cannabisnews.com: Mexico's New Anti-Drug Team Wins the Trust of U.S.





Mexico's New Anti-Drug Team Wins the Trust of U.S.
Posted by FoM on July 18, 2001 at 08:22:09 PT
By Tim Weiner
Source: New York Times
After five years of failure, American and Mexican officials fighting the war on drugs say they have created a trusted group of undercover Mexican investigators who are arresting long- sought suspects and attacking all the big drug cartels, instead of selling out to them as in the past.This breakthrough in no way means that the tide has turned in the drug war, they acknowledge. A never-ending river of cocaine and heroin still flows north from Mexico to meet never-ending demand in the United States. Drug barons are still using their profits to try to corrupt Mexican law enforcement at every level.
But in the last few months, something significant has changed: with the creation of a 117-member Mexican organized-crime unit, which works side by side with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Mexico, both sides say they are starting to trust each other."We have got counterparts down here whom we trust and with whom we can share sensitive information without that filtering out to the traffickers, and we haven't been proved wrong yet," said a senior United States law enforcement official in Mexico. "We have found some people in whom we have confidence."The creation of the new drug police unit, each member rigorously vetted by both nations, has meant a new way of doing business, said Joseph Keefe, the United States drug enforcement agency's chief of operations."We can sit down and freely share information with the Mexicans, they can share information with us, the information doesn't wind up on the street," he said. "They are going out and attacking drug organizations."José Santiago Vasconcelos, chief of Mexico's special organized-crime unit, who oversees the vetted unit, as it is known, said: "Information is flowing on both sides, almost instantaneously. We obtain information, we communicate it to the Americans immediately; they obtain information, and they communicate immediately, and we are connecting, coordinating, on cases as much in the United States as much as in Mexico."Both nations have tried without success since 1996 to form a cadre of trustworthy undercover Mexican investigators. The 117 Mexicans under Mr. Vasconcelos have been through financial audits, psychological screening and polygraphs. Their neighbors and families have been grilled. Their blood and urine have been analyzed. The screening was done by Mexican government officials with American help. Then they have gone to the United States for more tests and extensive training.They have been working since April for Mr. Vasconcelos and his organized crime unit. He is the only man in Mexico empowered to run wiretaps and undercover operations against drug cartels.The Americans give Mr. Vasconcelos information. He takes it to a trusted Mexican judge — a judge who, he hopes, will not leak details of the investigation to drug gangs — to win approval for wiretaps against suspects in Mexico. The information gleaned from bugging in Mexico can provide probable cause to seek more wiretaps in the United States.That sets information flowing across the border, "and there's a real synergy there," said a senior United States official in Mexico. Members of the Mexican unit then run the cases from investigation to arrest.They have attacked all the major drug cartels this year — "the entire spectrum of narcotics trafficking, making it very difficult to assert that this is anything other than real," said this American official. "In years past, to the extent that the government in Mexico did anything against one of the major cartels, it was typically viewed as a means of protecting another cartel someplace." he said. The implication had been that "the government was lining its pockets with money from one cartel, while trying to curry favor with the United States or others by going after another one." But now, he said, "there's a fundamental difference down here." Since President Vicente Fox took office in December, "there has been a broad- based offensive against all of the cartels."This year, the unit has helped arrest a former governor, Mario Villanueva, and a drug cartel operator, Alcides Ramón Magaña, jointly accused of conspiring to ship more than $2 billion worth of cocaine to the United States.Mr. Villanueva had been slipping in and out of Mexico since his term ended in 1999. But in May he was detected in Cancún. He was tracked for eight days, until officials had dotted every i and crossed every t for his arrest and potential extradition to the United States, Mexican and American officials said."We worked side by side, we had live sources on Villanueva's comings and goings, and we seized the right moment," Mr. Vasconcelos said.Mr. Magaña, a former federal police officer, had been in plain view, off and on, for close to four years. American agents had given their Mexican counterparts his home addresses, telephone numbers and safe-house locations, officials said. But nothing happened until June, when Mexican agents cornered him.This year ships hauling more than 50 tons of cocaine off the Pacific coast have been seized, officials said, and large drug smuggling and money laundering rings that reached from the Canadian border to Colombia have been at least temporarily destroyed.The arrest roster also includes three senior military officers, several drug cartel lieutenants, and a Tijuana cartel enforcer charged with shooting a Roman Catholic cardinal in 1993. After Mexico's Supreme Court approved extradition of drug suspects, four suspected major traffickers were sent to the United States for trial. Mr. Vasconcelos said the underlying trust in his new vetted unit "comes from a new openness" between the Americans and Mexicans. "We've created it among ourselves and it's generating confidence," he said. "And at last we understand we have a common enemy" — instead of fighting one another.The history of the drug war in Mexico suggests that tactical government victories are fleeting. The cartels have billions of dollars to buy off officials. They feed a seemingly insatiable demand with "ever-increasing supplies, delivered by ever- more sophisticated means," said Michael Massing, a longtime analyst of the drug war and author of "The Fix" (University of California Press, 2000). "Can it make a difference?" he said, referring to the new unit. "I'd be surprised if these changes lead to a substantial decrease in drugs going to the U.S. or a decrease in the violence and power of the cartels."The Drug Enforcement Administration in Mexico is essentially an intelligence service. Its agents cannot carry guns or make arrests. It gathers and analyzes information and hopes that its Mexican counterparts will act on it. If it cannot pass on information with confidence, in its view, nothing good will happen — and many bad things could, like the collapse of investigations or the death of colleagues.Its officials say they do not want to paint too rosy a picture.Only two years ago, Thomas Constantine, then the director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Mexican drug enforcement was corrupt and incompetent. And its previous attempts to form a trusted cadre of Mexican officers also began with enthusiasm, but failed miserably."There is little effective law enforcement leading to the arrest of major traffickers in Mexico," he said. "Investigations have been compromised," usually when drug traffickers bought information from corrupt Mexican agents. His depressing and largely undisputed assessment meant that the drug war, from the Americans' standpoint, was a losing battle and perhaps a lost cause.From 1996 onward, the drug agency, the F.B.I, the United States military and the C.I.A. have tried forming vetted units. Between 1997 and 1999, the American drug agency alone spent $4.5 million on training, equipment and lie-detector tests for Mexican agents and prosecutors.Seventy passed the test. Shortly after they were mobilized, the unit collapsed — corruption in the ranks, Mr. Constantine said.That left the number of trusted Mexican drug agents, and therefore the effectiveness of counternarcotics operations in Mexico, at "zero — or less than zero," said Mr. Keefe, the agency's operations chief.Part of the problem was the "massive ignorance and arrogance" of United States officials, said Barry R. McCaffrey, the retired Army general who served as the American antidrug chief for five years. He cited his own public assessment of his Mexican counterpart in the war on drugs, Gen. Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, as "a guy of absolute unquestioned integrity." General Gutiérrez was trusted with highly secret information by White House, Drug Enforcement Administration and intelligence officials. Presumably, every bit of it ended up in the hands of the traffickers. He was arrested in February 1997 and convicted of working for a major Mexican drug trafficker.A predecessor, Mario Ruíz Massieu, Mexico's drug policy chief in 1993 and 1994, killed himself in 1999 rather than stand trial in Texas on drug and money laundering charges. The moral, said General McCaffrey, was, "Watch your step — honest men die in Mexico," while the corrupted thrive. But the real lesson, said Mr. Fox's national security adviser, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, is that the nations have to work harder to establish trusted units."President Fox convinced President Bush to try this" when they met at Mr. Fox's ranch on Feb. 16, Mr. Aguilar Zinser said.A senior American official in Mexico said the two men had issued "orders from on high to make this thing work."Mr. Keefe said: "We're certainly sharing a lot more intelligence than we were a year or two ago. We're sharing it sooner. This is what's new — the straightforwardness of it. And it's been successful. So far."Complete Title: Mexico's New Anti-Drug Team Wins the Trust of U.S. OfficialsSource: New York Times (NY) Author: Tim WeinerPublished: July 18, 2001Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company Contact: letters nytimes.com Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/ Related Articles:Analysts Debate Mexico President's Open Border http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6806.shtmlFox Seeks New Cooperative Era For North America http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6711.shtml
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Comment #1 posted by Pontifex on July 18, 2001 at 10:32:01 PT:
Prepare yourself for the rapture... again
After five years of failure, American and Mexican officials fighting the war on drugs say they have created a trusted group of undercover Mexican investigators who are arresting long- sought suspects and attacking all the big drug cartels, instead of selling out to them as in the past.HA!Once again, the drug warriors assure us that victory is only a few hundred million dollars away.It's a matter of months before one of these "trusted Mexican investigators" turns out to be taking money from the cartels. Most of the rest will either be quietly on the take or quickly gunned down.The moral, said General McCaffrey, was, "Watch your step — honest men die in Mexico," while the corrupted thrive. Even McCaffrey knows how it goes south of the border. But don't expect that level of reasoning from the NYT editors.
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