Drug Corruption Heading North

Drugs can pass easily into the United States because the sheer volume of
cars trying to enter, as at the San Ysidro, Calif., border crossing, means
agents can't check them all. (Michael Williamson/ The Post)

    Second of five articles

By William Branigin and John Ward Anderson Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 3, 1997; Page A01

EL PASO — A Border Patrol agent in Douglas, Ariz., is convicted on
drugtrafficking charges for his role in guiding across the border a
vehicle loaded with more than half a ton of cocaine.

In Laredo, Tex., two sheriff's officers are arrested for stealing more than
a ton of marijuana from police custody and selling it back to drug dealers.

In Calexico, Calif., four current or former customs and immigration
inspectors are jailed for their part in two rings that smuggled more than
11 tons of cocaine, worth at least $165 million, into the United States
over five years.

With increasing frequency along the 2,000mile frontier between the United
States and Mexico — a region of remote desert and hardbaked farmland, with
a few booming cities and a generationslong tradition of smuggling — U.S.
officers entrusted with defending the border have been caught surrendering
it to drug traffickers.

These federal, state and local officials have been recruited by Mexican
trafficking groups that for years have relied on corruption as their
favored method for doing business south of the border. They are offered
huge bribes and profits, and run little risk of getting caught. Authorities
have had their greatest successes in discovering corruption through sheer
luck — leading them to conclude that much is going undetected.

"Unfortunately, both the violence and the corruption that are attendant to
the drug trade in Mexico are spilling across the border into the United
States," Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief Thomas A. Constantine
said in recent Senate testimony. "These criminals will not hesitate to
offer U.S. law enforcement officers millions of dollars to look the other
way or provide them with information."

Many senior U.S. officials say that the problem of corruption on the
American side of the border is limited to "a few bad apples," to cite a
commonly used phrase. They say there is no proof that drug corruption in
the United States is widespread or systemic — with entire border crossings
or units or agencies conspiring in illegal activities. That level of graft,
they say, is still confined to Mexico, where bribes are often kicked
rungbyrung up the ladder to the highest reaches of government, with every
official along the way taking a cut.

But anecdotal evidence suggests that the problem in the United States is
more extensive than generally acknowledged, particularly in local police
agencies along the border. There appears to be no coordinated federal
response to border corruption, however, and detecting these crimes is often
a matter of chance.

Meanwhile, according to estimates based on official figures, between five
and seven tons of illegal drugs are smuggled across the border every day.

"These quantities of coke and marijuana just couldn't be moved across the
border if there wasn't some sort of a problem with law enforcement and
detection," said Michael F. McCormick, head of the U.S. attorney's office
in McAllen, Tex. "You just have to read between the lines."

Echoing that theme, a senior Mexican antidrug official said, "How am I
supposed to believe that there's no corruption in [U.S. law enforcement]
when there are rivers of drugs and money corrupting it? It defies common
sense."

According to a drug smuggler from Texas who said he worked for a major
Mexican kingpin for about four years, every significant shipment he was
involved in was protected by Mexican federal police — and, he was told,
crossed into the United States at a border checkpoint with help from U.S.
officials who had been bribed. The drug dealer, who was interviewed in a
Mexican jail on condition that he not be quoted by name, said he has been
involved in the shipment of between 30 and 50 tons of cocaine and more than
100 tons of marijuana since 1993, earning for himself about $1 million.

"They [U.S. officials] give you a time, and you tell them the vehicle, and
it's money in their pockets, without taxes," he said. "If you were working
for Immigration and I told you, 'We're going to cross 500 kilos and we'll
give you $50,000 now and $50,000 after it's across,' would you take it or
not? It's something to think about. Nobody makes $100,000 in a day."

Officials cite various factors that contribute to corruption, including low
morale among many law enforcement workers; sophisticated surveillance by
drug mafias to identify the personal vulnerabilities of frontline
inspectors; possible intimidation of border guards and their families; the
crossborder family ties that some border guards have; and the difficulty
of detecting corruption, much less proving it in court. But in the end,
officials said, greed is the strongest motive for local police officers who
make as little as $15,000 a year and federal border agents who start at
around $25,000.

"Bribes were once $5,000, but now $30,000 to $60,000 is being offered,"
said Wayne Beaman, head of the McAllen branch of the Justice Department's
Office of the Inspector General. "The sky is the limit. And these
organizations do their homework. ... They have the resources in money and
personnel to match any offensive we can throw at them."

'The Right Inspector' While there is considerable disagreement about the
extent of corruption among U.S. border guards, virtually no one disputes
that Mexican law enforcement and army officials play a fundamental role in
ensuring that drugs are safely shipped through Mexico up to the border and
stockpiled there until a crossing is arranged.

"It's a huge syndicate, so it's better to pay everyone off, because if you
don't, someone gets [angry] and holds up the load," said a recently retired
DEA official who spent nearly two decades along the border. "Everybody gets
their cut — the governor, the military, highranking police."

Authorities say they frequently hear traffickers boast of having help on
the U.S. side of the border as wellespecially from customs inspectors and
border patrol guards.

Said one top federal antidrug official in Texas: "I did a lot of
undercover work, and there were hundreds of times traffickers would say,
'We've got the deal set, but not tonight, the right inspector is not in the
gate.' But the next night, we had our dope."

According to McCormick, head of the U.S. attorney's office in McAllen,
"People who cooperate with the government [on drug cases] give statements
saying that they were told to drive a load car to point X, but not to cross
until a certain time on a particular day." These informants have no direct
knowledge of who was involved, he said, but it is clear the organizations
have paid officials to let their drug loads through.

That type of corruption "is the most lethal type of corruption you have,"
said a former DEA official with extensive experience on the border. But
investigations of it "are not going well," he said.

"That to me is where the traffickers have made inroads. They don't need a
lot of people," the former DEA official said. "They don't need anything
sophisticated to happen except to know when the individual is on the line
and to make sure he knows when they're going to cross. It's an absence of
activity that's involved with him. He simply lets the car or truck or
camper pass without a secondary search. It's just that split second."

The federal antidrug official in Texas estimated that 10 to 25 percent of
the drugs smuggled into the United States from Mexico each year cross the
border with help from corrupt U.S. officials.

Officials said they believe, however, that by far the greater portion of
the illegal drug supply that comes across the border does so without the
help of corrupt U.S. agents. As evidence, officials cite the increasingly
sophisticated techniques Mexican gangs are using to smuggle their loads, as
well as the logic of pure arithmetic.

Given that more than 46 million people and 16 million vehicles crossed the
border at El Paso last year, said Tom Kennedy, the head of DEA in the city,
"Why would anyone want to pay extra money to come through the gate ... when
all they have to do is hide the coke in a concealed compartment on a
semitrailer with a legitimate load and a legitimate driver who's not even
aware of what's going on? The odds are in their favor."

The corruption has set federal agencies to sniping at one another.

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company