MILITARY'S PART IN STANDOFF DISPUTED

The story spread like wildfire on Web sites and blogs around the
nation: Armed men, who might have been Mexican soldiers, faced off
with the Border Patrol over a dump truck full of marijuana.

But Border Patrol officials now dispute the allegation by officials
with the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department that the men on the
Mexican side of the Rio Grande were the Mexican military.

"We have no evidence of that. We don't believe it was true," Paul
Beeson, deputy chief patrol agent in El Paso, said of the incident.

Border Patrol officials noted that the Mexican military uses G3
rifles, and not AK-47s, which were allegedly used by the men in the standoff.

The incident occurred Nov. 17, when Border Patrol agents tried to
stop a suspicious dump truck on the U.S. side of the border. The
truck, which contained marijuana, turned around and headed for the
river, where it got stuck halfway through the river bed. The driver
abandoned the truck and fled to Mexico.

Beeson said Border Patrol agents started to unload the drugs when the
driver returned with smugglers who were dressed in camouflage
fatigues and who carried AK-47s.

Sheriff's deputies, who were called for back-up, saw the smugglers,
15 to 20 of them, Sheriff Arvin West said. Some of them hooked the
truck to a bulldozer and towed it out of the river, while others
stood watch holding the weapons, but not pointing them.

"They appeared to have a military style to them -- their way of
standing. It was military-style people," West said. But he added, "I
don't know that they were (the military)."

West admitted that everything the men had, from the fatigues, to the
red dashboard light in their vehicles, to their weapons, are readily
available to people outside the military.

Angel Torres, the spokesman for Mexico's attorney general in Mexico
City, said his office is investigating the incident.

Men in military gear protecting drug shipments are not an uncommon
sight on the border, officials with the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition said.

Earlier this year, investigators doing surveillance in Zapata County
in South Texas spotted 25 armed people in dark fatigues carrying
duffel bags, said Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr., the
coalition's chairman.

"The way they were dressed, they appeared to be military-oriented.
Clean-cut. Some type of military organization," Gonzalez said.

In the Hudspeth County incident, the smugglers towed their
marijuana-laden truck back to Mexico, save for about 1,850 pounds of
the drug that had been removed by the Border Patrol.

Sheriff West said the Border Patrol agents, sheriff's deputies and
Texas state troopers who came to help watched helplessly.

"The truck was already on their (Mexico's) side of the river. We had
nothing to go against that bulldozer," he said.

President Bush mentioned the incident during his short El Paso visit
Tuesday, but did not mention the allegations that the Mexican
military had been involved. Bush used the story to illustrate the
dangers faced by Border Patrol agents in the field.

"Look, there is great risk for people who wear the green," he said
during his El Paso visit. "I was told about a recent apprehension
made by our Border Patrol agents of people trying to smuggle drugs
in. And it's night, you know. And this happened to be in a more rural
area, and the chopper had to leave to go refuel. And so we've got
people risking their lives out there to stop the trafficking of drugs
into our country, and that's dangerous. And so it's dangerous here. I
mean, there's no other way to look at it."

The number of assaults on El Paso Border Patrol agents doubled this
fiscal year to 43, compared with 21 last year, agency officials said.

Times reporter Daniel Borunda contributed to this story.