MEXICO DETAINS FORMER TOP DRUG COP

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's former anti-drug czar has been detained in a
widening corruption scandal that suggests a large percentage of top
agents assigned to fight the drug trade here have instead been
cooperating with cocaine cartels.

Noe Ramirez, who headed Mexico's elite anti-drug agency until August,
accepted a bribe of $450,000 to leak information to a drug gang,
Mexico's Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora alleged on Friday. Mr.
Ramirez, who since August has been Mexico's acting envoy to the United
Nations office for drug control in Vienna, was detained on Thursday
and charged with participating in organized crime. It wasn't possible
to reach him for comment.

He is the highest-profile target of a widening corruption probe,
called Operation Cleanup, that has implicated more than 35 high
law-enforcement officials and raised serious doubts about Mexico's
ability to wage the drug war. Mexico is the main transshipment point
for Colombian cocaine headed to the U.S., and Mexican gangs supplement
that with home-grown marijuana and amphetamines from Asia that they
smuggle into the U.S.

The scandal raises a question of whether Congress might put the brakes
on U.S.-Mexico counternarcotics cooperation, including a $400 million
initiative called Merida intended to supply Mexico with intelligence
training and gear such as helicopters.

John Walters, the director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control
Policy, praised the detention as evidence Mexico is willing to
prosecute corruption at all levels. "This is a positive action that
the world needs to support, and the U.S. government stands by them in
their efforts," he said.

The mounting corruption scandal is Mexico's worst in a decade. In
1998, anti-drug czar Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was convicted of
cooperating with a drug gang. The case, the basis of the Hollywood
movie "Traffic," was a humiliation for Mexico and for Washington,
which had praised Gen. Gutierrez and had worked closely with his
agency in sharing secret information.

After that, Mexico set out to create a new anti-drug agency immune to
corruption, able to carry out acts like wiretaps and using
lie-detector tests to weed out the corrupt. The detention of Mr.
Ramirez suggested that even this specialized agency, a part of the
attorney general's office, might have been corrupted at the top.

Last month, Mexico detained two other top agency officials, including
Francisco Rivero, head of drug intelligence. Detained in the past week
was Ricardo Gutierrez, head of Interpol's Mexico office, who couldn't
be reached for comment.

President Felipe Calderon has been struggling against a rising tide of
blood stemming from drug-cartel turf wars. More than 4,000 have been
killed this year in the mayhem, which includes decapitations, torture
and brazen daylight attacks on police. Mr. Calderon has sent 36,000
army troops about the country in an effort to keep the peace.

In some ways, the rising corruption and violence are an unintended
consequence of democratization. For decades, drug violence was kept in
check by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had
furtive pacts with some gangs at the expense of others. After the PRI
lost power in 2000, the end of those deals allowed for open, violent
competition, analysts say.

This may also have increased corruption as each cartel tried to buy
off some officials for protection against rival gangs and law
enforcement, said an adviser in the attorney general's office.

Separate from the Operation Cleanup probe is another one that has
implicated numerous former aides to Public Safety Secretary Genaro
Garcia Luna, a Calderon cabinet minister. Officials in the attorney
general's office said this week they are investigating Mario Velarde,
the former top adviser to Mr. Garcia Luna. The A.G. said there is no
investigation of Mr. Garcia Luna.

Mr. Garcia Luna's office did not respond to requests for comment. Mr.
Velarde could not be reached for comment.

Court testimony from anti-drug officials and former cartel members
detained in Operation Cleanup, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal,
shows how modern drug corruption works here and how hard it will be to
stop. In Mexico, court testimony is secret and not made public until
cases are closed.

Francisco Rivero, the detained former head of intelligence at the
anti-drug agency, acknowledged taking money from drug traffickers. In
his testimony, he identified them as representatives of the Beltran
Leyva brothers, a bloodthirsty gang that broke away from the Sinaloa
cartel earlier this year. Mr. Rivero's boss at the agency was Mr.
Ramirez, the man detained on Thursday.

Mr. Rivero recounted how he first met with a cartel representative in
September 2007 at a cantina near the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. He
met a cartel man who was called "19," because he was missing part of a
finger and had 19 digits left. At the meeting, 19 asked Mr. Rivero if
he had ever been offered a briefcase of money, Mr. Rivero testified,
adding that he laughed and said that was the kind of offer he'd been
waiting for.

After a meeting to haggle over price, 19 gave Mr. Rivero and several
associates $150,000 in cash near a pizza parlor in northern Mexico
City, Mr. Rivero testified. He said it was the first of several
monthly payments in return for information about any law-enforcement
operations against the gang.

"I would give them details of the upcoming operations, and anything 19
wanted," Mr. Rivero testified.

He was a useful contact, according to the testimony of a witness
code-named "Jennifer," a former cartel member who's now a protected
witness. In January, 2008, that witness said he was driving a Dodge
Durango with no license plate when pulled over by federal police for
speeding on the Mexico City/Toluca toll road. The police found two
handguns and a machine gun with a silencer.

Another federal police car arrived. The witness testified he called
one of Mr. Rivero's aides, Jose Antonio Cueto, who today cannot be
located. Within 20 minutes, he testified, several of Mr. Rivero's
aides turned up, and the federal police, recognizing them as top
members of the anti-drug agency, apologized profusely and let the witness go.

The arrangement faced a big test in January when army troops swooped
down on a farm in Sinaloa state and detained the Beltran Leyvas'
youngest brother, Alfredo. The army didn't notify the anti-drug agency
of the detention until afterward. Analysts say the army sometimes acts
alone because it doesn't trust other agencies.

Mexican officials say Mr. Rivero feared the cartel would kill him in
retaliation, and tried to appease the gang by handing over copies of
the younger brother's testimony and designing a plan for the cartel to
rescue him.

In his testimony, Mr. Rivero disputed the idea he hatched a rescue
plan. What he did say was that after the raid on the farm, the cartel
sent him word that he would be killed if he couldn't explain what had
gone wrong. Soon after, several of Mr. Rivero's aides met near a
Mexico City shopping mall with a top cartel figure, nicknamed "El
Grande," or "The Big One." Mexican officials say El Grande is the head
of the cartel's hit squad in Mexico City.

According to Mr. Rivero and the testimony of several of his aides, the
anti-drug officials explained they had no advance knowledge of the
army operation and couldn't have stopped it.

Days later, Mr. Rivero and his aides were given a lie-detector test at
the drug agency about the operation, according to one witness,
code-named Saul. A few days after that, Saul said, Mr. Rivero he got
a message from the cartel that he wouldn't be killed because he had
passed the test.

According to the testimony, El Grande also told Mr. Rivero's agents
their group wasn't the only group of officials the gang had bought off
within the anti-drug agency. The accounts said El Grande said he had
also bought off a group headed by Miguel Colorado, then technical
director of the agency and an official in charge of assigning federal
police agents to investigate gangs.

According to the witness code-named Saul, El Grande "asked how it
was possible to have bought off so many agents and gotten so little
help," and El Grande "said that he was thinking of having both groups
work together."

The web of corruption even touched the U.S. Embassy. In September
2007, Mr. Cueto, the Rivero aide who is now a fugitive, introduced 19
to an old friend and former federal police agent who had just started
working at the U.S. embassy and had access to sensitive information
from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to several
witnesses' testimony. The embassy employee, code-named Felipe, who is
now a protected witness, testified they agreed he would give
information in return for $30,000 a month.

On June 16, the men met again at a parking lot near the U.S. Embassy,
according to several witnesses. The witness who worked at the U.S.
embassy, Felipe, said he told the other men he was having doubts about
further cooperation.

Soon after Felipe's testimony in early July, 19 was detained and
became a witness, according to the court documents, including arrest
warrants and police records. Days later, on July 31st, Mr. Rivero and
some aides were detained outside the anti-drug agency. As the police
action unfolded, cellphones began buzzing with text messages,
according to a court transcript. The messages, say the documents, were
warnings, believed to be from law-enforcement officials, that the men
were about to be arrested and should flee.

Mr. Colorado, the former drug-agency technical director, and several
of his aides were put under investigation in early August and later
detained.