Monday, March 2, 2009

 

DEA Intelligence Chief Likens Mexico to 1980's Colombia

 

By J. Jesus Esquivel

 

·   None of the Mexican drug kingpins feel truly threatened by the war unleashed against them by the government of Felipe Calderón, because they find it easy to buy protection from authorities, lamented the Chief of Intelligence of the DEA, Anthony P. Placido. Although he states that Mexico will win this fight, he warns that before doing so the people "will pay a high price" due to narco-violence. In an interview with Proceso, Placido revealed one of Washington's current concerns: the repeated references to criminal ties of the closest collaborators of the Secretary of Public Security, Genaro Garcia Luna.

WASHINGTON – To the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), narco-violence and the serious problem of corruption due to drug trafficking, at top levels of the Mexican government, are because "none of the kingpins of the drug cartels" feel really at risk by the actions of President Felipe Calderón.

And "the main reason they don't feel threatened is because they have broad powers of corruption that gives them a kind of immunity, we say, guaranteed," Anthony P. Placido, head of Intelligence Operations of the DEA, explained in an interview with Proceso.

He added that the Calderón government is striving to eradicate corruption due to drug trafficking, but to end this practice it will take time and cause bloody struggles.

"The situation in Mexico is now similar to that experienced in Colombia at the beginning of the 1980s," he says. And he predicts: "The Mexican government's challenge is to transform a threat to national security into a problem that can be resolved by civil police. And, from our point of view, that is the path that Mexico is following, but it will take time and a greater sacrifice of people will be required in cities like Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Culiacan and elsewhere in the state of Sinaloa where there is too much violence. The situation will worsen there just before the problem is resolved."

Placido said that the DEA could even accept agreements with Mexican drug traffickers, similar to agreements made in Colombia in order to make it easier for them to hand over drug lords, although at this time he does not see conditions for it.

"If they are willing to surrender on terms that are acceptable to us, we would be happy to accept their proposals, (but) none of the Mexican criminal organizations would surrender at this time, [not] unless they feel really threatened by the operations of the Mexican government."

In the late 1980s and for most of the nineties, several of the major Colombian cartel kingpins (Medellín, Cali, and Northern Valley) negotiated, through the DEA, their surrender to U.S. authorities.

"People who have been involved in drug trafficking for years and agree to cooperate, by providing information and evidence to solve the problem, could receive a reduction in their sentence, which I think is one of the most appropriate ways to agree to negotiate with the drug traffickers," said the agent in charge of worldwide DEA planning and operations against drug trafficking.

The worrisome García Luna

Drug trafficking in Mexico, said Placido, counts on a power of governmental corruption that provides benefits, which greatly worries the U.S. government.

He explains that is why there are those in the U.S. Congress who refuse to openly support Mexican authorities in a common struggle. In fact, he notes, dozens of lawmakers on Capitol Hill now oppose giving Mexico the US$1.4 billion agreed to as part of the Merida Initiative.

"We are concerned, for example, that it is constantly mentioned that several of the closest associates of (Public Safety) Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna could be involved with criminal groups such as the Beltran Leyva (brothers)," he said, and he avoided giving names or further details on this rumor that worries the Barack Obama government.

Placido notes, that despite this, the Obama government has confidence in Calderón because he is acting with transparency and determination in the dismantling of government networks corrupted by organized crime.

"Honestly, the U.S. government would not be investing US$1.4 billion dollars in the Mérida Initiative if we were not sure that it is moving in the right direction," said Placido, who was also head of the DEA in Mexico.

[Question] Which is the most powerful cartel in Mexico?

[Response] The Sinaloa Cartel's federation is the most powerful and murderous. Certainly the Gulf Cartel is still violent; the Arellano Félix [Cartel] is fighting for its survival, held up on one leg; the factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, such as that of the Beltran Leyva, are aligning with Vicente Carrillo Fuentes (of the Juarez cartel). But without doubt we can say that Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman are the most powerful drug lords in Mexico.

The latest DEA investigations on the Sinaloa Cartel's federation, that is led by "El Mayo" Zambada and "El Chapo" Guzman, conclude that this criminal organization controls the entire Pacific coast and the main Mexican transshipment routes for cocaine and heroin.

"It gives them more power, the fact that they are the absolute owners of the Mexican arrival areas of cocaine sent from South America, but too they have the lucrative marijuana market, which allows them to get a lot of cash and to cover losses suffered when their shipments of cocaine, heroin and other drugs are confiscated here in the United States or Mexico," he stresses.

However, Placido does not share the view of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command, according to which Mexico is a "failed state" due to its inability to curb drug trafficking.

"I do not think we are even close to saying that the Mexican government has failed and that the drug traffickers have been victorious, or that Mexico is a lawless land and without a government controlling it.  No doubt there is much violence in Mexico, but it is the result of the government's efforts to curb the power and impunity of drug trafficking," said Placido, who paused to reflect on what he said and then makes a notation:

"Certainly the failed state [term] could be applied to places in Mexico like Ciudad Juárez or Tijuana, where there are very high levels of violence. But by saying this I do not want it thought in any way that I am trying to minimize the great problem of violence Mexicans are suffering elsewhere in the country.

"My prediction on what could happen in Mexico is that the people will first pay a high price for this violence, but the government is going to win the war and it will break the cycle of impunity enjoyed by drug traffickers, and it will destroy their influence of corruption and power of intimidation."

Penetration in the U.S.

Placido was asked about the presence of Mexican cartels in 195 cities in the U.S. He replied that the DEA and other federal agencies of his country are doing everything possible to dismantle these cells, although he acknowledged that they are expanding rapidly and that it is increasingly difficult to discover them.

"They are a powerful force in the U.S.," Placido accepted, explaining that since Colombian drug traffickers began to use Mexican operators to transport drugs in this country, groups like those of the Arellano Felix, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, and "El Chapo" Guzman began the conversion into absolute owners of the U.S. market.

For example, he says, "the Miami drug market was supplied by shipments that the Colombians sent by boat or aircraft from different Caribbean and South America locations. Nowadays these drugs are taken by Mexican drug traffickers in trucks that depart from different points on the border with Mexico; El Paso, Texas, is one of them," Placido exemplified, [and he] pointed to Atlanta, Georgia, and Los Angeles, California, as two cities where Mexican cartels have a "very consolidated" control, and from where they launch their distribution networks for the east and west coasts.

"All of the Mexican cartels are active here. They are competing among themselves for control of the cities, but a bloody war over this situation has not yet broken out like the one in Mexico; we say that here they are less violent," he adds.

Seated at a small round table on the ninth floor of DEA headquarters, at this time Placido does not venture a forecast as to when "El Chapo" Guzman, one of the most wanted criminals by the U.S. agency, might be arrested.

Whereas, with the wave of narco-violence affecting nearly every state in Mexico, this is not the time to do their usual predictions. And he reveals:

"There have been several, many, occasions (in Mexico) when we have been very close and ready to catch "El Chapo"; but in the end something happens that prevents us from arresting him. For some reason (El Chapo) receives a tip-off that we are close to him and he escapes in the nick of time."

He clarified that in all such operations the DEA agents are always accompanied by Mexican federal agents and soldiers, who are those responsible for executing the arrests.

And he advised: "We simply provide intelligence information as part of the bilateral actions and commitments for the exchange of information we have with Mexico in the war against drug trafficking."

For the head of intelligence operations for the DEA, "Mexico's success (in this fight) is the success of the United States, but without doubt this victory will be consolidated the day that we arrest the kingpins of Mexican drug trafficking and when they are extradited to the United States."

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Proceso (weekly magazine), February 22, 2009, Mexico City. MexiData.info translation