MEXICO TARGETS CORRUPT BUREAUCRATS IN DRUG WAR

Mexico City -- Many of the mug shots of drug traffickers that appear
in the Mexican press show surly looking roughnecks glaring menacingly
at the camera. An anti-corruption investigation unveiled last week in
the Mexican capital, however, made it clear that not everybody
enmeshed in the narcotics trade looked the part.

There was a gray-haired, grandfatherly type who was pushing 70, as
well as an avuncular figure with a neatly styled goatee and
wire-rimmed spectacles perched upon his nose. Some of the five men,
who found themselves on the front pages of newspapers on their way to
jail, wore suits, which made them look more like bureaucrats than bad guys.

Among the greatest challenges in Mexico's drug war is the fact that
the traffickers fit no type. Their ranks include men and women, the
young and the old. And they can work anywhere: in remote drug labs,
as part of roving assassination squads, even within the upper reaches
of the government.

It has long been known that drug gangs have infiltrated local police
forces. Now it is becoming ever more clear that the problem does not
stop there. The alarming reality is that many public servants in
Mexico are serving both the taxpayers and the traffickers.

The men in suits, it turns out, were both bureaucrats and bad guys,
corrupt officials high up in an elite unit of the federal attorney
general's office who were feeding secret information to the feared
Beltran Leyva cartel in exchange for suitcases full of cash.

Their arrest, and the firing of 35 other suspect law-enforcement
officials, represents the most extensive corruption case that this
country, which knows corruption all too well, has ever seen. And it
raises a question that is on the lips of many Mexicans: How does one
know who is dirty and who is clean?

"I'm convinced that to stop the crime, we first have to get it out of
our own house," President Felipe Calderon, who has made fighting
trafficking a crucial part of his presidency, said in a speech
Tuesday, after the arrests were announced.

That house is clearly dirty. There is ample evidence that Mexicans of
all walks of life are willing to join the drug gangs in exchange for
cash, including the farmers who abandon traditional crops and turn to
growing marijuana and the accountants who hide the narco-traffickers' profits.

There was sporadic evidence in the past that such corruption extended
into high-level government offices. An army general who commanded
Mexico's anti-drug unit was arrested and convicted in 1997 after the
discovery that he was working for a drug lord on the side. In 2005, a
spy working for a drug cartel was discovered working in the
president's office and accused of feeding traffickers information on
the movements of Vicente Fox, then the president.

On Saturday, acting federal police Commissioner Gerardo Garay said he
was stepping aside "to place myself at the orders of legal judicial
authorities to clear up any accusation against me."

Garay did not say what accusations he was referring to, nor were
federal officials available to comment on the resignation. But the
newspaper Reform reported Saturday that prosecutors are looking into
whether the federal police assigned to the Mexico City airport had
aided drug traffickers.

Many prison wardens and guards have shown themselves to be corrupt,
allowing prominent detainees not only to operate their crime networks
from their cells, but also to use their illicit drug proceeds to be
as comfortable as possible behind bars, paying for everything from
pizza to prostitutes. The porous nature of Mexican penitentiaries has
prompted Calderon to increase the number of transfers of drug lords
to the U.S. prison system. Calderon is not the first president to try
to root out corruption. President Ernesto Zedillo reorganized the
nation's federal police at least twice; each time traffickers quickly
infiltrated the force and bought off leading officials. His
successor, Fox, tried and failed to clean up law enforcement as well.

Calderon's efforts have been sustained enough that the traffickers
have begun a vicious counterattack; so far this year, nearly 4,000
people - including police officers, soldiers, criminals and civilians
- - have been killed in an extraordinary wave of violence linked to
organized crime.

The latest corruption scandal has prompted Calderon's attorney
general to order a restructuring and purging of his office, and
specifically the government organized-crime office known by the
Spanish acronym SIEDO, which was shut down after being infiltrated by
drug spies.

The government has ordered more lie-detector tests for officials in
delicate posts, beefed-up background checks and better salaries for
underpaid police officers. But the amount of cash that the
traffickers throw around - which Jorge Chabat, a security analyst,
calls "enough money to buy part of the state" - makes government
salaries seem laughable. Clearly, the government cannot compete peso for peso.

In some cases, finding out who has strayed from the straight and
narrow should be a simple matter of following the money. Miguel
Colorado, a top SIEDO manager, is reported to have bought four luxury
vehicles in one year. Expensive jewelry was found in his home. His
bank account was bulging.