Reed Irvine - Editor
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On September 25, CNN aired a heavily-promoted special report on narcotics trafficking featuring two of its star reporters---Peter Arnett of Operation Desert Storm fame and Brian Barger, a former AP reporter who tried to link the Contras to drug smuggling in the 1980s. In "Operation Green Ice," Arnett and Barger focused on international efforts to strike at drug lords through "sting" operations targeting money laundering.
In his introduction, Arnett said that the operation stretched "from surfside LaJolla, California, to the shadow of the Vatican...from Bogota to Big Ben." CNN cameras showed drug agents at work in the skies of the Colombian jungles, in Rome, in San Diego, and elsewhere. But in tracing the flow of drugs and drug money into the U.S., CNN turned a blind eye to the country which is now the biggest transshipper of cocaine and one of the largest producers of heroin and marijuana destined for the U.S. It missed the more explosive story of how Mexico is rapidly being turned into a "narco-democracy" rivaling Colombia.
This charge comes from a brave Mexican named Eduardo Valle Espinosa, formerly the personal assistant to Mexico's Attorney General, Jorge Capizo McGregor. Valle is a former newsman and legislator who fled to the U.S. to save his life. He said in sworn testimony in Washington, D.C. on August 25 that the Mexican drag mafia directed the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio, presidential candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) last March 23. Colosio foes within the PRI were also involved, Valle stated.
On September 28, three days after the CNN broadcast, the power of the Mexican drug lords was shown again when the PRI secretary general, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, was shot dead in downtown Mexico City. The victim's brother, Mario Ruiz Massieu, heads government anti-drug efforts. His slaying by a hired gunman has been linked to Juan Garcia Abrego, the Mexican drug lord who controls one the two major routes for the shipment of drugs from Mexico to the U.S.-- up Mexico's east coast along the Gulf of Mexico, Valle said that drug lords have so penetrated the Mexican political and business establishments that the country has become a "narco- democracy." If his evidence is true, Mexico could become even more troublesome to the United States than Colombia, or even such crisis-ridden countries as Bosnia, Cuba and Haiti. Valle testified for eight hours at the Mexican Consulate in Washington before two prosecutors from the Mexican Attorney General's office and four members of the Mexican Congress who are investigating the Colosio murder.
-------------------- Daniel James, who played a key role in arranging Jimmy I Carter's mission to Haiti, is a specialist on Mexico and the Caribbean. ---------------
Valle was interviewed live on AIM's TV show, "The Other Side of the Story," on August 31, the first time any U.S. media have publicized his testimony. The Wall Street Journal picked up the story on September 14 but, with the exception of the Los Angeles Times, the rest of our establishment media have ignored it.
I arranged for Valle's appearance on "The Other Side of The Story" and participated in the program. Valle subsequently gave me further details of his testimony in two long interviews. It was during his investigation of the drug mafia for the Attorney General, he said, that he learned that it had designs on Colosio. The mafia first tried to insinuate itself into the candidate's inner circle, and the brother of Mexico's No. I drug lord, Juan Garcia Abrego, obtained an invitation to attend a campaign dinner in his honor. But Valle immediately alerted Colosio and he was disinvited.
Valle said he discovered that at least three of Garcia Abrego's henchmen had penetrated Colosio's security force. He sought to warn Colosio, an old friend, who agreed to meet him in Hermosillo, Sonora, the presidential candidate's home state bordering Arizona, on March 25. He was too late--- Colosio was gunned down two days earlier in Tijuana.
A year earlier, when he was the Attorney General's personal assistant, Eduardo Valle had recommended a "decided and intelligent policy of relevant arrests" of narcotics traffickers. He listed 11 drug lords to be apprehended, headed by the same Juan Garcia Abrego whose men would later infiltrate Colosio's entourage. But nothing was done. Garcia Abrego and the other 10 remain at large to this day. Disgusted, Valle resigned on May 1, after a new Attorney General succeeded Carpizo. Complaining that pervasive official corruption was blocking his investigation of the drug mafia, he fled to the U.S. in fear of his life.
In his testimony at the Mexican Consulate, Valle charged that Juan Garcia Abrego and his so-called Gulf cartel, whose territory embraces about a dozen Mexican states along the Gulf of Mexico from the Texas border south to Chiapas, enjoy the protection of federal authorities. These officials, he charged, "were involved in the planning and execution of the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio." Documents he produced "show the protection, complicity or connivance of the federal authorities with the Gulf cartel that, together with Amado Carrillo Fuentes [who runs the rival Pacific cartel], are the operative arms of the Call cartel," Colombia's dominant drug ring. Among them was a 37-page list he showed me of names, phone numbers, and frequency of calls to high Mexican officials made by Gulf cartel members which were intercepted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Valle testified further that Garcia Abrego has taken control of about 50 airports in the border state of Tamaulipas since last year, and that the Secretary of Communications and Transportation, Emilio Gamboa Patron, had to know of it since his office---like our Federal Aviation Administration--- certifies all airports which may operate legally. The total number of airports in Tamaulipas has grown from 36 in 1974 to 221 now---- a significant rise not commensurate with the increase in legal commerce. Airports in the neighboring border states of Nuevo Leon and Coahuila have experienced an equally suspicious growth. Valle demanded that the former transportation undersecretary, Raul Zorrilla Cossio, who was with Colosio in Tijuana when he was killed, be investigated.
The cover for Garcia Abrego's control of the airports was said to be a businessman identified by Valle as the owner of many of Mexico's important airports and almost all those in Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Valle says he obtained this information from the Center for Drug-Control Planning (CENDRO), an agency of Mexico's National Institute to Combat Drugs; both work closely with U.S. law-enforcement agencies.
Valle charged that Transportation Secretary Gamboa and his executive officer, Arturo Morales Portas, frequently received a key figure in the Gulf cartel, Marcela Rosaura Bodenstedt Perlick, whose name appears often on the DEA list in Valle's possession. Marcela is a former federal police officer and former television star. She is the wife of Marcelino Guerrero who, Valle says, launders drug money. He has investments in the popular resort of Cancun, jointly with the son of Agriculture Secretary Carlos Hank Gonzalez, recognized leader of the PRI's hardliners and one of Mexico's wealthiest men. Transportation Secretary Gamboa denies that he has done anything wrong and remains in his post. So does his executive officer, Morales Portas. Former Undersecretary Zorrilla Cossio has yet to be investigated.
Valle claims to have evidence that drug figures have penetrated as high as the Mexican presidency. He reports that one of them, Oscar Malherve, whose name appears frequently on the DEA's list of intercepts, "called and received calls from three telephones in the presidency of Mexico, one of them from General Arturo Salgado Cordero, coordinator of presidential trips. Still another phone number accessible to Malherve was that of President Carlos Salinas's then chief of staff, Jose Maria Cordoba Montoya, regarded as the President's eminence gris and currently a Washington resident. Valle alleges that Malherve is the person who "connects the Call cartel in Colombia with the Gulf cartel in Mexico," and is one of Garcia Abrego's "most important" operators.
How has President Salinas, who leaves office on December 1, reacted to these allegations? Valle told me that he had written three letters to Salinas describing the phone calls to and from Malherve to Salinas appointees, as well as the visits of Marcela Bodenstedt to his Transportation Secretary and executive officer. Salinas responded by sending his new chief of staff, Santiago Onate, to meet with Valle in Washington on August 8. The men knew each other, having served together in the Chamber of Deputies, Mexico's lower house, from 1985 to 1988.
The result was that Salinas ordered the special prosecutor in the Coiosio case, Olga Islas Gonzalez Mariscal, "to investigate every lead."
The eleven drug lords whose arrests Valle sought control the narcotics racket in Mexico, he told me. U.S. law enforcement agencies agree with his assessment. Two of the drug kingpins, Garcia Abrego and Carrillo Fuentes, share the Colombian cocaine franchise but are fighting each other for complete control. The prize is Ciudad Juarez, opposite El Paso, Texas, which is the principal cocaine outlet to the U.S.
Two other major drug gangs are run by the Arrellano Felix brothers and Joaquin Guzman Loera. The gangs are in violent competition for control of "black heroin," which is indigenous to Mexico (but is also grown in next-door Guatemala). The brothers are the nephews of Miguel Angel Felix Guajardo, who is serving a life sentence for conspiring to kidnap, torture, and murder Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena Salazar in 1985 near Guadalajara, Mexico's second city and the country's drug capital.
In 1993, another Guadalajara murder was especially ominous. Gunmen armed with AK-47s walked up to the limousine of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo as he arrived at the airport to greet the Papal Nuncio and opened fire. The Cardinal and his driver perished. Drug lord Guzman Loera, who owned a similar auto, had arrived only moments before, and investigators concluded that he was the intended victim. An Aeromexico flight to Tijuana sat on the tarmac, its pilots ordered not to leave until "certain persons" were aboard. These proved to be the brothers Javier and Benjamin Arrellano Felix. Although the murders happened in broad daylight, in view of security guards, police and soldiers, none dared intervene.
Valle estimates that Garcia Ablego controls 60 to 70 percent of the cocaine entering the U.S., and Carillo Fuentes controls the rest. Garcia Abrego moves between 150 to 200 tons of cocaine across the border annually. Valued at $16 million a ton wholesale, he grosses between $2.4 and $3.2 billion per year. Valle believes that he is worth at least $10 billion and has invested $6 billion in legitimate U.S. businesses and properties.
U.S. law enforcement agents, though doubting that Garcia Abrego is worth $10 billion, acknowledge that his financial resources are "substantial." They also know that he and other narcos own property in the U.S. And they point out that they have long targeted Garcia Abrego as Mexico's top drug lord.
Mexico is "the principal transit route for cocaine entering the U.S.," according to the State Department's "International Narcotics Control Strategy Report" released in April. The report reveals that "at least 50 percent of the cocaine entering the U.S. is believed to be transshipped through Mexico." It notes further that Mexico is also "a major source country for marijuana and heroin," and "a significant source of 'designer drugs' and illicit steroids consumed in the U.S."
Although the Mexican authorities seized 46 metric tons of cocaine, 50 kilograms of heroin, and 495 metric tons of marijuana in 1993, "the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico to the U.S. remains undiminished," the State Department added.
Much of the cocaine shipped from Colombia to Mexico goes through Guatemala, and costs about $4,500 per kilogram (2.2 lbs.). It is then transshipped by air to Reynosa, Tamaulipas, where the Gulf cartel has available at least 50 airports; at that point, it is worth between $8,000 and $9,000 per kilo. By the time it reaches Houston, its value nearly doubles again, to around $16,000.
Cocaine enters the U.S. from Mexico mainly in tanker trucks, since they can carry huge payloads. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the first inspection paint is no longer at the border itself but about 25 miles to the north. This means that cocaine shipments can cross into the United States without detection and unload freely at designated drops any- where within the 25-mile zone. From there, they head for American cities across the country with relatively little risk of apprehension.
Their prime destination is Houston, which Valle says "is now the drug capital of the United States." (U.S. law-enforcement officials acknowledge that it has become a major source of cocaine but counter that Los Angeles, New York, and Miami may be bigger or on a par with it.)
Most important, American agencies believe that narco penetration of the Mexican political establishment is "serious." Though they do not go so far as to call Mexico a "narco-democracy," they note that several years ago Washington warned of the danger of the "Colombianization" of Mexico.
Valle is not the first person to draw attention to Mexico's drug importance. In June 1990, an article on "The Mexican Narco- political System" appeared in the newsletter of the Mexico-United States Institute [which I edited] which illustrated the workings of the system. Written by a prominent Mexican intellectual and newspaper columnist, Javier Livas, it began:
"A 'narco-political' system exists in Mexico which is nothing short of diabolic. It consists of the integration of the basic narco-trafficking organization with the endemic governmental corruption that nurtures it and is in turn nurtured by it. Together, police and narcos have built a system which is largely resistant to social pressure and to 'good police,' hence is hard to eradicate. Society is left virtually defenseless before the total corruption of public officials."
El Paso newsman Terence E. Poppa previously published a book, Druglord, which described how the "narco-political system" worked in the Mexican border town of Ojinaga. It revolved around a local drug lord, Pablo Acosta, who prospered thanks to the protection of the police but was finally killed by them. Poppa explained that authorities selected which dealers had prize territories and protected them as long as they made payments and did not attract unfavorable publicity; erring lords were killed or arrested, and replacements installed. Poppa wrote, "It was a system that enabled some authorities to keep a lid on drugs and profit handsomely from it at the same time."
But the Mexican government failed to react to the growing danger of the emerging "narco-political system" detected by Livas and Poppa. Since then, the Call cartel has made Mexico its "principal transshipment route" and taken over airstrips, roads, plus "vast territories"--in the words of a U.S. law-enforcement agent-- mainly in such border states as Chihuahua and Sonora. "The export of marijuana in those areas has expanded the power of the narcos," he adds, "and with it the level of violence."
Was the Guadalajara massacre an indication of how far the drug lords would go to eliminate their enemies? Does it lend credence to Eduardo Valle's charge that they killed Luis Donaldo Colosio, perhaps in collusion with his foes within the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party? Valle says that the drug mafia feared that Colosio, then Mexico's likely next
President, would move heaven and earth to destroy it. The "dinosaurs"--the PRI's old guard--likewise feared Colosio's pledge to separate the party from the state, its source of power for 65 years, thus ending the source of their own power and wealth.
U.S. law-enforcement sources question, however, that the Mexican drug lords and/or PRI "dinosaurs" killed Colosio. They say that no information has been uncovered by any U.S. agency, including the FBI and the DEA, to support Valle' s contention. On the other hand, they do not discount it. They subscribe, at least for the moment, to the conclusion reached by Mexican investigators that Colosio was killed by a lone gunman named Mario Aburto acting on his own account, not by any organized group. Aburto has confessed to the murder, and admitted that he acted for political reasons--to get rid of the PRI--but added that he does not belong to any political opposition group. That is the official version in the absence of airtight evidence to the contrary.
Such evidence, unfortunately, may never be produced. Colosio' s murder is already being compared to that of John F. Kennedy. There are some striking similarities-- Colosio, like Kennedy, was young, charismatic, popular, well-educated, and a politician to the core. He had been a Senator and was about to become President. Again like Kennedy, Colosio was shot down in broad daylight. And, too, he was surrounded at the time by friends, well-wishers, security guards, police, and (in Colosio's case) even soldiers. Unlike Lee Harvey Oswald, however, Aburto confessed. The motive for Colosio's assassination, as for Kennedy's, remains a mystery.
All this raises the question of Valle's credibility. Who is Eduardo Valle Espinosa?
The Attorney General who hired Valle to investigate the drug mafia was Jorge Carpizo McGregor who, as president of the Autonomous University of Mexico, knew Valle as a student. Valle was already known by his nickname, "El Buho"--"The Owl"- because he wears big horn-rimmed glasses and perhaps also because of his knowing look when discussing the symbiotic relationship between the narcos and many Mexican politicians.
Carpizo not only knew Valle well but trusted him. Even after Valle resigned his post, Carpizo called him an "honest and brave" man. This characterization carries much weight in Mexico because Carpizo has proved to be one of its most respected public servants in three successive presidential posts of increasing sensitivity: director of Mexico's Human Rights Commission, Attorney General, and now Secretary of Government. He chairs the Federal Electoral Institute that supervised Mexico's August 21 presidential vote, considered the cleanest in recent history.
U.S. law-enforcement agents agree that Valle is honest and conscientious, but say that he lacks law-enforcement experience and hence is prone to make risky calls and play loose with intelligence. Though admittedly not a professional officer, as a long-time journalist and trained in economics, Valle, 47, learned about law-enforcement procedures while investigating stories for such publications as Zeta, a muckraking Tijuana weekly, and El Financiero, a Mexico City daily. His interest in drug trafficking dates back to the murder of a fellow journalist in Chiapas, allegedly by narcos.
Valle was a Communist in his student days and played a leading role in the bloody 1968 confrontation between the left and the government. He still considers himself "a man of the left," but clearly has mellowed. In 1985, he won election to the Chamber of Deputies for a three-year term, after which be returned to journal- ism (in Mexico, legislators cannot be re-elected until another term has passed). Valle sees the battle against drugs as part of the "struggle for democracy," and for years besieged the Attorney General's office with memos demanding it seriously investigate the narcos. In January 1993, he got the chance to put his philosophy into practice when Carpizo named him his personal assistant.
Valle is faulted for publicizing sensitive information on the drug lords that U.S. law-enforcement agencies provided the Mexican Attorney General which should have been kept secret. Critics charge him with supplying the DEA's list of intercepts and other inside information to Mexico's top-rated investigative newsweekly, Proceso, which may have damaged important sources. Proceso was first to publish Valle's allegations against the drug mafia, via a long interview with managing editor Carlos Marin. The Proceso article had an explosive impact in Mexico. Oddly, no U.S. correspondent in Mexico has followed the story.
Yet even his critics in law-enforcement agencies acknowledge that on key points Valle is right. Above all, Eduardo Valle has turned the spotlight of publicity on the narcotics racket in Mexico and its narco-political system, whose grave implications for the United States now become palpable. Though the unauthorized release of intelligence on the narcotics racket cannot be condoned as a general practice, there is little doubt that the daily struggle against the drug traffic on our streets can be strengthened if the media will publicize this information. It may prod the government and law- enforcement agencies in all jurisdictions to take some actions to stop the flow of drugs. If so, Valle has rendered a public service which merits the highest award.
Strangely, the U.S. media seem to have abdicated the basic function of spreading pertinent information on the drug mafia and its threat to society at its highest, as well as lowest, levels. Instead, they content themselves with wringing their hands at the devastation drugs have caused our youth.
Send the enclosed card or your own card or letter to Ed Turner, CNN, suggesting they make up for overlooking Mexico's role in drug trafficking by interviewing Eduardo Valle and Daniel James.
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NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF By Reed Irvine
BEFORE HE GOT INVOLVED IN SETTING UP JIMMY CARTER'S MISSION TO HAITI, DANIEL James, whom we rely upon for information and guidance on all matters south of the border, had written an eye-opening report on the growing influence of drug lords in Mexico and Mexico's enormous and generally overlooked role in the drug trade. His article disclosed testimony ignored by the establishment media that connected the murder of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio to the drug lords. Before we could run this article, the murder of the general secretary of Mexico's ruling party, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, made headlines here. This time, a link to one of the powerful drug lords was immediately reported by the media. I know Mexico is not as intriguing as O. J., but it is a lot more important, and we present this report as a wake-up call for our media, beginning, as you will see, with CNN.
REPORTERS ARE SITTING ON AN EXPLOSIVE STORY THAT COULD END THE POLITICAL career of Ted Kennedy in November. In December 1992 we told you how the media were suppressing damaging revelations about Kennedy made by Richard Burke in his book The Senator. Burke, a top aide to the Senator for 10 years, told how Kennedy had outrageously exploited and sexually harassed women, including members of his staff, plying them with cocaine, a drug he himself frequently used. We supplied a postcard addressed to the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee urging an investigation of Burke's charges. We have just learned that the Ethics Committee finally opened an investigation early this year and subpoenaed Burke to testify. He tells us that he played tapes of several women telling how Ted Kennedy introduced them to cocaine at wild parties at his home in McLean, Virginia.
BURKE TELLS US THAT A REPORTER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST AND ONE FOR THE Boston Herald know about his testimony. If they have written anything about it, it hasn't been published. He says that another reporter showed him raw DEA reports about people who had said they had seen Ted Kennedy using drugs. He said the Ethics Committee has copies of these reports. The reporter, who had been given copies by a retired DEA agent, told Burke that he had not written a story because he feared that it might damage his career. He told Burke that he lacked his courage.
BURKE WAS TOLD BY SENATE STAFFERS THAT THE ETHICS COMMITEE HAD OPENED the investigation because it had received affidavits from women claiming they had been sexually harassed by Kennedy. According to the committee's rules, such a complaint from the aggrieved party is required before it can act. The wall of silence that has protected Kennedy for many years has finally been breached, but he is still being protected by friends and cowards in the media. The Ethics Committee, under heavy pressure from Kennedy and other Democrats, has put the investigation on hold until after the November elections. It has been impossible to get any comment at all from the members of the committee or its staff. But Richard Burke is willing to talk about the testimony he gave over a two-day period. He and his publisher, St. Martin's Press, supplied the committee with tapes, letters, photos and other corroborating evidence to support his testimony.
KENNEDY IS IN THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE TO RETAIN HIS SENATE SEAT. BURKE SAYS HE wrote The Senator so that Massachusetts voters would know of the conduct he observed first-hand as a key aide to Kennedy, but even the Massachusetts media have been silent about Burke's testimony before the Senate Ethics Committee. The media reveled in Anita Hill's undocumented charges against Clarence Thomas, the Washington Post's revelations about Sen. Packwood's sexual misbehavior and Paula Coughlin's allegations of abuse at the Tailhook convention. They are as silent about Burke's charges against Kennedy as they were about Paula Jones's charges against Bill Clinton. Liberalism seems to immunize politicians who sexually harass their employees and abuse drugs against media exposure.
JOE GOULDEN AND I DISCUSSED THIS ON "THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY" ON OCT. 5, another first for this news-breaking program. We have also discussed it on our nationally syndicated radio program, "Media Monitor," and in our syndicated column. It has also been reported by The Washington Inquirer, the little weekly that reports big stories the establishment media love to ignore.
AIM'S 25TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION DREW RAVE REVIEWS. I WANT TO THANK everyone who helped make this possible, including those who couldn't attend but who helped us cover the costs. The banquet has been aired both on C-SPAN and on our TV show, where we edited it down to 40 minutes, including one of the surprise highlights, impressionist Paul Shanklin, whose musical impersonations of President Clinton you may have heard on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Great American Awards were given to Richard M. Scaife, Wilson C. Lucom, Mrs. Gabrielle Pendleton, Walter J. Schloss and Fred Schwarz, honoring them for the support they have given to AIM and other causes based on the belief that ideas have consequences. Barrier Buster Awards were given to Emanuel McLittle, Barry Farber, Pat Buchanan, Paul Weyrich and Human Events in recognition of their efforts to overcome the barriers erected by the establishment media to the dissemination of conservative information and ideas. We plan to devote an issue of the AIM Report to the conference, but you can hear everything on audio tapes. See below.
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EARLIER THIS YEAR THE AIM BOARD APPROVED AN INCREASE IN OUR ANNUAL DUES TO $27.95 for those who get the AIM Report by 3rd class mail and to $36.95 for those who are on the first class list. This went into effect in April. I should have called attention to this in the Notes at that time, but I overlooked it, and I apologize for that. The increase was necessitated by rising costs.
AUDIO CASSETTES OF OUR 25th ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE ARE AVAILABLE FROM Wells Walker & Co., Inc.