Mexico Fires Drug Czar; Ties to Cartel Alleged

Mexico’s top counter-narcotics official was fired Tuesday after just 11 weeks on the job and accused of collaborating with the nation’s top drug-trafficking cartel, striking a major blow to Mexico’s promised crackdown on the multibillion-dollar cross-border drug trade.

Career army Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, 62, who was handpicked for the job by President Ernesto Zedillo in December and lauded for his honesty and determination by the Clinton administration two weeks ago, was expected to be arrested “at any moment,” Mexican Defense Secretary Gen. Enrique Cervantes Aguirre told reporters Tuesday night.

The accusations against Gutierrez show the difficulty Mexico faces waging war on wealthy drug cartels that have corrupted scores of police and officials and call into question Mexico’s anti-narcotics campaign just weeks before the United States is to pass judgment on the effort.

“This is a very embarrassing event for those who love Mexico,” Cervantes said, adding that he personally had recommended that Zedillo name Gutierrez to head the nation’s federal drug agency based on Gutierrez’s record of counter-narcotics operations during his 42 years in the army.

“Today, we have well-founded presumptions that the general and the personnel under his command have been and are collaborators of the criminal organization headed by Amado Carrillo Fuentes,” Cervantes said, referring to the reputed head of Mexico’s powerful Juarez drug cartel.

Atty. Gen. Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, who joined the defense secretary in announcing the case against Gutierrez, said the general who headed Mexico’s equivalent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration would face charges that include fostering cocaine trafficking and taking bribes.

Madrazo said another army officer, Gen. Tito Valencia Ortiz, had been named to replace Gutierrez as the new anti-drug czar.

In detailing the results of an internal military investigation begun Feb. 6, the defense secretary said that Gutierrez had been renting a luxury apartment he could not afford on his official salary from a lieutenant of Carrillo, and that the general knowingly had conspired with members of Carrillo’s cartel during the last several years while serving as military commander in Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara.

Cervantes said he “considers it well-founded that, during recent years, Gen. Gutierrez Rebollo deceived his superiors, defrauded the confidence they placed in him, worked against Mexico’s national security and damaged the combined institutional force against narcotics trafficking.”

Based in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, Carrillo’s alleged cartel has been identified by U.S. and Mexican authorities as the largest of several drug mafias that together supply as much as three-fourths of the cocaine sold in the United States. Carrillo, known by his nickname “Lord of the Skies,” and his reputed cartel have flourished partly through widespread police and official corruption on both sides of the border, law enforcement officials say.

When Gutierrez was named to head the civilian National Institute to Combat Drugs, or INCD, government officials justified the appointment by citing widespread corruption within Mexico’s civilian federal police force. His was just one of dozens of recent appointments that placed military officers in key civilian law enforcement posts in the war against illegal drugs.

As Zedillo’s reliance on the military in the drug war has increased in recent months, though, Mexican and U.S. analysts have warned that the traditionally isolated and professional Mexican army also is likely to be corrupted by the billions of dollars involved in the narcotics trade.

Zedillo on Tuesday released a statement saying that the case against Gutierrez--an almost unheard-of accusation of drug corruption against a high-ranking Mexican military officer--showed that “no one can be above the law . . . justice cannot be selective.”

Gutierrez’s ouster presents the Clinton administration with a dilemma: It comes just two weeks before the White House is required to certify whether Mexico is cooperating with the U.S. in efforts to curb the drug trade, a decision with far-reaching political and economic implications for Mexico.

Appearing at a news conference with Gutierrez and Madrazo in Washington this month, Clinton’s top anti-drug official, retired U.S. Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, appeared to leave no doubt Mexico would be certified. He applauded his Mexican counterpart personally and praised the Mexican army’s role in cracking down on the cross-border narcotics trade.

Asked the impact of Gutierrez’s ouster on Tuesday, though, one administration official in Washington said simply, “It won’t be good.”

The first hint that the general was the target of Mexican military operations came early Tuesday, when witnesses reported that dozens of army commandos raided and occupied properties in Guadalajara believed to belong to Gutierrez.

At first, a spokeswoman at the INCD said Gutierrez had been replaced because of a “cardiac ailment,” possibly connected to diabetes.