Pubdate: Sun, 12 Apr 2009
Source: Contra Costa Times (CA)
Copyright: 2009 Knight Ridder
Contact:  http://www.contracostatimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/96
Author: John Pomfret

MEXICO AND DRUGS: A CONVERSATION WITH ARIZONA'S ATTORNEY GENERAL

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard has made waves for employing 
controversial techniques to fight money laundering and for suggesting 
that the United States might need to rethink its drug laws. Goddard 
spoke with The Washington Post Outlook section's John Pomfret about 
Mexico, marijuana and an operation known as Tumbleweed.

Here are some excerpts:

Q. Is Mexico a failed state?

A. No. Not even close. The thing that I find appalling about the 
failed-state analysis is that the instability and the violence is 
precisely because the Calderon administration made the strategic 
decision to take on the cartels and to re-establish national 
sovereignty and the rule of law. And we're criticizing them for it.

Q. Is Mexico's violence going to spread north?

A. Yes. I hate to say that, but I don't think there's anything about 
our current response that keeps it from coming north.

Talking to one of the border sheriffs recently, I asked: How long do 
you think it will be before there's a violent episode in your county? 
And his response was, I think it'll happen this year. It's going to 
be a gunbattle between two criminal organizations and one of my 
rookies is going to get caught in the crossfire.

Q. Most Americans think that drug smugglers make their big profits 
off cocaine, but you say otherwise.

A. Marijuana is the horse. Marijuana is the profit center for the 
cartels. We think approximately 65 percent of the total revenue that 
the cartels get from drug smuggling is based on marijuana. You could 
say indirectly that much of the carnage in Mexico is financed because 
of profits from marijuana.

Q. Should marijuana be legal?

A. I personally don't think so. But I believe that we need to put all 
of the various options on the table. Legalization is one of those 
options. Would it reduce the profits of the cartels? Would it 
increase the risk to the population of the United States?

I don't have the ability to answer those questions. It might reduce 
the profits, but on the other hand, I don't believe I've ever heard 
an adequate answer for what is an acceptable amount of marijuana in a 
school bus driver's bloodstream.

Q. What about preventing people from taking drugs?

A. We do a lousy job. I think there was so much adverse reaction to 
the Reefer Madness campaigns and some of Nancy Reagan's histrionics 
that there's a perception that prevention doesn't work. I don't 
happen to believe that. Here in Arizona, the Arizona Meth Project has 
actually cut the use by teenagers of methamphetamine in half in just 
two years. The Obama administration wants to cut the guns going to 
Mexico. But in many states, including Arizona, if you buy multiple 
handguns you have to fill out a form, but you can buy an infinite 
number of AK-47s without filling out a form.

It does seem logical that if you could buy a two-shot Derringer, and 
if you bought more than one of them, you'd have to fill out a 
separate multiple-weapons form, which puts ATF on notice that you 
bought multiple Derringers. But if you're buying multiple AK-47s you 
don't have to fill out a similar multiple-weapons form.

Q. So you favor closing that loophole?

A. Oh, absolutely.

Q. Aren't you afraid of the NRA?

A. I'm not afraid of them. I'm respectful of them.

Q. There have been problems on Arizona's border for decades. How does 
today compare with the times of Pancho Villa and General Pershing?

A. In 1916, Pancho Villa came across the border. It was a time of 
extraordinary unrest in Mexico. General Pershing sent 10,000 regular 
army troops to catch Villa. They spent a very frustrating year 
because the mountain areas of northern Mexico and southern Arizona 
are some of the most treacherous in the world.

Today we have an extraordinary amount of national treasure that's 
spent on surveillance and customs enforcement and just about every 
technique you can think of, and they jump over it, they tunnel under 
it, they use deceptive tactics to divert the Border Patrol and then 
come across in other locations. And they have been able to stay at 
least a half a step ahead of the authorities to the point that the 
smuggling that we're watching most carefully -- the drugs and human 
beings -- has continued unabated.

Q. Tell me about a case.

A. Let me use Tumbleweed as an example. In five years we believe they 
took over 2 million pounds of pot into this country. This required 
literally truckloads on a regular basis to come across the border. 
You can't do that at any of the border entry points.

They had hydraulic bridges and they could hop the fence and then, 
using sophisticated night-vision devices, they could disappear into 
the canyons. They used spotters who sometimes were in the desert for 
two and three weeks at a time using carefully cached water and food 
and solar-powered transmitters to make sure that they had real-time 
information as to where the Border Patrol was. The only reason we 
found them was that we had even better technology with high-flying 
aircraft that the Border Patrol brought down from the Canadian border.

Q. Why isn't there a coordinated federal response to the border problems?

A. Now you're beyond my pay grade. But perhaps the best example I can 
give is my own testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where 
I was there talking about money-laundering, the guy next to me was 
talking about gun-smuggling, the guy next to him was talking about 
drug-smuggling, and the guy next to him was from ICE and was talking 
about people-smuggling. We're the victims of the way law enforcement 
in the United States has segmented its response to criminality.

Q. What's an ingenious way that criminals move money across borders?

A. The fact that somebody can have a million dollars in a 
stored-value card, and that people on the border have no idea that 
that's what it is, is atrocious.

Q. You mean like gift certificates?

A. I can walk across the border with a cell phone and what looks like 
a credit card and be moving literally tons of cash.

Q. The cases your office has worked seem like they jump out of a 
Louis L'amour novel. There's Operation Fly-By-Night, River Walker, 
Tumbleweed, En Fuego. Who comes up with the names?

A. You're touching on a sore subject. This is mostly the 
investigators themselves who sit around with their coffee pots, 
saying, "What are we going to call this one?" I think the names are 
as inspired as any part of this whole operation.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom