The FBI catches military recruiters moonlighting as cocaine runners

[Robbien]

A Midtown strip mall that should have housed the best of the best served as Corruption Central in Tucson. Two military recruiting stations sit side-by-side there, one run by the Army, the other by the Marines. Between them, a total of seven recruiters were on the take, secretly accepting bribes to transport cocaine, even as most spent their days visiting local high schools.

They had help from several more recruiters at an Army National Guard office, where one recruiter was said to be selling cocaine from the trunk of his recruiting vehicle.

Many of the drug-running recruiters remained on the job, with continued access to local schools, for months — and often, years — after FBI agents secretly filmed them counting cash next to stacks of cocaine bricks, the Arizona Daily Star found in a months-long probe of court records and military employment data.

Some were still recruiting three years after they first were caught on camera running drugs in uniform. Most have pleaded guilty and are to be sentenced in March. Some honorably retired from the military.

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/160717

[MADem]

1. Cocaine in Uniform--George Bush's military. Sounds about right. NT

[MidwestTransplant]

2. There is NO PROOF that he wore his uniform when he did coke.

NONE WHATSOEVER! Stop slandering the President. ;)

[MADem]

5. Naaah, he was bottomless in cowboy boots up on the bar!!!!! NT

[havocmom]

3. No wonder they got so hostile to the Raging Grannies who hung out there!

They didn't like surveillance by respectable members of society with strong convictions and the will to act on them. Some old broad may have seen something and blown their racket. Had to keep calling cops on grannies or the drug running may not have worked at all.

Sad that the dollar is valued over all else in America. THAT is what is destroying us.

[Robbien]

6. The Feds probably called the cops on the Grannies

The Grannies being there probably put a damper on all the drug activity the Feds spent three years sitting on their asses just watching. Gotta get the cops to shoo away the Grannies in order to give the Feds some cocaine dealing to watch.

[havocmom]

7. That'd be my guess. Lived for years in Tucson.

Drug trade important to the local economy. Some women hanging out constantly may well have been a threat to many.

[Ian David]

4. Army Stoned-- I mean, STRONG. n/t

[havocmom]

9. We might wanna look into the numbers of recruits

And question whether anyone signed under the influence.

[stillcool]

8. Gary Webb...deja vu n/t

[global1]

10. Are The Military Recruiting Offices The Mechanism That The Afghanistan....

poppy production and its resultant finished product - get to the American people?

[Syncronaut Seven]

11. You know, in any other country.

this would be a scandal.

In * world, it's just another economic opportunity.