GRAFT PROBE HAUNTS ANTI-DRUG FORCE

U.S.-trained Mexican troops under suspicion

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 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.

About 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.

The Mexican units, whose leaders were given Special Forces training at Fort
Bragg, N.C., are called Airmobile Special Forces and 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.

Mexico army's elite

Candidates for the GAFEs, supposedly the cream of the Mexican army, are
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 corps of uncorruptible drug fighters on both sides of the border.

`No one . . . we can trust'

``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.''

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Checked-by: Pat Dolan