"DHS involved in perjury and other crimes:

and we still don't want to talk about it."

The other day I noted that A: DHS and some people in the Justice Department seem to have been, er, loose with the truth in the case of Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos, and B: there seems to be damn little interest in this, if you judge from the lack of reports from the usual major media suspects. As of a little earlier, still no note of this at any of the blogs I mentioned then, nothing on Drudge. I state that I haven't listed to NBC, ABC or CBS news in quite a while, so I don't know if they mentioned it on their broadcasts. There are lots of articles in various places, but not in the big places where you'd expect.

This is really weird. You've got federal agents and officials lying under oath and to Congress, a federal prosecutor who had to have known about this mess while he was prosecuting, people in prison in the case, all kinds of shady doings, and damn few media types showing an interest. This is the kind of thing that SHOULD be getting lots of play, but... Glenn Beck had this article linked on his site today, including the interesting note
According to official documents in WND's possession, a Department of Homeland Security agent played a major role in managing the drug smuggler and conducting the field investigation in the incident that landed Border Patrol officers Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean in federal prison for more than a decade.

Yet, in the heavily redacted 77-page DHS report submitted to Congress Wednesday there is no explicit discussion of the role DHS Special Agent Christopher Sanchez played in the case.

In another article, there's this on the ballistics tests:
"For some unexplained reason, U.S. Attorney Sutton had the ballistics test performed by the Texas Department of Public Safety in El Paso, rather than by the FBI," he said. "This was a federal issue that should have gone to the FBI and only to the FBI. The Texas Department of Public Safety had no business running a ballistics report on a federal case. The FBI handles all shooting incidents, whether it involves assaults or otherwise, concerning federal agents. DPS should have refused the case and demanded that the bullet be picked up by the FBI for analysis.

"If you ask the Texas DHS how many shooting cases they handle involving federal agents, they would have said, 'None'. Then, if you asked the FBI how many shooting cases they handle involving federal agents, they would have said, 'All of them.' Yet that isn't how it went in this case. Nothing was done by the rules."

On the ballistics report:
Correa could not positively identify Ramos's weapon as the one that fired the submitted bullet. His report concludes:

The copper-jacketed bullet was fired from a barrel having six lands and grooves inclined to the right. The manufacturer of the firearm that fired the copper-jacketed bullet is unknown, but could include commonly encountered models of .40 S&W caliber FN/Browning, Beretta, Heckler & Koch, and Ruger pistols.

Correa's report gives no indication the bullet submitted for analysis was disfigured or in fragments, despite having been supposedly extracted from Aldrete-Davila's body after reportedly doing massive damage to his groin area and hitting bone.

So the test was done on a 'copper-jacketed bullet', ok. In this article, we have this on the wound and bullet:
The medical records document that March 16, 2005, Dr. Winston Marne removed a large bullet fragment from Aldrete-Davila's right thigh. The records indicate bullet fragments were found in Aldrete-Davila's pelvis but not removed. The path of the bullet is clearly described as entering in the left side of the left buttocks, traversing the groin area, and lodging in the right thigh.

If this information is correct, what was removed from the smuggler's body was one large fragment and some smaller pieces were left inside. Which doesn't leave much of a bullet to run ballistics tests on. Even to only narrow it down to 'could include' four brands of firearm. Add to all the rest of the crap that's come out, and this is, at the least- well, hell, there is no 'least' in this.

Happily, DHS seems to have pissed off a bunch of politicians really bad, and this has gotten the attention of people like Rush and Beck who've been talking about it. If the investigation I noted previously does happen- and honestly- something may get done about this. At the very least, the attorneys for Compean and Ramos may be able to do something with this information. But- have to add the caveat- if the information that's come out is accurate, there are a bunch of people in suits with large amounts of authority who really do belong in prison.

Yes, I know this is from WND, which hasn't always been the most accurate of sources. But they are reporting on this, and the information seems to be holding up, so I'll happily use it unless someone can point out a good reason not to. I do admit that I may be missing stuff; I've just done a couple of quick searches.