Is Mexican a con man or `political prisoner'?

By ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
Herald Staff Writer

MEXICO CITY Until he got thrown into jail,
the worst thing anyone said about Gen. Jesus
Gutierrez Rebollo was that he looked like Benito
Mussolini, bald and mean.

Before imprisonment, Mexico's muchhonored
antinarcotics chief heard only high praise. A man
of ``absolute integrity,'' Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey,
the Clinton administration drug czar, called him.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
awarded him a plaque: ``Outstanding Contribution
in the Field of Drug Law Enforcement.''

But last February, the world of Gutierrez Rebollo
came crashing down. Now he is the instant symbol of Mexico's
corruption and
the futility of U.S. efforts to crack down on the world's drug
mafias.

Put simply, he is depicted as a cop on the take. The
highestranking one ever.

Was he a master con man who fooled everyone by clamping down
on drug barons
of one cartel while secretly protecting another cartel, as the
government claims?

Or was he an honest general, driving around town in an '89
Chevy, jailed for trying
to prove drug corruption at ``the highest levels of Mexican
government'' as he
claims?

Or was his arrest, as many Mexicans suspect, the corollary of
a war within the top
echelons of Mexico's highly secretive military, whose real
motives are still
unknown?

The way Gutierrez Rebollo tells it, he is a ``political
prisoner,'' jailed because he
was about to crack down on the Tijuana cartel run by the
Arellano Felix brothers.
In written statements disclosed by The Herald last week, he
also says they wanted
to get him because he was investigating other drug
traffickers' connections to
Fernando Velasco, the fatherinlaw of Mexican President
Ernesto Zedillo.

``My father was not arrested because he was a traitor,'' says
Teresita de Jesus
Gutierrez, the general's daughter. ``His crime was to insist
in doing his job.''

``I feel like a Jew in Germany,'' the general said in a
message relayed to a reporter.
``They are not allowing me to talk to anyone.''

A soldier's soldier

For 43 years, Gutierrez Rebollo's military career seemed
impeccable. As a
relentless warrior against Mexico's drug mafias, he had put
three of the big capos
behind bars. Mr. Clean, he seemed, a man of simple heritage
and modest ways.

He was one of nine children of a peasant father who joined the
191017 Mexican
revolution and reached the rank of major in the Zapata army.

Gutierrez Rebollo was a man of the barracks, a soldier's
soldier, and for seven
years he commanded the Guadalajarabased military region of
five central states.
On Dec. 3, President Zedillo appointed him chief of the
National Institute for Drug
Control. Mexican police were notoriously corrupt. An Army
general seemed the
best way to clean house.

For Gutierrez Rebollo, it was quite a change. He had never
traveled outside
Mexico before. He felt funny wearing civilian clothes. And for
the first time in his
life, he worked with women. Sometimes they would cry. He found
it awkward.
``You give them an order, and they think you're shouting at
them,'' the general said
in an interview two days before his arrest.

An anonymous tip

At 9:30 p.m. and again at 11:45 p.m. Feb. 6, Defense Minister
Enrique Cervantes
Aguirre summoned him to his office, a grandiose place with
French colonial
furniture, huge chandeliers and big vases decorated with
scenes of famous battles.

What happened next depends on whom you believe. The two men,
both in their
early 60s, couldn't be more different. The defense minister is
an army intellectual
a former professor at the military college. He served as
military attache at the
Mexican Embassy in Washington.

The defense minister says he told the upfromtheranks
general about an
anonymous telephone tip about Gutierrez Rebollo's living
arrangement.

A quick investigation had nailed it down: The general was
living in an apartment of
``great luxury'' in Mexico City's upperclass neighborhood of
Bosques de las
Lomas, Chalchihui Street No. 215, a residence he could not
possibly afford on his
public servant's salary.

Did the general know that his landlord was a top lieutenant of
Amado Carrillo
Fuentes, Mexico's biggest drug dealer?

``Confronted, Gen. Gutierrez Rebollo gave confused answers,''
the defense
minister said in an interview last week. ``Gutierrez Rebollo
looked desperate.''

Witnesses say the defense minister feared that the general
would do something
crazy, like commit suicide. ``Are you armed?'' Cervantes
Aguirre asked. Gutierrez
Rebollo responded, ``No, my general.''

Private label

As the tale eventually unraveled, the defense minister said he
also found out that
Carrillo Fuentes himself once occupied the apartment directly
above the general's.

Among the evidence: a wine barrel in the living room with the
private label,
``Amado Carrillo.''

Worse still, Carrillo Fuentes' stooges had given
``considerable sums of money''
and five cars including a bulletproof 1994 Jeep Cherokee
to Gutierrez
Rebollo and his top aides.

The upshot: Gutierrez Rebollo was on the payroll of the
Carrillo Fuentes cartel to
crack down on the Arellano Felix brothers, their archrivals.

Carrillo Fuentes, better known as ``The Lord of the Skies,''
died unexpectedly
July 5, apparently after massive cosmetic surgery in Mexico City.

Another version of events

Gutierrez Rebollo, now Prisoner 708, tells a different story
of that night of Feb. 6.

According to his written statements and interviews with his
daughter, he and the
defense minister shouted at each other, arguing about his plan
to capture the
Arellano Felix brothers.

Then they argued about the Amezcua brothers, leaders of yet
another drug cartel
who Gutierrez Rebollo says were in touch with the president's
fatherinlaw.

The conversation got nasty. The defense minister accused
Gutierrez Rebollo of
breaking military discipline and threatened to press charges
against him for his
longtime ties to Eduardo Gonzalez Quirarte, a lieutenant of
drug lord Carrillo
Fuentes.

Gutierrez Rebollo exploded. A low blow, he called it. Sure, he
had kept Gonzalez
Quirarte as an informant and received precious information.
Didn't all cops use
bad guys to get information? Besides, Gutierrez Rebollo
claimed, the Gonzalez
Quirarte connection was not news he had told Cervantes
Aguirre all about it.

If he was guilty of anything, so was the defense minister and
much of the high
command, Gutierrez Rebollo shouted.

At that point, the defense minister called his guards and
ordered that Gutierrez
Rebollo be taken to the military hospital.

They checked him in under a fake ID and posted guards in front
of his room.

``I was illegally detained . . . and given medicines to kill
me,'' Gutierrez Rebollo
said. ``I am a political prisoner . . . for having discovered
that drug trafficking has
reached the very presidency of the Republic.''

Scene at hospital

Gutierrez Rebollo's family rushed to the hospital after a tip
that the general was in a
coma.

``A whole section of the intensive care unit was closed off,''
his daughter Teresita
says. ``Two armed soldiers and eight in civilian clothes told
me they had been
commissioned by the defense minister to protect my father and
that I could not see
him.''

Teresita says she stormed her way into the room, found her
father conscious but
weak after heart surgery.

In the days that followed, Teresita and her mother found out a
few other things.
There was another woman in the waiting room, with two grownup
sons. Her
name was Lilia and she was living with Gutierrez Rebollo in
the Chalchihui
Street apartment.

``Imagine my shock,'' Teresita says. ``I was the only child,
the princess of the
family, and suddenly I found myself in front of two men who
introduce themselves
as my brothers.''

Gutierrez Rebollo's wife of nearly four decades, Maria Teresa
Ramirez, a deeply
religious woman, was stunned. One of the general's attorneys
quips, ``I'll defend
him against the government, but I don't dare take up his case
at home.''

Gutierrez Rebollo says the charges against him are ridiculous.
He could well afford
the luxury apartment on Chalchihui Street. He paid $1,300 a
month from a
$10,000amonth salary.

Government investigators say, however, that Gutierrez
Rebollo's salary was not
enough because he was maintaining two other lovers besides Lilia.

Stronger evidence?

The investigation has turned up stronger evidence, according
to the government.
Gutierrez Rebollo's former driver now the prosecution's
main witness says he
was sent to meet with Carrillo Fuentes on at least seven
occasions between
December and January.

Now Gutierrez Rebollo is in a cell in Mexico's
maximumsecurity jail of Almoloya,
where he is in the company of such noted inmates as Raul
Salinas, the brother of
former president Carlos Salinas, and Mario Aburto, the killer
of presidential
candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.

Government investigators are untangling his financial affairs.

They told The Herald last week that they have discovered that
Gutierrez Rebollo,
his wife, his lover Lilia and their children had $1.8 million
in ``cash deposits they
cannot legitimately account for.'' They think he ``possibly''
had an additional $1.2
million in secret bank accounts under other names or shell
companies.

Still, there are unanswered questions: Why would Mexico's top
antinarcotics
official be so stupid as to rent an apartment from the world's
biggest drug
trafficker?

Why would Mexico's top antidrugs cop make only $2 million or
$3 million, a
drop in the bucket for Carrillo Fuentes' $25 billion drug empire?

The defense minister has an explanation for the apartment
stupidity.

The amount of his wealth is immaterial, says a top official
with Mexico's attorney
general's office. ``He is not being prosecuted for illegal
enrichment, but for taking
money from drug traffickers. Whether he accepted millions or a
few vehicles
doesn't make a difference.''

Defense Minister Cervantes Aguirre says Gutierrez Rebollo was
a master con
man, convincing everyone that he was an austere man and a
crusader in the war on
drugs. ``In reality, he was the main operative for the
Carrillo Fuentes cartel''
against the Arellano Felix cartel, he said.

U.S. backs defense minister

U.S. officials say they are fully satisfied with the Mexican
defense minister's story.

Asked about Gutierrez Rebollo's allegations that the defense
minister ordered him
to cancel plans to arrest the Arellano Felix brothers, U.S.
drug czar McCaffrey
said, ``I have heard the accusation, and I flatly don't
believe it.''

A senior U.S. official said he is ``99.9 percent persuaded
that Gutierrez Rebollo is
guilty as hell of being a mole of the Carrillo Fuentes gang.''

The official added, ``How come four DEA agents in Guadalajara
didn't pick up on
that, we don't know. He had fooled the Mexicans, he had fooled
us.''

U.S. officials are as upbeat about Defense Minister Cervantes
Aguirre as they
were about Prisoner 708 six months ago.

``Mexico is taking the right action,'' McCaffrey said a day
after Gutierrez Rebollo's
arrest. ``We support the actions the government of Mexico has
taken to date and
urge them to pursue their investigation.''

Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald