THE LESSER OF THREE EVILS

Mexico And U.S. Authorities Finally Captured Arizona's Leading Drug
Kingpin. Good Work, Guys. Now Let Him Go.

I've asked the promotions staff to hurry up with my tee shirt idea.

The shirt will show a convict getting barbecued in the electric chair. The
convict's sassy brunette hair will be aflame as gobs of milky eyeball juice
squirt through the leather shroud. A banner above the human fireworks will
read: "Fry Winona!"

I don't loathe Winona Ryder, per se. I just want all these two-bit
celebrity grifters executed at dawn so we can begin discussing arrests that
matter.

For example, while Six-Finger Winona was shoplifting, or not, the most
important arrest in recent Arizona history went unnoticed. In late
December, Mexican and U.S. authorities popped Miguel Caro Quintero, the
leader of the drug cartel that controls Sonora and Arizona, as he drove
down a city street in Los Mochis, Sinaloa.

Caro Quintero's organization is considered one of the most powerful cartels
in North America. The feds want him extradited to the United States on four
drug and money-laundering indictments in Arizona and Colorado. The Mexicans
probably will turn him over once our hangin' president gives proof he won't
execute him like he did most of Texas.

I've got the promotions folks working on another tee shirt idea:

"Free Miguel!"

But I'm dead serious on this one. His release could save the lives of
countless people from Phoenix to Nogales, including the lives of Arizona
law enforcement agents.

The U.S.-Mexican border is basically controlled by three major cartels: the
Juarez Cartel to our east, the Arellano Felix Cartel to our west and,
finally, our cartel, the Caro Quintero organization.

By far, we are blessed with the most stable, most professional, least
violent cartel of the three.

To our west, the California border region averages about one drug murder
every two days. Tijuana is known as the Frontera Roja, the Red Frontier,
for all the blood spilled by the Arellano Felix brothers controlling their
turf.

The brothers, Benjamin, Javier and their enforcer, Ramon, keep power
through inspired intimidation. In one case, they are accused of hiring a
Julio Iglesias-looking Venezuelan to seduce the wife of a rival. The man
lured the guy's wife to San Francisco, talked her into withdrawing $7
million from a bank, took the money and killed her.

Then came the Arellano Felix flare. The man chopped off the woman's head,
sent the head in a box to the rival and then threw the rival's children off
a bridge.

In recent weeks, a DEA agent told me, drug shipments with ties to the
Arellano Felix organization have been intercepted in Arizona.

"We're not sure yet what this means," he says. "But it isn't good."

What it probably means is that the arrest of Miguel Caro Quintero has
created a power vacuum in the Arizona-Sonora corridor. When there is a
power vacuum, there often is widespread slaughter.

Take Juarez, for example. That region was thrown into chaos after the 1997
murder of Juarez Cartel kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

Carrillo Fuentes was just as violent but much less showy than his
California rivals. He adapted the more Central American habit of
"disappearing" folks. Guys dressed as police would show up, pluck you off
the Avenue of the Americas and take you for a ride south of town. Sometimes
your bones were found, sometimes they weren't.

Apparently, some plastic surgeons were paid off to kill Carrillo Fuentes
while he was getting a new face.

Soon after, all the surgeons, technicians and anyone remotely associated
with those folks were found executed.

Violence escalated as his lieutenants fought for control. It's estimated
that 60 people were murdered around Juarez in the power struggle in the
year following his death. In late 1999, several mass graves were found on
two ranches tied to the cartel just outside Juarez. Many Americans were
among the dead.

Some were rivals, some were informers, some were just people who did jobs
that cartel leaders felt might threaten their business. For example, a
group of telecommunication workers were murdered as they installed
equipment cartel leaders feared would improve police surveillance.

There are signs that the Juarez Cartel also is moving into the vacuum left
in Arizona by the arrest of Miguel Caro Quintero.

While Caro Quintero has been linked to several murders, it would appear
execution is viewed by his organization as a last resort, not the first
one. A federal drug agent described the Caro Quintero organization as "Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs" in the pantheon of international drug cartels.

Actually, it's more like the Microsoft of cartels.

Caro Quintero brought warring factions together by explaining that, if they
all worked together, everybody would get rich and everybody would stay
alive. As a streamlined, unified front, they could move more product with
less spoilage and fewer defaults on accounts.

Caro Quintero basically became the region's drug brokerage firm.

Then everyone was armed with the world's best communications equipment.
Tunnels were built, officials were paid off. Soon the cartel was arguably
the most efficient in the world.

"Their transportation, telemetry and communications are second to none,"
says Raul Rodriguez, commander of the drug task force in Nogales.

For American drug enforcement officials, it's Caro Quintero's efficiency,
not his violence, that made him a top public enemy.

Unprecedented amounts of drugs were moving through Arizona because of him.

But an unprecedented lack of violence also moved through.

"It is much, much less violent here than in Tijuana and Juarez regions,"
Rodriguez says.

Robert Almonte, a deputy police chief in El Paso, which borders Juarez, agrees.

"This cartel is incredibly violent," Almonte says. "You definitely don't
want these guys."

But we may get them. The Caro Quintero organization is hurting. And
September 11 made it even worse.

The border was locked down just as the marijuana harvest began in Mexico.
As the months passed, drug runners became desperate as tons of pot began to
rot in Mexico (they don't have huge freezers, apparently). In desperation,
drug runners are making mistakes.

DEA seized a near-record 10,000 pounds in Tucson in December. El Paso
police had their best quarter ever, Almonte says.

Even if the shipments get through, heightened security has made it much
more difficult to get money back to Mexico.

"It has become a very bad year for the cartels," says Jim Molesa, a DEA
special agent based in Phoenix.

(If you're a pot smoker, you may soon have to do your patriotic duty and
Buy American.)

Drug agents aren't sure what will happen with the Caro Quintero
organization. Rodriguez is guessing a lieutenant will take the post
peacefully; others believe a fight is already beginning.

My fear is that all this good work by U.S. and Mexican drug agents will
cause terrible ramifications down the road. Hemorrhaging money and without
a leader, either the unified factions within the Caro Quintero organization
will begin warring or the Juarez or Tijuana cartels will move in. And no
doubt the mayhem will be reflected in the Phoenix murder rate.

After years of trying, we may finally become America's deadliest city.

I believe the U.S. and Mexico should change their mindset toward drug cartels.

Until demand for drugs is abated, which history suggests will never happen,
the existence of drug cartels will be inevitable.

The formation of cartels for a population has proven as inevitable as the
formation of governments for a population.

So, perhaps drug cartels should be treated as rogue governments, not as
crime organizations. The policy should not be to destroy the cartels, but
to steer them toward stability and the behavior least damaging to American
interests.

Imagine Arizona-Sonora as Afghanistan. Miguel Caro Quintero is Hamid
Karzai, the alternative is Muhammad Omar or Osama bin Laden.

So, free Miguel! Lose some paperwork. Take a bribe. Send him a hacksaw in
his birthday cake. Whatever.

In its present form, the enforcement arm of America's War on Drugs is a
limited police action, an ambiguous Vietnam of partial containment. For
every drug runner arrested, another appears in his or her place.

As such, I'm still astonished by the courage of those who risk their lives
enforcing this policy. It's tougher to risk death for containment than for
victory.

If we're going to force border agents and police to play this game of cat
and mouse, then at least let them play with a sane, civilized mouse.

That way, we won't have our cats' heads sent home in boxes.