Pubdate: Sun, 09 Jul 2000
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191
Fax: (619) 293-1440
Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: Robert Caldwell, Insight Editor
Note: Part 1 of a 6 part special report on the Arellano Felix Cartel

'SILVER OR LEAD'

Bribery, Assassination Sabotage Mexico's Anti-drug Efforts

About noon on Nov. 22, 1998, the wife and two children of drug cartel 
principal Eduardo Arellano Felix arrived at UCSD Medical Center's Regional 
Burn Center in San Diego. The woman, Sonia Martinez, her four-year-old 
daughter and six-week-old son had been badly burned that morning when a 
leaking propane barbecue cooker exploded at their home in Tijuana.

Eduardo was burned, too, on the face and hands. But he chose not to risk 
arrest in the United States on whatever drug-trafficking charges might be 
pending against him. So he sought treatment in Mexico while sending his 
wife and children across the border to receive the best possible medical care.

Federal agents learned almost immediately that morning that Arellano family 
members were crossing the border. They promptly imposed surveillance over 
Eduardo's wife and children at the Burn Center complex in San Diego's 
Hillcrest neighborhood. Their hope was that Eduardo or another Tijuana 
cartel kingpin would visit the critically injured family members. Failing 
that, some useful information might still be gained by monitoring the family.

In Washington, Drug Enforcement Administration head Thomas A. Constantine 
was hopeful but realistic. On the subject of Mexico, Constantine was 
accustomed to being disappointed. He would later tell The San Diego 
Union-Tribune, "We share information with Mexico on the major drug 
traffickers down there . . .and, as I' ve said before, nothing ever seems 
to happen. There are no cases, no arrests and no major dismantlement of the 
big organizations."

Still, American law enforcement had rarely if ever had an Arellano wife and 
children under close surveillance in the United States. Maybe they' d get 
lucky. And, up to a point, they did.

The UCSD Medical Center, citing patient privacy requirements, declined any 
comment and provided no information on these events. The account presented 
here was assembled from law enforcement sources speaking on background and 
from Constantine, who spoke on the record.

As Constantine recalls the story today:

"In the course of doing that (surveillance), we get very good information 
that there is going to be a planned meeting in Tijuana and that one of the 
Arellano Felix brothers, I think it was Ramon, is going to be there. 
Another very important target, Ismael Higuera, who was very powerful and 
very violent, was also going to be at the meeting in Tijuana.

"So we provided that information to some of the vetted (carefully screened 
to preclude the corrupted) people from the Mexican units to check that out. 
When they checked out the address we had given them, they saw a lot of 
armored cars and a lot of bodyguards. So it looked solid. You had our 
source of information, which we thought was very credible, and you had a 
physical surveillance of things that looked unusual.

"And then when we reached out to find a (Mexican) unit we could trust, 
which is always the big problem . . .the only ones around are the military 
vetted units and that took 12 to 13 hours for a response. By that time, 
obviously, everything had disappeared and was gone and there was no longer 
anything that could be worked on."

Constantine cites this lost opportunity, one among many, as typical of the 
frustrations of a decade during which the Arellano principals survived 
every effort to apprehend them and most efforts to disrupt the cartel' s 
operations.

"It was a good example of even when you get this great information and you 
see events taking place which tend to corroborate it, the ability to do 
something about it is difficult if not impossible," Constantine says.

The footnote to this incident was no less discouraging.

Sonia Martinez and her daughter left the Regional Burn Center to return to 
Tijuana on Christmas Eve, 1998 (her infant son remained a patient at the 
center until February 1999).

U.S. agents tailed the Martinez vehicle to the border where a vetted 
detachment of Mexican drug police was to assume surveillance. Within 
minutes, the Mexicans radioed their U.S. counterparts to report that their 
agents had lost the car in traffic.

And Eduardo Arellano Felix never bothered to pay more than $1 million still 
owed the Regional Burn Center for his family' s medical bills.

No one to trust

Virtually alone among senior Clinton administration officials, the DEA' s 
Constantine was willing to criticize publicly Mexico' s performance as a 
supposedly "cooperating" ally in the campaign against narcotics 
trafficking. In February 1999, two months after the Tijuana debacle, he 
spoke particularly bluntly. In testimony to the Senate Caucus on 
International Narcotics Control, Constantine said:

"In spite of existing U.S. warrants, government of Mexico indictments and 
actionable investigative leads provided to Mexico by U.S. law enforcement 
the truly significant principals have not been arrested, and appear to be 
immune to any law enforcement efforts."

Two weeks later, he was similarly outspoken in testimony before a House 
subcommittee holding hearings on narcotics policy. Referring to the 
Arellano Felix organization and other Mexican narco-trafficking cartels, 
Constantine declared, "they have been able to continually evade arrest and 
prosecution . . .attributable to their ability to intimidate witnesses, 
assassinate public officials and, as is well documented, their ability to 
corrupt many of the civilian law enforcement agencies in Mexico on a 
systemic basis and often at the command level."

Constantine had an avalanche of facts on his side. The Arellanos' cartel 
had built a lucrative drug-trafficking empire by bribing those who could be 
bribed and killing those who couldn' t. At least 20 Mexican prosecutors and 
drug agents had been killed in Tijuana in recent years. Other Mexican 
officials, prosecutors or agents believed working on Arellano cases had 
been gunned down in Mexico City, Guadalajara and elsewhere.

The pervasive penetration and corruption of Mexican police and government 
agencies by the drug traffickers, in turn, left U.S. law enforcement with 
almost no one to trust or work with in Mexico.

"Generally speaking, there is no Mexican law enforcement organization that 
has not been penetrated by the drug mafias," insists Gil Macklin, a former 
congressional staffer with more than a decade of experience on drug issues.

Recently retired senior U.S. Customs agent William F. Gately is withering 
in his critique of Mexico' s corruption problem. Gately capped a 
distinguished Customs career by running a successful money-laundering sting 
that culminated in 1998 with the unmasking of Mexican banks and bankers in 
league with drug traffickers. Testifying last year before the House 
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, Gately said:

"In Mexico, there is no line which can be drawn to separate the police or 
the prosecutors from the mafia, the politicians from the mafia, the 
government from the financial institutions, or any combination of these 
entities."

William Cecil, nearing retirement as director of air and marine 
interdiction operations for the U.S. Customs Service here, is outspoken in 
his criticism of Mexico' s drug-war cooperation with the United States.

"The 'cooperation' by Mexico, in spite of what the administration says, is 
little to none. And if it improves somewhat just prior to the (annual, 
congressionally mandated) certification, then it goes to hell in a 
handbasket," Cecil says.

"Just on the air side, we know, and have seen, airfields that these 
aircraft are landing at and off-loading their drugs are guarded by the 
(Mexican) military," Cecil adds.

"They make a show of cooperation but it's very shallow. As soon as 
something becomes the least bit effective, it's stopped. It is obvious to 
us that some (drug) loads are allowed and some aren't," Cecil says.

Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House' s Office of National Drug 
Control Policy, is notably sympathetic in assessing Mexico' s efforts 
against a predatory drug trade and its powerful cartels. But McCaffrey also 
notes that the Mexican drug-trafficking cartels are spending an estimated 
$6 billion a year corrupting Mexico' s police, military, government 
agencies and officials.

McCaffrey' s Mexican counterpart as a national drug policy director in 1997 
was a trusted Mexican army general, Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo. Mere weeks 
after McCaffrey hailed Rebollo' s appointment as a signal of Mexico' s 
renewed determination to go after the traffickers, he was discovered to be 
on the payroll of the Juarez-based Carrillo Fuentes cartel. Embarrassed 
Mexican officials promptly had Rebollo arrested and jailed, but the 
much-vaunted drug agency he headed had to be completely disbanded.

Deadly choices

At the level of ordinary Mexican police, who are typically ill-trained, 
poorly equipped and paid a paltry $300 a month, the drug traffickers' 
offers can seem irresistible. Vince Rice, special agent and press spokesman 
for the DEA' s San Diego office, expresses a measure of empathy for the 
deadly dilemma facing Mexico' s cops.

"They' re told (by the traffickers), ' Cooperate, quit or die, and your 
family dies, too.' What would anybody do? What would I do?" Rice says.

The un-refusable "silver or lead" choice also applies to the cartel' s 
dealings with fellow criminals. A U.S. investigator related this account of 
the Arellano cartel' s coercive persuasion:

"A low-level trafficker began moving marijuana for Ismael Higuera (a.k.a. 
El Mayel, then the Tijuana cartel' s operations director). The trafficker 
was very successful. One day El Mayel told the trafficker that he wanted 
him to start moving coke. No, said the trafficker, that is too dangerous. 
Twice more El Mayel asked him to smuggle cocaine into the United States and 
twice more the trafficker refused.

"Then one day the trafficker was abducted and driven into the desert. When 
the van with El Mayel in the front seat stopped in a desolate spot, he saw 
a circle of men surrounding two men in the middle. The men in the circle 
took turns beating the two victims senseless. Finally, one of the men in 
the circle stepped forward with a pistol and shot both victims in the head.

"El Mayel looked at the trafficker and asked, ' Would you like to move some 
coke for me?' "Sure," said the trafficker.

Given this culture of extreme brutality, finding witnesses willing to 
testify against the Arellanos is a huge challenge for law enforcement.

The fate of two Mexican federal police agents who testified in a migrant 
smuggling case in Tijuana sent the intended message. Juan Antonio Martinez 
Catarino and Miguel Angel Anaya Valenzuela were shot to death in their 
vehicle outside Tijuana' s federal courthouse in 1997 immediately after 
testifying for prosecutors.

Mexico recently created a witness protection program modeled after that of 
the United States. As of last year, the results wouldn' t have encouraged 
many witnesses to come forward and testify. Two of the program' s six 
witnesses had been killed.

Frustration

The level of frustration in U.S. law enforcement with the drug-money 
corruption in Mexico is palpable.

Publicly, U.S. officials generally maintain the politically approved 
fiction that Mexico is "cooperating fully" with the United States in 
efforts to combat the drug trade and apprehend the traffickers.

Privately, those on the drug war' s front lines -- the agents, 
investigators, intelligence analysts, inspectors and others -- see a 
reality that constantly mocks the official pronouncements. Not 
surprisingly, most front-line drug fighters have long since grown cynical 
over what they perceive as Mexico' s colossal levels of corruption and 
their own government' s diplomatic complicity.

"Mexico is the best country money can buy," muttered a U.S. Customs 
inspector surveying a load of marijuana seized recently from a smuggler at 
the San Ysidro border crossing. Such sentiments are hardly rare among 
Customs inspectors and others striving day after day to stem the steady 
flow of narcotics from Mexico.

Some Mexican officials are willing to acknowledge privately that corruption 
is sabotaging their anti-drug efforts. Only a brave and candid few are 
willing to say so publicly.

Mariano Herran Salvatti, director of the Mexican attorney general' s elite 
anti-narcotics agency known by its Spanish acronym FEADS, admitted in a 
recent interview with the Mexico City newspaper Reforma that catching the 
Arellanos was proving so difficult partly because the cartel was getting 
"institutional protection" from government officials.

"We haven' t been able to get to the most wanted men in Mexico because of 
such protection," Herran told Reforma.

A U.S. law enforcement analyst with years of experience monitoring the 
Arellanos and their drug dealing offers this assessment:

"The state judicial police in Baja are owned by the Arellanos. They guard 
the Arellanos. So we deal mostly with the federal police. But our 
assumption is that all Mexican law enforcement agencies are completely 
penetrated."

Asked if Tijuana is still the cartel' s headquarters and base, the analyst 
says:

"Absolutely, and don' t let anyone tell you differently. There is no reason 
for them to leave. Why should they? There is nothing effective being done 
against them in Tijuana. There is no effective law enforcement against them."

And how does it feel to watch the most violent criminals in Mexico operate 
with impunity just across the border?

"Oh, it' s horribly frustrating. We know where they are, right there on our 
doorstep and we can' t get them. We know with effective law enforcement 
they could be readily apprehended. Mexico has completely lost control of 
its major cities to the traffickers," the analyst says.

What might work?

After a pause, he answers with barely disguised disgust, "I couldn' t think 
of anything the Republic of Mexico could do that would work."

Legal barriers

Nobody needs to remind Gonzalo Curiel of just how tough it is to prosecute 
the Arellano Felix cartel. As an assistant United States Attorney and chief 
of the San Diego office' s narcotics enforcement section, Curiel could 
write a book on the job' s frustrations. Curiel' s life was threatened by 
Arellano cartel henchmen and at one point he was compelled to relocate and 
accept protection from U.S. marshalls. Then or now, the legal difficulties 
are immense.

For starters, all the principals live in a foreign country, beyond U.S. 
jurisdiction. Worse yet, the estimated $1 million or more in bribes they 
pay every week to Mexican police, prosecutors, office holders and others 
buys them de facto sanctuary in a headquarters and base area barely 20 
miles from downtown San Diego. It also puts the Arellanos smack in the 
middle of the most lucrative drug route into the American narcotics market, 
the richest in the world.

Sitting in his office at the federal building, Curiel ticks off the 
resulting obstacles to justice.

"We can' t wiretap them. We can' t surveil them. We can' t eavesdrop on 
them. We can' t observe them. And if we do indict them, we can' t apprehend 
them," Curiel says.

He might have added that he can' t get them extradited from Mexico to stand 
trial in the United States, either. For reasons ranging from pervasive 
corruption to a dysfunctional judicial system and an obsession with 
sovereignty, Mexico has yet to extradite a single major drug trafficker 
under indictment for crimes in the United States.

Last November, Curiel and his boss, Gregory Vega, the U.S. Attorney for the 
Southern District of California, surveyed their lack of progress across 
this dismal legal landscape and decided to ask for help. Vega and Curiel 
were particularly concerned about a 17-month decline in U.S.-Mexico 
cooperation and high-level collaboration on drug-trafficking issues.

This was partly a result of Mexico' s acute embarrassment and then anger 
over the drug money-laundering sting run by the U.S. Customs Service. 
Dubbed Operation Casablanca, it produced 142 arrests, including dozens of 
prominent Mexicans lured to Las Vegas in June 1998. Casablanca further 
embarrassed the Mexicans by implicating several of Mexico' s biggest banks 
in laundering drug money.

Mexican officials expressed outrage that this covert operation was 
conducted partly on Mexican soil without the knowledge or permission of the 
Mexican government. Customs officials defended that secrecy as essential to 
protecting Casablanca against compromising leaks that would have ruined the 
operation.

U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno sought to placate the Mexican government 
by signing the so-called Brownsville letter. In effect, the Reno letter is 
a memorandum of understanding that pledges the United States not to conduct 
law enforcement operations in Mexico without first informing the Mexican 
government and obtaining its permission.

Critics, including the former FBI supervisor who headed the inter-agency 
Arellano Task Force here, charge that the Brownsville agreement is 
seriously damaging U.S. anti-drug efforts inside Mexico.

"We have to assume that any intelligence or other sensitive information 
shared with Mexico will be betrayed to the traffickers, because it so often 
is. The Brownsville agreement effectively shuts down much of our 
investigative activity in Mexico because the lives of our operatives and 
informants are, or would be, in danger," explains recently retired FBI 
agent Vincent DelaMontaigne.

In any event, Reno' s concession produced no immediate improvement in 
U.S.-Mexico cooperation on narcotics trafficking.

"What had been missing was the personal, one-to-one contact you need," Vega 
says. "One of the things I thought had to be done was to reach out to 
Mexico. We had to re-engage with Mexico."

So Vega and Curiel flew to Mexico City last November for an unpublicized 
visit with Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuellar and his 
counter-narcotics chief, Mariano Herran. Vega and Curiel appealed for help.

"We let it be known that this was a priority for us and that we wanted to 
get Mexico re-engaged. We appealed to their national pride. I told them 
that I' d seen the Mexican lives lost in law enforcement, in witnesses, 
people trying to do their jobs. I recited the drug traffickers they had 
arrested. I said the next logical step is the Arellanos. We extended our 
hand. We said ' We would like to work with you. We would like you to work 
with us,' " Vega recalls.

Curiel says Madrazo readily acknowledged that the Mexicans had made little 
progress against the Arellanos.

Progress, but ...

Vega and Curiel say their appeals were favorably received.

"We received commitments," Vega says. "Regarding the Arellanos 
specifically, there was a commitment to have Mexican agents here, to come 
to San Diego to work with the DEA and the FBI, to devote additional resources.

"And we agreed to stop pointing fingers. We' d try to work together in an 
atmosphere of mutual respect. ' Let' s move forward (toward) our main 
objective, to try to dismantle the AFO,' " Vega recalls saying to Madrazo.

Vega and Curiel made one more trip to consult with Madrazo in Mexico City. 
Following the November meeting, Curiel says he began conferring several 
times a week with officials in the Mexican attorney general' s office. Vega 
and Curiel also say the meetings prompted Madrazo' s decision to assign 
special prosecutor Jose "Pepe" Patino Moreno and several deputies to work 
closely with U.S. law enforcement on Arellano cases.

Tragically, that decision put the courageous and widely respected Patino 
and his investigative team squarely in the cartel' s sights, with deadly 
consequences in April for Patino and two other agents.

Vega and Curiel point to the recent federal indictments of Benjamin and 
Ramon Arellano Flix as evidence of a renewed push by U.S. authorities to 
counter the cartel. They also cite the arrests of Ismael Higuera Guerrero, 
the cartel' s operations director, and Jesus "Chuy" Labra Aviles, the 
cartel' s alleged financial adviser and manager, as potential breakthroughs 
for the Mexican government.

But certain hard realities remain.

These apply equally to the decade-long struggle against the Tijuana cartel 
and in the larger battle against all the Mexican narco-trafficking 
syndicates and the tons of narcotics they send flooding into the United States.

The U.S. Congress' non-partisan General Accounting Office reviewed the 
status of U.S.-Mexican counter-narcotics activities in 1999. Their score 
card on Mexico in particular was dismal news from the drug-war front:

- - "Drugs are still flowing across the border at about the same rate . . .

- - There have been no significant increases in drug eradication and seizures,

- - No major drug trafficker has been extradited to the United States,

- - Money-laundering prosecutions and convictions have been minimal,

- - Corruption remains a major impediment to Mexican counter-narcotics 
efforts, and

- - Most drug trafficking leaders continue to operate with impunity."
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