MEXICO PROBING ANTI-DRUG TROOPS MEMBERS OF ELITE, U.S.-TRAINED UNITS SAID
TO ASSIST TRAFFICKERS AT AIRPORT

Two years ago, U.S. and Mexican officials, frustrated by corruption in
Mexican law enforcement agencies, pushed the Mexican army to take the
lead in fighting the drug war. Forming the backbone of the effort were
new, vetted units trained by U.S. Special Forces and given helicopters
for mobility.

But now the program, begun with high hopes and effusive praise from
senior officials of both countries, is facing the same evil it was
formed to combat. Around 80 members of the elite units have been under
investigation in recent weeks on allegations that some of them took
hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to sneak cocaine-filled
suitcases and illegal aliens through the Mexico City airport on their
way to the United States. Nine of these Mexican soldiers have been
jailed on formal charges and five more have been detained.

On Sunday, Mexican civilian anti-drug authorities removed 40 of the
troops -- all trained under the Special Forces program -- from their
assignments at the airport as a result of the corruption
investigation.

The episode, which has left some U.S. drug enforcement officials newly
disillusioned, comes amid a rapid and widespread expansion of training
of foreign armed forces by U.S. special operations troops -- an
initiative that has proceeded largely without public debate or
congressional oversight. In Mexico, as in much of Latin America, the
operational focus is on combating the drug trade. But here, as in
Colombia, U.S. training has not succeeded in stemming the corruption
and human rights abuses that have plagued anti-drug operations in the
past.

The Mexican units, whose leaders were given Special Forces training at
Ft. Bragg, N.C., are called Airmobile Special Forces and are widely
known by their Spanish acronym GAFE. The United States pays $28
million a year for the program and 252 Mexican officers were trained
in its first 18 months, with another 156 officers scheduled for
training by the end of fiscal 1998, according to the Pentagon. The
U.S.-trained officers then train other groups in Mexico, and by now
there are supposed to be 42 100-man units stationed around the country.

Candidates for the GAFEs, supposedly the cream of the Mexican army,
are vetted by Mexican and U.S. officials. Those sent for training in
the United States have their names checked against databases of suspected
drug traffickers kept by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the CIA
and the Defense Intelligence Agency. They also receive higher salaries
than troops outside the units to make bribes less tempting.

The GAFE troops who worked at the Mexico City airport were trained by
Mexican trainers, not directly by U.S. Special Forces. But U.S.
officials said the indications of possible graft were a blow to their
efforts to establish several corps of uncorruptible drug fighters on
both sides of the border.

"After a while you wonder what the hell you are doing there," said one
law enforcement official. "There is no one there we can trust
completely. This was supposed to be the group we could trust and work
with."

Of equal concern with the arrests themselves, U.S. and Mexican
officials said, was the fact that the elite troops, whose mission was to be
deployed around the country as combat-ready shock troops to attack
drug cartels, were being broken up, seconded to other agencies and
given routine duties such as patrolling the airport.

"I don't know why those troops were there. That is not what they were
supposed to be doing," one Mexican official familiar with the program
said of the airport arrests. "They are supposed to be the door-kickers
and have the capacity to go after the drug traffickers and offer the
best support available. It is a matter of concern to us they reportedly
were loaned
out to other agencies, and we are investigating why that is."

Another senior Mexican official acknowledged that the arrests were
"worrisome because we expected them [the elite troops] to have more
commitment, to be able to have more trust in them. . . . We tried to
get the best people, but we are not always successful."

U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and congressional
investigators said there were indications that a senior general in the
upper ranks of the GAFE had assigned the troops to the airport in an
effort to protect illegal activities.

"There is no other reasonable explanation," said one congressional
staffer investigating the case. "Those are the indications we are getting."

The detention of the GAFE members comes as U.S. law enforcement
officials have begun to question the units' usefulness in fighting
drug trafficking. U.S. officials said the GAFEs have participated in
only one arrest of a major drug trafficker -- Adan Amezcua, nabbed earlier
this
year.

The latest corruption charge is only one of a continuing series of
disappointments in joint programs designed to improve drug-fighting
efforts in Mexico, transit zone for an estimated 60 percent of the
cocaine and two-thirds of the heroin entering the United States.

A June 30 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the government
watchdog agency, found that much of the $76 million in U.S. anti-drug
aid given to the Mexican military by the Department of Defense in
fiscal years 1996 and 1997 was spent on aircraft and helicopters the
Mexican army has been unable or unwilling to use.

And the report found that two Knox-class frigates the Mexican navy
purchased from the United States for use in counter-drug missions
"were not properly outfitted and are currently inoperable."

U.S. and Mexican officials said they were more concerned, however,
about the corruption allegations. Law enforcement operations at Mexico
City's Benito Juarez International Airport were taken over by a GAFE
in April 1997. Within the last five months, nearly 20 of the
approximately 80 officers and troops assigned to the airport have been
arrested on charges of protecting drug shipments, assisting illegal
immigrants and shepherding electronics and other high-duty imports
past customs agents, according to Mexican investigators.

The most recent case, the detention of 14 soldiers on Aug. 9, began
when a general who oversees the federal police in Mexico City received an
anonymous letter alleging that anti-drug agents at the airport were
protecting drug loads and facilitating the entry of illegal immigrants
from South and Central America.

According to a Mexican investigator familiar with the case, the
members of the anti-drug unit protected suitcases each containing 22
pounds of cocaine that arrived on an Avianca flight from Bogota,
Colombia, every Tuesday for the past six months. Military officials
reportedly were paid $2,500 for each suitcase delivery, the
investigator said.

One military officer who works on the airport detail, and who agreed
to be interviewed on condition of anonymity, said the anti-drug
officers routinely pull suitcases containing cocaine off the luggage
carriers between the point where they are unloaded from the aircraft
and the point where bags are inspected by drug-sniffing dogs. After
the dogs have examined the luggage cart, the source said, the officers
toss the cocaine-filled suitcases onto the baggage conveyor belt.

In addition, members of the law enforcement units allegedly used their
airport passes to lead illegal immigrants from international flights
to the adjoining domestic terminal, bypassing immigration proceedings
and allowing them to illegally board flights to cities close to the
U.S. border. One Mexican investigator said members of the Mexico City
military team had been assisting an average of 20 illegal immigrants a
week for the past six months and were paid $500 per person for a total
of about $240,000.

A senior military officer, who asked that his name not be used,
defended the airport agents who work for the military unit, alleging that the
only evidence of wrongdoing against the officers is "some change in
their lifestyles -- the way they dress, the cars they drive -- but
that's not strong enough to get them."

U.S. officials and news reports in Mexico have tied the airport GAFE
to an attempt to protect two loads of cocaine totaling 1,335 pounds
that arrived on two flights from Bogota on Aug. 20.

Two other members of the military unit were arrested in March on
charges of attempting to protect 332 pounds of cocaine that arrived as baggage
on a commercial flight from Bogota, according to the federal attorney
general's office. Mexican authorities also linked two other cocaine
shipments -- one of which was hidden amid religious books -- totaling
512 pounds to that investigation.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry