Suzanimal
12-11-2017, 10:12 AM
Five years if you work for HSI, the rest of us can rot in prison.
In exchange for pleading guilty, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed to drop additional charges of fraud and obstruction of justice against Ciccione when he’s sentenced next February.
“Chris is a good man who served his country for more than 20 years both in the military and as a federal agent,” said his defense attorney, Marc Seitles, in the wake of the conviction. “Sadly, he had a poor lapse in judgment, and today, accepted responsibility for it.”
Taking the blame might not be enough to appease Piedrahíta. The cartel chieftain is likely headed for extradition to the States—and his lawyers say he plans on filing a case alleging criminal extortion against none other than his old compañero Chris Ciccione.
Sex Parties, Border Bribes, and Drug War Deception
Christopher Ciccione, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), pleaded guilty in a Miami courtroom on Nov. 30 to conspiring to commit “deceit, craft and trickery” against Uncle Sam for what would appear to be no more than a few centavos on the dollar. Ciccione, 52, now faces up to five years in prison for aiding and abetting a Colombian capo linked to four major cartels.
What’s the going rate for selling out your country? The court records say that in 2010 Ciccione and another as yet unnamed HSI agent received from an infamous crime boss wanted in one of the nation’s biggest cocaine smuggling incidents about $17,700 in cash, along with an all-inclusive long weekend of wining, dining, and high-end call girls at a luxury hotel in Bogotá.
...
Ciccione is far from the first U.S. drug warrior to get caught with his pants down (literally) in cartel country. Several DEA agents—including some with top-secret clearance—were accused by the Justice Department of attending “sex parties” thrown for them by known Colombian drug dealers back in 2015.
Closer to home, a 2016 report indicated that hundreds of Homeland Security and Customs Enforcement officers had accepted about $15 million in bribes from drug smugglers and human traffickers while “protecting” U.S. borders.
Within just the last week, at least five more U.S. law enforcement officers have been indicted or convicted of narcotics-related criminal activities, including a NYPD counterterrorism agent arrested for running heroin across state lines.
On the same day that Ciccione was convicted in Miami, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with the House Foreign Relations Committee to request additional funds for U.S. efforts to fight narco-traffickers south of the border. His rhetoric, as usual, closely echoed President Donald Trump’s simplified dichotomy of black-hatted “bad hombres” and the gringo “good guys” who oppose them.
Such a narrative fails to acknowledge all the dancing with the devil our own side has done, and continues to do, in the ever-expanding drug war.
...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/busted-the-fed-in-cahoots-with-a-colombian-drug-lord?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+thedailybeast%252Farticles+ (The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles)
In exchange for pleading guilty, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed to drop additional charges of fraud and obstruction of justice against Ciccione when he’s sentenced next February.
“Chris is a good man who served his country for more than 20 years both in the military and as a federal agent,” said his defense attorney, Marc Seitles, in the wake of the conviction. “Sadly, he had a poor lapse in judgment, and today, accepted responsibility for it.”
Taking the blame might not be enough to appease Piedrahíta. The cartel chieftain is likely headed for extradition to the States—and his lawyers say he plans on filing a case alleging criminal extortion against none other than his old compañero Chris Ciccione.
Sex Parties, Border Bribes, and Drug War Deception
Christopher Ciccione, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), pleaded guilty in a Miami courtroom on Nov. 30 to conspiring to commit “deceit, craft and trickery” against Uncle Sam for what would appear to be no more than a few centavos on the dollar. Ciccione, 52, now faces up to five years in prison for aiding and abetting a Colombian capo linked to four major cartels.
What’s the going rate for selling out your country? The court records say that in 2010 Ciccione and another as yet unnamed HSI agent received from an infamous crime boss wanted in one of the nation’s biggest cocaine smuggling incidents about $17,700 in cash, along with an all-inclusive long weekend of wining, dining, and high-end call girls at a luxury hotel in Bogotá.
...
Ciccione is far from the first U.S. drug warrior to get caught with his pants down (literally) in cartel country. Several DEA agents—including some with top-secret clearance—were accused by the Justice Department of attending “sex parties” thrown for them by known Colombian drug dealers back in 2015.
Closer to home, a 2016 report indicated that hundreds of Homeland Security and Customs Enforcement officers had accepted about $15 million in bribes from drug smugglers and human traffickers while “protecting” U.S. borders.
Within just the last week, at least five more U.S. law enforcement officers have been indicted or convicted of narcotics-related criminal activities, including a NYPD counterterrorism agent arrested for running heroin across state lines.
On the same day that Ciccione was convicted in Miami, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with the House Foreign Relations Committee to request additional funds for U.S. efforts to fight narco-traffickers south of the border. His rhetoric, as usual, closely echoed President Donald Trump’s simplified dichotomy of black-hatted “bad hombres” and the gringo “good guys” who oppose them.
Such a narrative fails to acknowledge all the dancing with the devil our own side has done, and continues to do, in the ever-expanding drug war.
...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/busted-the-fed-in-cahoots-with-a-colombian-drug-lord?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+thedailybeast%252Farticles+ (The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles)