POLICE TRAINED BY U.S. AMONG TARGETS OF NARCOTICS ASSASSINS

At Least 3 High-Ranking Federal Agents Who Were in Program Have Been Killed,
Officials Say

MEXICO CITY When Mexico's acting federal police chief was gunned
down inside his home this month, U.S. law enforcement officials took
special note. The U.S. ambassador called him a hero.

Edgar Millan Gomez, it turns out, had been part of a little-known
U.S. training program to create special investigative units, or SIUs.
From 2002 to 2006, as many as 298 special agents have been vetted by
Mexico and trained and equipped by the U.S. government at an
estimated cost of $1.4 million, according to a report issued last
year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

But in killings dating to last year, at least three high-ranking
federal agents who had received U.S. training have been gunned down,
U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials said, speaking on
condition of anonymity.

The killings dealt a blow to both governments' efforts to battle
powerful drug cartels and are designed to discourage other agents
from cooperating with U.S. law enforcement, U.S. Ambassador Tony
Garza said in an interview.

"If ... they continue to target those individuals that have been
effective, and with which we have worked closely, you've got to ask
yourself, how are they [Mexican officials] going to find good people
to take on these cartels in the face of these assassinations?" he
said. "I get concerned that we're on a slippery slide towards our own
folks being exposed.

"Bottom line, we've got to put better and more effective tools in the
right people's hands," he added.

Likely a Factor

It is not clear that agents were targeted solely because of their
U.S. training, but U.S. officials say it likely was a factor. And
U.S. and Mexican officials agree that protection for these agents
must be improved.

"The message from the cartels - and I, for one, do think it is a
message - is duly noted," said one U.S. law enforcement official,
speaking on condition of anonymity.

The stakes are high for both countries, said Mr. Garza, citing the
violence along the border and throughout Mexico.

"This is not Colombia," he said. "But ...we don't share a 2,000-mile
border with Colombia."

A spokesman for Mexico's National Federal Public Security Ministry
would neither confirm nor deny that Mr. Millan or other agents were
trained by the U.S. or other foreign governments.

To be sure, the slaying of federal police is not linked to just those
elite members who have received U.S. training.

On Tuesday, seven federal police officers were killed during a raid
on a suspected narco safe house in Culiacan, the capital of the
Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, where the Sinaloa cartel is based.
Police said that one suspected cartel assassin also was killed in the
shootout, and several were arrested.

The assassinations of senior Mexican federal agents come as Mexican
cartels undergo a transformation - with old allies turning on each
other and rivals cozying up to one another, U.S. and Mexican law
enforcement officials said. The result is likely to be increasing
violence in the months to come, partly in response to President
Felipe Calderon's campaign against the cartels.

More than 4,000 people have died in drug-related violence since Mr.
Calderon's term began Dec. 1, 2006, including more than 450 law
enforcement officials. But he believes his campaign is working.

"We have damaged their financial and logistical operations," Mr.
Calderon said recently. "And this has apparently provoked these
criminal acts of desperation in which they seek to recover the
protected spaces they've lost."

The U.S. Congress is debating President Bush's proposed Merida
Initiative, a $1.4 billion anti-drug plan aimed at helping Mexico
obtain helicopters, improve intelligence sharing, and reduce the
smuggling of high-powered weapons from the U.S. to Mexico.

No Troops

The plan does not contemplate the presence of U.S. troops in Mexico,
but it does call for more training of hundreds of judges, law
enforcement officials and additional highly trained agents to take on
the cartels.

The training of these Mexican agents, conducted through Mexico's
Federal Investigative Agency, or AFI, is designed to create a
reliable force to share intelligence, build trust and coordinate
joint operations.

The joint efforts have paid off so far, the GAO report said. Since
2002, "SIU units have undertaken investigations leading to the arrest
of numerous drug traffickers, including several top drug kingpins."

Other slain agents who had received SIU training, according to U.S.
law enforcement officials, include a top AFI agent, Omar Ramirez, who
was shot and killed in September in the posh Mexico City neighborhood
of Lomas de Chapultepec, and Jose Nemesio Lugo Felix, a top official
in the intelligence unit of the attorney general's office who was
gunned down last May on his way to work in Mexico City, two U.S. law
enforcement officials said.

"American law enforcement officials who worked with Mr. Lugo admired
him for his dedication and professionalism, and he was held in the
highest regard," Mr. Garza said.

U.S. law enforcement officials said the targeting of these
SIU-trained agents reflects the success of the program.

"Cooperation has never been better," said a veteran U.S. arms
trafficking expert, speaking on condition of anonymity. "And I don't
say that in a gratuitous, political way. This is the real deal."

The killings also indicate that more needs to be done to ensure
agents' safety, particularly in the face of endemic Mexican
corruption, said security expert Raul Benitez Manaut of the National
Autonomous University of Mexico City.

"The Mexican federal agents need to be much more careful and vigilant
because they are at greater risk," Mr. Benitez said, suggesting that
cartel infiltration of the federal police had compromised security in
the case of Mr. Millan's killing.

A Mexican law enforcement official working closely with the U.S.
government said the "agents are the key to Mexico's future."

"We need to have a much more effective way of protecting them,
isolating them from the corruption around them," the official said,
speaking on condition of anonymity.