DRUG WAR MASQUERADE

Part 1:

On the day he died, Esequiel Hernandez Jr. took his goats to the river. He
let 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. 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.

On the day 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.

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 front lines
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. Though it no longer exists, this separation of
military and police powers 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 of 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. (San Antonio is on the list.) 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 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 when
Urias remembered 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
the 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."

Unready Soldiers

Cpl. Banuelos first set foot in the Redford desert three months later. On
the morning of May 13, 1997, 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, they 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 down river.
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 while 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 departed 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. He didn't even meet
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. Dewbre warned 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.

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-'80s, 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.

The books in the Madrid library show that Cpl. Banuelos was far from the
first soldier to ride into Redford. First came the Apache. Then came the
Spanish. In 1747, Captain Joseph de Ydoiaga led an expedition of 150 men
and 1,000 horses. Ydoiaga's report led to the construction of a Spanish
fortress, near present day Presidio. Next came the Mexicans, who in 1821
won independence from Spain. And in 1836 the Texans separated from Mexico.

The Mexican-American War brought the U.S. Army in 1846. The United States
won a bloody victory over a Mexico torn apart by civil unrest. The Treaty
of Guadalupe de Hildago cut Mexico in half. The United States took
everything from the Rio Grande to California.

The treaty also divided the village of El Polvo, placing the fields on the
south side of the river in Mexico. And the new border attracted a new breed
of men with guns. A private trading post just upriver on the American side
became a haven for profiteers such as John Burgess, a war veteran who
traded American guns and slaves for Mexican silver. When President Ulysses
S. Grant began paying cash for Indian scalps, Burgess scalped dark-skinned
Mexicans and pawned off the hairpieces. The new Anglo settlers also changed
the name of the dusty village. The English name -- "REDFORD" -- is painted
in block letters on the small silver water tower at the west end of town.

The Army built a fort at Redford called Camp Polvo during the Mexican
Revolution, which spilled across the Rio Grande after 1910. Pancho Villa
campaigned near the border. For years, whichever side was losing would
surrender to the U.S. Army rather than their enemy. When the revolution
ended, the Army left several buildings behind, including an adobe officers'
house, and a small stone cistern.

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, sometime
between 7 and 8 p.m. 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 mid-day, 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?"

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

They didn't need to be there -- at least not in May. A decade's worth of
federal statistics prove it: More than 85 percent of all illegal drugs
entering the United States arrive via official Ports of Entry monitored by
the Customs Service. Most comes concealed within legitimate cargo. Nearly
100 percent of all heroin shipped to the United States last year flowed
through official ports, according to federal estimates. Ninety-nine percent
of the methamphetamine tumbled through those ports. Ninety-seven percent of
the cocaine blew in this way.

Marijuana is the lone exception. Half the weed consumed in this country is
grown here. Much of the rest comes across at places like El Polvo. Last
fall, the Border Patrol caught a motor home stuffed with 2,700 pounds of
marijuana. Its driver claimed he crossed at El Polvo. Large busts like this
happen every fall. That's because marijuana is a crop. Most of it gets
harvested and shipped across the border in the fall and winter. Only
tourists and amateurs bother smuggling in May.

If Congress were serious about employing the armed forces to stop the
northward flow of drugs, it would post search teams at each of the 39
customs checkpoints along the 2,000-mile border. Three and a half million
trucks rolled through in 1996. Customs was able to inspect but a quarter of
them.

The main reason these trucks go uninspected is because truckers -- and the
corporations who hire them -- complain the wait at customs is too long.
These corporations, which finance political life in America, complain to
Congress that more searches would slow down the progress of North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Washington wants it both ways. It wants to stop the flow of drugs and
immigrants, while increasing the flow of goods and services. Putting troops
in places such as Redford is a compromise. It allows Congress to appear
tough on drugs, while not hindering trade.

Congress has strained to expand the military's role along the border ever
since JTF-6 was created. Both the House and Senate versions of the 1989
bill would have given the military the power to arrest civilians. These
provisions were killed as a result of strong opposition from the Pentagon,
which trains soldiers to kill their enemies, not arrest them. Many, many
military scholars warn that training the armed services to do police work
will render them unprepared for actual combat.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan