by Julian Assange may be a creepy pervert but the State Department documents being released through WikiLeaks are providing some valuable insight about arms trafficking and seized firearms in Mexico.
Mike Vanderboegh has a post on Sipsey Street Irregulars about a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City to the State Department, DOJ, and many other U.S. agencies. The unclassified cable sent on October 28, 2009 has a subject heading of “MEXICO ARMS TRAFFICKING: ACCESS TO CONFISCATED WEAPONS, A NECESSARY STEP MEXICO”. After much discussion of how Mexico stores and catalogs confiscated weapons and how their court system treats the information, there is an acknowledgment that the claim that 90% of weapons found in Mexico originated in the United States is incorrect.
ΒΆ6. (SBU) Comment. Claims by Mexican and U.S. officials that upwards of 90 percent of illegal recovered weapons can be traced back to the U.S. is based on an incomplete survey of confiscated weapons. In point of fact, without wider access to the weapons seized in Mexico, we really have no way of verifying these numbers.
So given this, why do Obama Administration officials including the new Acting Director of ATF continually repeat a claim that has been proven false in more than one venue?