In the Fast & Furious operation the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives handed thousands of automatic guns to the Mexican drug cartels. This was supposed to "track" where the guns were going. The ATF then lied about the operations.
In another operation, revealed today, agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency laundered cartel money to "track" where it is going:
The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.
They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.
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One D.E.A. official said it was not unusual for American agents to pick up two or three loads of Mexican drug money each week. A second official said that as Mexican cartels extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations had grown as well. When asked how much money had been laundered as a part of the operations, the official would only say, “A lot.”
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And the former officials said that federal law enforcement agencies had to seek Justice Department approval to launder amounts greater than $10 million in any single operation. But they said that the cap was treated more as a guideline than a rule, and that it had been waived on many occasions to attract the interest of high-value targets.
In other operations, to be revealed at some later point, the Department of Agriculture is optimizing South American coca plantations, the Food Safety and Inspection Service is helping the cartels to implement product quality standards for coca procession, the Special Operation Command is training cartel members how to effectively fight against Mexican government forces and the Central Intelligence Agency is providing the top management personal of the Mexican drug cartels.
The immense profits from these operations get washed through too-big-to-fail banks at Wall Street and a part of them is used to by off the politicians who would otherwise ask too many questions.
All this of course is only to "track" what the drug cartels are doing.
Such "tracking" is just what every business owner is doing in his own shop. Tracking what is bought, produced and sold and the money streams involved. The U.S. government is doing just the same. All to keep the customers happy and the profits to flow.
So there is nothing of interest to see here. But look over there, those must be terrorists. And there is that small country on the other side of the planet that is threatening our business. Must. Go. To War. Now.