MEXICAN MILITARY CAUGHT UP IN DRUG CORRUPTION, 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 pointed to low pay among the middle and lower ranks as
making 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," said a U.S. official, speaking 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 that 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.

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 Mexico 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-narcotics 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 in
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 United States.

The policy of 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 United States, 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."

U.S officials and analysts stressed that low pay among the rank and
file 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
mid-level and bottom ranks that have more to gain than to lose.
Temptations there run deep."

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.

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, elite special air
forces - 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. That would be 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, were reverberating within the military, 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.