All in the Familia
One man’s dogged pursuit of his drug cartel in-laws
Of course, whatever happened doesn’t speak well for the government‘s effort to stamp out the drug trade. In the case of Rio Blanco, more than 30 traffickers were named in various applications for wiretaps, and agents overheard scores more discussing transactions, prices, shipments and debts. Absent Skip’s driving personal agenda, selecting whom to arrest when became, inevitably, an almost random decision. In the meantime, as one federal agent said in court papers, ”The seizures represent only a small percentage of the cocaine and money being transported.“
Whatever the priorities the task force was juggling, Ensley can‘t get past one simple fact: He delivered to the federal task force an open-and-shut case that led to the indictment against Luis Valenzuela, and the government never laid a hand on him. Ensley even induced Valenzuela to personally conduct a drug transaction himself -- a rare breach of procedure for a top-level trafficker. ”I spent 10 years grooming this guy,“ Ensley fumed. ”They didn’t know Luis even existed.“
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