Mexico Rebuilds AntiDrug Force
By Sam Dillon
New York Times Service

MEXICO CITYMexico has dismantled its main antidrug
force, which was disgraced in February when its director and many of
its agents were discovered to be working for traffickers, and announced
that it had been replaced by a new organization to be built from a
nucleus of trusted agents.
The new agency will be headed by its current chief, and the
1,100 officers who worked for the old agency will be eligible, alongside
new people, to apply for work in the reconstituted force.
But all of these applicants will be put through a battery of
drug, polygraph and other tests to certify their trustworthiness before
they are hired, Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuellar said. Such
screening of agents is new.
The new agency, to be known as the Special Prosecutor's
Office for Attention toDrug Crimes,,.will occupy the same Mexico City
headquarters as the organization it will replace, which was known as
The Institute for Combating Drugs.
The inauguration Wednesday of the Special Prosecutor's Office
appeared to have been timed, at least in part, to give a sense of
momentum in the war on drugs five days before President Bill Clinton
is scheduled to arrive for his first state visit.
The Special Prosecutor's Office is part of a law enforcement
shakeup that Mr. Madrazo has been carrying out, largely in secret, in
recent weeks, in an effort to curtail the influence of traffickers and
organized crime.
Another new agency whose formal creation was announced
Wednesday, the Organized Crime Unit, is to bring together trusted
investigators to combat not only drug smugglers but also money
launderers and arms dealers.
Despite security precautions, however, questions have been
raised about the ability of the new units to be effective. Two police
investigators assigned to one of the recently organized specialized anti
drug units were kidnapped last month and found dead Friday in the
trunk of a car in Mexico City. Authorities said the two officers had
been pursuing a drug trafficker, Amado Carrillo Fuentes.
The U.S. ambassador, James Jones, said Wednesday that in
response to a plea from Mexico for investigative help, two agents from
the FBI arrived in Mexico City on Sunday to examine evidence
relating to the murder of the Mexican of ficers. Mr. Jones said a
hypothesis was that the two of ficers had been murdered by traffickers.
"They seem to have been honest cops who were doing their
work and were found out and were killed," Mr. Jones said.
The two officers join a long list of agents murdered in recent
drug violence. About 200 Mexican officers were killed in the year that
ended Oct. 1, U.S. officials said.
The creation of the new of five appears to be the most
ambitious law enforcement shakeup here since 1993, when the
Institute for Combating Drugs was created. But how much more
effective the new antidrug organizations will be remains to be seen.
When the government created the Institute for Combating
Drugs in June 1993 with technical help from American drug agents,
Mexican and U.S. officials hailed it as a great advance over other law
enforcement organizations that had been corrupted by traffickers. On
Wednesday, Mr. Madrazo said the institute was being abolished partly
because of "the welldocumented corruption in which public servants
from that organization have fallen."