2,000 MILES OF DISARRAY IN DRUG WAR

U.S.-MEXICO BORDER EFFORT 'A SHAMBLES'

In 1996, as Mexican drug cartels were expanding their power and reach,
officials in Washington and Mexico City decided to fight the growing threat
by setting aside their long-standing distrust and building combined law
enforcement units to gather intelligence and attack the cartels.

Today the program -- which the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration
last year called the "primary program for cooperative law enforcement
efforts" -- is a shambles, according to U.S. law enforcement and
congressional sources.

For the past 14 months, agents from the DEA, FBI and U.S. Customs Service
who were to form the backbone of the U.S. portion of the force have refused
to cross the border because they are not allowed to carry weapons in Mexico.

And at least five senior Mexican officers involved in the program have been
arrested on suspicion of taking money from drug traffickers, kidnapping key
witnesses or stealing confiscated cocaine.

The units, called Bilateral Border Task Forces, initially were established
in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez -- seats of the largest Mexican drug
trafficking organizations -- and the northern industrial city of Monterrey.
The task forces, with offices in four other north Mexican towns, were seen
as vital to increasing the flow of information between the nations'
counter-drug forces along the 2,000-mile border.

U.S. and Mexican officials agreed that the performance of the task forces
would be a yardstick by which to measure cooperation between the two
nations, and monitoring their success was included formally in the White
House's National Drug Control Strategy report issued last month.

"Regretfully, [the task forces] were never really implemented," DEA chief
Thomas Constantine told Congress last week, blaming the failure on
corruption and lack of security. U.S. officials said the Mexican government
failed to finance the task forces and that U.S. agencies had borne the full
cost of Mexican operations until last September. At that point, U.S.
officials said, Mexico said it no longer wanted U.S. funding and that the
task force would be paid for with money confiscated from drug traffickers.

The analysis of the effort's failure comes as some members of Congress gear
up to try to overturn the Clinton administration's decision last week to
certify Mexico as fully cooperating in the anti-drug war. These opponents
argue that Mexico has not taken significant steps to fight drug trafficking
or related corruption.

Every attempt to organize binational law enforcement units along the border
has failed since DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was tortured and murdered
in Mexico in 1985, dramatically changing the relationship between the two
nations' law enforcement agencies.

The failure of the task forces points to the deep distrust and differences
in perception on both sides of the border, despite official rhetoric in
Mexico City and Washington praising binational cooperation.

The task forces' Mexican component was dismantled after Gen. Jesus Gutierrez
Rebollo, head of Mexico's anti-drug agency, was arrested in February 1997
for alleged ties to one of the country's most powerful drug cartels.

To rebuild a credible force, Mexican task force participants are supposed to
be screened, first by the Mexican attorney general's office and then "super
vetted" by U.S. agencies. U.S. officials said about 800 people had passed
the Mexican process, but of those, only 206 had passed the U.S. vetting.

Officials agree that the screening is vital to try to avoid the myriad cases
of corruption that have plagued the units.

Because of the lack of vetted officers, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.), who closely monitors the issue, the task force intelligence
facilities "are manned by non-vetted, non-law enforcement civilians and
military staff and have only produced leads from telephone intercepts on
low-level traffickers."

U.S. critics of the task forces point to troubling cases of corruption
involving Mexican members of the units:

Ignacio Weber Rodriquez, commander of the Tijuana task force, was arrested
for his alleged involvement in the kidnapping of a DEA informant on March 5,
1997.

Alejandro Hodoyan Palacios, a U.S. citizen who reportedly had worked for the
major drug cartel run by the Arellano Felix brothers in Tijuana, was giving
information to DEA agents in San Diego at the time of his kidnapping.
Hodoyan has not been seen since he was nabbed in a downtown Tijuana parking
lot by armed men, allegedly including Weber.

Weber later was identified by Hodoyan's mother, who tried to stop the
kidnappers from dragging her son out of their vehicle. Weber remains under
house arrest in Tijuana.

In May, 21 police and army officers -- including the Mexican commander and
four members of a combined border task force -- were arrested for allegedly
stealing a half-ton of cocaine from the evidence room at the Mexican
attorney general's office in San Luis Rio Colorado, which straddles the
Arizona border. Only two remain in custody.

Some packages of the stolen cocaine, marked with the attorney general's
evidence stamps, later were confiscated during a drug bust in San Diego,
according to senior Mexican law enforcement officials.

Horacio Brunt Acosta, a Mexican federal police commander in charge of
intelligence operations for the border task forces, was fired last year for
allegedly taking bribes from drug traffickers. U.S. and Mexican law
enforcement officials recently identified Brunt as a suspected drug
trafficker in Arizona. U.S. officials said they have asked the Mexicans for
information on Brunt's activities but so far have received nothing.

Another senior task force member based in Monterrey last year invited drug
traffickers to the agency's "safe house," not only giving away the location
but allowing the traffickers to identify all the agents, U.S. officials
said.

Because of the lack of funds, U.S. officials said, the task forces' safe
houses, which were to be changed every few months to avoid raising
suspicions, were left unchanged for two or three years. Only in the past
month, as funds have become available, have some of the houses been changed,
said U.S. and Mexican officials.

Perceptional problems also have hindered the task forces. While Mexican
officials said the task forces were seen as intelligence-gathering units,
U.S. officials said they envisioned the integration of intelligence
gathering and operational capabilities for a comprehensive attack on the
drug cartels.

In a measure of just how different perceptions are, at the same time that
U.S. officials outline the failure of the task forces, Mexican officials are
saying the units are functioning as planned.

"The task forces are fully equipped and fully operational," said Eduardo
Ibarola, deputy attorney general for international affairs, in a meeting
with journalists in Washington.

Mexican officials said the task forces have been in effect since May, when
70 young officers passed background checks by the Mexican attorney general's
office and the FBI, and underwent FBI training at Quantico.

They also said 150 troops from elite, U.S.-trained Mexican military units
are being sent to the border as reinforcements.

But a senior U.S. law enforcement official said no cross-border intelligence
is being shared and that there would be no such cooperation until the
security issue and corruption were addressed.

U.S. officials also remain furious that U.S. agents cannot carry weapons
into Mexico. U.S. agents stopped crossing the border on Jan. 1, 1997.

"The issue of personal security for U.S. agents working with the task forces
in Mexico has not been resolved and as a result, the task forces are not
operational and will not be until the security issue is resolved," Feinstein
said Wednesday in a Senate speech.

"This critical joint working relationship is made impossible by Mexican
policies that do not allow for adequate immunities or physical security for
U.S. special agents while working in Mexico," Feinstein said.

A Mexican official disputed the charge, saying it is an issue of national
sovereignty.

"Mexico cannot permit foreign agents to carry weapons in Mexico as we do not
ask that Mexicans be allowed to carry weapons elsewhere," the official said.
"It is a very sensitive issue; it may be one of those differences that may
not be resolvable."

Farah reported from Washington, Moore from Mexico City.

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company