Mercenaries at Work for Mexico's Drug Families

Traffickers Hire Foreigners to Train Private Militias in Face of Reform
Efforts, Officials Say

Mexican drugtrafficking organizations are hiring foreign mercenaries to
strengthen their paramilitary forces, heightening the threat that
traffickers pose to U.S. security interests, senior law enforcement
officials said yesterday.

At a joint hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate
Caucus on International Narcotics Control, senior officials also said
antidrug cooperation between Mexico and the United States is at an
alltime high. While acknowledging that corruption in Mexican law
enforcement agencies remains a serious problem, the officials praised
President Ernesto Zedillo for his efforts to build a new antidrug police
force with U.S. help. Members of the new force are polygraphed, vetted and
undergo extensive background checks before being admitted to the force.

But not all the testimony was positive. Donald Ferrarone, who recently
retired as special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's
Houston office, told the senators that "every indicator now and over the
last 20 years reveals the government of Mexico consistently works together
with the major drugtrafficking families, seeing to it that the drugs . . .
are offloaded securely, protected, shipped crosscountry under convoy,
stored and safely transported to our border."

The testimony regarding hiring of mercenaries came from James Milford,
deputy administrator of the DEA, who acknowledged publicly for the first
time that the Mexican organizations use foreigners to train their private
militias.

Milford identified the Arellano Felix organization as "one of the most
powerful, violent and aggressive trafficking organizations in the world."
The organization, based in Tijuana, is led by seven brothers and four
sisters. The Arellano Felix organization "maintains wellarmed and
welltrained security forces, described by Mexican enforcement authorities
as paramilitary in nature, which include international mercenaries as
advisers, trainers and members," Milford said.

"DEA considers the traffickers from Mexico, because of their involvement in
polydrug smuggling, their proclivity for extreme violence and their
geographic proximity to the United States, to be a more distinct and
imminent danger to the United States than Colombian organizations," Milford
said.

Knowledgeable sources said the mercenaries are largely from Colombia,
Britain and Israel and are employed to train the militias in the use of
more sophisticated explosives and combat techniques.

In the late 1980s, the Medellin cocaine cartel in Colombia hired Israeli
mercenaries to train its private army in the use of explosives. The rival
Cali cartel then hired about a dozen British and South African mercenaries
to kill leaders of the Medellin organization.

Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's antidrug policy chief, told
the committees that success in combating drug trafficking from Mexico is
contingent on cooperation with Mexican law enforcement officials.

McCaffrey argued that Mexico has taken "significant strides" in making
legal and institutional reforms that would pave the way for increasing
cooperation.

In recent years, U.S. law enforcement officials have been reluctant to
cooperate with their Mexican counterparts because of the widespread
corruption among Mexican police and military officials. Earlier this year,
the head of Mexico's special antidrug police was found to be on the
payroll of one of the drugtrafficking organizations. Following his arrest,
the entire force was disbanded.

"Much remains to be done," McCaffrey acknowledged. "President Zedillo has
recognized that corruption continues to be a significant threat to Mexico's
national security. . . . Reform has been and will continue to be painful,
dangerous and timeconsuming."

(c)Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company