Anyone remember Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Jaime Zapata? Agent Zapata was assassinated by drug thugs wielding ATF-enabled firearms in Mexico. (Zapata’s murder fell below the media and political radar in light of the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, also gunned down by drug thugs wielding ATF-enabled firearms.) We still don’t know why Zapata was in Mexico. Nor do we know why a U.S. Border Patrol Agent and two of his “retired” colleagues (including one ICE agent) were in Afghanistan. Dangerous place, apparently . . .
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says a Border Patrol agent working in Afghanistan killed the gunman involved in a deadly attack on a group of civilian contractors in that country this week,” hstoday.us reports.
Three contractors were killed in Sunday’s attack. Napolitano says two were former Homeland Security employees. She identified the Americans as Benjamin Monsivais, a former Border Patrol agent and retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, and retired CBP port director Joseph Perez. A British contractor also died in the attack. A person wearing an Afghan police uniform turned his gun on the contractors.
Spooky stuff.
The secretary told the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday about the current Border Patrol agent’s role. She did not identify the agent or describe the work that person is doing in Afghanistan.
Call me a journalist (although Ralph tells me bloggers aren’t journalists in any legal sense) but I’d like to know what the Committee knows: whats the DHS doing in Mexico and Afghanistan? Aren’t foreign ops supposed to be a CIA deal? It looks like the whole U.S. “War on Terror” in Afghanistan has gone interagency and . . . quiet.
FYI: the American Contractors in Iraq reports 59 of their ilk have been killed in the second quarter of 2012 (so far) vs. 418 deaths in all of 2011. As the toll mounts, what’s with calling these attacks “green on blue”? If they’re not evidence of increasing Taliban infiltration of Afghan forces I don’t know what is.