F.B.I.-MEXICAN INQUIRY INTO ABDUCTION LED FROM BAR TO GRAVEYARD

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- The recent spectacle of the Mexican and United
States authorities digging up bodies on remote ranches near this border city
has a lot to do with what happened two years ago in one of this city's
better-known saloons.

Three yuppies of the drug trade, young smugglers from El Paso, were
celebrating one more successful deal on Jan. 10, 1998.

After dinner in Juarez, they entered the Kentucky Bar for a night of
drinking. Even before the drinks arrived, armed men dressed in black burst
in shouting "Judicial police!" and began beating them with assault rifles.
The Americans were forced into a waiting Chevrolet Suburban and carried
away. Their relatives never saw them again.

The brazen abduction followed a pattern almost routine here since 1993, in
which more than 100 people vanished after being grabbed by armed men who
identified themselves as policemen.

One of the worst kept secrets of this rough-and-tumble city is that the
federal police appear to have collaborated with drug traffickers by taking
part in abductions, beatings and killings. Even the special prosecutor
appointed by the Attorney General says that in 45 disappearance
investigations, he has found evidence of federal police involvement in every
case. Witnesses have reported seeing policemen take part in abductions.
Others report seeing victims in the custody of the police.

But none of the investigations led anywhere until the incident in the
Kentucky Bar. Because American citizens were involved, a young Federal
Bureau of Investigation agent in El Paso began looking into it, eventually
piecing together much of the puzzle and learning of a site in Mexico where
some of the victims may have been buried.

Earlier in December, the United States and Mexico began the operation to dig
up bones at four ranches near Juarez. So far, remains of nine bodies have
been unearthed, a modest but not insignificant achievement in what is one of
the largest law enforcement operations between the two countries.

But there is little indication so far that the investigation has done much
to curb the purported collusion between the Mexican police and drug
traffickers to eliminate troublesome competition.

"There's never been any serious Mexican investigation," said Victor Clark
Alfaro, a human rights leader who has has studied the cases of dozens of
people who have disappeared in northern Mexico.

"These abductions are carried out by an alliance between organized crime and
government officials, and since the victims are people with ties to
traffickers, authorities don't take them seriously."

Because the exhumations continue, officials of both the United States and
Mexico have shrouded the investigation in secrecy. But some details,
including the incident at the Kentucky Bar, have emerged from interviews
with people who have been questioned by the F.B.I. Some of their information
has been confirmed by United States court records and other interviews. One
of the major sources for this article, who spoke only on the condition of
anonymity, was described by Enrique Cocina Perez, Mexico's special
prosecutor for the Juarez disappearances, as a key figure in the inquiry.

The F.B.I., asked about references to its investigation, declined comment on
specific points. "There were hundreds of persons involved in this, so you
can't present this as the overall story," said David Alba, the F.B.I.
special agent in charge in El Paso, suggesting that there were elements of
the investigation that had not been disclosed.

The three Americans celebrating in the bar that night were Eduardo Barragan,
Jorge Luis Garibay and Guadalupe Matthew Baca. They were residents of El
Paso in their 30's, and Mr. Barragan was well known locally as the
gregarious and attractive scion of a wealthy family.

When he attended Burges High School in El Paso in the 1980's, Mr. Barragan
drove a DeLorean sports car. His sister Cecilia, who is Mr. Baca's wife,
said in an interview that the family wealth derived from legitimate
businesses, including the limousine service her brother owned. When Mr.
Barragan disappeared, however, his father, Henry Barragan, was serving time
in a federal prison on charges of cocaine trafficking.

All three men in the bar that night were participants in a smuggling group
with a $3 million-a-month contract to the Juarez drug cartel, according to a
person familiar with their activities. Their business was to take possession
of tons of marijuana in Juarez and carry the loads across the bridges to
warehouses in El Paso, the person said.

Their abduction was witnessed by dozens of passers-by, making it similar to
many other disappearance cases. In some of those instances, men with police
credentials have blocked off Juarez streets to pull victims out of cars. In
others, uniformed policemen have carried people away after smashing into
their homes.

In a few cases, the victims have been seen later in Federal Police custody.
On several occasions, the Juarez city police have witnessed the abductions
and filed reports, but the reports later disappeared from official files.

Since 1997, relatives of disappeared people in Juarez and El Paso have
clamored for justice through an association. Its leaders have compiled a
list of 196 people who have disappeared since 1993. The Juarez newspaper,
Norte, has counted 120 vanished people. The missing include 22 Americans.

After the three Americans were dragged out of the Kentucky Bar, Mr.
Barragan's family made contact with the F.B.I. According to a person
familiar with the inquiry, intelligence information led F.B.I. agents to
focus early attention on Jose Ismael Cruz, a 29-year-old Mexican who had
been a minor employee in the Americans' smuggling group, driving marijuana
across the bridges. Within days after the abductions, Mr. Cruz took over the
smuggling contract previously held by the missing Americans.

Two months after the three disappeared, F.B.I. agents arrested two of Mr.
Cruz's employees as they crossed into El Paso with 1.5 tons of marijuana.
Once in custody, the men agreed to provide evidence against Mr. Cruz, Ray
Velarde, Mr. Cruz's lawyer, said in an interview.

During the next year, they and other confidential informants provided the
F.B.I. with detailed information on Mr. Cruz's operations. Last April, 13
months after the first arrests, agents raided an El Paso drug warehouse
disguised as a plastics recycling plant, seizing 4.5 tons of marijuana and
arresting three more of Mr. Cruz's employees.

Mr. Cruz was himself arrested last June, after a wild car chase that began
when F.B.I. agents intercepted him as he drove away from an El Paso bar, and
ended when several agents crashed their cars into his BMW. Mr. Cruz is in an
El Paso jail awaiting trial on charges of resisting arrest and conspiracy to
distribute marijuana.

In the debriefing sessions of Mr. Cruz's associates, F.B.I. agents heard
theories about why the Americans were abducted, according to a person
familiar with the inquiry. One was that Mr. Cruz was so determined to rise
in the trafficking world that he had organized a virtual coup d'etat against
his smuggling employers, hiring Mexican policemen well known in Juarez as
contract assassins to execute the Americans. Others said the Americans were
drug soldiers killed in a larger battle raging at the time between rival
cartel leaders.

One of the people cooperating with the F.B.I. provided a horrifying witness
account of the Americans' last hours. They were taken to a Juarez mansion,
where the police assassins and Mr. Cruz beat them savagely, ignoring pleas
for mercy, and kicking them endlessly after they had slumped to the floor.
By the time the witness left the scene, it was unclear if they were dead or
alive, and Mr. Cruz's cowboy boots were drenched in blood.

Norte identified Mr. Cruz as the organizer of the Americans' disappearance,
Mr. Cruz denied the accusations in a jail-house conversation with his
lawyer, Mr. Velarde said.

During the F.B.I.'s questioning of Mr. Cruz's associates, one of the
informants said he thought he knew where the missing Americans might be
buried; he identified several ranches in and around Juarez, where the police
were known to bury their victims, according to two people who have been
interviewed repeatedly by the F.B.I.

The F.B.I. agents were not the only investigators hearing reports about the
grave sites. So was Mr. Cocina, the Mexican special prosecutor looking into
the disappearances.

He was the fourth in a series of prosecutors to take on the cases, and all
of his predecessors had had a dismal record. The first fell asleep during
depositions, and two others were accused of crimes and dismissed.

In contrast, Mr. Cocina quickly waded into the details of dozens of cases,
said Jaime Hervella, the El Paso accountant who founded the relatives'
association. Mr. Cocina told association leaders that he had taken federal
jurisdiction over 45 investigations and had found evidence of involvement by
federal police officers in every case. Mr. Cocina collected photographs and
thick files on many of the suspect officers, Mr. Hervella said.

Mr. Cocina declined to be interviewed. But people familiar with his inquiry
said he was told in detail about the clandestine graveyards as early as last
spring. He had the jurisdiction to seek a search warrant and carry out the
excavations without the F.B.I. help, but did not.

One day last summer, however, Mr. Cocina met with three F.B.I. agents at
their El Paso offices. A person who took part in the meeting said Mr. Cocina
laid out aerial photos and topographical maps of the Juarez region, which
Mexican and American investigators had used to pinpoint graveyard sites.
After the meeting, the F.B.I. agents requested help from Washington, and
negotiations ensued with Mexico that led to the digging at the grave site in
Juarez.

After a convoy of F.B.I. forensic experts drove into Mexico on Nov. 29, many
Mexicans questioned why their government had allowed F.B.I. agents to
operate on Mexican soil.

"It was obvious that the U.S. pressured Mexico to carry out the
exhumations," Senator Alfredo Aguilar Zinser, one of the operation's most
outspoken Mexican critics, said in an interview. "The Mexican attorney
general allowed foreign agents into Mexico because he hadn't done his own
proper investigation. Now we're in the humiliating position of letting the
U.S. come in to do a job that he didn't do."

The day the exhumations began, an F.B.I. agent made contact with Mr.
Barragan's sister, requesting dental records for her brother and husband.
Both men were in the Kentucky Bar that night and were never seen again. None
of the nine bodies have been positively identified, however, and the digging
continues.