From Reforma, May 29, 1998 Published in World Press Review, August, 1998
Page 48

OPERATION CASABLANCA'S STING

In Operation Casablanca, billed as the biggest international sting
operation in history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
charged three of Mexico's largest banks with laundering millions in drug
money for Mexican and Colombian cartels. Mexican officials called it a
national insult: Whatever the banks had done, they said, Mexican
authorities should have been informed of U.S. police activities in their
territory. Here political Adolfo Aguilar Zinser expresses his anguished
ambivalence about the incident. - WPR

U ntil the U.S. launched Operation Casablanca to catch money-launderers in
Mexico, President Ernesto Zedillo had never been so stung by U.S.
violations of Mexico's sovereignty. After issuing a cautious diplomatic
note, Zedillo followed up in very concrete and undiplomatic language,
publicly charging the U.S. government with giving its agents free rein in
Mexico without informing Mexican authorities.

Far from offering an apology. President Bill Clinton told Zedillo he was
awfully sorry to have to treat Mexico in this way but his government could
not inform ours about its covert operations, and these operations would be
repeated as often as necessary in Mexico and anywhere else in the world. A
State Department spokesman added that Mexico should worry less about
formalities and more about actually combating drug trafficking.

What is surprising about these exchanges is not the arrogance of the U.S.
government but the unusual vigor shown by Zedillo in this case. Instead of
taking refuge in diplomatic niceties, Zedillo insisted that the two
countries seek a way to restore sovereignty through a commitment by the
U.S. to respect binational agreements on the exchange of information and to
punish U.S. agents who have violated the law. Foreign Minister Rosario
Green says that the Americans have been asked for detailed information
about their operations in Mexico. So far, the demands by Mexican officials
have had little substance. They are like the daredevil stunts of a
bullfighter trying to impress the crowd. Does the Foreign Ministry really
believe that the U.S. Justice Department is going to humbly hand its agents
over to Mexican authorities so that the offending agents can serve time in
prison?

U.S. agents in Mexico enjoy complete immunity from prosecution by Mexican
authorities. If a DEA agent were to be detained by a Mexican officer, the
Camarena syndrome would explode all over again, and the U.S. government
would accuse Mexico of kidnapping. [U.S.-Mexican relations hit a low in
1985, when DEA agent Enrique Camarena was killed in Guadalajara. The U.S.
accused Mexican officials of collaborating with drug dealers in Camarena's
murder. -WPR.] It is absurd to talk about protecting sovereignty through
actions that the Mexican government will never dare to take.

If Mexico had any guts, it would stop observing bilateral agreements on
information exchange. Secondly, it would suspend ratification of additional
protocols to the extradition treaty signed by both countries. And thirdly,
Mexico would ask the U.S. to recall all of its police agents stationed in
Mexico. Surely some of those agents were involved in Operation Casablanca.
But it will be hard to prove it or to detain them for investigation.

Zedillo's government lacks the political credibility to defend its
sovereignty. The reason that the U.S. claims it is necessary to maintain
the secrecy of its covert anti-drug operations is the risk that if the
Mexican authorities find out, those actions would be sabotaged by the
corruption prevailing in the Mexican government and the complicity of the
police with drug traffickers. In other words, the only way to guarantee our
sovereignty is to leave no doubt about the capacity of our political
institutions to combat corruption on their own. The Zedillo administration
is not doing that.

Much has been written recently about why the U.S. gave full media exposure
to the results of a covert operation that has overstepped its bounds and
threatened the entire Mexican financial system, a system that the U.S.
itself has spent billions shoring up. For many Mexicans, the motives for
Casablanca are questionable. Little has been said, however, about what may
have suddenly inspired Zedillo to react with such patriotic zeal. Would it
be wrongheaded to suspect that the president's defense of our sovereignty
is not very sincere either, that his real motive is to conceal the
corruption thriving at the highest levels of power in Mexico? The lack of
credibility and moral authority of our government isthe true enemy of our
sovereignty.

- -- Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, "Reforma" (independent), Mexico City, May 29, 1998

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski