Post a Comment On: Sipsey Street Irregulars

[Image] How many automatic weapons, grenades, explosives and other destructive devices have you ever bought at a gun show?

Back in the 90s when I was helping J.D. Cash and Glenn Wilburn with the private investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing, I had occasion to meet a fellow named Pete Langan. Pete was the son of a US Army and CIA veteran who had died when he was young. Lacking a good male role model, Pete got into petty crime, was jailed, raped in prison, became a racist, antisemite and one of the leaders of the Aryan Republican Army (known by the FBI as "the Midwestern Bank Bandits"). There were a lot of strange twists and turns in Pete's story, but the strangest of them was that while he was living the life of a macho neo-Nazi guerrilla, he was also a regular at "Kansas City Crossdressers and Friends," where he dressed as a woman and went by the name Donna.

Richard Leiby, the Washington Post reporter and regular recipient of my on-line email newsletter, The John Doe Times, did a story on Pete entitled, "The Saga of Pretty Boy Pedro; How a Wheaton Kid Became a Neo-Nazi Bank Robber, and One Confused Human Being."

Indeed. I talked to Pete while he was awaiting trial in Columbus, Ohio (my old stomping grounds) and he was a regular correspondent and phone interviewee of J.D. Cash. He told J.D. that he would be happy to tell us the truth about McVeigh, Elohim City (the ARA's Oklahoma base) and the Oklahoma City bombing if we could just get him immunity from prosecution for mass murder and a sex-change operation. Obviously, that was out of our control. As far as I know, he's still alive in federal prison, where the authorities are keeping him well away from any press (they even stiffed 60 Minutes).

One confused human being. Yes. Well, I thought about Commander Pedro when I saw this link on David's War on Guns site and back-tracked the reporter's biography.

David's outraged comment on the story about how American gun shows are feeding the Mexican drug gangs:

One Stop Shopping

Where do I go to get RPGs, dynamite, fragmentation grenades, etc. that I want to smuggle into Mexico?

You guessed it! BATFU-monitored gun shops and those damned American gun shows!

And people believe this sh**.

This is the FOX News article that drew David's scorn:

Mexican Drug Cartels Armed to the Hilt, Threatening National Security Wednesday, February 04, 2009

"By Matt Sanchez

In November, along the border with Texas, Mexican authorities arrested drug cartel leader Jaime "el Hummer" Gonzalez Duran — one of the founders of "Los Zetas," a paramilitary organization of former Mexican soldiers who decided there was more money to be made in selling drugs than in serving in the Mexican military.

As El Hummer was being transported to the airport in an armed vehicle, his fellow cartel members launched a brazen attack against the federales.

They were armed to the teeth. Their arsenal ranged from semi-automatic rifles to rocket-propelled grenades. When the smoke finally cleared and the government had prevailed, Mexican federal agents captured 540 assault rifles, more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 150 grenades, 14 cartridges of dynamite, 98 fragmentation grenades, 67 bulletproof vests, seven Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles and a Light Anti Tank (LAW) rocket.

This is modern Mexico, where the leaders of the powerful drug cartels are armed to the teeth with sophisticated weapons, many of which are smuggled over the border from the United States. It is with this array of superior weapons that drug cartels are threatening the very stability of their own country. And it's why America's outgoing CIA Director, Michael Hayden, says violence in Mexico will pose the second greatest threat to U.S. security next year, right after Al Qaeda.

"Americans are understandably focused on the flow of drugs and migrants into the U.S. from Mexico," says Andreas Peter, author of "Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide."

"But too often glossed over in the border security debate is the flow of weapons across the border into Mexico," he told Foxnews.com in a statement via the Internet.
The cartels are obtaining arms from America by using "straw man" buyers, who legally purchase weapons at gun shops and gun shows in the U.S. The weapons cross into Mexico, where border security is much weaker heading south of the border than it is going north.

Mexican Drug Cartels Armed to the Hilt

Authorities don't know how many firearms are sneaked across the border, but the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) says more than 7,700 guns sold in America were traced to Mexico last year, up from 3,300 the year before and about 2,100 in 2006. Mexican authorities say 90 percent of smuggled weapons come from the United States.

In Northern Mexico, high-powered American weapons have enabled drug cartels to control whole territories. There is the Colt AR-15, the civilian version of the military M-16. And there is the "cuernos de chivo" — Spanish for goat horns . . . the 30-shot curved banana clip of the AK-47.

The AK-47, long the symbol of guerrilla revolution, is not the most accurate or technical assault rifle, but it gets the job done. It is the workhorse of drug cartels, and ammunition can come from a variety of world sources, including the United States.

And then there are the sniper rifles.

"The .50-caliber was interesting because we haven't seen that type of arm used in Mexico yet," said Scott Stewart, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and an analyst for Stratfor, a geopolitical security firm. The .50-caliber long-range sniper rifle is incredibly accurate and dangerous; a trained operator could kill a human being with a round from well over a mile away.

For criminal cartels like Los Zetas, greater firepower means greater influence in not only the drug trade; it has enabled them to infiltrate and threaten the entire power structure of Mexico. In December, the Mexican attorney general announced the arrest of Maj. Arturo Gonzalez Rodriguez for allegedly assisting Mexican drug trafficking organizations — allegedly for $100,000 a month.

The connection between the drug cartels and the Mexican army has given cartel leaders access to military grade weapons like the high powered Five-Seven semi-automatic pistols.

A favorite with the cartels, the Five-Seven has the advantage of being light: under 2 pounds, with a 20-round clip filled with bullets the cartels call "matapolicias' — "cop killers."

"The 5.7 x 28, armor piercing (AP) rounds are not available for sale to the general public and are probably coming from the Mexican military," said Stewart who has analyzed U.S.-Mexican border security issues for half a decade.

The drug-related murder rate in Mexico doubled in 2008 from just one year before, and as the violence escalates, the power of the drug cartels has destabilized Mexican authority to the point of threatening national security.

Last week Gen. Ángeles Dahuajare announced that more than 17,000 soldiers had deserted in 2008.

"The Mexican Army is becoming a revolving door for the enforcement arm of the drug cartels; they simply pay better," Stewart said.

"If they don't get the weapons from the U.S., they'll get it from somewhere else: Brazil, Guatemala, Argentina or even former satellite state 'gray markets,'" he said.
Despite the efforts of his comrades in crime, El Hummer wound up in jail — and Mexican authorities paraded him before the media to reassure the public that they are still in control.

But that was largely for show. As long as weapons flow into Mexico, the drug cartels will be able to develop an arsenal. "Control" will be unstable, at best.

Now David has been pointing out the "American Gun shows Make Drug Violence Possible" lie for some time. The gist of is that the cartels are buying full-auto weaponry, destructive devices and explosives at American gun stores and at American gun shows. This lie is being pushed in various quarters to get an new AWB and to "close the gunshow loophole," as if either of those moves would cause problems in armament procurement for a world-wide illegal smuggling organization.

But I was surprised that FOX had picked up on this canard, until I back-tracked the reporter.

[Image]

Meet Matt Sanchez. When I read the name, some small alarm went off at the back of my brain. Sanchez, yeah, I'd heard of the guy. :The Wikipedia bio is, uh, interesting:

Matt Sanchez (born December 1, 1970) is an American writer and journalist, and has served as a Marine reservist. In March 2007, Sanchez was awarded the first "Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award" at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The conference received mainstream media attention when Ann Coulter referred to John Edwards as a "faggot". Shortly afterward, it was revealed that Sanchez had performed in gay pornographic films in the early 1990s as Pierre LaBranche and Rod Majors.

As a war correspondent, he was involved in the Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy.

Biography

Early life

In an interview, Sanchez states that he wrote for travel magazines.

Adult entertainment

In the early 1990s, Sanchez performed in gay pornographic movies. He first worked under the direction of Kristen Bjorn using the stage name "Pierre LaBranche." Scenes from his original films have been re-released in compilations. Sanchez stated in an interview with Radar magazine that it "was just the nature of the business, you shoot a lot of films and they use them forever."

Marines Corps service


[Image]
Sanchez in Marine Corps Dress Blue uniform in 2003

In 2003, he joined the United States Marine Corps and was trained as a refrigeration mechanic.

Political activism at Columbia University

In 2005, while a junior at the Columbia University School of General Studies, Sanchez claimed he was harassed by students during the Fall 2005 "Activities Day" while manning the table for the Columbia Military Society. According to Sanchez, he was approached by members of the International Socialist Organization, an anti-war campus group who told him he was stupid for serving in the military. According to Mark Xue, president of the military society who was at the table with Sanchez, "They were telling him that he was stupid and ignorant, that he was being brainwashed and used for being a minority in the military." Sanchez made a series of formal complaints to the university, which upon investigation found no grounds for punishing the three accused students. The accused dispute Sanchez's account of the events. In a Columbia Daily Spectator editorial titled, "The Conservative Witch Hunt," Zach Zill wrote that while he did make clear that he found on-campus military recruitment offensive, he had done so without the use of epithets and derogatory language. Monique Dols, another of the accused Socialists, stated the complaint was false and "a discrediting campaign against us."

Sanchez and others in the student group MilVets, an organization for on-campus veterans, had also voiced their frustration at what they perceived to be a lack of regard for veterans on the campus. In February 2006, the university amended its non-discrimination policy to include "military status" as a group to be protected from harassment. According to the University, this was not a policy change, but merely a "semantic clarification," as the words "military status" replaced "disabled or Vietnam era veteran."

National recognition

On December 4, 2006, Sanchez wrote an opinion piece for the New York Post, titled, "Diversity Double-Talk: Ivy's 'Inclusion' excludes Military," which led to his being invited onto various conservative talk shows in January 2007 to discuss the incident.

On March 2, 2007, Sanchez was awarded the Jeanne Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). A featured speaker at the conference, Ann Coulter, made controversial remarks at the event, referring to presidential candidate John Edwards as a "faggot."

According to an editorial by Sanchez published by Salon, he was compared online to Rich Merritt, author of Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star, and Jeff Gannon, a conservative journalist who was outed as a gay escort. In the Salon piece, Sanchez noted that "porn is just ... porn," and that he considers his pornographic career an identity outgrown.

On March 7, 2007, the Matt Sanchez story appeared on MSNBC's program Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Michelle Malkin wrote a piece in which she states that Matt "...appeared on Fox News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor and Hannity and Colmes."

Marine Corps inquiries

On March 16, 2007, John Hoellwarth, a staff writer for Military Times Media Group, reported that Sanchez was the subject of a Marine Corps inquiry about his appearances in gay pornographic videos and related allegations. Of concern was whether "Sanchez had enlisted prior to the end of his film career," "if Reserve Marines were prohibited from doing porn when not in a drilling status," and "how the current 'don't ask, don't tell' policy might apply."

In an article published April 1, 2007 by the Marine Corps Times, Hoellwarth wrote that the Marine Corps was also investigating reports that Sanchez had "wrongfully solicited funds to support [his] purported deployment to Iraq." According to the article, a Marine investigator accused Sanchez of "coordinating a $300 payment from the UWVC (United War Veterans Council) and $12,000 from U-Haul." Sanchez told the newspaper that the charges were "demonstrably false," and that he never collected any funds from the listed organizations.

Journalist

Matt Sanchez reported on the Iraq War as an embedded journalist. He first accompanied an American military unit that traveled from Kuwait into Iraq, then in July 2007 he joined a unit in Afghanistan. He currently reports from the United Nations for World Net Daily.

Sanchez was revealed as a source associated with criticism of the Scott Beauchamp "Baghdad Diarist" series of writings which appeared in The New Republic.

The story became nationally known when military bloggers (milbloggers) and Weekly Standard editor Michael Goldfarb raised doubt about the validity of the "Baghdad Diarist" accounts. Michelle Malkin aired a report on the matter on The O'Reilly Factor.

Selected filmography
The below is a partial filmography:

As "Rod Majors" Jawbreaker, 1994 (Catalina Video)
Idol Country, 1994 (HIS Video)

As "Pierre LaBranche"
Call of the Wild, 1992, (Kristen Bjorn Video)
Montreal Men, 1992, (Kristen Bjorn Video)


And I thought I had an eclectic biography. So what are we supposed to make of this controversial (to say the least) credentialed "journalist" who writes the Brady Bunch party line without reference to reality?

I don't know if he's "one confused human being" like Pete Langan, but he's sure got his facts confused.

Oh, yeah, in the gay porn film Jawbreaker, Sanchez played "Convict #3." Maybe he and Pete Langan have more in common than we know. Sheesh.