'SILVER OR LEAD'

Bribery, Assassination Sabotage Mexico's Anti-drug Efforts

About noon on Nov. 22, 1998, the wife and two children of drug cartel
principal Eduardo Arellano Felix arrived at UCSD Medical Center's Regional
Burn Center in San Diego. The woman, Sonia Martinez, her four-year-old
daughter and six-week-old son had been badly burned that morning when a
leaking propane barbecue cooker exploded at their home in Tijuana.

Eduardo was burned, too, on the face and hands. But he chose not to risk
arrest in the United States on whatever drug-trafficking charges might be
pending against him. So he sought treatment in Mexico while sending his
wife and children across the border to receive the best possible medical care.

Federal agents learned almost immediately that morning that Arellano family
members were crossing the border. They promptly imposed surveillance over
Eduardo's wife and children at the Burn Center complex in San Diego's
Hillcrest neighborhood. Their hope was that Eduardo or another Tijuana
cartel kingpin would visit the critically injured family members. Failing
that, some useful information might still be gained by monitoring the family.

In Washington, Drug Enforcement Administration head Thomas A. Constantine
was hopeful but realistic. On the subject of Mexico, Constantine was
accustomed to being disappointed. He would later tell The San Diego
Union-Tribune, "We share information with Mexico on the major drug
traffickers down there . . .and, as I' ve said before, nothing ever seems
to happen. There are no cases, no arrests and no major dismantlement of the
big organizations."

Still, American law enforcement had rarely if ever had an Arellano wife and
children under close surveillance in the United States. Maybe they' d get
lucky. And, up to a point, they did.

The UCSD Medical Center, citing patient privacy requirements, declined any
comment and provided no information on these events. The account presented
here was assembled from law enforcement sources speaking on background and
from Constantine, who spoke on the record.

As Constantine recalls the story today:

"In the course of doing that (surveillance), we get very good information
that there is going to be a planned meeting in Tijuana and that one of the
Arellano Felix brothers, I think it was Ramon, is going to be there.
Another very important target, Ismael Higuera, who was very powerful and
very violent, was also going to be at the meeting in Tijuana.

"So we provided that information to some of the vetted (carefully screened
to preclude the corrupted) people from the Mexican units to check that out.
When they checked out the address we had given them, they saw a lot of
armored cars and a lot of bodyguards. So it looked solid. You had our
source of information, which we thought was very credible, and you had a
physical surveillance of things that looked unusual.

"And then when we reached out to find a (Mexican) unit we could trust,
which is always the big problem . . .the only ones around are the military
vetted units and that took 12 to 13 hours for a response. By that time,
obviously, everything had disappeared and was gone and there was no longer
anything that could be worked on."

Constantine cites this lost opportunity, one among many, as typical of the
frustrations of a decade during which the Arellano principals survived
every effort to apprehend them and most efforts to disrupt the cartel' s
operations.

"It was a good example of even when you get this great information and you
see events taking place which tend to corroborate it, the ability to do
something about it is difficult if not impossible," Constantine says.

The footnote to this incident was no less discouraging.

Sonia Martinez and her daughter left the Regional Burn Center to return to
Tijuana on Christmas Eve, 1998 (her infant son remained a patient at the
center until February 1999).

U.S. agents tailed the Martinez vehicle to the border where a vetted
detachment of Mexican drug police was to assume surveillance. Within
minutes, the Mexicans radioed their U.S. counterparts to report that their
agents had lost the car in traffic.

And Eduardo Arellano Felix never bothered to pay more than $1 million still
owed the Regional Burn Center for his family' s medical bills.

No one to trust

Virtually alone among senior Clinton administration officials, the DEA' s
Constantine was willing to criticize publicly Mexico' s performance as a
supposedly "cooperating" ally in the campaign against narcotics
trafficking. In February 1999, two months after the Tijuana debacle, he
spoke particularly bluntly. In testimony to the Senate Caucus on
International Narcotics Control, Constantine said:

"In spite of existing U.S. warrants, government of Mexico indictments and
actionable investigative leads provided to Mexico by U.S. law enforcement
the truly significant principals have not been arrested, and appear to be
immune to any law enforcement efforts."

Two weeks later, he was similarly outspoken in testimony before a House
subcommittee holding hearings on narcotics policy. Referring to the
Arellano Felix organization and other Mexican narco-trafficking cartels,
Constantine declared, "they have been able to continually evade arrest and
prosecution . . .attributable to their ability to intimidate witnesses,
assassinate public officials and, as is well documented, their ability to
corrupt many of the civilian law enforcement agencies in Mexico on a
systemic basis and often at the command level."

Constantine had an avalanche of facts on his side. The Arellanos' cartel
had built a lucrative drug-trafficking empire by bribing those who could be
bribed and killing those who couldn' t. At least 20 Mexican prosecutors and
drug agents had been killed in Tijuana in recent years. Other Mexican
officials, prosecutors or agents believed working on Arellano cases had
been gunned down in Mexico City, Guadalajara and elsewhere.

The pervasive penetration and corruption of Mexican police and government
agencies by the drug traffickers, in turn, left U.S. law enforcement with
almost no one to trust or work with in Mexico.

"Generally speaking, there is no Mexican law enforcement organization that
has not been penetrated by the drug mafias," insists Gil Macklin, a former
congressional staffer with more than a decade of experience on drug issues.

Recently retired senior U.S. Customs agent William F. Gately is withering
in his critique of Mexico' s corruption problem. Gately capped a
distinguished Customs career by running a successful money-laundering sting
that culminated in 1998 with the unmasking of Mexican banks and bankers in
league with drug traffickers. Testifying last year before the House
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, Gately said:

"In Mexico, there is no line which can be drawn to separate the police or
the prosecutors from the mafia, the politicians from the mafia, the
government from the financial institutions, or any combination of these
entities."

William Cecil, nearing retirement as director of air and marine
interdiction operations for the U.S. Customs Service here, is outspoken in
his criticism of Mexico' s drug-war cooperation with the United States.

"The 'cooperation' by Mexico, in spite of what the administration says, is
little to none. And if it improves somewhat just prior to the (annual,
congressionally mandated) certification, then it goes to hell in a
handbasket," Cecil says.

"Just on the air side, we know, and have seen, airfields that these
aircraft are landing at and off-loading their drugs are guarded by the
(Mexican) military," Cecil adds.

"They make a show of cooperation but it's very shallow. As soon as
something becomes the least bit effective, it's stopped. It is obvious to
us that some (drug) loads are allowed and some aren't," Cecil says.

Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House' s Office of National Drug
Control Policy, is notably sympathetic in assessing Mexico' s efforts
against a predatory drug trade and its powerful cartels. But McCaffrey also
notes that the Mexican drug-trafficking cartels are spending an estimated
$6 billion a year corrupting Mexico' s police, military, government
agencies and officials.

McCaffrey' s Mexican counterpart as a national drug policy director in 1997
was a trusted Mexican army general, Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo. Mere weeks
after McCaffrey hailed Rebollo' s appointment as a signal of Mexico' s
renewed determination to go after the traffickers, he was discovered to be
on the payroll of the Juarez-based Carrillo Fuentes cartel. Embarrassed
Mexican officials promptly had Rebollo arrested and jailed, but the
much-vaunted drug agency he headed had to be completely disbanded.

Deadly choices

At the level of ordinary Mexican police, who are typically ill-trained,
poorly equipped and paid a paltry $300 a month, the drug traffickers'
offers can seem irresistible. Vince Rice, special agent and press spokesman
for the DEA' s San Diego office, expresses a measure of empathy for the
deadly dilemma facing Mexico' s cops.

"They' re told (by the traffickers), ' Cooperate, quit or die, and your
family dies, too.' What would anybody do? What would I do?" Rice says.

The un-refusable "silver or lead" choice also applies to the cartel' s
dealings with fellow criminals. A U.S. investigator related this account of
the Arellano cartel' s coercive persuasion:

"A low-level trafficker began moving marijuana for Ismael Higuera (a.k.a.
El Mayel, then the Tijuana cartel' s operations director). The trafficker
was very successful. One day El Mayel told the trafficker that he wanted
him to start moving coke. No, said the trafficker, that is too dangerous.
Twice more El Mayel asked him to smuggle cocaine into the United States and
twice more the trafficker refused.

"Then one day the trafficker was abducted and driven into the desert. When
the van with El Mayel in the front seat stopped in a desolate spot, he saw
a circle of men surrounding two men in the middle. The men in the circle
took turns beating the two victims senseless. Finally, one of the men in
the circle stepped forward with a pistol and shot both victims in the head.

"El Mayel looked at the trafficker and asked, ' Would you like to move some
coke for me?' "Sure," said the trafficker.

Given this culture of extreme brutality, finding witnesses willing to
testify against the Arellanos is a huge challenge for law enforcement.

The fate of two Mexican federal police agents who testified in a migrant
smuggling case in Tijuana sent the intended message. Juan Antonio Martinez
Catarino and Miguel Angel Anaya Valenzuela were shot to death in their
vehicle outside Tijuana' s federal courthouse in 1997 immediately after
testifying for prosecutors.

Mexico recently created a witness protection program modeled after that of
the United States. As of last year, the results wouldn' t have encouraged
many witnesses to come forward and testify. Two of the program' s six
witnesses had been killed.

Frustration

The level of frustration in U.S. law enforcement with the drug-money
corruption in Mexico is palpable.

Publicly, U.S. officials generally maintain the politically approved
fiction that Mexico is "cooperating fully" with the United States in
efforts to combat the drug trade and apprehend the traffickers.

Privately, those on the drug war' s front lines -- the agents,
investigators, intelligence analysts, inspectors and others -- see a
reality that constantly mocks the official pronouncements. Not
surprisingly, most front-line drug fighters have long since grown cynical
over what they perceive as Mexico' s colossal levels of corruption and
their own government' s diplomatic complicity.

"Mexico is the best country money can buy," muttered a U.S. Customs
inspector surveying a load of marijuana seized recently from a smuggler at
the San Ysidro border crossing. Such sentiments are hardly rare among
Customs inspectors and others striving day after day to stem the steady
flow of narcotics from Mexico.

Some Mexican officials are willing to acknowledge privately that corruption
is sabotaging their anti-drug efforts. Only a brave and candid few are
willing to say so publicly.

Mariano Herran Salvatti, director of the Mexican attorney general' s elite
anti-narcotics agency known by its Spanish acronym FEADS, admitted in a
recent interview with the Mexico City newspaper Reforma that catching the
Arellanos was proving so difficult partly because the cartel was getting
"institutional protection" from government officials.

"We haven' t been able to get to the most wanted men in Mexico because of
such protection," Herran told Reforma.

A U.S. law enforcement analyst with years of experience monitoring the
Arellanos and their drug dealing offers this assessment:

"The state judicial police in Baja are owned by the Arellanos. They guard
the Arellanos. So we deal mostly with the federal police. But our
assumption is that all Mexican law enforcement agencies are completely
penetrated."

Asked if Tijuana is still the cartel' s headquarters and base, the analyst
says:

"Absolutely, and don' t let anyone tell you differently. There is no reason
for them to leave. Why should they? There is nothing effective being done
against them in Tijuana. There is no effective law enforcement against them."

And how does it feel to watch the most violent criminals in Mexico operate
with impunity just across the border?

"Oh, it' s horribly frustrating. We know where they are, right there on our
doorstep and we can' t get them. We know with effective law enforcement
they could be readily apprehended. Mexico has completely lost control of
its major cities to the traffickers," the analyst says.

What might work?

After a pause, he answers with barely disguised disgust, "I couldn' t think
of anything the Republic of Mexico could do that would work."

Legal barriers

Nobody needs to remind Gonzalo Curiel of just how tough it is to prosecute
the Arellano Felix cartel. As an assistant United States Attorney and chief
of the San Diego office' s narcotics enforcement section, Curiel could
write a book on the job' s frustrations. Curiel' s life was threatened by
Arellano cartel henchmen and at one point he was compelled to relocate and
accept protection from U.S. marshalls. Then or now, the legal difficulties
are immense.

For starters, all the principals live in a foreign country, beyond U.S.
jurisdiction. Worse yet, the estimated $1 million or more in bribes they
pay every week to Mexican police, prosecutors, office holders and others
buys them de facto sanctuary in a headquarters and base area barely 20
miles from downtown San Diego. It also puts the Arellanos smack in the
middle of the most lucrative drug route into the American narcotics market,
the richest in the world.

Sitting in his office at the federal building, Curiel ticks off the
resulting obstacles to justice.

"We can' t wiretap them. We can' t surveil them. We can' t eavesdrop on
them. We can' t observe them. And if we do indict them, we can' t apprehend
them," Curiel says.

He might have added that he can' t get them extradited from Mexico to stand
trial in the United States, either. For reasons ranging from pervasive
corruption to a dysfunctional judicial system and an obsession with
sovereignty, Mexico has yet to extradite a single major drug trafficker
under indictment for crimes in the United States.

Last November, Curiel and his boss, Gregory Vega, the U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of California, surveyed their lack of progress across
this dismal legal landscape and decided to ask for help. Vega and Curiel
were particularly concerned about a 17-month decline in U.S.-Mexico
cooperation and high-level collaboration on drug-trafficking issues.

This was partly a result of Mexico' s acute embarrassment and then anger
over the drug money-laundering sting run by the U.S. Customs Service.
Dubbed Operation Casablanca, it produced 142 arrests, including dozens of
prominent Mexicans lured to Las Vegas in June 1998. Casablanca further
embarrassed the Mexicans by implicating several of Mexico' s biggest banks
in laundering drug money.

Mexican officials expressed outrage that this covert operation was
conducted partly on Mexican soil without the knowledge or permission of the
Mexican government. Customs officials defended that secrecy as essential to
protecting Casablanca against compromising leaks that would have ruined the
operation.

U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno sought to placate the Mexican government
by signing the so-called Brownsville letter. In effect, the Reno letter is
a memorandum of understanding that pledges the United States not to conduct
law enforcement operations in Mexico without first informing the Mexican
government and obtaining its permission.

Critics, including the former FBI supervisor who headed the inter-agency
Arellano Task Force here, charge that the Brownsville agreement is
seriously damaging U.S. anti-drug efforts inside Mexico.

"We have to assume that any intelligence or other sensitive information
shared with Mexico will be betrayed to the traffickers, because it so often
is. The Brownsville agreement effectively shuts down much of our
investigative activity in Mexico because the lives of our operatives and
informants are, or would be, in danger," explains recently retired FBI
agent Vincent DelaMontaigne.

In any event, Reno' s concession produced no immediate improvement in
U.S.-Mexico cooperation on narcotics trafficking.

"What had been missing was the personal, one-to-one contact you need," Vega
says. "One of the things I thought had to be done was to reach out to
Mexico. We had to re-engage with Mexico."

So Vega and Curiel flew to Mexico City last November for an unpublicized
visit with Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuellar and his
counter-narcotics chief, Mariano Herran. Vega and Curiel appealed for help.

"We let it be known that this was a priority for us and that we wanted to
get Mexico re-engaged. We appealed to their national pride. I told them
that I' d seen the Mexican lives lost in law enforcement, in witnesses,
people trying to do their jobs. I recited the drug traffickers they had
arrested. I said the next logical step is the Arellanos. We extended our
hand. We said ' We would like to work with you. We would like you to work
with us,' " Vega recalls.

Curiel says Madrazo readily acknowledged that the Mexicans had made little
progress against the Arellanos.

Progress, but ...

Vega and Curiel say their appeals were favorably received.

"We received commitments," Vega says. "Regarding the Arellanos
specifically, there was a commitment to have Mexican agents here, to come
to San Diego to work with the DEA and the FBI, to devote additional resources.

"And we agreed to stop pointing fingers. We' d try to work together in an
atmosphere of mutual respect. ' Let' s move forward (toward) our main
objective, to try to dismantle the AFO,' " Vega recalls saying to Madrazo.

Vega and Curiel made one more trip to consult with Madrazo in Mexico City.
Following the November meeting, Curiel says he began conferring several
times a week with officials in the Mexican attorney general' s office. Vega
and Curiel also say the meetings prompted Madrazo' s decision to assign
special prosecutor Jose "Pepe" Patino Moreno and several deputies to work
closely with U.S. law enforcement on Arellano cases.

Tragically, that decision put the courageous and widely respected Patino
and his investigative team squarely in the cartel' s sights, with deadly
consequences in April for Patino and two other agents.

Vega and Curiel point to the recent federal indictments of Benjamin and
Ramon Arellano Flix as evidence of a renewed push by U.S. authorities to
counter the cartel. They also cite the arrests of Ismael Higuera Guerrero,
the cartel' s operations director, and Jesus "Chuy" Labra Aviles, the
cartel' s alleged financial adviser and manager, as potential breakthroughs
for the Mexican government.

But certain hard realities remain.

These apply equally to the decade-long struggle against the Tijuana cartel
and in the larger battle against all the Mexican narco-trafficking
syndicates and the tons of narcotics they send flooding into the United States.

The U.S. Congress' non-partisan General Accounting Office reviewed the
status of U.S.-Mexican counter-narcotics activities in 1999. Their score
card on Mexico in particular was dismal news from the drug-war front:

- - "Drugs are still flowing across the border at about the same rate . . .

- - There have been no significant increases in drug eradication and seizures,

- - No major drug trafficker has been extradited to the United States,

- - Money-laundering prosecutions and convictions have been minimal,

- - Corruption remains a major impediment to Mexican counter-narcotics
efforts, and

- - Most drug trafficking leaders continue to operate with impunity."