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Old 05-09-2010, 11:11 PM   #1
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Tactical Shooting: A New World: A Private War On Narcoterrorism

Just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, the city of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua is an urban warzone. Mexican Presidente Felipe Calderon has sent in more than 7500 federales and soldiers to keep the peace, but the vicious turf wars of the narcoterroristas continue unabated. The municipal police has been disarmed by the federal troops; their loyalty so suspect that they are viewed as more likely to use them to resist the military than the narcoterroristas.

The US government is committed to opposing the criminal syndicates that market their produce across the American border. In recent years, voices warning that the security situation in Mexico is deteriorating so fast that it is in danger of becoming a failed state have grown increasingly loud. As a result, the financial assistance of the United States has been augmented with other methods. As a result of a recent change in the Mexican Constitution, local criminals suspected of crimes inside the US may be extradited there to face justice. Task forces of US and Mexican police investigate cases and plan interdiction together. Private security consultants from the United States have trained Mexican security troops or put together plans for new security initiatives. Some of these consultants have had national stature, such as former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

The most controversial initiative of the US remains direct law enforcement inside the borders of Mexico. As yet, US officers have not attempted to arrest Mexican criminals across the Rio Grande, but undercover investigators answering to federal law enforcement agencies such as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have been dispatched to infiltrate the ranks of Mexican cartels and to provide evidence for a later trial under US law.

Accusations that one such informant in the Chihuahua area, Guillermo Eduardo Ramírez Peyro, had participated in acts of violence in direct contravention of US Department of Justice policy served to weaken intelligence gathered by said agent and prejudice any future case built on that intelligence. As the accusations were not confined to ‘low’ felonies, but spoke to multiple murders, Peyro was eventually arrested himself.

The conclusion reached by the Justice Department were that future informants would of necessity be outside the core membership of the most violent cartels, as the conduct expected of the upper leadership made it all-but impossible to avoid the agent being put in a position where he would have to choose between compromise and breaking the law in a way that the United States Government could neither condone nor overlook. This would hamper their investigations, but that would be preferable to similar situations coming up with increasing rapidity.

After ICE officers assigned to the task force made their case to superiors in the Department of Homeland Security, another conclusion was reached there. Using unofficial contacts within the intelligence community, a proof-of-concept operation was carried out by the CIA SAD (SOG). Numerous other informants recruited by Peyro, mainly members of the Juárez cartel, were contacted and given new handling procedures as well as sophisticated electronic surveillance and communications equipment that would allow them to send their take out directly over the Internet by a method extremely unlikely to be detected by either the cartels or the Mexican government. CIA Collection Management Officers at a designated desk, codenamed VIRGIN, would then receive the take and turn it over to the DEA and ICE as part of routine inter-agency information sharing under the auspices of DHS, claiming that it was incidental intelligence developed during a counter-terror operation in Mexico.

After the proof-of-concept had proved successful, the decision was made to limit exposure by employing only ‘blue-badge’ CIA case officers on missions requiring direct contact with the agents. This meant that the officers would be government contractors and not direct employees. Their legitimate employment with the security consultancy company ARWV International, a company in the majority ownership of Booz Allen Hamilton, would serve as their NOC (Non-Official Cover) as well as serving reduce legal and political exposure if it ever got out that the CIA had failed to disclose the specifics of Operation VIRGIN to Congress.

ARWV International employs just over forty people; with over half of them either seasoned business consultants in the field of private security or office staff and support personnel. The other employees are all graduates of the CIA Clandestine Service training program as well as the commando training required of a member of the elite Special Activities Division (Special Operations Group) within the National Clandestine Service. Most of them are furthermore veterans of conventional military special operation groups before becoming Paramilitary Operations Officers. For all intents and purposes, their contractor status has no effect on their job except that they are paid better than government service, receiving an average salary of $189,000 per year in addition to whatever hazard pay they may earn.

In the beginning of the year 2010, a female agent codenamed Azulejo (real name, Maria Elena Perez Cruz), turned in information that convinced the operations desk officer in charge of VIRGIN to authorise a long-term infiltration with some risk. Azulejo had met Vicento Carrillo Fuentes, the elusive leader of the Juárez cartel and she had reason to believe that he would be back within less than a month. If the turn-around time of the data was shorter, his arrival could be confirmed and then communicated to the Mexican authorities, hopefully leading to his arrest.

According to instructions, Azulejo had invented a story about a boyfriend involved in criminal enterprises in the United States in order to better justify remaining unattached to the targets of the investigation. The decision was made to infiltrate a team with surveillance equipment to receive the take from Azulejo in real time. Upon a confirmed sighting on Fuentes, the team leader was to contact the VIRGIN desk immediately through his encrypted computer link and stream the data to them. The information would then be routed to the Mexican Federal Police through a cooperative venture with the US Department of Homeland Security, purporting to be from an ICE technical surveillance operation. The projected response time was estimated at less than three hours.

Since Azulejo would lack the technical capability to set up surveillance equipment that covered the target zones, one of the six man team dispatched would have to take on the role of her boyfriend in order to obtain access to these areas. Based on physical resemblance to the description previously given, this duty devolved onto Alejandro Ortiz, Lt. (Ret.) of the USN, a former member of SEAL Team 4 and a five-year-veteran of the CIA. Since he was the usual team leader, his assistant team leader would functionally be in command of the mission during times when he was undercover.

The team would have access to two luxurious houses in a good neighbourhood of Juárez where three other employees of ARWV International would also be staying as part of their cover of advising the Federal Preventive Police on their management cycle. They would work somewhere around two days a week at this task, but should they have reason to believe that Fuentes might be expected, other personnel would be sent in to take over most of their duties.

Their surveillance would take place in three main locations. One was a leased flat on the third floor overlooking a night club where Azulejo and members of the Juárez cartel were frequent guests. Another was a hotel room on the second floor of a hotel next to Azulejo’s home. The third was an empty house where the caretaker had been bribed not to worry about squatters on the fourth floor, which had a line of sight to Azulejo’s place of work, a purported steelworks factory which was also used to process and package cocaine.

Yes, I know that I still haven't finished three of my older threads about the playtest. Big whoop, you wanna fight about it?! I just finished my exams, the playtest is time-sensitive and I decided that I'd rather prioritise running new ones and reporting on actual problems found during those to the authors than completing the prose descriptions for the forums. I will get to that, but later.
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