EX-DRUG AGENT WITH ALLEGED CARTEL TIES SHOT IN MEXICO

MEXICO CITY--In a hail of gunfire in the heart of the Mexican capital,
attackers Thursday wounded a former top anti-drug official whom U.S.
authorities recently had accused of aiding narcotics kingpins, local
media reported.

The shooting of Cuauhtemoc Herrera Suastegui, along with a recent
mysterious death, rocked the Justice Ministry, the main Mexican
institution fighting the U.S.-bound drug trade.

Another senior official, Juan Manuel Izabal Villicana, was found shot
in the head earlier this month in an apparent suicide. He left letters
acknowledging that he had stockpiled a fortune while in office,
touching off a corruption scandal.

The attack Thursday occurred shortly after 5 p.m. According to
witnesses, a firefight broke out in the turn-of-the-century Hotel
Imperial on the bustling Avenida Reforma, one of Mexico City's main
avenues. Herrera Suastegui was hit and another man, apparently a
bodyguard, was killed, local television and radio reported. Federal
and local prosecutors originally had said Herrera Suastegui was
killed, but he was later reported alive in a Mexico City hospital.

Juan Lopez, a 52-year-old newspaper vendor who works outside the
hotel, heard the gunfight. "I thought they were fireworks," he said.

Reporters glimpsed what appeared to be gun casings on the floor of the
hotel restaurant. At the entrance, police investigators snapped photos
of a body on the floor inside. The investigators declined to comment
on the shooting.

Herrera Suastegui worked side by side with U.S. agents in an elite
anti-drug squad in the Justice Ministry. The so-called organized crime
unit, whose members were handpicked and subject to extensive vetting,
received U.S. training and support.

Herrera Suastegui had been head of investigations for the unit until
last year, when he was transferred to another investigative job. He
stopped working for the Justice Ministry on Jan. 14, the ministry's
press office said, adding that it had no further details.

Last month, a Drug Enforcement Administration official told a U.S.
congressional subcommittee that Herrera Suastegui had turned into a
symbol of the corruption that plagues Mexico's anti-drug forces.

William Ledwith, the DEA's chief of international operations, said in
his testimony Feb. 29 that Herrera Suastegui last year "was reassigned
to a high-level position within the PGR [Justice Ministry] despite
failing a [U.S. government]-administered polygraph examination in 1998."

"Additionally, there are indications that he provided assistance to
the Carrillo Fuentes drug trafficking organization," Ledwith said,
referring to one of the country's top drug cartels, based in the
border city of Ciudad Juarez.

Ledwith's remarks made headlines in Mexico. In an interview published
Thursday in the Mexico City daily Cronica, senior Mexican drug
officials said they had planned to interrogate Herrera Suastegui this
week.

Mariano Herran Salvatti, the head of the Mexican version of the DEA,
told the newspaper that Herrera Suastegui was under investigation. But
another senior anti-drug official, Jose Trinidad Larrieta, told the
paper that "the evidence from the investigation isn't sufficient yet
to think about pressing charges."

Herrera Suastegui played a major role in the investigation of the
Juarez cartel's move into the Yucatan peninsula in recent years.

Authorities caught six of the alleged assailants in Thursday's attack,
media reports said.