DRUG WAR CORRUPTION TAINTS MEXICO MILITARY

Long A Source Of Pride, Troops Are Led Astray By Low Wages, Officials Say

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials and analysts say there are new signs that drug
corruption is spreading within the Mexican military, an institution long
regarded as more professional and less prone to criminality than the
country's law enforcement agencies.

In interviews, four senior U.S. officials, a senior Mexican intelligence
official and three independent analysts all expressed concern about the
expanding role of the Mexican military in the drug war. Some said low pay
among the middle and lower ranks makes military personnel vulnerable to
offers from cartel leaders who may double or triple their pay. "Corruption
is more serious in the Mexican military than just about any other Latin
American military," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. "The
reason is not that the Mexicans are any more venal; it's that we're talking
about huge amounts of money because drugs flow into Mexico and that makes
them more vulnerable."

Spokesmen for the Mexican Embassy in Washington and for Los Pinos, the
presidential residence, declined to comment, referring questions to the
military. Military officials requested questions in writing but said there
would be no reply for now.

The concerns were underscored in a video sent to The Dallas Morning News in
October and described in a Dec. 1 article.

The video shows four men, bound and bloodied and prodded by an unseen
interrogator, talking about their work for a drug cartel.

Two of the four identified themselves as former military men and said their
job was to recruit for the cartel from Mexico's special forces. The
emergence of two new paramilitary groups, Los Negros and Los Numeros, which
may seek to bolster their forces with military personnel and federal
agents, has added to the concern, U.S. officials said. The groups are said
to work for the Sinaloa cartel, purportedly headed by Joaquin "El Chapo"
Guzman. They were recruited to battle the rival Gulf cartel and its
enforcement arm, the Zetas, and to spread the Sinaloa cartel's dominance
along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, the officials said. U.S. prodding The
Mexican government's central role in fighting drug trafficking is a
relatively recent development. In 1996, during the administration of
President Ernesto Zedillo, the U.S. government encouraged the Mexican
government to give the military a central role in anti-narcotics efforts -
in part because the military was viewed as uncorrupted, analysts said.
"We're the ones who pushed the Mexican military into fighting narcotics,"
said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, head of the Mexico Project at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "We've pushed them into
narco-corruption."

The military - historically a rallying point of Mexican nationalism - was
long viewed as relatively free of the kind of corruption that has engulfed
the country and many of its institutions. For example, this month the
Mexican attorney general's office said that 1,493 federal agents - about
one of every five members of an elite force of 7,000 working for an agency
modeled after the FBI - were under criminal investigation. In the past five
years, President Vicente Fox has dramatically increased the military's
participation in anti-drug efforts by including military personnel on the
attorney general's payroll.

"I think it's very dangerous to move military officers into what should be
civilian jobs," said another senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of
anonymity. "It's very risky, not only to the mission they're supposed to
perform, but to the institution from where they come." Since 1996, the U.S.
government has spent at least $225 million on training and other military
assistance for anti-drug aid programs, according to a report by the
Washington Office of Latin America, or WOLA, a nongovernmental organization
that monitors military cooperation between Mexico and the U.S. Giving the
military a central role has "allowed drug traffickers to penetrate deep
into the military structure," without markedly slowing the flow of drugs to
the U.S., the report said.

"Transparency is essential to combating corruption, but the Mexican
military has managed to avoid external oversight," said Joy Olson,
executive director of WOLA. "It should come as no surprise that the
military's secrecy is one factor that has made it more vulnerable to the
corrupting influence of the drug trade."

Low wages U.S officials and analysts stressed that low pay among
rank-and-file soldiers makes them especially vulnerable to drug
traffickers. Soldiers make about $300 a month, compared with $5,000 for
lieutenant colonels and about $28,000 for the defense secretary, according
to a salary scale on the military's Web site.

Raul Benitez Manaut, a military expert at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico, said that for the most part high-ranking military
officials make enough money to resist the lure of working for criminal
organizations. "The top brass has a lot to lose, although that doesn't mean
that we haven't had a few cases of corruption," he said. "However, it's the
midlevel and bottom ranks that have more to gain than to lose. Temptations
there run deep." Mr. Benitez pointed to several prominent military members
alleged to have provided protection to drug kingpins in exchange for money
and other bribes. They include army Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, a career
officer who was director of the National Institute to Combat Drugs when he
was arrested in 1997 and jailed on charges of protecting members of the
Juarez cartel. Another senior U.S. official, considered an expert on the
Mexican military, said: "I don't think at high levels there is rampant
corruption, but given how low the pay among the unit level and how pay is
often late or delayed, frustration is clearly indicated by the high
desertion rate. ... So there is certainly corruption that happens that
can't be controlled by headquarters. I don't think headquarters condones
it, but they certainly don't do enough to address it. Then again, I can't
think of a realistic way they could." In 2001, Mexican newspapers received
a letter, apparently from a deserter, saying: "I was loyal and risked my
life an infinite number of times in situations that I now understand were
not worth it. I later understood that you cannot live off of loyalty.

While our commanders eat steak, we, with the sweat on our foreheads, were
only capable of eating beans." The letter was signed, "Zetas 10 2001," an
apparent reference to the paramilitary group. Taped killing Fresh concerns
about the military's role in the drug war surfaced this month with reports
about the video showing the four bloodied men, who described carrying out
abductions and killings for the Gulf cartel. In the video, two of the four
men said that their job involved recruiting soldiers and members of the
GAFES, Mexico's version of the Green Berets. Several members of the GAFES,
some trained by U.S. military personnel at Fort Bragg, N.C., deserted and
formed the Zetas, the enforcement arm of the Gulf cartel, according to the
attorney general's office. A U.S. law enforcement official and a senior
Mexican intelligence official in Mexico City, speaking on condition of
anonymity, have said that members of the Mexican military appeared to have
played a role in the interrogation of the four men in the video - a
conclusion based on the way the men were handcuffed.

Two of the four, who identified themselves as civilians, had their hands
bound behind their backs.

Two who said they had been in the military had their hands bound in front
of them, a standard courtesy that military officers would extend to fellow
soldiers, the intelligence official said. In the video, the men are seated
on the floor in front of black plastic garbage bags at an undisclosed location.

At the end of the video, one of the men who identified himself as having
been in the military is shot in the head with a gun held by a person off
camera.

Reports about the video, which received wide media coverage in Mexico, are
reverberating within the military, Mr. Benitez said. "Many are asking
questions, questioning their own colleagues, their commitment, and their
overall mission of taking on drug traffickers." News assistant Irene
Barcenas in Mexico City and staff writer Tim Connolly contributed to this
report.