Checking in on James Comey

Like the previous post, this article comes from Bill Conroy.  This time, from June 1, 2013, long before James Comey got crossways with Donald Trump.

President Barack Obama is expected to nominate former George W. Bush-era Deputy Attorney General James Comey as the next director of the FBI, according to multiple media outlets that have published fawning reports about Comey’s supposed independence and upstanding moral character.

[...]

But is Comey, who now serves on the board of the giant British Lender HSBC, really the guy in the white hat the commercial media – always enamored of power and not so much principle – paints him to be?

HSBC must think so. The bank brought Comey onboard, providing him annual compensation of some $190,000, to serve as window dressing for their recovery from over-indulging in the illegal drug market. The lender late last year received a slap on the wrist from the US Department of Justice (paying a relatively small fine compared to its billions in annual profits in exchange for promising to be good citizens in the future) — but only after admitting to allowing its US and Mexican subsidiaries to serve as money-laundering machines for Mexican and Colombian narco-traffickers.

[...]

So, in some senses, it could be argued Comey is now collecting a consulting fee that is, in part, being paid to him from the fruit of drug-money laundering.

However, there is a far more sinister story buried in Comey’s record of government service.

[...]

According to former DEA Special Agent in Charge Sandalio Gonzalez, Comey played a key role in helping to cover up what he describes as “one of the darkest chapters in the history of US federal law enforcement.” The case to which Gonzalez is referring is the House of Death — in which a US government informant assisted, and even participated in, the torture and murder of a dozen people, mostly Mexican citizens, who were then buried in the backyard of a house in Juarez, Mexico.

  Narco News

And that case is where I came across the articles in these last two posts on Pence and Comey. Bill Conroy is an investigative journalist who broke the House of Death story and reported extensively on it. I'll try to get some posts up from those articles soon as stories with a relationship to a Netflix series Narcos: Mexico and a recent USA Today report on the case that formed the basis for the series.

But, I digress...

Gonzalez, incensed by the House of Death murders and the near assasination of a fellow DEA agent and his family, wrote a letter to his counterpart at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, denouncing the informant’s activities and the complicity of federal agents and prosecutors in the bloodshed. The informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro (aka, Lalo) was under the supervision of ICE as well as the US Attorney’s Office for Western Texas — then headed by Johnny Sutton — while Comey was deputy attorney general and Sutton’s boss.

[...]

Gonzalez’ letter made its way to then-US Attorney Sutton, who, rather than investigating the serious charges contained in the letter, instead complained to his superiors at DOJ headquarters in Washington.

Comey served as deputy attorney general from 2003 to 2005. The House of Death murders played out between August 2003 and January 2004. The commercial media, though, to this day has been silent about the ensuing cover-up orchestrated at the highest levels of DOJ that has assured no one in Justice has been held accountable for the House of Death murders — which were carried out by an informant who had made his US government handlers aware of his assistance and even participation in the murders, often in advance of the murders.

"To this day" means June 1, 2013, of course. In a wild string of events since 2003, the informant is now attempting to avoid deportation to Mexico, I believe. That will be covered in a future post I hope to write that I mentioned earlier.

DEA commander Gonzalez personally briefed the staffs of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D.-Vt., about the House of Death carnage and DOJ officials’ complicity in the murders.

Still, no one at DOJ (which oversees the DEA) or the Department of Homeland Security (which oversees ICE) has ever been questioned publicly, under oath, by any member of Congress about their role in allowing the informant, Ramirez Peyro, himself a former Mexican cop, to participate in murder while working a case for DOJ — while Comey was managing the department.

I'm not sure if that is still the case. Maybe I'll find out researching the future post.

In fact, the only investigation ever conducted was an internal agency probe, known as the JAT, undertaken jointly by DEA and ICE, that to this day —despite numerous FOIA requests filed by Narco News seeking its release — remains buried, its findings never made public.

There is a long paper trail illuminating the facts, which has been uncovered by Narco News over the course of years, but, again, ignored to this day by a commercial media now fawning over the impending nomination of Comey as the next FBI director.

[...]

The assertion that Comey played a role in the House of Death cover-up, in light of his pending nomination to be the top dog at the FBI, should be a big deal, given one of the FBI’s jobs is to handle informants during criminal investigations, and to also deal with the intricacies and sensitivities of law enforcement operations carried out on foreign soil. Narco News did contact Comey previously to ask him about his role in the House of Death case, but he declined to comment.

[...]

So it seems the die is cast, and we as a nation will likely put a man in one of the most powerful posts in the nation, a position where he will make calls daily on civil rights, and life and death, without fully vetting his role in what former DEA Special Agent in Charge Gonzalez describes as one of “the darkest chapters in the history of U.S. federal law enforcement.”

I'm surprised Trump's henchmen haven't dug into this.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.