that whatever agreements we can use so that we
can train them in our own evidence collection techniques and
the rest will benefit us in intelligence gathering in the
United States. Much the same way, when I served in Iraq, we
worked with the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police, we gleaned
that intelligence that we were able to use in our own capacity.
We could do that in Mexico. So it would actually benefit us in
the long run rather than just benefit them.
Mr. Flake. Thank you.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. It is too bad that Mr. Mica had to
leave because somebody just handed me a report. He was asking
about the Obama administration's approach. Apparently, there
was an article in today's paper where he was quoted as saying
he expects ``to have a comprehensive approach to dealing with
issues of border security that will involve supporting Calderon
and his efforts in a partnership, also making sure we are
dealing with the flow of drug money and guns south, because it
is really a two-way situation there.'' So, we will certainly
explore that more when we have our own hearings on that. But
that is an indication of the direction.
Let me just--that article that was in the Economist that I
referenced in my opening remarks sort of goes beyond where Mr.
Burton was and I want to bring it up a little bit--I am going
to describe, give you a little book report on the premise and
just get reactions on this. The premise makes much to do about
the fact that this is such a lucrative, illegal industry for
people, that there are $322 billion a year and that obviously
people will fight to the death to protect that kind of profit.
So the article says first that since the first
international effort to ban trade in narcotic drugs, which was
in 1909, the article says the effort has failed. It recounts
the 1998 U.N. promise of a ``drug-free world'' or the promise
of ``eliminating or significantly reducing the production'' by
2008, that is the production of opium, cocaine, and cannabis.
And it says that has failed. It says even if the claim that
close to half of all cocaine produced had been seized, the
street price in the United States does not seem to have risen.
It claims that the market is stabilized, but it means that more
than 200 million people, 5 percent of the world population,
still take illegal drugs. That is about the same proportion as
took illegal drugs a decade ago. It says the United States
spends $40 billion a year trying to eliminate drugs. It says
the United States arrests 1.5 million people per year in drug
related offenses and jails half a million of them.
The Economist claims that the struggle has been
``illiberal''--how unusual for the Economist--``murderous, and
pointless.'' It says the prohibition strengthens the efforts of
warlords. It said the street price is more involved with the
risk of getting drugs into Europe and the United States and
that even if the source is disrupted, business adapts to a new
location.
And then it talks about Afghanistan being a failed state
and drugs moving from there. I guess it references South
America where it might go from Peru to Bolivia to Colombia.
Wherever you push it at one point, it goes to another. And
their fear is, of course, that the drug gangs will team up with
the terrorists and the money will get together and be a
problem. It says $320 billion a year in the illegal drug
industry results in weapons, terror, and corruption.
And then it talks about five different things: shifting the
focus to prevention and treatment; maintaining an effort to
interdict and go after traffickers; banning the sale to minors;
decriminalizing, regulating, and taxing to take the profit out
of the illegal industry; and then using those revenues and
savings to guarantee treatment. Can I just have the reaction
from left to right of folks there? Dr. Selee.
Dr. Selee. Well, I think they have hit some of the major
points. There is de facto a bit of decriminalization going on
in this country in a number of States, actually. And, in fact,
the Economist article cites this. A number of States really
don't enforce particularly small time use of some narcotics. I
think it is worth studying and seeing what the effect of that
is on the overall market, if that is being successful.
I don't think there is a serious debate in this country
right now on legalization. We could debate philosophically
whether we think there should be or not. But we do have some
experience with decriminalization, just simply states that have
decided, and in fact, Seattle--where our new director-designate
of the ONDCP is coming from--is one of the areas that has tried
to decriminalize some small time use. It is worth studying and
seeing whether that is effective. I would certainly say the
other elements, investing in treatment and so on, these are the
ways to go. Investing in treatment, investing in enforcing
where the harm is greatest, that is the way to go.
And if I could, Mr. Chairman, just say something very
quickly on a question you raised earlier and something about
President Obama's statement yesterday. I think one of the key
questions on coordination on this, not on the money laundering
piece but on the broader question with Mexico, is this may be
the kind of thing where the NSC is particularly useful at
taking a leadership role and bringing together domestic policy
and foreign policy networks in the government. This may be the
kind of issue which is high enough level that you can only
begin to get the kind of comprehensive approach you are talking
about and that President Obama was talking about if there is
leadership from the White House saying, let us pull together
Homeland Security, let us pull together Justice Department,
State Department. Everyone has a piece of this larger--Defense
Department--there are pieces of this that everyone is doing and
doing well. But unless we do it together in a more coordinated
way, I don't think we get to the right solution we want.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Selee. Mr. Braun.
Mr. Braun. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Listen, with respect to
just legalization, it is the old saying: We are doomed to
repeat history if we don't know it, if we are not aware of it.
The worst period in our Nation's history with respect to drug
abuse was that 30 to 40 year period after our Civil War--the
``Soldier's Disease.'' You could walk into any drug store in
our country and you could buy cocaine, morphine, heroin, or
opium off the shelf because it was unregulated.
The hue and cry went out to your predecessors back in those
days that the Federal Government had to step in and do
something about it and regulate this stuff and somehow get some
kind of a control on it. Because it was ripping apart the
fabric of our country, one family after another. There has not
been one country anywhere in the world that has decriminalized
drugs--even marijuana--that didn't eventually recriminalize
drugs because workplace incidents of injury skyrocketed.
Incidents of drugged driving and highway accidents and
deaths skyrocketed. School equivalency and efficiency tests
plummeted. I mean, I could go on and on. There is plenty of
history that clearly shows legalization will not work. You
can't tell that I am passionate about this.
Mr. Tierney. I trust you will be sending a letter to the
Economist. [Laughter.]
Mr. Braun. Well, going back to the Economist--just one
other piece--the evidence is in. We are experiencing, I think
we are now into just beyond the 2-year mark of significant
continued increases in price of both cocaine and
methamphetamine, they are still conducting studies on the
heroin now in our country, and continued, significant decreases
in purity. A lot of that has to do with President Calderon and
what is going on in Mexico. A lot of it has to do with what is
happening in Colombia and what has happened in Colombia over
the last several years. And there are some other dynamics that
play here as well. But those are the facts. Thank you.
Mr. Tierney. Senator, go ahead.
Mr. Paton. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to say in reference
to that, in my own State, I conducted extensive hearings on
Child Protective Services and the statistic that I was given
from Child Protective Services was this: 95 percent of their
removals for children who were abused or neglected by their
parents were methamphetamine-related. It is not a victimless
crime.
And the bottom line is if they decriminalize that, you are
going to see more child abuse; you are going to see more
problems with those children. Six children in my district in a
1-year period of time were killed by their parents. All six
cases had one thing in common--methamphetamines. And in one of
the cases, there was a little girl, her body was found in a
storage facility in Tucson. Her brother, they couldn't find
that body.
And the accused said in the interrogation, if you give me
meth, I will tell you where I put my son. That is the effect
the drugs are having. That isn't the illegal buying or selling.
That is just the using, the effect that it has had in my
district.
And I can tell you that we have a methamphetamine epidemic.
It used to be made in the United States, in Arizona. Now it is
being made in Mexico. And those precursor chemicals are being
shipped from China and elsewhere into Mexico and they are
flooding our State. And I can tell you that it is killing
children in my own district.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Senator. Mr. Diaz.
Mr. Diaz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The thing I find most
encouraging about this hearing is that, as Mr. Flake said, it
is opening a broad discussion of ideas. There is a whole
spectrum of things you could talk about with drugs. Drug policy
has been sort of the third rail of what elected people all over
the country are wanting to talk about.
I think it is encouraging to see that might be a subject of
discussion. It put me personally in mind of a man named Herman
Kahn who wrote a book called ``On Thermonuclear War.'' He is a
famous nuclear strategist and he wrote about something that was
called the white slave problem in Victorian England. And
essentially what it was, women were being kidnaped off the
streets of London and put into the prostitution traffic, just
as we today have sex traffic. But nobody knew about it because
in Victorian society you couldn't talk about it.
So he, in ``On Thermonuclear War,'' talked about
thermonuclear war and people said that was thinking about the
unthinkable. So he wrote his next book and titled it,
``Thinking About the Unthinkable.'' So I think it is great that
committees like this are willing to engage this question.
And there is a whole spectrum. It is not just legalization.
But I do know that drugs do drive the things that I know about.
They drive the criminal street gangs, who are the primary
retail distributors. So something has to give here. The second
thing I think it is, as several of the speakers before me have
pointed out, it is a hydraulic system. Whether it is
enforcement, we stop the movement of drugs through Florida and
they end up moving through Miami. The same thing with guns.
Maybe, and I hope that Senator Paton's straw purchaser law
will be more effective in Arizona, but we have 50 States and
lots of other places. So it is a hydraulic system. And I like
the fact that you are willing to look at all those integrated
together.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Diaz. Mr. Flake. Mr.
Fortenberry.
Mr. Flake. I yield to Mr. Fortenberry.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thanks again, Mr. Chairman. I want to
followup on the previous questions I had asked. Mr. Braun, you
didn't get a chance to answer. The reason I raised the issue of
National Guard troops to the border is that it clearly has been
raised elsewhere and may come to dominate this discussion in
the coming days or weeks. Again, an opinion on that, but going
back to the second phase of the question, what are the simplest
things that can be done first and implemented easily that will
have maximum impact?
We talked about this issue of--which seems to me to be
quite simple--one of technology monitoring traffic for stolen
vehicles going out of the country. That clearly would, at least
in my view, it would be easy to implement. But we have talked
about a range of things today including interdiction, law
enforcement, increased detention capacity, border control,
social programs, and diplomatic initiatives which have to be a
part of this entire continuum. And I agree with that. But
again, Mr. Burton said, I have had 150 hearings on this similar
problem, growing perhaps in intensity. What are immediate steps
that can be taken that perhaps are somewhat simple but can be
leveraged for maximum impact quickly?
Mr. Braun. Congressman Fortenberry, thanks for the
opportunity to talk about the National Guard and our military.
The National Guard, there is a role for the National Guard and,
in fact, the National Guard has supported DEA for many, many
years. They have provided us with additional intelligence
analysts that we needed along the border. They have
intelligence analysts assigned to the El Paso intelligence
center, just as our Department of Defense does. They bring to
bear some very high tech equipment like seismic technology to
locate and identify those tunnels that pose such a real threat
to our national security on the southwest border. So they are
engaged and they are involved. They have been for a long time.
I would agree with Mr. Paton, though. Having National Guard
or our military in uniform, armed, on the front lines on our
border, I think poses some major issues. I believe you will
probably all recall the very tragic incident outside of El Paso
about 10 years ago when a young Marine--who was on just simple
observation, performing simple observation duty--confronted a
young kid that was actually, as I recall, a goat herder and who
was armed with a .22 rifle. And the kid pointed it in the wrong
direction and he paid for it with his life. And that turned
into, well, just a very tough thing for both of our countries
to manage and deal with, both the United States and Mexico. So
I am just saying that we have to be, you know, vary cautious
and prudent and judicious with how we use our military folks.
Some short term solutions, I agree with you, I think
technology brings a lot to the table. The LPR, or the license
plate readers, DEA has worked very closely with CBP in Texas
and I believe also in Arizona, Mr. Paton and Mr. Flake, and
with tremendous results. What needs to be done, I believe the
way they work best, obviously, at the Border Patrol checkpoints
that are 20 or 30 miles inland, before those vehicles make it
to the POEs, they have time to flash the plate using
technology, make the inquiry, and then determine if the vehicle
or driver of the vehicle--not particularly the driver of the
vehicle but the registered owner of the vehicle--might be
suspect or has shown up suspect in some activity in the past.
Those things on pilot programs have--I am telling you what--it
is good stuff, good technology. And I believe we can make and
need to make much better use of it.
With respect to LPRs, though, I would simply say that you
know, as we have seen so many times in the past, you have DEA
with their interests; you have ICE with their interests; you
have CBP with their interests. Someone needs to be placed in
charge of this effort. If we are all out there buying these
things, we ought to at least be buying the ones that we can
integrate together into one system so that the information can
then be quickly and very effectively shared. Mr. Selee and Mr.
Paton have both brought up, you know, that point earlier. Thank
you.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Braun. Thank you, Mr.
Fortenberry. Mr. Flake.
Mr. Flake. I have to run to the floor, unfortunately, now
and I think we are about to end. But I just wanted to say in
closing that I appreciate, this has been a very illuminating
hearing and I appreciate all of you for your testimony. And I
will just end with one thing I started with. I hope that we
can--and this is only a Federal issue, we have to do this in
Arizona; we are in a bad way because of the Federal
Government's failure to adequately secure the border--but one
thing that would help would be to have comprehensive
immigration reform and to have a meaningful temporary worker
program where legal workers can come and go.
And when we have had other versions of that--we don't want
to recreate the baser [phonetically] program, believe me--but
when you have a legal framework for people to come and go, then
you can free up the resources that we desperately need to build
the infrastructure that Senator Paton talked about to
adequately deal with this issue.
So I hope that we can get off the dime on a number of
issues here at the Federal level to improve the situation. But
this has been a very good hearing. I thank the chairman for
calling it.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Flake.
And again, thank all of you for your contribution here
today. I think we have an idea of some things we should pursue,
from technology on the border to infrastructure investments
that need to be done, toward at least addressing the idea of
what nature of guns are going south and what we might to do
lessen that--both in the quality and kind of guns that are
going down as well as the numbers--and the money, and, of
course, the usage of the consumers on this end.
So thank every one of you for your contribution. I leave
you only with one request that you needn't comply with because
I don't have any right to give you homework.
But one area that we didn't get into was precursors,
although we mentioned it at a couple points. If any of you have
information that you think the committee should focus on or
have their attention drawn to about the role of precursors
coming in, where do they come from, where do they transit on
the way through, is there a role for the United States at all
to be involved with trying to deal with that issue, we would
certainly appreciate it and we will share it with the other
Members on that. So again, thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Flake.
Meeting adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]