MEXICO'S POLICE LIAISON FOR INTERPOL IS ARRESTED IN DRUG PROBE

MEXICO CITY -- A senior Mexican police official who worked as the
country's liaison with Interpol was arrested Tuesday as part of an
ongoing investigation into information leaks from top law enforcement
authorities to the nation's notorious drug cartels.

Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas was director for International Police Affairs
and Interpol at the Federal Investigative Agency, the Mexican version
of the FBI. Interpol is the world's largest international police
organization and is charged with combating terrorism, money laundering
and drug trafficking. An official such as Gutierrez could have had
access to reams of sensitive intelligence gathered by Mexican and
international law enforcement.

Gutierrez was placed under house arrest pending the outcome of the
investigation.

The latest detention, announced Tuesday night by the Mexican federal
attorney general's office, is part of the government's "Operation
Clean House," launched after the January arrest of Alfredo Beltran
Leyva. He leads a brutal drug cartel centered in Sinaloa state, which
is battling with rivals and police for cocaine-trafficking routes into
the United States.

In the last year, about 4,000 people have died in the drug wars.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has made confronting the cartels a
centerpiece of his administration.

That the cartels may have penetrated Interpol is an indication of how
hard the fight against the traffickers will be -- and of the level of
corruption within Mexican law enforcement. The United States recently
committed $400 million to aid in that battle, but many U.S. law
enforcement officials remain wary of their Mexican counterparts,
fearing that shared information flows quickly to cartel leaders.

According to a June news release from Interpol, Gutierrez headed the
organization's National Central Bureau for Mexico. Though he was not
employed by Interpol, the release described the head of the National
Central Bureau as "usually one of the highest-ranking law enforcement
officials in the country."

Operation Clean House has swept up other law enforcement officials.
This month, Rodolfo de la Guardia Garcia, who served on Interpol's
executive committee, was placed under house arrest as investigators
looked into the possibility that he was on a cartel payroll.