MEXICANS MIFFED OVER CHAPO , TALKING HEADS CRY "INDICT": SEAN PENN, KATE DEL CASTILLO ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW

By Juan Montoya
Even as Mexican prosecutors mull filing some sort of criminal charge against actors Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo for meeting and interviewing El Chapo Guzman, talking heads on Univision, CNN and NBC are consulting their legal gurus to see whether the duo runs the risk of prosecution in the U.S.
But why?
How many interviews were conducted with Osama Bin Laden when he was the most wanted man in the world, never mind Mexico?
There was never any move to prosecute those reporters and talking heads. In fact, many of them would have given their eyeteeth to procure an interview with bin Laden.
Now that two actors were able to meet with El Chapo three months after his escape from the high-security prison in Altamoya, it makes the Mexican intelligence and prosecutors lose face because it took them a longer time to just find out where he was at. Now they are claiming on Televisa that it was the Penn-del Castillo meeting that led them to the fugitive.
That is really so much bunk. In fact, the same network reported that they were actually seeking another Sinaloa Cartel sicario, Orso Iván Gastélum Cruz,  who was captured with him in a tunnel under the house in Los Mochis, Sinaloa.
El Chapo was just the icing on the cake. Five other people in the house were killed by the Mexican Marines.
While Penn  and del Castillo continue to receive criticism over their interview, we suggest that it's just the green-eyed devil envy because they – Mexican authorities and media types – did not get it first. Today, Televisa showed it s close nexus with the Mexican government when talking head Carlos Loret de Mola was led – step by step – along the route taken by the Mexican Marines through the house and basement of El Chapo's hideout. As the squad leader showed them the route, de Mola kept asking inane questions like "How did it feel to be shot at?" and "What was going through your mind during the shooting?"
Compared to the performance by de Mola, Penn's interview ranked slightly higher in the journalism scale.
We post this link to the Penn-Chapo interview from Rolling Stone.

Disclosure: Some names have had
 to be changed, locations not named, and an understanding was brokered with the subject that this piece would be submitted for the subject’s approval before publication. The subject did not ask for any changes.

"The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom." —Montaigne

By Sean Penn
It's September 28th, 2015.

My head is swimming, labeling TracPhones (burners), one per contact, one per day, destroy, burn, buy, balancing levels of encryption, mirroring through Blackphones, anonymous e-mail addresses, unsent messages accessed in draft form. 

It's a clandestine horror show for the single most technologically illiterate man left standing. At 55 years old, I've never learned to use a laptop. Do they still make laptops? No fucking idea! It's 4:00 in the afternoon. Another gorgeous fall day in New York City. The streets are abuzz with the lights and sirens of diplomatic movement, heads of state, U.N. officials, Secret Service details, the NYPD. It's the week of the U.N. General Assembly. 

Pope Francis blazed a trail and left town two days before. I'm sitting in my room at the St. Regis Hotel with my colleague and brother in arms, Espinoza.

Espinoza and I have traveled many roads together, but none as unpredictable as the one we are now approaching. Espinoza is the owl who flies among falcons. Whether he's standing in the midst of a slum, a jungle or a battlefield, his idiosyncratic elegance, mischievous smile and self-effacing charm have a way of defusing threat.
His bald head demands your attention to his twinkling eyes. He's a man fascinated and engaged. We whisper to each other in code. Finally a respite from the cyber technology that's been sizzling my brain and soul. We sit within quietude of fortified walls that are old New York hotel construction, when walls were walls, and telephones were usable without a Ph.D. We quietly make our plans, sensitive to the paradox that also in our hotel is President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico.
Espinoza and I leave the room to get outside the hotel, breathe in the fall air and walk the five blocks to a Japanese restaurant, where we'll meet up with our colleague El Alto Garcia. As we exit onto 55th Street, the sidewalk is lined with the armored SUVs that will transport the president of Mexico to the General Assembly. Paradoxical indeed, as one among his detail asks if I will take a selfie with him. Flash frame: myself and a six-foot, ear-pieced Mexican security operator.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/el-chapo-speaks-20160109#ixzz3wxACSSBQ
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