LOST IN THE RAIN IN JUAREZ

What's the difference between nine and 400?

About sixty-five F.B.I. agents plus 100 reporters (with
parachutes).

Just in case you missed the apologetic retractions (there weren't
any), the big Drug War Hysteria Story of 1999 - hundreds of bodies
buried outside Cuidad Juarez - fizzled into virtual nothingness by the
new year. In early December, newspapers and televisions all over the
globe broadcast sensationalized images of the "killing fields" of
Juarez, where the sixty-five U.S. agents joined several hundred
Mexican police in "investigating" what was described as an F.B.I.
informant's tip that "as many as 100" victims of drug traffickers had
been buried on ranches near Juarez, over the last several years. By
early January, at four supposed " mass gravesites" only nine bodies
had been recovered, and operations had been suspended "for the holidays."

If you don't know that, don't be embarrassed. The same reporters (as
many as 100 in the first few days) who had been only too eager to
inflate the early body-count were long gone by the time it became
obvious that the story had collapsed. In a December 29 followup
feature that opened with a sensationalized re-telling of a
two-year-old story about an apparently drug-related Juarez kidnapping,
The New York Times buried the real news in the eighth paragraph: "So
far, remains of nine bodies have been unearthed, a modest but not
insignificant achievement in what is one of the largest law
enforcement operations between the two countries." "Modest but not
insignificant?" How about "pitiful and shamelessly
exaggerated?"

A month earlier, reporters from all over had eagerly swallowed the
F.B.I.'s vague references to "hundreds" of bodies buried by Mexican
drug cartel, amplified by a published list of the city's supposed
"disappeared" since 1993 - said to number 196, "including," reporters
invariably added, "twenty-two Americans." Although face-saving
investigators now say their "informant" never cited a number, on
November 30 the Los Angeles Times credulously reported that "one
senior U.S. law enforcement official in Washington said investigators
believe that the graves contain between 100 and 300 bodies." On NBC
Geraldo Rivera interviewed his "pals" in law enforcement (ex-agents
and academic hangers-on, who also turned up on NPR with similar
tales), who claimed knowledge of "hundreds" of bodies buried in
gravesites "all along the border," while Rivera's colleague Fred
Francis proclaimed ominously, "We're talking about as many as 400."
Well, Gerald," intoned Francis, "never before has such a horror story
unfolded in Mexico, in the Chihuahuan Desert. Never before so many
bodies expected." On "Good Morning America," Mike Von Fremd reported
unquestioningly, "The F.B.I. says this will be the biggest forensic
dig since mass graves were uncovered in Kosovo."

Print journalists were equally gullible. "The F.B.I. called the scale
of the killing represented by the graves unprecedented, even by the
infamous standards of the Mexican cartels," solemnly repeated the
Times of London. "Mark Kleiman, director of Drug Policy Analysis
Programme at the University of California, Los Angeles, said: 'I can't
think, in the entire history of the illicit drug business, of anything
comparable.'"

Leaving professor Kleiman to his feverish thoughts, Left Field has
more than a little sympathy for those Juarenses led to believe by the
F.B.I. and Mexican authorities that hundreds of their fellow citizens
(and never forget, twenty-two Americans) might be buried on the
outskirts of town. What appears to have happened is that U.S. agents,
convinced by a Mexican informant that "some" bodies might be buried on
ranches outside Juarez, wanted an excuse to get access by twisting the
arms of the Mexican government. Only a handful of potential corpses
wouldn't do; they persuaded Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuellar
that his investigators would certainly be overwhelmed by the hundreds
of bodies underground, and that only U.S. equipment, organization, and
expertise - of the sort that dug up Kosovo - could possibly deal with
the crises.

By mid-December, Madrazo was under persistent criticism that he had
sacrificed Mexican sovereignty to U.S. pressure, the mayor of Juarez,
was demanding that everybody (including Bill Clinton) stop referring
to the Juarez drug cartel," U.S. and Mexican officials were blaming
each other for the "leaks" and "exaggerations," and the F.B.I. was
feeding reporters excuses disguised as new information. Geraldo
Rivera was nowhere to be found.

As for the rest of the notional and international press corps (called
"parachute journalists" by the locals who have to pick up after them)
- - by then they couldn't be bothered with missing bodies. They've
gotten a new assignment, and are happily in search of hundreds of
Algerian terrorists.