Congressman Says U.S. Vets Aid Drug Lords

A congressman with years of law enforcement expertise along the U.S.-Mexico border is raising a new specter in the fight against drugs: Former U.S. soldiers are being lured by big money to provide security and other high-tech support for Mexican drug cartels.

Silvestre Reyes, a longtime Border Patrol official in Texas who now serves in the House as a Democrat from El Paso, said in an interview Wednesday that former U.S. counterintelligence officers and ex-Green Berets are being drawn into the service of Mexican drug gangs because of their wizardry and electronic know-how for subverting U.S. anti-drug operations.

“At this point, there’s not any real way for us to evaluate how widespread this is,” Reyes warned. “But it exists. It’s out there. We know it, and [the Mexicans] know we know it.”

His comments drew an immediate and sharp rebuke from officials at several key federal agencies. Both the military and the White House drug policy office cautioned that, while there may be some cases of U.S. veterans working for Mexican drug lords, the problem is not widespread.

Navy Ensign Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s task force that coordinates anti-drug efforts with law enforcement, responded to Reyes’ charge with derision. “I guess there’s no reason why the Mexicans wouldn’t use Wal-Mart employees either for their highly trained marketing skills.”

But other officials acknowledge that in a world of fast money, anyone, including those in the U.S. veteran community, is prone to temptation, particularly when they potentially could sell their high-tech expertise for as much as half a million dollars a year.

“Drugs cut through every segment of society,” said one federal drug enforcement source here. “Every drug dealer is a mercenary in his own right, so of course they’re hiring” U.S. veterans.

Reyes declined to reveal any names or specific cases where ex-military officials might now be involved in helping the Mexican drug franchises. He said U.S. intelligence and other ongoing operations could be jeopardized were he to do so.

“We have arrested military people involved in drug smuggling,” he said. “They’re often individual or anecdotal cases. And we are also getting intelligence that includes former soldiers from throughout the world who are being hired by the Mexicans.”

As an example, he mentioned a case in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley several years ago in which members of the Texas National Guard were apprehended for helping to smuggle marijuana.

“We’re talking about ex-soldiers with skills in weapons and skills in camouflage and skills in electronic eavesdropping,” he said.

Reyes said that along the Texas border with Mexico, U.S. agents have found that “individuals with military training” have been used to scout illegal crossing areas and jam U.S. electronic sensors. In addition, he said, U.S. agents have had their police radio traffic intercepted.

In other cases, he said, former soldiers have been hired for their expertise with explosives and their understanding of how to translate secret U.S. police communiques. Some veterans are highly trained in wiretapping, while others might be keen on interrogation techniques for learning U.S. law enforcement secrets.

“We utilize sensors,” Reyes said. “We utilize electronic platforms to monitor the border. And we do know that there have been instances where our electronic sensors were jammed. And there are a wide variety of experienced military individuals that have this kind of expertise. . . . All of this creates a problem for us.”

Reyes said he has known of this problem since he was chief of the Border Patrol in South Texas beginning in the mid-1980s. But now, with Texas soon to see a tripling in the number of federal agents working the border, he thought it important to raise the issue publicly from his forum as a freshman in Congress.

As a member of the House National Security Committee, he suggested that Congress may have to look for new ways to beat the Mexican drug lords if they continue to use former U.S. military officials. “Congress may have to act,” he said.

Peter Lupsha, a retired political science professor at the University of New Mexico who has written extensively about Mexico’s drug organizations, agrees that illegal traffickers have been hiring former U.S. military personnel.

He and others noted that the close proximity of the sprawling Ft. Bliss army post to the Texas-Mexico border near El Paso would provide a lucrative pool for Mexican drug operatives to recruit American expertise. Lupsha added that he knew of a case in recent years in which a former Air Force officer sold his electronic skills to the Mexicans and that, even when the U.S. government learned of his involvement, he was never prosecuted.

In an interview with the El Paso Times, Lupsha said some former soldiers simply cannot resist the chance to turn their expertise into a handsome profit. “The lure of that kind of money, which is paid in cash, is very, very great.”

But Stephens, the spokesman for the Pentagon’s joint military-law enforcement anti-drug effort, said such charges only hurt the U.S. war on drugs by casting aspersions on the military’s role in the effort.

“We have no information about these allegations,” he said. “But we would welcome any statement or facts or any information that the congressman might want to put forward.”

Don Maple, a deputy director in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, also was skeptical that a noticeable number of ex-soldiers have slipped over to the other side, but he conceded it could be true.

“We don’t have any information to confirm this, but of course it’s possible,” he said. “There are plenty of former military people, and it’s possible some of them have succumbed to the high pay that the drug gangs offer. It’s possible, and we can’t rule it out.”