Mexico Told U.S. Nothing of Probe Into Drug Czar

The Mexican government told the United States nothing of its suspicions about Mexico’s anti-drug czar Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo until enough evidence was amassed to show that he had collaborated with drug traffickers for years, Foreign Minister Jose Angel Gurria conceded Friday.

“If we had suggested something was afoot,” then found the suspicions unfounded, Gurria told a news conference in Washington, “then we would have impaired and compromised our chief law enforcers.”

Clinton administration officials “were encouraged” by the apologetic tone of Gurria’s comments, a senior White House official said. But the explanation offered little comfort to U.S. officials who knew nothing of doubts about Gutierrez when they gave him secret information in recent weeks about undercover narcotics efforts in Mexico.

The administration is also trying to determine whether U.S. intelligence shares part of the blame for the lack of knowledge about Gutierrez, and to assess the damage Gutierrez could have done by passing information on to drug traffickers.

Washington did not find out about the cloud over the onetime general until the Mexican government announced his dismissal Tuesday. That was 12 days after Mexican authorities first questioned him about his ties to Mexico’s largest drug cartel.

U.S. sources said the Central Intelligence Agency never briefed Gutierrez, but it routinely shares information with other American agencies and officials conceded that they do not know how much of their information reached him. The sources conceded that the CIA had no knowledge of the investigation of Gutierrez until the Mexican government shared the news, nor did they have independent evidence that he was corrupt.

The lack of warning has prompted questions in the White House about the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence in Mexico, although some U.S. law enforcement officials familiar with the Mexican government termed the lack of information unsurprising.

“The Mexican military has been a very, very closed society,” a senior official at the Drug Enforcement Administration said. “They don’t share information with their own people and they certainly don’t share it with us. Unless this guy shows up in an investigation, we’re not going to know he’s a crook.

“It’s not our job to spy on the Mexican military,” the official added, suggesting that that task falls to other branches of the U.S. intelligence community.

Gurria took pains to explain why his government had kept its investigation secret, despite cooperation between the United States and Mexico in fighting drug smuggling.

“Once we had all the elements, we went public,” he said. “We cannot share information about every one of the investigations. In this particular case, it was, I would say, particularly delicate to cast doubt on our own structure had we not had the full elements. And what we did was act as fast as we could and then go public and divulge the information and hopefully control the damage.”

Gurria told reporters that his government does not know yet whether Gutierrez’s ties to the drug cartel thwarted drug missions or cost any lives. He insisted that Mexico has demonstrated that it is cooperating fully with the United States in the war against drugs. “This is a major incident. I don’t want to trivialize it. I don’t want to minimize it,” he said. “But the bottom line is, cooperation is good.”

But he was testy in replies to questions about the process that requires President Clinton to inform Congress by March 1 whether a number of countries, including Mexico, have fully cooperated in the war against drugs. Clinton certified Mexico last year, although some Republicans and DEA agents argued that it should be decertified. Until Gutierrez was dismissed, there appeared little doubt Mexico would be certified again.

Gurria criticized this process, saying: “We think, in fact, it inhibits cooperation. It is designed in a way in which it becomes acrimonious and divisive and recriminatory.”

Times staff writer James Risen contributed to this story.