U.S.MEXICO DRUG FORCES BESET BY WOES

TIJUANA To U.S. officials overwhelmed by the explosion of Mexican drug
trafficking in the early 1990s, it seemed a bold solution: Fight the
cartels with crossborder forces composed of elite officers rigorously
vetted and trained in the United States.

Men like Nicolas Carrillo and Eligio Garcia.

But today, Carrillo and Garcia are in a Tijuana jail among six Mexican
members of the elite forces accused of serious crimes in various
cities. Outraged U.S. officials suspect that the six are being framed
by traffickers working with corrupt local authorities.

The charges against the officers are a serious blow to a program the
Clinton administration has called a cornerstone of the fight against
Mexican drug lords. The cases illustrate the frustrations of battling
cartels in a country awash in corruption, say U.S. and Mexican officials.

And the cases are just the latest problems to bedevil the 3yearold
Border Task Forces, or BTFs. U.S. officials say the forces have been
thwarted by crossborder squabbles and excessive bureaucracy.

The task forces are under scrutiny as the U.S. Congress decides by
March 26 whether to challenge President Clinton's recent ruling that
Mexico is an ally in the war on drugs. Some U.S. officials say the
forces show how bilateral cooperation isn't working.

Their "achievements in attaining investigative goals to date have been
minimal," Thomas A. Constantine, head of the Drug Enforcement
Administration, testified this month before Congress.

If U.S. lawmakers vote to decertify Mexico as a drug ally, economic
penalties could follow.

The Border Task Forces were created in July 1996, with Mexico
contributing vetted police officers to the teams and the United States
providing DEA, FBI and customs officers. They set up four headquarters
in Mexicoin the border cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez and the
drug hubs of Monterrey and Guadalajaraand five satellite units in
smaller Mexican cities.

The new forces were to work together far more intensely than border
agencies ever had. U.S. officials screened and trained the Mexican
agents, and committed about $4 million to the Mexican teamspaying for
everything from their lunches to their sophisticated radio system in
Ciudad Juarez.

But the program quickly ran into trouble. U.S. authorities refused to
allow their agents to commute across the border after Mexico declared
they couldn't bring their guns. As a result, only U.S. antidrug agents
already based in Mexico worked with the task forces.

That problem was solved in recent weeks with an agreement to meet on
the U.S. side.

But the forces now have a fresh problem: the agents who wound up
behind bars.

>From Model Agents to Prison Inmates The case of Carrillo, 24,
and Garcia, 30, illustrates how even the best agents can be
neutralized by Mexico's drug world. The men had seemed models of a new
generation of Mexican police. Fresh out of the police academy, they
had passed a battery of U.S. and Mexican exams testing their honesty,
U.S. officials say. In July 1997, they attended a onemonth training
course run by DEA, FBI and customs officials in Leesburg, Va.

The two agents quickly proved themselves to their DEA counterparts.
Sent to Guadalajara, they worked closely with DEA agents and helped in
the arrests of the elusive Luis and Jesus Amezcua, the alleged
methamphetamine kings of Mexico, officials say.

"If these [antidrug] guys were crooked, they could have made the big
bucks with the Amezcuas," said a U.S. official, one of several who
spoke on condition of anonymity. "So, suddenly, they're going to make
chump change in Tijuana?" The Mexican agents' troubles began in
September. Just days after being transferred to Tijuana, Carrillo and
Garcia were contacted by two men they had previously met through a DEA
informant, they said in testimony and in a jailhouse interview with
The Times. The two informants offered enticing news: They could set up
a buyandbust operation to snare a major marijuana dealer.

The next day, the two agents said, the informants called and summoned
them to Tijuana's Terranova Hotel.

The deal was going down.

But on arriving, the two Mexican antidrug agents were arrested, along
with the informants. State authorities charged the agents and the two
informants with kidnapping Julio Monge, a convicted drug dealer who
had been in a room with the informants.

U.S. and Mexican authorities believe that Monge had been planning to
sell marijuana to the informants but then realized something was fishy
and called his father for help. The father, also a convicted
trafficker, told authorities his son had been kidnapped. The father
had earlier revealed that state police officers were his allies in
drug deals, one of the informants recalled in court testimony.

Other TaskForce Agents Facing Probes Today, the case against the
two agents appears to be near collapse. According to court documents,
the younger Monge recently retracted his accusations against the
antidrug agents and blamed the two informants for the kidnapping.
Aside from his accusation, there had been little evidence of an
abduction; Monge wasn't even bound when police found him.

Mexican officials say the case is an example of how drug traffickers
and their proxies, corrupt police officers, are sabotaging the task
forces.

The forces "have hurt drugtrafficking groups in the border area,"
Mariano Herran Salvatti, the head of Mexico's antidrug agency, said in
an interview. "Now they're trying to strike back at our agents through
false charges." The two Tijuana agents were only the first to
face investigations. Last month, a taskforce member in Mexicali was
accused by a federal police officer of stealing from a confiscated
marijuana shipment, said Jorge Espejel, the Mexican supervisor of the
task forces. Espejel insists on the innocence of the agent, who is
under investigation but not jailed.

Meanwhile, state police in Monterrey arrested three BTF members
earlier this month as they met with a local man in a city parking
garage. The man, Rogelio Garcia Gutierrez, had told police that the
three agents were trying to extort $50,000 from him, state police
officials say.

Mexican antidrug authorities vigorously dispute that charge. According
to Herran Salvatti and Espejel, the three agents were set up by state
police working with excolleagues who are being investigated by the
antidrug task forces for trafficking.

U.S. authorities say the string of accusations is so serious that it
could destroy the program.

"If they start getting arrested on trumpedup charges by corrupt state
and local officials, that will bring an end to" the forces, a U.S.
official said.

The jailed Tijuana agents said Mexican authorities have been
supportive, continuing to pay them and helping with their legal fees.
Mexican officials say they can't shield the agents from the legal
process, although they insist that the men are innocent.

Some Believe That Units Are Tainted But others believe that the
units may have been tainted by corruption. The judge handling the
Tijuana case, for example, notes that one of the agents, Carrillo, is
facing two additional kidnapping charges. In both cases, Carrillo and
the two informants are accused of abducting Tijuana men in September
to pressure their families for money, state Judge Gloria Fimbres said.

U.S. and Mexican antidrug officials said they did not know about those
charges.

Corruption has been common in Mexico's antinarcotics programs, and it
has tarnished even the task forces. In 1997, the forces had to be
rebuilt after Mexico's drug czar, Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez
Rebollo, was arrested and accused of helping drug lords.

That same year, a BTF commander in Monterrey was "asked to leave"
after he invited traffickers to the unit's "safe house," a U.S.
official said.

Corruption isn't the only impediment to the task forces'
effectiveness, U.S. officials say. The Mexican government still hasn't
provided all of the 70 agents that it originally pledged, U.S.
officials say. Mexican officials deny the units are
understaffed.

And U.S. authorities complain that in Mexico's highly centralized
system, local agents must clear everything with Mexico City, wasting
precious hours.

U.S. officials say that's what happened in November, when the forces
received a tip about a meeting of leaders of the Arellano Felix drug
gang in Tijuana. Mexican taskforce members staked out the house and
requested backup for a raid, several U.S. officials said in
interviews. But no help arrived for hours.

The Mexican officials disputed the U.S. account, saying the delay was
necessary to obtain an arrest warrant and check out the tipwhich they
said proved false. U.S. authorities, however, still believe that a
drug meeting took place.

Despite the setbacks, U.S. and Mexican officials aren't ready to give
up on the task forces. They say they have produced valuable
information leading to seizures and indictments. And, given the long
history of distrust between law enforcement officers on the border,
even flawed teamwork is a step forward, some officials say.