Dianne Feinstein: “I do this, Mr. President, because I think this is testimony that is crucial to a decision that will shortly be before…”

“I do this, Mr. President, because I think this is testimony that is crucial to a decision that will shortly be before the Senate. This is our No. 1 drug enforcement agency in the United States, and I think it is important that the testimony of the head of that agency be read by Members considering this issue. Perhaps the most powerful of all cartels today is the Amado Carrillo- Fuentes organization, also known as the Juarez cartel. This organization operates out of Rancho Hacienda de la Natividad today, near Cuernavaca, Morelos, outside of Mexico City. It runs multi-ton quantities of Colombian cocaine toward Mexican distribution sites and then into the United States. The organization runs these drug trafficking operations in Chihuahua, Mexico City, Mayarit, Nuevo Leon, Oaxaca, Sinaloa, Sonora, Jalisco, Baja, CA, Tamulipas, Veracruz, and Zacatecas, among others. Despite the ``encouraging results and notable progress'' cited by the State Department, the Juarez cartel is today as strong as it has ever been. Worse, it is spreading its tentacles into the United States, and this concerns me deeply. One law enforcement official told me it controls a majority of the cocaine in Los Angeles.”