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American Show Trial
It was a show trial. Except it wasn’t in Moscow. It was in Brooklyn. The guilt of the defendant was never in question. It was an honest-to-God American show trial. It was a display of an “enemy of the people” at the moment he is smitten by the righteous might of American justice. It was…
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The Lie at the Heart of the Trial of El Chapo Guzman
The lie at the heart of the trial of El Chapo Guzman is one familiar to every American who understands what happened to this country during Prohibition: Men and women are human. They can be bought, bribed, threatened or cajoled. It is the basis of organized crime. Getting the ‘go-ahead’ from Marta Fernando…
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THE SECRET TRIAL OF ‘EL CHAPO’ GUZMAN
The government’s star witness in the trial of El Chapo Guzman was trying to buy information from a man who was instrumental in the purchase of the DC-9 — dubbed “Cocaine One” for its resemblance to official U.S. government planes — busted in Mexico in April of 2006 carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine. Fernando Blengio Cesena, alias…
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True Detective: Chicago, El Chapo, & Vince Vaughn’s Mom
Actor Vince Vaughn, in the news for his starring role in HBO’s True Detective and recent controversial statements advocating more guns in schools, now has a new source of notoriety guaranteed to keep him in face time: his family. Vaughn’s mother, Sharon Vaughn, a sparkling and vivacious Chicagoland socialite, and his step-father, Stephen Ferrone, a…
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DC-9 ‘Cocaine One’ kingpin’s secret conviction
It was the biggest drug seizure on an airplane in Mexican history. It led directly to the forced sale of Wachovia, then America's 4th largest bank. And it threatened to become America’s most notorious drug scandal since Iran Contra. Yet when a leader of the drug smuggling organization responsible for the flight of the DC-9…