EX-DRUG AIDE IN MEXICO U.S. ACCUSED IS FATALLY SHOT

Gunmen today killed a former senior Mexican law enforcement official whom
American authorities accused in Congress of being an associate of drug
traffickers, the authorities said. Cuauhtemoc Herrera Suastegui, the former
investigations director of one of Mexico's most elite anti-drug units, was
shot this evening in a downtown Mexico City restaurant. One of his
bodyguards was also killed and at least two people were wounded.

Investigators at first reported that Mr. Herrera's body bore no
identification documents, but Hugo Vera, a deputy state's attorney, said
detectives were presuming that one of the two men killed was Mr. Herrera.

William E. Ledwith, international operations director of the Drug
Enforcement Administration, identified Mr. Herrera as an example of
corruption in Mexican anti-drug units in a Congressional hearing on Feb. 29.

Mr. Herrera, while director of investigations of the Organized Crime Unit,
an elite group that worked for Mexico's attorney general, failed a lie
detector test administered by American officials in 1998, Mr. Ledwith said.

"You have to assume that everything we've been giving them has ended up in
the hands of the traffickers," one United States law enforcement official
said after Mr. Herrera failed the test. "It's a disaster."

Despite his identification as a security risk, Mr. Herrera was not
dismissed then, but was reassigned to another high-level position within
the Attorney General's Office, Mr. Ledwith said.

"Additionally, there are indications that he provided assistance to the
Carrillo Fuentes drug trafficking organization," Mr. Ledwith said.

Mr. Ledwith's testimony passed largely unnoticed in Mexico until Monday,
when a Mexico City newspaper, La Cronica, published a front-page article on
the D.E.A. charges.

A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office said today that the agency
had put Mr. Herrera under investigation last year after the Drug
Enforcement Administration privately accused him of being an associate of
traffickers. Mr. Herrera quietly resigned on Jan. 14, the spokesman said
today.

After the killings today, at least five men were detained, the authorities
said.