‘Gunwalker’ Deepens: Agent Zapata Killed By Gun From … Texas?
On February 15, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were returning to Mexico City, where they were assigned after a meeting, when they were ambushed by members of the Zetas cartel on a highway near San Luis Potosi.
Agent Avila was lucky. While seriously wounded in the attack he managed to survive, and is on the long road to recovery back in the United States. Agent Zapata died as a result of the ambush, and it was determined that he was killed with a weapon smuggled across the U.S. border.
A week after the ambush Julian Zapata Espinoza, aka “El Piolin,” was captured and confessed to the shooting, saying that the Zetas mistook the ICE Chevrolet Suburban for a vehicle driven by a rival cartel. Curiously, that confession does not match the facts as related by Agent Avila, which indicated the cartel knew exactly who they were attacking. It seems unlikely that the cartel gunners could have missed seeing the U.S. government diplomatic plates as they overtook the vehicle from behind and rammed it off the side of the road.
Regardless of the other details of the ambush, what is known is that these two agents were shot at point-blank range by a gunman armed with a weapon that had been purchased in a gun store in the United States. Agent Zapata’s death is commonly accepted as the second U.S. fatality related to “Operation Fast and Furious.”
But that isn’t entirely true.
The weapon used to shoot these agents was not sold in the Phoenix, Arizona, area that was the hub of Operation “Fast and Furious,” also known as Gunwalker, which allowed gunrunners to acquire the gun that was used to murder Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December. Instead, one of the weapons used to shoot these two ICE agents came from Lancaster, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.
Brothers Otilio and Ranferi Osorio and their neighbor Kevin Morrison were arrested in Texas after Zapata’s death, but only after ATF and DEA agents had organized a transfer of some 40 weapons in November. It was one of those rifles that was traced back to Agent Zapata’s murder.
Senator Charles Grassley noted that these three men had actually been stopped by local police after the transfers took place, but they were not arrested — presumably on orders from the Department of Justice.
The men were trailed as part of a multi-agency operation similar to Fast and Furious, that to date has not been named, in the Dallas Field Operations area, which encompasses southwest Texas, north Texas, and Oklahoma.
This is in addition to considerable circumstantial evidence that the Houston Field Operations area, which is made up of central and southeastern Texas, may have been responsible for shipping a large percentage of the recovered guns linked to Mexican cartels in central and southern Mexico. How large is the alleged Houston operation? It could possibly dwarf the Arizona operation now so infamously known as the source of the weapons recovered at Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder.
County sheriffs stopped a truck containing numerous rifles in Seguin, which is on I-10 between Houston and San Antonio. From there, it’s only 3 hours to the border.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Guadalupe-deputies-seize-weapons-cache-during-1460841.php
I wonder if these are released weapons….
Bob, I always look forward to your updates on this story eagerly. Thanks for the great work. I’m glad you’re on it.
I believe this needs correcting: Agents Avila and Zapata were murdered with a “walked” Texas gun. Only Agent Zapata, correct? Although both were shot — by the same “walked” Texas gun?
CORRECTION, Avila did not get killed in the ambush, only Zapata
Bob, keep up the good work. The Dems deserve to find out that our side can produce a reporter us to “Watergate” standards – no, better, actually. This is murder. That was merely a criminal conspiracy to “hack” the Dems.
“What was the ultimate goal of these projects? Was it a cynical and criminal enterprise to manufacture cartel-linked murders in order to generate domestic support for harsh gun control measures — like that issued by fiat by the Obama administration yesterday?”
The answer is yes. There is no other credible explanation, despite whatever the naysayers offer as alternative explanations.
Also note that like the Mexican government and LEA, ICE and the Border Patrol were not “briefed in”- hence, it has been their agents and officers who have died as a result.
If I were of a nasty, suspicious turn of mind, I would be inclined to think that a secondary goal of this operation was to “discourage” ICE and the Border Patrol from “interfering with the legitimate commerce across the border”- i.e., drugs and illegal aliens.
The One might not risk openly ordering them to open the floodgates for his main constituencies’ favorite recreational chemicals, and large numbers of potential “undocumented voters”, but he would probably have no problem with making it as difficult as possible for the gatekeepers to do their jobs. Just as long as he could avoid getting caught at it, that is.
As we are now seeing in the budget “negotiations”, there seems to be no limit to the perfidy this President is capable of. Just so long as he gets what he wants- and can blame it on somebody else.
clear ether
eon
Since federal agents from the agencies in question are stationed in Mexico, I have to wonder if the Mexican government is not as innocent as it claims. There could have been coordination between US and Mexican law enforcement in order to try and track the guns walked into Mexico. Is Mexican president Calderon’s outrage real, or is it a feint so his government can maintain plausible deniability. Remember, the issue of the cartels buying guns in the US was high on Calderon’s priority list. He, and Obama, wanted a reinstatement of the US assault rifle ban, and he and Obama discussed this subject in a one on one meeting. I hope those US federal agents, who are itching to testify, get the opportunity to do so.
There appears to have been absolutely no coordination with the Mexican government or any effort to trace the guns once they crossed the border.
Drug runners have lots of money, Lil’ Barry needs lots of money for his re-election ….
HOLY #*@$!%& $#!* I never even thought of that. Altogether possible.
Thanks for the update to this latest mis-carriage of justice by the Justice Department. Who would have thought our government would morph into a criminal enterprise under dictatorial powers? What can Issa do to remove the blacked-out FOI documents? If these people were not black, they’d have been impeached by now. Everyone’s afraid of massive riots, apparently.
Our hope is that Calderon will take action, since so many Mexicans have been murdered thanks to Eric Holder’s support to the president’s efforts at gun control.
Obviously, Obozo wants to disarm the rest of us, so that we will have no defense against rioting Obozo supporters, MS-13, Zeta, SEIU thugs, and whatever other criminal dregs he can muster on his own behalf.
It is shocking that our own so called “leaders” would betray our country and go to such lengths to create a false image of wide spread weapons trafficing between the US and Mexican drug cartels so they could then clamp down on legal US gun sales. Why would Eric Holder and Barack Obama and their backers want to shut off the sale of legal weapons to free US citizens? I will let you all come to your own conclusions on that one.
The scariest part is that if some brave whistle-blowers didn’t intercede on behalf of ALL OF US AMERICANS, this ‘agenda’ might have come to full fruition!
IF border patrol agent BRIAN TERRY would not have been killed, we might not still know about these guns
The thinking behind these operations is so convoluted, it is almost impossible to understand. Pray for courage for Issa to expose what is going on in Washington.
as I have said so many times. this regime is the most CORRUPT in the history of the WORLD. I have said befor they should all be in a federal prison for fourty years and one day making little rocks out of big ones 12 hours a day. well no they shouldn’t all be in prison. some of them should be hanged for the traitors they are, and any one who even thinks obama knew nothing of this crap needs to get their heads out of their butts and smell the coffee. if that isn’t HIGH CRIMES and missdemeaners WHAT is///
prediction: this coverup will go down in history as the beginning of the end for the man with no country, odummy. outrage should be the soup of the day, instead of ignorance about what these criminals are doing. everybody i ask never heard of it. we need to get this stuff out on the i-net. if everyone here would go to different blogs everywhere and let people know what is happening, it could get some traction. the fantasy media will never put it out there. this needs to continue to simmer and simmer as we go towards the next election.
i see that bad guys from honduras were also armed by odummy and his mafia. guess since odummy couldn’t get away with rigging their last election, he arms the marxists there? chavez may get hold of that counrty yet if odummy gets his way.
if we don’t get these criminals out of power there will be no more America. i have a feeling that this sort of criminal activity by this administration is just the tip of the iceberg. just heard he is still giving tax $$$ to acorn, breaking the law in our faces. we need to keep an eye on acorn’s activites for sure. can you believe we have fallen so far so fast? God help us.
Outrage is largely ginned up by the media. It’s almost as though, until the media tells us that we should be outraged about something, we’ve lost the capacity to think on our own.
The lamestream media (including Fox Snooze, which is not much better than the other networks these days) has been too busy making a circus out of the Casey Anthony trial. That little girl must be spinning in her grave from all of those detestable presstitutes making their money and their careers out of her death.
so far all you people have in ALL your articles are a few breadcrumbs and a lot of speculation. you can scream and shout and pull your hair out but no one is going down any time soon, at least not the real people who are responsible. and your conspiracy theories are going to remain largely within the realm of theories because no one is going to get caught.
let me just say one thing. when you guys actually, after much random poking around in the mud with a stick, do come up with anything significant. before you even realize how significant it is this website is going to be pulled from the net as if it never existed.
viva homeland security and nsa
Murders aren’t significant?
If murders aren’t significant, what is?
Oh, and BY THE WAY, DHS and NSA don’t have the power to sanitize the net of anything that they don’t want us to see. If they try to pull down one high profile site, that in itself will serve as a red flag to everyone who is looking for evidence of a coverup. Too many people will have seen it by then.
And don’t forget, as with Watergate, the coverup can be worse for the Obozo administration than the original crime.
I think a distinction needs to be drawn here between ” they dont have the power” and ” they dont have the legal authority”.
The coverup is not worse than the crime. The crime killed people. Unless Obama’s folks start knocking off the informants (most paid informants rank somewhere between shady and dirtbag so there’s lots of deniablity there), I don’t see the coverup as being any worse than the crime.
We’ll see when the MSM catches up to this story whether they go into a monkey-spank frenzy with it like watergate or not. I’m not holding my breath. So while watergate and Lewinski were more about the coverup than the crime, this is not.
If they shut down this site, they’ll have to shut down all the sites that tell the truth and that will trigger a blood bath for sure.
It was CBS that first broke this story nitwit.
Where do you find the rocks that simboy & friends crawl out from under ?
viva homeland security and nsa
Simboy likes nutty Big Sis and the current crowd of enforcers ? The gang that can’t shoot straight ? Geez, Sim spent the entire Bush presidency feeling persecuted by government types, but now this bunch of rather inept enforcers are his new best friends.
Follow the $. was it $40 million or $50 million that was used from the “stimulus”
package to fund part of this “shovel ready” project?
If money was allocated, then it would seem it was not just a rouge secretary from ATF that pulled this off.
But sadly nothing will come of this but an executive order to take all arms away from the US citizen, including butter knives.
actually it was only TEN MILLION in the stimulus package.
If you go to the DOJ report issued in November of 2010 and scroll down to around page 110 or so, you will see a chart that shows important dates in this operation which started in Laredo, Texas in 2005.
The operation got money in the RECOVERY ACT, and special border appropriation acts
“Follow the $. was it $40 million or $50 million that was used from the “stimulus”
package to fund part of this “shovel ready” project?”
‘Shovel ready’. Silly me, I thought he was refering to construction, not grave digging.
While the new media, which plays Samizdat to the MSM Pravda and Izvestia, will cover this story nothing will come of it because only the national media can draw the attention of the general public. Until that happens Obama can tell the NYT that he did it to drum up support for taking away guns from Americans and if killing a few thousand Mexicans is what it takes then so be it and nobody would care.
“before you even realize how significant it is this website is going to be pulled from the net as if it never existed.
viva homeland security and nsa”
I wonder how someone would know that some government agency plans to do that?
Do they plan to destroy everyone who already knows about it? Seems like they would have a lot of work to do if they did.
The war on drugs is a farce, hypocrisy at its most ironic.
There have been thousands of murders, Billions laundered through US Government agencies, Tens of Billions laundered through banks and Hedge funds in New York and Miami, Chicago, and most banks in southern and border states. This has been going on since the late 70′s.
Seriously, Y’all need to take a good hard look at the world you live in, this brand of ignorance feeds it.
Government breaks the law, creating a public outrage, and then — with the stroke of a pen — enacts a new, corrective law, which, like the first, it doesn’t intend to be fettered by. Ironic? When things become routine there is no room for irony.
Why is no body else reporting this??? Even the conservative sites seem to be missing the biggest scandel in a hundred years
SOME media have reported on this,. CBS really broke it. Since then FoxNews has done alot of reporting on it. CNN has done a couple of reports.
but dont expect anything with NBC in the name to report on is since their CEO jeffery immelt is too busy kissing the backside of this administration.
ABC News Jake Tapper questioned the white house press secretary on it last week and posted a blog on it, but i have not seen any videos that would show me its been on their news.
and Youtube has lots of videos on this. There are even facebook pages on this where people are posting stories from various media outlets and places like PM to help spread the word
Nice to see this reported, but I am disappointed and shocked that PJM is only reporting this now – it has been a known fact for some time now.
Also look up Operation Castaway, the equivalent of Operation Fast & Furious that has been taking place in Honduras
I find Bob Owens’s first article on Gunwalker on May 6.
the murder weapon of Zapata was verified as part of Fast & Furious in March
I just wonder if that slimy snake Eric Holder is going to skate out from underneath this one.
Like he did on dropping charges against the New Black Panthers or has done a workaround to charge the new Somali terrorist in civilian court. And day to day other stuff with the people he has hired who work tirelessly in support of the Holder idiotology.
Was it a cynical and criminal enterprise to manufacture cartel-linked murders in order to generate domestic support for harsh gun control measures — like that issued by fiat by the Obama administration yesterday?
Setting up Gunwalker in all of its forms and permutations in order to lay the groundwork for yet another power grab, this one to accomplish a favorite agenda item and chip away at the 2nd amendment, seems more and more plausible.
Typical of this administration’s snide and backdoor approach to governance.
“ATF, FBI, DOJ, IRS, DEA, and DHS”
You would think that in this incredible mindtrust that one senior person would have stepped forward and protested that this was a REALLY BAD IDEA. Or are these agencies so corrupted by the administration, the cronies, the Czars now that there is no discussion but rather “Yuh Vill Follo Oders o Elssss, you half no sey in thees matta, do azs you ah tolt”.
This whole administration reeks of the Nixon cover up that the dear hearts on the left finally managed to take down Nixon and staff and the Kings Horses.
I think it only approporeate that the a special counsel be appointed and that we procede with an in depth investigation. Who knew and when did they know? Where is the smoking gun?
Normally I can’t stand this stuff, but I am so fed up with the new and improved corruption brought in by Pelosi and Obama that I simply do not care anymore.
Hang Em Fast and Furrious. Hang Em High. Hang EM around August of 2012 so that we can be rid of these marxist scum.
Yeah I know, I didn’t include Reid, but I think he’s too stupid to get it. What a bunch of losers in Nevada to elect this pencil head. Lost a lot of respect on that one and Boxer. Who are these people that elect these mindless jerks?
Like most I am really tired of all of the talk !
We can ‘blogtificate’ about the trash in the white house and the trash that put them there – but someone should be organizing a group of concerned citizens who have enough ‘war fighter experience’ to make sure it never happens again!
I keep hearing that to get physical against the administration could lead to mass racial unrest – but a dust up in the streets would be better than ‘eating the payback’ we are getting from the Black and Colored Racist Officials in the administration.
So equipment and travel expenses for a select cadre of professionally trained ‘Special Forces Magicians’ – trained in all aspects of making things disappear – ‘what a concept’!
Oh – Not disappear completely – those arrested for crimes against the nation could be ‘housed’ – like in the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Rather vehement there Rhodes.
– but someone should be organizing a group of concerned citizens who have enough ‘war fighter experience’ to make sure it never happens again!
Your enemy is the huge proportion of ill-educated and under-educated Americans who couldn’t see Obama for what he is during his nearly 2 year long campaign.
And they’re still around, en masse.
(forget the hopey-changey drivel, at the very least his remark that we could solve our energy problem through proper tire inflation should have been a heads up)
Geez, I was done at Wright, Ayres and “Typical white person”, OH, and “for the first time I am proud to be yada yada”. I guess we all had our point in time and that’s OK with me.
Meanwhile everyday I work with “ill-educated and under-educated Americans” (white, black and brown), sometimes when they are in my car I feel compelled to turn down my talk radio as,,, Well, doggone it,,,,,I don’t want to hurt their feelings about the Messiah and besides they wouldn’t get it anyhow because, well,,,, you guessed it, they are ill-educated and under-educated Americans, mostly by choice, and in addition useful idiots for the left, with a dream I might add, that if they can just get one more memeber of the family on Food Stamps or Social Security and subsidized housing they will have that life they always wanted and never thought attainable, you know,,,,just like grandma and mama and papa. And maybe, just maybe if they are really on their game they can get one of those bright and shiny unregistered pistol, just like uncle Jake.
The most telling fact relative to Fast & Furious/Gunwalker is that, reportedly, the weapons weren’t traced once they had walked.
Let alone the incredibly difficult logistics of tracing guns once they had crossed into Mexico, it has been reported that efforts to follow the weapons were somewhere between negligible and nil.
Excellent investigations, thank you.
If this were still a free Country, the whole administration would already be impeached.
Unless the parasites stop being encouraged to consume the hosts, I’d highly suggest learning Spanish and Mandarin, grow your own vegetables and keep your friends close and your enemies within range.
It has been established that “Project Gunrunner” was funded by $40,000,000 from the stimulus. Remember Obama came to power with the stimulus fully written all 1,000 or so pages of it. The stimulus was written in 2006 and 2007 which means all of this has been carefully planned long in advance. The stimulus was and is the left wings funding to destroy America and most of our legislatures signed it without reading it. Gun walker (runner) is just a small piece of the whole planned destruction. People wonder why the left wing is always after the right to keep and bear arms, it’s because an armed populus does not have to submit to tyrants.
i dont know where that 40Mil came from but there was only 10 Mil in the stimulus package. there was another 12MIL in the fiscal 2011 budget for the program, but that budget has never been voted on
first they tell us 90 percent of the mex cartel guns come from the states
then they make sure through fast and furious and these other operations
then they tell us that it was only a few guns
http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/07/12/atf.guns/index.html
I think a $50M operation would cover more than 2,000 guns
I cannot begin to tell you how many people I have told about this and they had no idea it happened and Obama and Holder are behind it. This has to be on the front page of every website, and newspaper so that the sheeple in this country wake up. Most people that I know that voted for Obama regret it, but there are those stupid ones that will never admit it.
Please keep up the great updates Bob and keep it on the front page. Thank you!
Cudos to Rep. Issa and Sen. Grassley. Hopefully, the House Oversight Committee along with true American media resources can keep the iron hot on this until justice is truly done.