EX-AGENTS ACCUSE U.S. OF IGNORING MEXICO CORRUPTION

Administration officials deny overlooking Salinas' actions

MEXICO CITY - When Raul Salinas de Gortari, brother of the former Mexican
president, was charged in 1995 with taking huge payoffs from drug
traffickers, even some of the most jaded Mexicans were shocked. But some
former U.S. agents barely blinked.

"We know a lot about what goes on. The problem is, we don't do anything
about it. We tolerate corruption in Mexico," said Hector Berrellez, a former
veteran agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. "I once had
information that Raul Salinas had allegedly brokered deals with Pablo
Escobar," the late Colombian drug lord. "Washington ordered me not to write
it up. 'Stop writing that stuff,' they told me. So what am I supposed to do?
Go to the movies? Go see Zorro?"

Disillusioned, Mr. Berrellez said he actually did spend some of his
afternoons at the movies in Washington, D.C., before retiring in September
1996. Now 52, his take on the continuing Salinas affair is that some U.S.
officials turn a blind eye to drug corruption because they don't want to
jeopardize America's commercial and diplomatic ties with Mexico.

"Don't tell me we couldn't go to Mexico and stamp out drug trafficking. Of
course we could," Mr. Berrellez said. "But we don't. There is no drug war."

If U.S. officials did shy away from investigating Raul Salinas, Swiss
authorities certainly did not. And on Tuesday, they plan to announce the
results of a three-year investigation into allegations that former President
Carlos Salinas de Gortari's brother had become a big-time money launderer.
Details of their investigation - first published in The New York Times - are
expected to show that Raul Salinas controlled the shipment of tons of drugs
through Mexico during his brother's six-year term, which ended in 1994.

Raul Salinas, now in a maximum-security prison outside Mexico City, has
denied any connection with drug trafficking. And after a Mexican prosecutor
earlier this month announced that the government had traced to Mr. Salinas
bank accounts containing about $250 million, the former president's brother
fired off an angry response: "Don't let yourselves be fooled. I don't have
any more accounts."

Clinton administration officials, for their part, strongly reject the
suggestion that they looked the other way while Raul Salinas is alleged to
have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in drug bribes, perhaps with
the consent of his powerful brother.

"Certainly at the policy level, there was no such understanding or sense
that there was a problem with Carlos Salinas," said one official, who
requested anonymity.

Raul Salinas held a midlevel government post during his brother's term and
was called "Mr. 10 Percent" - a reference to rumors that he took a
10-percent cut on back-room deals with the government, the official said.
But "we had no serious concerns about narco-corruption."

"Now it strikes us as unfair that law enforcement says, 'We've known this
for eons.' They say, 'Didn't you know they were corrupt?' Well, no, we're
not intelligence agents. We're policy-makers."

A spokesman for the DEA declined to comment.

Carlos Salinas, now living in exile in Ireland, has denied promoting drug
corruption and has said he was "astonished by the huge amount" of money
traced to his brother.

Michael Levine, who spent 25 years with the DEA and other federal agencies,
ran a sting operation called "Operation Trifecta" in 1987, which he said
revealed "massive government corruption in Mexico." He said informants said
that Carlos Salinas intended "to open his country up for drug traffickers"
after his election in 1988. But he said federal officials, including some at
the CIA, hushed up the details of his undercover operation and discouraged
him from targeting the Salinas family.

U.S. officials didn't want to sink the North American Free Trade Agreement,
or NAFTA, he said.

"It's mind-blowing," he said. "Sometimes I look back and say, 'Did this
really happen?' You can't make up this kind of stuff."

The CIA declined to comment.

Mr. Levine said he remains convinced that the Salinas family had deep
drug-trafficking ties and that Carlos Salinas must have been involved at
some level.

"Raul could have never done anything without Carlos. I think Raul's the fall
guy. That's the story," said Mr. Levine, who has written three books about
his experiences and has a weekly radio show in New York City.

There are other DEA veterans who agree with Mr. Levine. One is Celerino
"Cele" Castillo, who worked as an agent in Central and South America and has
testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

"Our hands are tied. We are not allowed to conduct major operations against
well-known officials that we believe are involved in drug trafficking unless
it's approved in Washington. And approval is unlikely. The U.S. government
doesn't want to embarrass the Mexican government," said Mr. Castillo, the
author of a book called Powderburns.

Phil Jordan, former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center, jointly run
by the DEA and other federal agencies, said during the debate over NAFTA
five years ago that his superiors in Washington ordered him not to talk
about his concern that free trade would boost drug trafficking.

Since then, a U.S. Customs-led task force called Operation Alliance has
concluded that trafficking gangs are exploiting NAFTA to send more drugs
northward across the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Our worst fears have been realized," said Mr. Jordan, head of a corporate
security company in Dallas.

Peter Lupsha, a former University of New Mexico researcher specializing in
organized crime, contends that drug trafficking in Mexico is simply a low
priority for Washington.

"For recent Washington administrations, whether they be President Bush's or
President Clinton's, free trade, investment, development and other economic
issues are paramount," he wrote in the journal Trends in Organized Crime.
"Drug trafficking, immigration, environmental concerns . . . are all issues
to be swept under the rug and ignored."

But in the end, "consistently ignoring or downplaying Mexico's problems . .
will only work against the successful creation of the much-desired free
trade hemisphere," researcher Silvana Paternostro wrote in World Policy
Journal.

Checked-by: Don Beck