General Goes High-Profile in Mexico

The private jet appeared as a blip on military radar moments before it crash-landed in the mountains near Guadalajara in June 1995. But that radar speck started one of the most successful Mexican military operations in the war on powerful drug mafias that supply up to three-fourths of the cocaine sold in the United States.

Gen. Jose Gutierrez Rebollo, a member of Mexico’s presidential guard and military commander in Guadalajara at the time, learned that among the plane’s passengers was Hector Luis “El Guero” Palma, reputed leader of one of Mexico’s largest drug cartels, who allegedly had dozens of corrupt federal police on his payroll.

Within hours, federal agents working with the joint military-civilian operation had traced the wounded Palma to an exclusive Guadalajara neighborhood, where heavily armed federal police officers were protecting him. Gutierrez quietly mobilized 200 soldiers to surround the house and local federal police headquarters, then arrested Palma and 33 police officers without firing a shot.

The operation stands out as a model of the Mexican military’s new high profile in the government’s war on drugs and police corruption. And the tough army general who commanded it now is in charge of the war itself.

Gutierrez--a career military officer who has been so low-profile and press-shy that a Mexican military spokesman here on Wednesday said he had never heard of him--was named commissioner this week of Mexico’s elite National Institute for Combating Drugs.

At 62, the enigmatic general, who is the first military officer to serve in a post historically reserved for well-connected politicians, will be a key point man working with U.S. law enforcement in the war on drugs.

That relationship is scheduled to begin here Tuesday when Gutierrez meets with the Clinton administration’s drug czar, retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey.

McCaffrey will find in the general a stark contrast to Francisco Molina, the educator and lawyer who preceded Gutierrez. Although the two career military officers have yet to meet, McCaffrey told The Times in a telephone interview Wednesday that his new Mexican counterpart “has a public reputation of absolute integrity. He is a strong leader. This is clearly a focused, high-energy man.

“But the important thing is that the Mexicans are confident in him,” McCaffrey said.

The U.S. drug czar also had high praise for Mexico’s new attorney general, Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, saying he “has a reputation, both public and private, of rock-solid integrity.” But McCaffrey added that he had “enormous admiration” for former Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano Gracia and his handpicked drug chief, Molina, who were dismissed by President Ernesto Zedillo on Monday.

McCaffrey built a close working relationship with Lozano and Molina, an erudite professor and opposition politician. And earlier this week, U.S. law enforcement officials expressed concern that the two men’s dismissals could affect the close ties the officials had forged with Mexican law enforcement personnel--although McCaffrey brushed aside those concerns.

Last week, Molina told The Times that, during his eight months in the job, there had been “unprecedented cooperation” among Mexican and U.S. drug agencies. They formed joint task forces and shared sensitive intelligence after many years of mutual suspicion.

Despite that strong U.S. backing, though, Molina had described his job as increasingly difficult--and deadly. Against the backdrop of widespread corruption, he said, the Mexican drug agency is outgunned and out-financed by drug smuggling gangs that earn an estimated $30 billion a year--equivalent to one-third of Mexico’s federal budget.

Several of Molina’s predecessors in Mexico’s top counter-narcotics posts initially were hailed as honest reformers by U.S. law enforcement--as Molina was until his dismissal--only to be tarnished years later by allegations of corruption or incompetence.

In the immediate aftermath of his firing, Molina too has come under fire, as senior Mexican officials have privately faulted his performance. Official statistics released Tuesday showed that cocaine seizures by Molina’s agency were down 50% between January and November of this year compared with the same period in 1995.

It was precisely to improve performance and to attack enduring police corruption, officials said, that Zedillo turned to a senior officer of the Mexican army--a disciplined force that remains largely untouched by corruption.

And the few senior Mexican officials and prominent journalists who know Gutierrez’s background insist that McCaffrey will be pleasantly surprised when the two meet.

Gutierrez “is, in every way, a product of the military,” said Jorge Zepeda Patterson, editor of Siglo 21, the most influential newspaper in Guadalajara, where the general had been military commander since 1989. “He is very temperate in his personal ways and totally honest in all ways.”

Still, until this week, few Mexicans had heard of him.

“Do you know who Gen. Jose Gutierrez Rebollo is?” asked political columnist Sergio Sarmiento in his syndicated national column Wednesday. “No? I’m not surprised. He’s an unknown in the world of politics and justice. Nevertheless, this general . . . is a key to understanding the president’s decision to replace the nation’s attorney general.

“The institution needs honesty and discipline, and for that perhaps [Zedillo] has chosen a military officer to lead the most delicate part--the war on drugs.”