US WITHHELD JUAREZ DRUG CARTEL INFORMATION, MEXICAN OFFICIAL SAYS

By Alfredo Corchado

The Dallas Morning News

April 3, 2004, Saturday

MEXICO CITY _ Mexican authorities are angry about a report that a paid
informant for a U.S. government agency supervised murders in Mexico and that the
agency did not share that knowledge, a senior Mexican law enforcement official
said.

The actions of the informant and the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, or ICE, were "reckless, irresponsible," said the official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity.

Withholding the information risked the lives of Mexican and American federal
agents and jeopardized a major federal investigation into the Juarez drug
cartel, the official said. The Mexican government is determined to "get to the
bottom" of the intelligence lapse, he added.

"Everything and everyone, whether U.S. or Mexican federal agents, was at risk
here," the official said. "There were many lives at stake here."

ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa in El Paso said the agency's "previous
comments about the ongoing investigation still stands. We have no other comment
at this time."

Previously, ICE said it does not comment on pending criminal cases but "takes
any and all allegations of misconduct seriously."

The Dallas Morning News has obtained a copy of an ICE classified memorandum
on the activities of the informant. The 15-page memo provides dramatic new
details about the first in a series of drug-related killings in Ciudad Juarez,
which it said was committed with the help of two Mexican judicial police
officers.

Among the details in the memo:

The officers split $2,000 for killing a suspected drug trafficker known only
as "Fernando."

The killing was ordered by the victim's childhood friend, Heriberto
Santillan Tabares, a top lieutenant in the powerful Juarez cartel organization
of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

The officers, who were on duty, strangled Fernando, then struck him in the
back of the head with a shovel, which was later used to bury him in the backyard
of the house where he was killed.

The informant was so trusted that he was allowed access to a cartel safe
house where he witnessed "everything they could need, stemming from groceries to
women."

The informant's debriefing eventually led to the capture of Santillan,
implicated more than a dozen state police officers, and led to the discovery of
12 bodies buried in the backyard of a middle-class neighborhood in Juarez.

The informant's role, however, came to light only after an attempt by
Santillan's drug trafficking gang, known as La Linea, to kill two U.S.
undercover agents in Juarez, according to U.S. law enforcement officials.

ICE officials told the Mexican government they did not share facts about the
informant's activities because "the information was so unbelievable they
couldn't believe it themselves," the Mexican law enforcement official said. The
informant audiotaped the killing, according to the memo.

The Mexican official said he does not accept that explanation: "I didn't
believe them then, and I don't believe them now."

He said the episode undermines the trust between the United States and Mexico
that has been built over years and that is enshrined in a bilateral treaty.

That treaty calls for close cooperation between drug and intelligence
agencies of the two countries _ including sharing of information, he noted. It
also specifies that the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, with the
permission of Mexico, is the agency that represents U.S. interests in drug
investigations on Mexican soil, he said.

"We have many questions like what role, or information, if any, does the
informant have on a possible link between the cartel and the murder of women,"
the official said. "This was a big, big oversight, and we're still very angry."

The dispute comes amid an expanding investigation by the federal government
into the killing of scores of women in Juarez over the last 10 years.

President Vicente Fox has appointed a special prosecutor to pursue those
responsible for the crimes and a commissioner to improve conditions for women in
Juarez.

He said Friday that his government would release preliminary findings from
the investigation in two weeks.

“There will be good news for the people (of Juarez) and some bad news for the
criminals and corrupt public functionaries that didn't comply with the law," he
told visiting news executives with the Associated Press Managing Editors.

A March 14 report in The Dallas Morning News on the activities of the U.S.
informant was based on interviews with current and former U.S. law enforcement
officials familiar with the memorandum.

The document itself contains information that provides rare insight into the
hierarchy of the Juarez cartel, its inner workings and extracurricular
activities, such as parties with women and recreational use of cocaine.

The memo also offers a wealth of detail about recruitment of police officers
to carry out contract killings and the specifics of one such slaying, of
"Fernando" _ believed to be Fernando Reyes Aguado, an attorney from the state of
Durango.

The memo notes that the informant's standing in the Juarez cartel quickly
improved, apparently because of his participation in the killing, details of
which were ironed out at a Starbucks coffee shop in an El Paso mall.

"Santillan praised (the informant) for his/her participation in the murder
and (said) that his/her participation could lead to his/her meeting with Vicente
Carrillo Fuentes, (aka VCF)" according to the memo written by a special agent of
ICE.

"Santillan also told (the informant) that he was now number four in running
the narcotics business for the VCF organization." That was written Aug. 25,
2003.

For the next six months, the informant, who previously had been fired by the
DEA for attempting to smuggle more than 220 pounds of marijuana into El Paso,
continued working for ICE, supervising the murders of at least 14 more drug
suspects, including a U.S. citizen, U.S. law enforcement officials said.

ICE knew of the killings but did nothing to stop them, Mexican and U.S. law
enforcement officials said.

U.S. sources said one reason the informant continued working for ICE was that
he helped that agency complete a huge bust of a nationwide tobacco-smuggling
ring. A 92-count indictment detailing the scheme was unsealed in El Paso on Jan.
28.

"Busting a tobacco smuggling operation cannot justify the taking of a life,
not even that of a drug dealer," the Mexican official told The News.

The series of killings in which the informant was involved ended with the
arrest of Santillan, the alleged cartel lieutenant, Jan. 15. Shortly after his
arrest, the bodies of "Fernando" and 11 other people were exhumed from the
backyard of a house in Juarez.

Santillan is in an El Paso jail, awaiting trail on charges of drug
trafficking and murder in connection with the deaths of at least five of the 12
men found buried.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone recently postponed a hearing in the
Santillan case for six months, granting a request by the U.S. attorney's office,
which maintained that the case was "complex and unusual" and that prosecutors
need more time to gather evidence from the Mexican government.

 (Staff writer Ricardo Sandoval in Mexico City contributed to this report.)

 (c) 2004, The Dallas Morning News.

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