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The political stakes were clear from the clout of the
participants. Included at the Friday White House sitdown
were President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, antidrug czar General Barry McCaffrey and
National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. The issue: whether
to certify Mexico as cooperative in the war against
drugs. All week long the President had been bombarded with
contradictory signals from his political staff, a chorus of
denunciations of Mexico from Congress and warnings of
retaliation from the Mexican government should Clinton make
the wrong choice. Among the threats were cancellation of
Clinton's scheduled April trip to Mexico and summary
ejection from the country of all U.S. drug agents.
Albright, McCaffrey and Attorney General Janet Reno
cautioned that the antiU.S. backlash from a decision to
cast Mexico into the outer darkness would outweigh any
potential political gain.

In the end, Clinton decided to certify Mexico as a
willing partner in the drug fight. At a press conference,
Albright admitted that "corruption is deeply rooted in
Mexican counterdrug institutions," but she added that
President Ernesto Zedillo "has responded to this crisis
with integrity and candor."

Certification, required by Congress each year for
nations that are transit or production sites for illegal
drugs, would have been a matter of routine for Mexico
before the stunning arrest two weeks ago of General Jesus
Gutierrez Rebollo, chief of the country's antidrug agency,
who had been praised by McCaffrey as a fount of integrity.
Gutierrez, who was formally indicted for corruption last
week, had allegedly been on the payroll of drug lord Amado
Carrillo Fuentes since 1993. His detention hit the Clinton
Administration like an "earthquake," said State Department
spokesman Nicholas Burns. "It sent shock waves through the
State Department."

An angry Clinton, convinced that the Gutierrez arrest
could not be ignored, was initially inclined to yank
Mexico's certification, with a waiver of the economic
sanctions that have been imposed on other decertified
nations such as Colombia and Burma. But diplomats warned
that such a move could ruin U.S.Mexican relations.
Clinton's political choice was made doubly agonizing by a
tide of antiMexico sentiment from Republicans and
Democrats alike. In the debate leading up to the decision,
not a single member of Congress vocally defended
certification. To label Mexico cooperative, declared
Senator Paul Coverdell, the Republican chairman of the
Senate subcommittee on western hemisphere affairs, "would
make whatever credibility the process had a total
hypocrisy."

On the Democratic side, Mexico's most outspoken
adversary was Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. In
advocating decertification with a waiver of economic
sanctions, Feinstein said, "I believe President Zedillo's
efforts to fight drug trafficking have been totally
overwhelmed by pervasive, endemic corruption throughout the
Mexican government, police and military." On Thursday she
presented the White House with a letter signed by 40
Senators urging decertification. Proponents of
certification countered that trade and immigration links,
not to mention a 2,000mile border, made amicable relations
with Mexico imperative. Swallowing his humiliation in the
Gutierrez affair, McCaffrey told the press last week, "It
is our belief that the U.S. and Mexico are trapped
economically, culturally, politically and because of drug
crime, in the same continent, and we'd better figure out a
way to work on it together for the next 10 to 20 years."

For its part, Mexico, even as its diplomats fulminated
about the dire consequences of decertification, took action
to give Clinton cover. On Wednesday police arrested a drug
trafficker named Oscar Malherbe de Leon. On Thursday the
Mexican navy burned a ton of seized cocaine on the resort
island of Cozumel. More substantively, Time has learned,
President Zedillo will soon announce that he plans to scrap
Mexico's existing narcoticsfighting apparatusincluding
the tainted National Institute to Combat Drugs, headed by
General Gutierrezand start fresh with an independent new
agency modeled on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Under the plan, the DEA, the FBI and even the CIA would be
invited to help train and screen a new crop of betterpaid
Mexican drug fighters. "We guarantee this new agency will
be bulletproof when it comes to corruption," says a
highranking Mexican official. Some Clinton aides are
impressed with the initiative. "If this is for real, and we
think it is, it's a very important step," says a senior
U.S. official. But those who have watched Mexico burn its
promises before are skeptical. Complained DEA administrator
Tom Constantine: "There is not one single civilian
lawenforcement institution in Mexico with which the DEA
has a really trusting relationship." U.S. agents doubt
Mexico's new drug superagency will be the first.

Reported by Tim Padgett/Mexico City and Elaine Shannon
and Douglas Waller/Washington