FATAL ERROR: THE PENTAGON'S WAR ON DRUGS TAKES A TOLL ON THE INNOCENT

On the day he died, Esequiel Hernandez Jr. took his goats to the river. He
led them from their makeshift pens of wire and branch, then shooed them down
the dusty lane. They wandered past the ruins of the Spanish mission, through
the abandoned U.S. Army post, and down a stony bluff to the Rio Grande.

When he reached the crest of the bluff, Hernandez stopped. Behind him lay
the mud-red adobe homes and melon-green alfalfa fields of Redford, Texas.
Before him stretched the Chihuahuan desert, Texas' vast gravel backyard,
speckled with squat greasewood bushes and whip-like ocotillo plants. Except
for Hernandez, whose goats brought him here late each afternoon, the
residents of the little oasis rarely ventured into this no man's land.

But on this, his final walk to the river, Hernandez spotted something in the
desert. It looked small and shaggy. He'd lost a goat not long before. He
suspected wild dogs had taken it. His herd was already at the river's edge,
halfway to the gray-brown creature. It moved. He couldn't afford to lose
another goat. He raised his ancient .22-caliber rifle and aimed into the
desert.

Twenty minutes later, Hernandez's 18-year-old body lay grotesquely twisted
across a stone cistern at the edge of the village. He died trying to protect
his goats. He was killed by a 22-year-old soldier trying to protect
America's youth from drugs.

When Esequiel Hernandez Jr. died, he became the first civilian killed by
U.S. troops since the student massacre at Kent State University in 1970. His
death led to a temporary suspension of troop patrols near the U.S.-Mexican
border. And last month, the government paid his family $1.9 million to
settle a wrongful death claim.

At the same time, Clemente Manuel Banuelos became the first-ever member of
the United States Marine Corps to kill a fellow citizen on U.S. soil. Four
investigations and three grand juries probed the May 1997 shooting. Each
concluded that because Banuelos followed orders, he was innocent of criminal
wrongdoing. Those who issued the orders were never tried.

Both young men became victims of the Pentagon's quixotic $1 billion-a-year
war on drugs.

Hooked on Drug Money

Hernandez's days were numbered since 1989, the year then-President George
Bush waved a bag of crack on TV. Seated in the Oval Office with pictures of
his family behind him, Bush held up the clear plastic bag and told the
nation that it was crack cocaine seized in the park located directly across
Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

U.S. presidents have been declaring "war on drugs" ever since the Nixon
administration. Bush's remedies were much the same as those proposed by his
predecessors: more cops, stiffer sentences. But because few police officers
and no judges report to the White House, most presidents waged this war
rhetorically. Bush changed that. He ordered the Pentagon to the frontlines
of the drug war.

For more than a century, stationing U.S. soldiers in American backyards was
against the law. The Posse Comitatus Act, passed by Congress in 1878, made
it a felony to deputize the armed services for domestic duty. Thus, since
Reconstruction, not the U.S. Army but state-run National Guard units were
called on to suppress labor strikes, race riots, student protests, and other
acts of civil disobedience. Today, this separation of military and police
powers no longer exists, though it is still touted in high school civics
textbooks as a hallmark of U.S. society and democratic ideals.

Congress began chipping away at Posse Comitatus in 1982 -- the same year
then-Vice President Bush was put in charge of the War on Drugs -- with a
defense bill that allowed the military to loan equipment and facilities to
civilian law enforcement agencies. A 1989 bill went further, allowing
military personnel to work in the field. And a 1991 act authorized the
services to conduct armed anti-drug reconnaissance missions. The definition
of these missions has been expanded in every defense bill since.

Just two months after Bush waved his bag of crack, the Pentagon created
Joint Task Force Six (JTF-6). Headquartered in a former Army stockade near
El Paso, JTF-6 was initially conceived as a temporary operation, with duties
confined to the U.S.-Mexican border. As it now approaches its 10th birthday,
JTF-6 is one of the longest running task forces in U.S. military history.
More than 72,000 soldiers have served in JTF-6 operations scattered across
30 states.

Many JTF-6 missions do not involve combat troops. The Army Corps of
Engineers, for example, has built hundreds of miles of fencing and roads
along the U.S.-Mexico border. Others, such as the mission to Redford, have
placed armed soldiers in American backyards.

JTF-6 cannot launch a mission on its own. The work must be requested by a
civilian law enforcement agency fighting drugs within one of the nation's 21
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. But the U.S. Border Patrol is JTF-6's
main client. The two agencies have collaborated on an average of 157
missions a year.

The mission to Redford, for instance, began with a request from the Border
Patrol's sector headquarters in Marfa. Spanning 2,200 square miles of West
Texas desert, Marfa is the most rural and least active of nine sectors along
the U.S.-Mexican border. As a result, Marfa also has the fewest agents. So
in 1996, the sector chief requested JTF-6's help. The request was approved
by Operation Alliance -- JTF-6's civilian sister agency -- and the El Paso
task force issued a call for military volunteers.

The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force quickly signed on. Like the Border
Patrol, the California-based 1st Marines were regulars at JTF-6's desert
headquarters. The 1st Marines participated in 119 missions prior to Redford,
with 28 scheduled for 1997 alone. And like the Border Patrol, the 1st
Marines were hooked on drug interdiction money. The division burned an extra
$9.1 million worth of JTF-6 green during the four years prior to the Redford
mission. Wrote the ranking general: "Unequivocally, my commanders depend on,
and plan for, this annual infusion."

Friendly Fire

Late one afternoon in February 1997 -- the very same month that JTF-6 and
the 1st Marines began planning the Redford mission -- Border Patrol agents
Johnny Urias and James DeMatteo heard gunshots while patrolling the Redford
riverfront. Urias and DeMatteo were at the landing used by Juan Olivas,
Redford's part-time boatman. Olivas rows passengers across the Rio Grande
for 50 cents a head. If a friend lacks the fare, Olivas has been known to
take groceries in trade. The service isn't legal. Nor is it lucrative. For
most of the year, the river is shallow enough to ford without getting a knee
wet.

The two agents were walking among the cottonwood trees by the river, Urias
recalled, when they heard a "firecracker kind of pop at a distance."
DeMatteo recalled "three popping sounds coming from out left." Unsure what
was happening, they climbed back into their truck and drove slowly up the
dusty lane to Farm Road 170, the two-lane blacktop that winds through
Redford.

Before they reached the village, a beat-up truck approached them from
behind. It flashed its headlights. The agents stopped. So did the old white
pickup. A boy hopped out and ran up to the Border Patrol vehicle.

"I'm sorry that I was shooting," the agents recalled the boy telling them.
"I thought someone was doing something to my goats. I didn't know you were
back there."

The tall, lanky teenager was Esequiel Hernandez Jr. Known as "Skeetch" or
"Zeke" to his friends, and simply as "Junior" to the adults in the village,
Esequiel was the sixth of eight children of Maria de la Luz and Esequiel
Hernandez Sr.

Esequiel Sr. farms a small tract of land in the oldest part of Redford,
called El Polvo. It was named after a Catholic mission established here in
1684. The Franciscans called it San Jose Del Polvo, or St. Joseph of the
Dust. The name fits. The Hernandez family draws its blood from this river,
and this dust.

High mountains let few raindrops pass into this part of the desert. But
where the river floods, there are small strips of muddy soil. The
adobe-and-cinder-block village of Redford stands in the desert above one
such stretch of precious red soil, every inch of which is planted in
alfalfa, melons, pumpkins, or other crops.

Esequiel Jr. was a popular kid at Presidio High. He was the only boy to sign
up for the folk dance troupe. He was a straight kid who didn't smoke,
drink, or do drugs, according to his peers. His only brushes with the law
were a result of his habit of driving without a license -- a common West
Texas transgression.

Esequiel wasn't college bound. The only visible indication of personal
ambition was a large Marine Corps recruiting poster mounted on the wall
above his bed. For the time being, he played cowboy. He rode horses in
parades wearing an embroidered shirt and large white hat. When he wasn't on
horseback, he helped his father tend the family's 43 goats. It was his chore
to walk them to the river each afternoon. And he usually took with him a
World War I-era .22-caliber rifle his grandfather had given him. The old gun
was mechanically unreliable, but straight shooting. This, too, he hung on
the wall above his bed.

As the February sun crept behind the high, hard mountains to the west, Urias
and DeMatteo studied the boy who had followed them down the dusty lane. No
harm intended, they figured. No harm done. Urias left the boy with a
friendly warning. "Use more discretion when shooting your weapon," he later
recalled telling Esequiel. "Especially at night."

Team 7 Takes the Field

Corporal Banuelos first set foot in the Redford desert three months later.
On the morning of May 13, 1997, as he scouted the stony bluff just
downstream from El Polvo with his commanding officer, Capt. Lance McDaniel,
Banuelos noticed an empty cardboard bullet box that had contained .22
caliber rounds. Unaware of the Hernandez's habits, the pair speculated that
the box had been left by drug smugglers.

McDaniel picked Banuelos to lead a four-man team that would surveil the
Redford crossing. The 22-year-old corporal's team, called Team 7, was to
watch the crossing at night, and radio reports of any illegal activity to
the Border Patrol. During the day, Banuelos and his men were to retreat to a
"hide site" in an arroyo just downriver. There the soldiers were to conceal
themselves from the villagers.

The assignment was a coup for Banuelos, who was not much older than
Hernandez when he joined the Marine Corps. The boy from San Francisco had
matured noticeably during his three years in service, earning an achievement
medal rarely awarded such a junior enlisted man. And now, while still a
corporal, he had been selected to lead an observation team at Redford. All
the other team leaders were sergeants. If the mission went smoothly,
Banuelos would soon be a sergeant, too.

But mission No. JT414-97A, as the soldiers called it, was not going
smoothly. For although McDaniel's senior officers at 1st Division HQ were
hot to take JTF-6's money, their support for the captain's efforts to
prepare for the mission was tepid at best.

McDaniel was hamstrung at every turn by bureaucracy, paperwork, and the fact
that 1st Division's command viewed the mission as little more than a free
training exercise. That's the conclusion of an exhaustive report authored by
retired Maj. Gen. John T. Coyne, from which many of the operational details
described in this story were drawn. The Coyne report highlights how
different police work is from military action, and harshly rebukes the 1st
Division for failing to adequately prepare its soldiers for this policing
mission.

In one striking example, McDaniel's men were pulled away from a training
exercise in order to participate in a dress uniform review. The officers'
club mentality was visible in a statement from the man who ordered
McDaniel's men to participate in the formality. Maj. Steven Hogg said he was
comfortable with the order because he "was satisfied that Capt. McDaniel was
hitting all the wickets."

As a result of this type of bureaucratic interference, Capt. McDaniel was
able to conduct only three days of training before his teams left Camp
Pendleton for Texas. And because mission assignments weren't settled until
the last minute, Team 7 never trained as a unit.

Cpl. Roy Torrez Jr., Banuelos' second in command, hadn't received any field
instruction since his basic Marine combat training after boot camp. Torrez,
whose main job in the Marine Corps was driving a tow truck, was also Team 7
medic. He had completed a first-aid course in order to meet a quota at the
garage where he worked. Like Torrez, Lance Cpl. Ronald Wieler had received
no field training since basic. Wieler was a radio operator. Most of his
preparation consisted of cutting rags and sewing his own camouflage "ghillie
suit." Lance Cpl. James Blood, the team's junior man, did attend the three
days of training. But Blood was assigned to another team during that time,
and hadn't even met his teammates until the day before McDaniel and Banuelos
found the empty bullet box by the river.

Upon returning from that walk, McDaniel briefed his men at a Marfa base
camp. The two-hour talk addressed safety issues, communication protocols,
and the "rules of engagement." The soldiers were handed ROE cards that
listed specifically what they could and could not do. They were told what to
do if they encountered drug smugglers. But they neither discussed nor
rehearsed what to do if they came across a civilian.

Staff Sgt. Daren Dewbre concluded the briefing, warning the soldiers that
drug gangs posed an "organized, sophisticated, and dangerous enemy." He told
them that other teams had taken fire on previous missions. He told them that
"the enemy" would employ armed lookouts -- and that some villagers were in
cahoots with the smugglers. His briefing notes read: "Redford is not a
friendly town."

Men With Guns

Redford is one of the most remote towns in the United States. It is also one
of the oldest. And it's among the most often visited by soldiers. Located in
Presidio County, eight hours west of San Antonio and five hours east of El
Paso, Redford is in many ways more Mexican than American. Spanish is the
language of choice. The most popular shopping center is in Ojinaga, a
Mexican border town half an hour upriver. An American flag flies out front
of Redford Elementary School. But its flagpole erupts from the center of the
school's basketball court, leaving visitors to wonder whether the patriot
who erected the pole was entirely familiar with the rules of the game.
Directly across Farm Road 170 -- which until it was paved in the 1960s was
called Muerte del Burro, or Death of the Donkey -- stands the Madrid
library. In 1979, schoolteacher Lucia Rede Madrid started the small library
in her husband's store. She loaned books to the kids in Redford, and also to
Mexican kids from across the river. By the mid-Eighties, her library had
swelled to an estimated 50,000 volumes, overflowing both the store and the
attached stucco home. Lucia's "bridge of books" earned her two presidential
medals, and made her the most famous person in Redford -- until Zeke.

Three Days in the Desert

Banuelos and his team were dropped off along Farm Road 170 late Saturday
night, May 17. The soldiers leaped out of the Chevy Suburban wearing
camouflage face paint and shaggy burlap "ghillie suits." They carried two
five-gallon water cans, two radios, and assorted gear. Each carried his
M-16A2 rifle. Team 7 walked half a mile to the observation post. The team
they were replacing was dehydrated and nauseous after its three-day tour.
The departing team commander told Banuelos: "Watch out for the goats."

Banuelos, Torrez, Wieler, and Blood settled into the stony bluff above the
river. A canopy of stars revealed itself overhead. They saw two vehicles
cross the river that night, and radioed the Border Patrol both times. As
dawn came Sunday, Banuelos moved his men to the arroyo. The day passed
slowly, punctuated by fitful naps. The goats came in the afternoon -- dozens
of them, scrabbling through the hide site, foraging among the greasewood
bushes. Some came so close that one soldier feared they would gnaw on his
leaf-like ghillie suit.

Team 7 moved up to the observation post early that evening, some time
between 7-8pm. This was a departure from mission JT414-97A's plan, which
instructed them not to move until after dark. The soldiers reported more
vehicle crossings that night -- pickups, Suburbans, and Blazers rolling back
and forth across the river. But the Border Patrol only stopped one or two.

On Monday the desert began to be very hot. At midday, the surface
temperature of the Chihuahuan desert can reach 180 degrees Fahrenheit.
Snakes stay in their burrows to avoid being cooked. The soldiers had no
burrows. They lay on hot stones, wrapped in their burlap suits. Each man had
only three quarts of water per day. All they had to eat were fibrous goo
bars called Meals Ready to Eat, like Slim-Fast shakes without the liquid.

The goats returned in the afternoon. They stuffed their mouths with desert
weeds. They gurgled as they drank deeply from the river. By that evening,
Team 7 had begun to realize that El Polvo was a well-worn crossing, and that
most of what was smuggled across wasn't drugs.

Vehicles of every description arrived laden with tires, cement, furniture,
produce, and other contraband. Torrez and Blood griped about how rarely the
Border Patrol responded to their calls. "If they don't care," Blood recalled
asking, "why do we need to be out here?"

Checked-by: Don Beck