U.S.Mexican Drug Collaboration Fails When Lives Are on the Line

By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Mexico—Fourth of five articles

When 21 police and army officers from this desert town near the Arizona
border were arrested in connection with the theft of a halfton of cocaine
from the evidence room at the local federal attorney general's office, it
seemed like just another example of Mexican drug corruption.

But as details of the May 12 theft began to unfold, the story took a twist
that U.S. drug agents found distressingly familiar: The arrested Mexican
cops included the commander and members of a special antidrug unit funded
in part by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

"Every time we think we're making progress, something happens," complained
a U.S. official on the border, who said the case illustrates why American
drug investigators often refuse to work with their Mexican counterparts.

At a time when top U.S. and Mexican officials including Presidents Bill
Clinton and Ernesto Zedillo boast of unprecedented cooperation between
the United States and Mexico in the war on drugs, antidrug agents along
both sides of the 2,000mile border complain there has never been more
distrust or less cooperation at the operational level.

The contradictory views, which emerged in dozens of interviews with
drugfighting officials in Mexico City, Washington and along the frontier,
reveal a wide gap between what is said in the capitals and what occurs
daily on the border.

"We don't have sharing, we don't have any giveandtake," said a senior law
enforcement official in Washington, acknowledging the discrepancy between
public pronouncements and groundlevel realities. "We need to be able to
pass on information and get information back. That is not happening. When
we have given information to the Mexicans, it was like putting it in a
black hole."

Mexican antidrug officials have their own complaints, pointing out that
U.S. law enforcement agents are quick to highlight corruption that aids the
drug trade on the Mexican side of the border, but seem less anxious to
investigate corruption within their own ranks.

The drug trade doesn't end at the border, Mexican authorities observed
drugs still must be shipped hundreds or thousands of miles farther until
they reach the streets of America's cities. Mexican officials find it hard
to believe that along the way there are no crooked U.S. cops, no paidoff
U.S. politicians, no U.S. cartel kingpins.

At the highest levels of both governments, communication between policy
makers has rarely been better. The two presidents and their senior law
enforcement chiefs have met regularly on drug issues, signing historic
agreements. A steady stream of U.S. experts has traveled to Mexico City to
give advice on how to draft new laws against organized crime and
moneylaundering and to combat corruption.

But drug agents on the border the choke point where a pooling of
resources arguably could have the greatest effect in stanching the daily
flow of as much as seven tons of drugs into the United States say there
are few joint investigations and little sharing of information, sources or
other intelligence on drug cases. There are few visits or even telephone
calls between Mexican and U.S. drug investigators, no joint training or
other exercises, no shared radio frequencies. Except at the highest
administrative levels, it is rare that a drug agent from one side of the
Rio Grande knows the name of even one agent on the other.

A U.S. drug investigator who has spent 20 years on the border explained the
problem: "You've got a guy in the Mexican police who makes nothing, and you
know he's corrupt. You've got an informant in the middle you'd like to keep
alive. The first thing the Mexican [officer] wants to know is the source of
your information, and that guy's going to be floating in the river next week."

Top U.S. officials are acutely aware of the dilemma, having been scorched
themselves. Today, the enduring symbol of the U.S.Mexican partnership
against drugs is a photograph of White House antidrug policy chief Barry
R. McCaffrey and the former Mexican antidrug chief, army Gen. Jesus
Gutierrez Rebollo, taken in January during their first meeting in
Washington. During the session, McCaffrey lavished praise on his counterpart.

Three weeks later, Gutierrez was jailed on allegations that he was on the
payroll of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpin, the late Amado Carrillo
Fuentes, head of the Juarez Cartel. Gutierrez is now on trial on charges
that he helped Carrillo Fuentes, who died in July after radical plastic
surgery, by launching Mexican army operations against the cartel's
archrivals, the Arellano Felix brothers who operate the Tijuana Cartel.
Zedillo later abolished the antidrug agency Gutierrez headed, after
deciding it was too corrupt to be rehabilitated.

Despite the security breach, which forced both governments to review the
sensitive information Gutierrez had received in intelligence briefings,
U.S. officials said scaling back U.S.Mexican cooperation was never an option.

"I deal with all sorts of people in the hemisphere that I know are tainted
by corruption," McCaffrey said in an interview. In the case of Gutierrez,
he said, "our intelligence was wrong. . . . He turned out to be a mole for
a criminal gang. So what?. . . . I don't take any responsibility for who
Mexico or Colombia selects for these positions, I just try and work with
them."

Given the deep economic and cultural ties between the United States and
Mexico, McCaffrey said: "What option do we have except to be partners?"

In a speech during a recent tour of the Southwest border, McCaffrey
conceded, "Washington's policies to reduce the supply of drugs are a
failure. . . . We have made some progress on this problem, but we will not
resolve it unless cooperation between the United States and Mexico is part
of our effort. . . . The U.S. cannot possibly address this problem by itself."

U.S. and Mexican officials have had little success in forcing that attitude
down the ranks. A telling example was a recent undercover investigation of
Mexican cocaine trafficking in the United States that resulted in the
arrest of 89 people and the seizure of nine tons of cocaine and more than
$18 million in cash.

Federal sources said U.S. investigators gathered mountains of information
about Mexican drug mafias, including the names and addresses of various
kingpins living in Mexico. But when asked if the United States would give
the information to Mexican authorities, one law enforcement official
involved in the probe laughed. "I guess we would if we were directly
ordered to," he said. "But I can't see why we would. Why let the Mexicans
know what we have? So they can pass it along to the traffickers?"

The feeling of distrust and suspicion is mirrored on the Mexican side of
the border. "All the drugs that enter through Juarez in trailer trucks and
airplanes are arranged," said one former Mexican federal judicial agent who
spent his career in various border posts. "They want to put all the blame
on this side, they want to say that we are the corrupted ones. But everyone
knows that Amado Carrillo bought people on both sides."

But more than ambitious joint investigations, any communication at all on
the border would be welcomed, according to a senior antidrug administrator
whose office covers more than 250 miles of U.S.Mexican border.

"It would help immensely if the Mexican comandante would call and say, `We
just lost a load [of drugs] here on the river, and it's going to arrive in
your country at Point X in a few minutes,' " he said. "We've never gotten
such a call."

In Mexico, the experience is the same. Describing his relationship with his
American colleagues across the border, one Mexican federal drug official
noted, "I don't know any of my counterparts."

President Zedillo agreed there are shortcomings at the operational level.
"Perhaps we should be doing more," he said in an interview. "But I think
the change has been clear over the last two years, progressively."

A Lack of Trust

As an example of failed communication and cooperation, it is hard to top
the case of Vicente Teran Uribe.

Teran is listed by the DEA as one of Mexico's 20 leading drug dealers a
shadowy, wealthy alleged trafficker and money launderer who authorities say
allows cocaineladen planes from Colombia to land at secret airstrips on
his ranches near the U.S. border. The DEA's "Top 20" dossier, made public
in early June, contains scant information about Teran: date and place of
birth, nationality, height, weight, hair color and eye color are all
"unknown."

But Teran was hardly in hiding: As DEA was releasing its list, he was
running for mayor of Agua Prieta, a major border town across from Douglas,
Ariz., about 100 miles south of Tucson.

DEA officials refused to comment on Teran, who was elected mayor July 6.
Nor would DEA officials explain why, if communication and cooperation with
Mexico are so good, they were unable to obtain the most elementary
information about such a public figure.

Top antidrug officials in Mexico said U.S. officials never asked them
about Teran nor showed them a copy of the "Top 20" list, despite an April
8, 1996, memorandum from President Clinton ordering U.S. agencies "to
ensure that the Mexican Government receives copies of relevant public
reports" about drug trafficking.

The first time Mexico's highestranking antidrug officials saw the list
was when a reporter for The Washington Post showed it to them two months
after its release. Mexican authorities said they were not investigating
Teran who has denied any ties to drug dealing and had no information
implicating him in trafficking.

Rather than a blanket indictment of poor intergovernment communications,
there may be a much simpler explanation for the Teran affair: If there is a
U.S.Mexican partnership, the DEA is the most reluctant participant of all
the U.S. agencies.

DEA agents and officials trace their distrust of Mexico to the 1985
kidnapping and killing of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena by drug
traffickers in the central Mexican city of Guadalajara. The killing was
particularly brutal. Camarena was kept alive and tortured for days, with
much of the incident taperecorded.

An investigation implicated several highranking Mexican government
officials, including some of the Defense Department's top brass, but none
was held accountable for the slaying. Ever since, the DEA has held a grudge
against Mexican law enforcement and the military.

"Historically, corruption has been a central problem in DEA's relationship
with [our] Mexican counterparts," DEA chief Thomas A. Constantine said in
congressional testimony earlier this year. "In short, there is not one
single law enforcement institution in Mexico with whom the DEA has an
entirely trusting relationship."

Constantine is one of the few highranking U.S. officials willing to speak
bluntly about why cooperation with Mexico is not better, which perhaps is a
reflection of the role his agency plays in the drug war. Generally, the DEA
takes the lead on drug investigations, and its agents are the Americans who
have to work most closely with their Mexican counterparts. Because they are
the ones most at risk, DEA agents are often also the most reluctant to put
their trust and faith in the integrity of Mexico's drug investigators.

But, in fact, there is also deep division within the agency itself and
between DEA and other U.S. law enforcement organizations working along the
border, according to antidrug officials. DEA agents in the United States
often have no more contact with DEA agents based inside Mexico than with
Mexican drug agents. The DEArun El Paso Intelligence Center, which
analyzes intelligence data on Mexican cartels collected through wiretaps
and other methods, seldom shares its information with other U.S. drug
interdiction agencies, according to senior law enforcement officials.

The DEA currently has no offices along the border inside Mexico the
office closest to the international boundary is in Monterrey, 116 miles
from the frontier. Recent plans to open offices in Tijuana and Ciudad
Juarez have been jeopardized by political disagreements between the two
countries over the role of the DEA in Mexico, by corruption in Mexico's law
enforcement agencies, and by a dispute over allowing DEA agents to carry
guns inside Mexico, according to senior U.S. officials.

That leaves the DEA agents on the U.S. side of the line those closest to
the trafficking problems frustrated and at odds with their own
hierarchy. Some current and former DEA agents on the border trace this
estrangement to a change in internal DEA regulations six years ago that
prohibits them from visiting Mexico without prior approval from Washington
and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City; the embassy often passes the
information on to Mexican law enforcement officials. The travel
restrictions make it virtually impossible to develop a working relationship
with their Mexican counterparts, the sources said, and the notification
procedures tip off too many people about their investigations.

"As a younger agent, we'd work with the Mexican feds, and we had a good
relationship with them," said a recently retired DEA agent from Texas. "It
used to be that you could go into Mexico as far as 28 kilometers [about 17
miles] and work undercover. You'd go in, take your ball cap off, negotiate
with dealers, stand up and walk away, and the Mexicans would go in behind
you and arrest them."

But since DEA agents have had to get permission and issue advance
notification, he said, raids against drug kingpins have been missing their
targets by mere hours. "It was obvious that the highest levels of the
Mexican government and law enforcement were tipping them off. The minute we
called Mexico City, Juan Garcia Abrego [once Mexico's top drug lord] knew
we were coming."

"I used to go over there on a daily basis," said another longtime DEA
agent. "Now, I can't tell you the last time I went there or talked to
someone there. At least five years."

Quiet Collaboration

Many Mexican law enforcement officials and politicians also trace their
distrust of U.S. officials to the killing of DEA agent Camarena. After the
murder, Mexico was pummeled in the U.S. Congress, prompting some Mexican
leaders to vow privately that they would never again cozy up to the
Americans because of the potential for negative fallout if things went sour.

That feeling is reinforced each spring, when Mexico goes through the
process of being "certified" by the U.S. president as a reliable ally in
the war on drugs. Mexican officials see the process as little more than a
humiliating exercise in Mexicobashing.

Traditionally, Mexicans jealously guard their sovereignty and question
American motives for meddling in internal Mexican affairs. As a result, it
often is politically risky for the two presidents to agree, for fear of
being labeled "soft" on a problematic neighbor.

Clinton and Zedillo each have declared drug trafficking an issue of vital
national security, and they have pledged to work together to fight it in a
series of agreements that include U.S. training for Mexican drug
enforcement agents, U.S. technical assistance establishing procedures for
conducting money laundering investigations, the planned transfer of 70
surplus U.S. helicopters for drug interdiction and use of U.S. Customs
Service aircraft in joint air and sea interdiction efforts.

Yet officials from the two countries remain at loggerheads over the
extradition of criminals, effectively letting people wanted in one country
escape prosecution and incarceration by hiding out in the other. The main
problem lies in differences between U.S. and Mexican law: Judges in the
United States, for instance, often refuse to extradite Mexicans back to
their country when the evidence against them was obtained by torture a
common interrogation technique in Mexico.

Mexican officials, on the other hand, frequently deny U.S. extradition
requests if the suspect faces a possible death sentence in the United
States (capital punishment is unconstitutional in Mexico) or if U.S.
evidence was obtained through wiretaps, paid informants and other
techniques that until recently were outlawed in Mexico.

Even when the countries work together, they sometimes are reluctant to
admit it. For instance, the Mexican navy and the U.S. Coast Guard and
Customs Service have been collaborating for months to stop and seize
Mexican speedboats called "shark boats" that race up the Gulf of
Mexico and dump loads of marijuana on the beaches of Texas. But officials
in both countries are loath to acknowledge the extent of the Mexican navy's
cooperation, fearing a public backlash in Mexico that could destroy the
program.

They have reason to be concerned. On Sept. 29, a proposal by Mexico's
Foreign Ministry to ease restrictions on U.S. antidrug surveillance
flights over Mexico drew immediate criticism as an infringement on Mexico's
sovereignty. And when U.S. former defense secretary William Perry divulged
plans in March 1996 for joint U.S.Mexican naval exercises, his premature
disclosure sparked headlines of outrage in Mexico City and the plan died.

"These are `coincidental' operations," insisted a Coast Guard official,
adding, "We know what happened to Perry. It's a matter of semantics, but if
that allows us to work together, great."

"We are working very closely with the Mexicans so they can help us keep the
pressure on in the Gulf from their side, and they seem to be doing it very
well," said a senior Coast Guard official, praising a new communications
system "that allow us to communicate at a tactical level unit to unit,
ship to ship, across the border."

"It's working," he said, noting that on at least five recent occasions when
the Coast Guard had to stop chasing a drugsmuggling boat because it raced
back into Mexican waters, the Mexican navy picked up the pursuit.

Coast Guard officials also have visited Mexico to train its sailors in
technical skills, such as how to detect secret compartments. The training
paid off in January: the Coast Guard spent several days searching a Mexican
fishing boat off the Pacific coast of Mexico and found 1,690 pounds of
cocaine. Afterward, the Mexican navy ordered the vessel into port.

Their search yielded another 2.7 tons of cocaine hidden in secret
compartments within the fuel tanks.

MISTRUST ACROSS THE BORDER

As the U.S. and Mexican presidents boast of unprecedented cooperation in
the fight against drugs, antidrug agents on the front lines on both sides
of the border complain that distrust has never been greater. U.S. agents
refuse to share information with their Mexican colleagues because they
believe corrupt Mexican agents will pass it on to traffickers, and Mexican
agents complain of American meddling. Crossborder contacts between U.S.
and Mexican agents are all but nonexistent.

Between five and seven tons, or up to 14,000 pounds, of drugs enter the
United States each day. That is more than 5 million pounds a year. Yet only
a fraction is seized. U.S. drug agents also confiscate property of people
caught with drugs, but such seizures are declining.

Drug seizures on the Southwest border in pounds per fiscal year:

Fiscal year

Drug 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

Cocaine 121,376 101,224 125,802 101,622 80,771

Marijuana 537,887 523,695 558,582 815,118 904,347

Heroin 451 477 517 458 1,027

DEA asset seizures in millions of dollars per fiscal year:

Fiscal year

Site 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

Houston 109.9 64.4 50.7 58.6 27.2

National 878.1 688.0 653.6 650.3 498.8

SOURCE: U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

ABOUT THE SERIES

* SUNDAY U.S. and Mexico are overwhelmed by the amount of illegal drugs
crossing their porous 2,000mile border.

* MONDAY Drug traffickers pay off police officers on both sides of the
border.

* TUESDAY Drugrelated crime and violence spread to cities throughout the
United States.

* TODAY U.S. and Mexican governments collaborate at the highest levels to
stem the drug trade, but relations along the border are often characterized
by suspicion and resentment.

* THURSDAY Mexican drug gangs hide within the large immigrant communities
in U.S. cities.