The FBI ran a child porn site to catch predators, and now the accused are crying foul

Kevin Krause
The Dallas Morning News

When Daryl Glenn Pawlak logged into a large child pornography website and downloaded images using his work computer, he was charged with receipt and possession of child pornography.

The operator of the website that was exploiting children, however, was not arrested.

That's because it was the FBI. And federal prosecutors are defending the agency's decision to secretly hijack and peddle child porn for two weeks as part of a sting operation. During that time, tens of thousands of images of child pornography were uploaded to the site. "Not only was the government the largest distributor of child pornography ... it was also the largest exploiter of children," Pawlak's attorney said in a court filing. "This conduct is the essence of outrageousness, and a serious need for deterrence exists."

The case has ignited debate among legal scholars and defense attorneys about internet privacy and the FBI's decision to keep such a website up and running while more children were harmed.

Dozens of defense attorneys have filed motions to suppress evidence from the controversial child pornography sting, called Operation Pacifier. In some cases, federal judges have granted those motions. But most attempts to get charges thrown out have failed, legal experts say, even though some judges have ruled that the government violated the law and acted inappropriately.

Joining legal challenges nationwide, Pawlak's attorneys are trying to get the charges dismissed, arguing that the government went too far by using a single warrant in Virginia to hack the computers of people all over the country, including his client.

The American Civil Liberties Union compared it to Operation Fast and Furious, a failed sting operation run by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives beginning in 2009 that resulted in 2,000 firearms winding up in the hands of criminals.

In that case, ATF allowed people to illegally buy the guns to traffic to Mexico in the hopes of tracking them to Mexican drug cartel leaders. But that didn't happen, and instead the agency lost track of the guns, including two that were found at the scene of the 2010 murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

The FBI declined to comment about Operation Pacifier. The U.S. attorney's office in Dallas said in court filings that it acted within the law and that dismissing the case would give people like Pawlak a "free pass" for trolling the web for photos and videos of children being sexually abused.

"The FBI's process here should be encouraged, not deterred," a prosecutor in Dallas said in a court filing.

Defense attorneys say the matter will eventually be resolved in the appellate courts, if not the U.S. Supreme Court.

Historically, the government has taken down such websites immediately.

Douglas Anderson, chair of the University of North Texas' philosophy and religion department, said the government was conducting a cost-benefit analysis, weighing damage to children against catching people who download child porn.

He said he was surprised children were used in such a calculation.

"It's a moral conundrum for anyone who takes the view that we are committed to protecting them in all ways," Anderson said. "They're weighing it against these kids' lives."

World opinion says we have a basic duty to protect children, Anderson said.

"You'd have to have something pretty overwhelming to offset damaging more people," he said. "It would have to be awfully extreme to allow even one child to be harmed."  

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Was Former DEA Agent Jailed for Exposing ATF Arms Trafficking?

Narcosphere

Iran/Contra-Era Whistleblower Cele Castillo Alleged in 2008 That Federal Agents Were Helping to Smuggle Guns into Mexico

Cele Castillo, a former DEA agent who blew the whistle on the CIA-backed arms-for-drugs trade used to prop up the 1980s Contra counter-insurgency in Nicaragua, is now sitting in a federal prison for what may well be another act of whistleblowing in this century.

Before Castillo reported to the federal pen in July 2009, where he is now stuck until April 2012, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records, he shared with this reporter a series of revelations concerning arms trafficking and what he thought were corrupt ATF agents.

Those revelations, now some three years old, dovetail in great detail with the still unfolding ATF Fast and Furious operation, in which federal ATF agents allowed thousands of high-powered weapons purchased by criminal operatives at U.S. gun stores to be smuggled into Mexico unimpeded.

And Fast and Furious, as recent news reports have revealed, was not the first such operation put in play by U.S. federal law enforcement agencies. A similar “gun-walking” tactic was employed by ATF in 2006 and 2007 under the Bush administration through a program known as Operation Wide Receiver.

Castillo’s case, which involved allegations that he purchased and sold firearms illegally, was largely ignored by the mainstream media, though Narco News reported extensively on it and Castillo’s contention that he had been framed and was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct. [Past coverage at this link.]

At the time, as he was going through the buzz-saw line that is the federal judicial system, Castillo told Narco News that he was likely being targeted because of his role in exposing the CIA-backed effort to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua some 25 years earlier, or possibly because he had evidence of corruption within the ATF. But in truth, Castillo really didn’t know what direction the assault was coming from or why he was being targeted.

Now, though, in light of the exposure of ATF’s Fast and Furious, it seems the question needs to be asked:

Did Castillo, well before Fast and Furious came to light this year, rip back the curtain on a long-running U.S.-government sanctioned program to supply illegal arms to paramilitary units supported by the Mexican military — units charged with clandestinely carrying out the dirty work of the drug war in Mexico?

The answer to the question should matter to all of us, because that “war” has cost the lives of more than 50,000 Mexican citizens since it was launched in late 2006 under the reign of Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Well, here’s what Castillo told Narco News in late 2008, some three years before news of Fast and Furious and Operation Wide Receiver starting making headlines in the mainstream news:

During the [Mexican] presidential elections, El Chapo [Joaquin Guzman Loera, the leader of the Sinaloa drug organization] supported [Mexican president] Calderon. Calderon then rented the military to El Chapo to take out Osiel [Cardenas Guillen, head of the rival Gulf Cartel]. Keep in the back of your mind: why has Chapo never been arrested? Calderon took back the military and is now working hand-in-hand with El Chapo.
… The majority of the guns that are going into Mexico from the gun shows are going to the The Mexican paramilitary unit out of Monterrey, Mexico. … A Mexican military captain, "El Capi," is doing all the purchases. 
…. These people are part of President Calderon's people who control the drug trade into the U.S. There is an ATF agent … who works with these people.

Castillo, at the time, assumed the ATF agent, actually two of them that he identified, were on the take, not part of an officially sanctioned U.S. operation. But events that have unfolded since 2008 open that assumption up to a possible different interpretation.

Castillo, who never lost his investigative edge, said in 2008 that some of his information was coming from a U.S. government informant, who was later murdered. In addition, he claimed a notorious prison gang, the Texas Syndicate, was working with the supposedly corrupt ATF agents to assure the gun-trafficking into Mexico remained protected from law enforcement intervention.

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