FOX WANTS ARMY DRUG ROLE ENDED

Law enforcement corruption targeted

MEXICO CITY – Six years ago, a military force more than 20,000-strong fanned
out across Mexico to fight thugs and wipe out sprawling fields of marijuana
and poppy plants.

Now Vicente Fox, winner of Mexico's July 2 presidential election, wants to
send these fatigues-clad soldiers back to their barracks. His anti-crime
plan, unveiled Monday, calls for "demilitarizing" law enforcement in Mexico.

The plan would also attack corruption by restructuring the country's law
enforcement institutions.

"Vicente Fox is determined to unleash a decisive battle against crime," said
Jose Luis Reyes Vazquez, a lawyer who is helping the president-elect design
his anti-crime program.

Authorities plan a "ferocious" attack on corruption, Mr. Reyes said. But it
will take time – "it won't happen from one day to the next."

Ending the military's law enforcement role would be controversial. Over the
last six years, the Mexican army has become a premier drug eradication
force. In 1999 alone, Mexican soldiers leveled 506,330 illicit drug plots
covering 146 square miles and seized 784 tons of marijuana, the military
says.

Why quit now? their supporters might ask.

On the other hand, some say, immersing soldiers in the anti-drug fight
boosts the risk that they'll be corrupted by narco-dollars.

That alone may be good reason to take them out of it, said Tom Cash, a
former veteran agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"No military or law enforcement entity dealing with narcotics has ever
escaped corruption," he said. "All of the armed services should be separate
and apart from civilian law enforcement."

Most soldiers simply aren't trained for law enforcement, he explained, and
know little about even the basics, such as collecting evidence.

"Gathering evidence in the military is counting bodies. The military fights
live-fire wars," said Mr. Cash, now an executive with Kroll & Associates, an
international security firm.

Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo turned to the military after crime soared
at the beginning of his term in late 1994. The top 20 public-safety jobs in
Mexico City were handed out to colonels and generals, according to a 1999
military study by George Grayson, a professor of government at the College
of William & Mary in Virginia.

Drug gangs were flourishing, there was "abject corruption" among state and
federal police and Mr. Zedillo desperately needed help, the study says. So
the military was given the task of bringing law and order to Mexico.

U.S. officials, looking for a trustworthy ally in law enforcement, were
delighted, and Defense Secretary William Perry journeyed to Mexico in
October 1995, the first time a U.S. defense secretary had gone to Mexico in
an official capacity.

It's not that the Mexican military was squeaky clean, the Grayson study
says. In 1991, for instance, Mexican Secretary of the Navy Mauricio Schleske
Sanchez resigned for "family reasons" after authorities found he owned two
Houston homes worth about $700,000 – equal to his government salary for the
previous 40 years.

In an even more embarrassing case, Army Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, then
head of Mexico's anti-drug agency, was arrested in 1997 after police
discovered he was living in a luxury apartment provided by the late drug
lord Amado "Lord of the Skies" Carrillo.

Asked why soldiers should be taken out of the counternarcotics business, a
top Fox aide, Francisco Molina Ruiz, back-pedaled.

"Well, maybe it's not necessary to take them out," the senator and former
head of Mexico's anti-drug agency said. But their role in counternarcotics
will certainly be studied, he said.

The plan presented Monday would split the powerful federal attorney
general's office into separate police and prosecutors' offices. The attorney
general's office is currently part of the executive branch and is in charge
of both investigating and prosecuting federal crimes such as drug
smuggling – a situation that has given rise to allegations of corruption and
political favoritism.

The plan would also create a federal investigative force similar to the FBI
in the United States, Mr. Reyes said.

Mr. Fox's proposals to reform the justice system would have to be approved
by a two-thirds' majority in the Mexican Senate and the lower Chamber of
Deputies.

Until more is known about what Mr. Fox plans to do, "we should withhold
judgment," said Thomas Umberg, former deputy director of the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy. "Clearly Mexico has challenges."

Mariano Herran, the current head of Mexico's anti-drug agency, said in July
that the government this year has seized more than 22 tons of cocaine.

He described that as an unprecedented achievement that wouldn't have been
possible if not for the close cooperation between all levels of law
enforcement, including the Mexican navy.

Terrance Poppa, author of Drug Lord: The Life and Death of a Mexican
Kingpin, said he's not convinced of the Mexican claims and believes that an
international team of observers ought to be allowed to verify that drugs
seized in Mexico are actually destroyed.