U.S. Officials Worry About Mexico Police Appointees

U.S. officials are expressing fear that appointments to several top Mexican police posts, including that of a fugitive from the United States, signal a lack of commitment by new President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to crack down on narcotics trafficking and improve law enforcement.

Salinas, who took office Dec. 1, has called drug trafficking a national security problem and told visiting U.S. congressmen last month that its eradication is a priority. He vowed “to make life miserable” for traffickers.

But the attorney general Salinas appointed, Enrique Alvarez del Castillo, comes to the job after five years as governor of the state of Jalisco, home to several Mexican drug lords. U.S. and Mexican sources said drug trafficking and related killings increased in Jalisco during his tenure. Among the cases cited is the 1985 kidnaping by state judicial police of Enrique S. Camarena, an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration who was tortured and murdered along with his Mexican pilot.

“Putting that governor in as attorney general is a complete insult to any hope of working with Mexico,” said a U.S. Senate investigator who has worked on drug issues. “It’s a joke.”

Sources here and in Washington, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified, said American officials also were irked by the appointment of Miguel Nazar Haro as Mexico City police intelligence chief. Nazar was indicted in 1982 by a U.S. grand jury in San Diego on car theft and conspiracy charges. He was arrested in the United States, posted $200,000 bail and fled the country.

Nazar, also a one-time CIA source, was named to the new and still-undefined intelligence post by Mexico City Police Chief Javier Garcia Paniagua, a former director of the federal security police and a resident of Guadalajara, in Jalisco state, for the last few years.

Sources said they were baffled by the great gap between the government’s rhetoric, which “has been extremely good,” and the appointments. They said they are taking “a wait-and-see” approach.

“There is the theory that ‘it takes one to know one,’ that these people are certainly wise to what is going on. They are not criminally or politically naive,” said one source.

The concern in the U.S. government is not unanimous. David L. Westrate, assistant administrator of the DEA, for example, cited the assurances that Salinas gave President-elect Bush when they met last month that combatting drugs would be among his top priorities.

The appointments have come under unusually strong attack by the Mexico City press, coming at the same time as a police scandal over the suppression of a riot last month in the state jail at Tepic, about 110 miles northwest of Guadalajara in Nayarit state, that officials said left 23 dead.

A Mexico City SWAT team called the Zorros stormed the jail after prisoners took over the administrative offices with hostages. The prisoners killed the warden and commander of the SWAT team, but at least five of the prisoners who were filmed giving their names to police after surrendering were later listed as among the dead.

Mexican officials insist that there was no impropriety in the jail capture and defend the law enforcement appointees as capable officers. But in what appears to be a political move to counter the bad publicity, a Mexican official asserted to two reporters that the Guadalajara-based DEA agent Camarena had been a drug trafficker himself.

Intelligence Report Cited

The official, who declined to be identified, claimed to have seen a Mexican intelligence report that Camarena “was up to his ears” in narcotics trafficking before his murder. He implied that Camarena had worked for Colombians competing with Mexican drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, who is in jail for masterminding the killing.

No other U.S. or Mexican police officials could be found who had seen the report and nothing like it has been leaked in the four years since the killing. The source refused to give details.

The Mexican press has focused attention on Nazar, who, in addition to his indictment in the United States, is accused of having personally tortured political prisoners in the 1970s. While with the federal security police, Nazar was a leader of the Brigada Blanca, an inter-

Efficient and Brutal

Those familiar with police work describe Nazar, 64, as efficient and brutal, a 20-year veteran of the federal security police and director of that now-defunct agency from 1977 until he resigned in January, 1982, apparently because of the American indictment.

They say he was brought in to help crack down on rampant crime in the capital, one of the issues that caused the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party to lose Mexico City in the July presidential election. The political opposition, however, charges that Nazar will use his new intelligence unit to spy on them and that it will be used nationally as the SWAT team was in the December jail riot.

At a press conference last week, Police Chief Garcia Paniagua said Nazar is perhaps the best police investigator in Mexico.

“He has been accused by U.S. authorities, but here, in this country, I don’t know of any case against him or any arrest warrant,” Garcia Paniagua said. Asked if the U.S. accusation was false, he said, “If they are wrong, that’s their problem, not mine. I am not interested in their opinion either.”

Car Theft Ring

Nazar was accused of participating in an $8.4-million car theft ring that smuggled luxury cars stolen from Orange and San Diego counties into Mexico for sale. Nazar testified before a grand jury in San Diego that he was innocent and was being framed.

A U.S. attorney was fired over the case after he publicly accused the CIA and Justice Department of having delayed the indictment because Nazar was regarded as an “indispensable” CIA source.

While Nazar’s appointment is viewed as something of a slap in the face to the United States, sources appeared more worried about the implications of Alvarez del Castillo’s appointment as attorney general for drug eradication efforts.

Under Alvarez del Castillo, Jalisco drug traffickers operated with near impunity, they said, charging that either Alvarez had been bought off to do nothing or was totally unaware of what was going on in his own state.

At a press conference with Mexican reporters last month, Alvarez del Castillo denied that traffickers had been “protected” in Jalisco while he was governor. A government official, who declined to be identified, defended the appointment, saying Alvarez del Castillo is a veteran lawyer with experience fighting narcotics and an extensive political background. As governor, the official said, Alvarez worked closely with U.S. officials.

U.S. officials also are concerned about some of the people Alvarez del Castillo brought with him from Jalisco. Pablo Aleman Diaz, former head of state security for Jalisco, is the new director of the Federal Judicial Police and Hector Castellanos, former secretary of government in Jalisco, is an assistant attorney general.

Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow, in Washington, contributed to this article.