Mexico Replaces Inept, Corrupt AntiDrug Force

By MARK FINEMAN, Times Staff Writer

MEXICO CITYThe Mexican government scrapped its
corruptionridden antidrug force Wednesday, purging its
1,100 agents and replacing them with a specially trained, rigorously
tested and better paid antinarcotics unit directly under command of
the attorney general.
Unveiling the new drug enforcement plan at a news conference
here, Atty. Gen. Jorge Madrazo Cuellar said it was merely the first
in a series of sweeping law enforcement reforms ordered by
President Ernesto Zedillo to win back Mexicans' confidence in their
criminal justice system.
The new agents, he said, are required to take psychological,
drugdetection and liedetector tests and open their personal
finances to investigatorsan effort to combat the corruption that he
said had compromised the 4yearold National Institute to Combat
Drugs, or INCD.
Members of the new unit, he said, also will be given "substantial"
pay raises, expanded life insurance and better medical and
retirement benefitsadditional hedges against the billions of dollars
in bribes that Mexico's drug cartels have paid officials to allow the
smuggling of South American cocaine across the U.S. border.
When asked how many agents the new unit has, Madrazo said
only 60 of the 107 agents who applied for the jobs have passed the
tests. U.S. and Mexican officials privately have said the new
antidrug squad will have at least 1,000 agents when it is complete.
In discarding the INCDcreated under a similar restructuring in
1993Madrazo cited the agency's "advanced state of
deterioration," "documented corruption" within its ranks and its
"proven inability to dismantle the drug cartels."
Madrazo said the INCD's current director, Mariano Herran
Salvattia career prosecutor who was the first to pass the stringent
new tests in Marchalso will head the new drug unit, officially
dubbed the Special Prosecutors Office for Crimes Against
HealthMexico's terminology for drug crimes.
Madrazo's reorganization came just five days before President
Clinton is due to arrive for the first U.S. presidential visit here in
nearly two decades. The attorney general denied that the two
events are linked.
"This reform has absolutely nothing to do with bilateral relations
with the United States," Madrazo said, detailing the months of study
that went into it. But he added, "After this, we hope that these
measures will make [the relationship] even better."
Establishing better cooperation between the two countries in
combating a drug trade that supplies up to threequarters of the
cocaine sold in the United States and generates an estimated $30
billion a year in illicit profits will be high on the agenda when Clinton,
Zedillo and their key cabinet members meet here next week.
U.S. officials, who privately hailed Madrazo's new program,
have been pressing Mexico City for radical reforms in its drug
enforcement operations since the Feb. 18 arrest of Mexico's
antidrug czar, Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo. Gutierrez
headed the INCD when he was jailed along with two of his top
lieutenants and charged with collaborating with Mexico's most
powerful drug cartel.
Gutierrez, an army general, was arrested just days before
Clinton certified Mexico as an ally in the drug war. The arrest raised
fears of intelligence leaks in joint U.S.Mexican drugenforcement
operations and triggered a failed attempt in the U.S. House of
Representatives to overturn Clinton's certification of Mexico.
But officials in Washington also took steps Wednesday to clear
the air on the drug front in advance of Clinton's May 57 visit.
A U.S. official said the Clinton administration had dropped
formal protests it filed with Mexico in March on a major
drugmoney laundering case, which touched off a series of charges
and countercharges between Mexico City and Washington.
A senior U.S. law enforcement official conceded that
Washington was wrong in alleging that Mexico had seized only a
tenth of an estimated $183 million in suspected drug proceeds that
U.S. investigators said were in the Mexican bank accounts of
Rigoberto Gaxiola Medina, who is under indictment for drug
trafficking in Detroit.
The U.S. official, who asked not to be named, told reporters
Wednesday that Mexico, in fact, had frozen all $16 million that was
in the accounts at the time, as Mexico had asserted all along. The
$183 million, he said, represented the total in suspected drug money
that had passed through the accounts.
"The [U.S.] protests were based on a misunderstanding," the
official said. Explaining the timing of the Clinton administration's
apologydelivered formally to the Zedillo administration here last
weekhe added: "I'm not going to say this was unrelated to the
president's trip. But these are areas [we] want to make progress on
throughout."
Meanwhile in Washington, the House International Relations
Committee voted Wednesday to abolish the drug certification
program that has angered the United States' southern neighbors and
rejected an effort to tie U.S. aid to how a country votes in the
United Nations.
The votes came as members began work on a sweeping foreign
affairs bill that seeks to make changes at the State Department and
the United Nations. The panel voted 2418 for an amendment to
eliminate the certification program. This year's certification process,
which approved Mexico and disapproved Colombia, brought calls
for changes in the process.
Times staff writer Mary Beth Sheridan contributed to this report.

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