LONG DENIED' WIGHTMAN-ZAMORA CONNECTION REVEALED

By Juan Montoya
For years now, Cameron County District Attorney's Office Public Information Officer Melissa Landin (formerly Zamora) has denied she has passed along information to local blogger Robert Wightman so he can exercise his own brand of smear-and-gotcha pseudo-journalism.
Whether it was information from the DA's files on certain political candidates, internal memos about individuals within the DA's Office, or pesky bloggers who were blowing her cover, Wightman seemed to have the inside track.
He, of course, always indignantly denied he did and said he got all his information through public information requests.
The first inkling his readers got that he knew something that the general public did not was his request (and the PIO's release) of confidential internal documents of a spat Landin had with former DA's Office Community Outreach staffer Zeke Silva.
For months, Silva had been a thorn on Landin's side. In the contest to vie for DA Luis Saenz's attention, Silva was an obstacle. For months before Saenz's election, Silva had been his constant companion and supporter, convincing voters that Saenz had changed from the DA who had left the office in near scandal over his womanizing. His former investigator George Gavito had even been taped promising a women who had complained about sexual harassment  a job with Rep. Rene Oliveira if she would desist in her complaint.
When Saenz was elected, he rewarded Silva with the community outreach position. He then hired Zamora as his PIO.
The chemistry there did not work out. Just as she had at the county judge's office with Cris Valadez, Landin wanted to be at the top of the pecking order. When Carlos Cascos demurred about leaving her in charge of the office when he was out of town, she left in a huff.

At her new gig she complained in two confidential interoffice memos to DA chief Investigator George Delaunay and Public Integrity Unit Chief Victor Cortez that – among other things – Silva had used an alias on social media to maker her look bad, that he had accused her of leaking information to Wightman, that Silva had bought and paid for advertisements on a blog, and that he had badgered her about purchasing a jacket with the DA's logo on it.
Since both memos were meant to be confidential interoffice communications between Zamora and investigators Cortez and Delaunay, no one but those three were privy to their existence. In fact, there is no copy on the memos forwarded to anyone else. And when we learned about their existence, we gleaned from Human Resources that no copies existed in their files.
So, if we deduct that two professional investigators would never reveal even the existence of confidential memos to anyone, who then, let on to Wightman that the two memos existed?  We doubt that Silva would do that to himself. The logical solution is that the revelation that the two unofficial "memos of concern" to individuals outside the DA's Office could only have come from Zamora.
None other than the portly blogger has outed her a s his source for those confidential memos and  numerous other documentation Wightman used to attack her "enemies."
How that qualified as damaging the integrity of a public office is never explained in the complaints, except to say that "He accused me of being best friend and of providing information to a local blogger (Wigthman). He said he had nothing to do with what is written in a certain blog of which I disagreed...I disagreed and told him it reflects poorly on the office."
Well, the lass doth protest too much, we fear.
Well, now that Zamora her been reined in by Saenz, Wightman has no compunction about protecting his sources, a lesson he would have learned if he had taken a Journalism 101 course at the local community college or the local high schools for that matter. Instead, He outs her, thumbs his nose at her, and ditches her like a used gum wrapper.
Another of her "enemies" was Martin Zarkis, who made the mistake of running against her buddy Deborah Portillo.
Wightman had tried to get files from the district clerk and the Brownsville Police Dept. about Zarkis' alleged criminal offenses and had been unsuccessful. So he turned to his buddy Melissa and milked her for all it was worth on the politically-damaging dirt.

On May 31, 2013, at 11:04 a.m., Wightman emailed Zamora an open records request for the DA's copy of Sarkis' criminal file. He attached what records he had for Zamora to peruse and hinted that since the file was empty for the most part "this means there were back door negotiations. How do I get access to the DA's copy of the file – open records request – what? (see graphic)."
Those of us who have made open records request know that the DA's Office will usually drag their feet on inquiries and make them wait the full 10 days prescribed by law before they cough up any information requested.
Sometimes, they just pretend that they don't have it or place so many obstacles for the requester, that Hercules himself would have given up on the labor.
Not so with Wightman's request. In a little over three hours, Wightman was invited to come by the DA's Office and "pickup" the materials he requested.
A trove of more than 300 pages of emails acquired through a public information request of electronic communications between Zamora and Wightman indicated that he asked about the DA's file on the Sarkis' criminal case at 10:12 a.m. that Friday, that she asked him to file the information request at 10:54 a.m,, that he filed it at 11 :04 a.m., and that she answered him at 1:31 p.m. that "I have the documents ready for pickup, Melissa."

Now all that has gone by the wayside and Wightman not only concedes that he did her dirty work, but that he had direct access to all kinds of criminal and civil files through Zamora. Since she is of no use to him, he – as is his wont – throws her to the lions.
This is par for Wightman. Ask Valadez, Jessica Tetreau, Carlos Cascos, Rick Zayas, Minerva Peña, Otis Powers, Luis Saenz, etc. They have all gotten the treatment from this blowhard and lamented the fact later.
And if it's true (we quit believing his claims a long time ago) that he has sources in Asst. DAs and staff at the BISD and BPD, these sources might well want to reconsider. You could be the next one outed.
Now he's trying to shut down Cheezmeh blogger Erasmo Castro over some copyright infringement of his "work product," as it were. Copyright on the world-wide web? You've got to be kidding.
If you have ever been to a party of classroom teachers, the one thing you notice immediately is how they are all trying to talk above each other and be the only voice heard. It's a lag over from their profession in trying to be overheard in a room full of screaming kids.
Wightman is the same with a snarky twist. He not wants to be the only voice heard, he also wants to be the only speaker.
Listen to his advice to Zamora in happier days when he counseled her as early as April 16, 2013, on how to go about suing individuals and shutting down their social media "for internet harassment."
"(Juan) Montoya,-Zeke and Duardy (Eduardo Paz-Martinez ) are never going away. No one will come to their defense..." he wrote her.
"Duardy by his own admission is not selling books (or slow as he says) - no one will help Zeke - and Montoya will just hang himself without a defense. For Google to shut them down all you need is an order they have defamed you - you do not need damages - just a court finding these statements are false."
For someone who says they love the First Amendment, this shows both of these persons' real colors. The real purpose of a writer to society is to inform and perhaps, if you get lucky, even entertain. It is not as Wightman or Zamora practice, and is exemplified by Editor Whedon in Edgar Lee Masters "Spoon River Anthology":

To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,

To use great feelings and passions of the human family

For base designs, for cunning ends,

To wear a mask like the Greek actors –

Your eight-page paper (blog) – behind which you huddle,

Bawling through the megaphone of (cyber) type:

"This is I, the giant."

Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,

Poisoned with the anonymous words

Of your clandestine soul.

To scratch dirt over scandal for money,

And exhume it to the winds for revenge,

Or to sell papers,

Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,

To win at any cost, save your own life.

To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,

As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track

And derails the express train