WASHINGTON - Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington's expanding role in Mexico's fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials. The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are. [continues 1408 words]
WASHINGTON - The United States is expanding its role in Mexico's bloody fight against drug trafficking organizations, sending new C.I.A. operatives and retired military personnel to the country and considering plans to deploy private security contractors in hopes of turning around a multibillion-dollar effort that so far has shown few results. In recent weeks, small numbers of C.I.A. operatives and American civilian military employees have been posted at a Mexican military base, where, for the first time, security officials from both countries work side by side in collecting information about drug cartels and helping plan operations. Officials are also looking into embedding a team of American contractors inside a specially vetted Mexican counternarcotics police unit. [continues 1522 words]
WASHINGTON The United States is expanding its role in Mexico's bloody fight against drug trafficking organizations, sending new CIA operatives and retired military personnel to the country, and considering plans to deploy private security contractors in hopes of turning around a multibillion-dollar effort that so far has shown few results. In recent weeks, small numbers of CIA operatives and U.S. civilian military employees have been posted at a Mexican military base, where, for the first time, security officials from both countries are working side by side in collecting information about drug cartels and helping plan operations. Officials are also looking into embedding a team of U.S. contractors inside a specially vetted Mexican counternarcotics police unit. [continues 909 words]
WASHINGTON - Stepping up its involvement in Mexico's drug war, the Obama administration has begun sending drones deep into Mexican territory to gather intelligence that helps locate major traffickers and follow their networks, according to American and Mexican officials. The Pentagon began flying high-altitude, unarmed drones over Mexican skies last month, American military officials said, in hopes of collecting information to turn over to Mexican law enforcement agencies. Other administration officials said a Homeland Security drone helped Mexican authorities find several suspects linked to the Feb. 15 killing of Jaime Zapata, a United States Immigration and Customs EnforcementImmigration agent. [continues 1204 words]
WASHINGTON - The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables. In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of drug agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be hard to tell the politicians from the traffickers, and where drug rings are themselves mini-states whose wealth and violence permit them to run roughshod over struggling governments. [continues 1926 words]
WASHINGTON - American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups, according to court records and interviews. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai. The October 2001 warning was dismissed, the authorities said, as the ire of a jilted girlfriend and for lack of proof. Less than a month later, those concerns did not come up when a federal court in New York granted Mr. Headley an early release from probation so that he could be sent to work for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Pakistan. It is unclear what Mr. Headley was supposed to do in Pakistan for the Americans. [continues 1558 words]
GUADALAJARA, Mexico -- President Barack Obama began a summit meeting here Sunday night with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts that touched on a broad range of issues including climate change, the economic crisis, the swine flu pandemic and the battle against illegal drugs. The annual meeting was started four years ago as a way for the neighboring countries to build on ties established by the North American Free Trade Agreement. As much as they bring the countries together, the meetings have also served to highlight deep differences, particularly on trade and immigration. [continues 676 words]
MEXICO CITY - At the end of two days of meetings with Mexican officials, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that cooperation between the United States and Mexico was stronger and "fundamentally different than that which existed in the past." In an interview on Friday before meeting with President Felipe Calderon of Mexico, Mr. Holder and his Mexican counterpart, Eduardo Medina-Mora, said the stakes of their new efforts to stem the drug violence wreaking havoc in Mexico were high for both countries. Both men dismissed assertions in a Pentagon report in December that the crisis had pushed Mexico to the verge of becoming a failed state. [continues 552 words]
LAREDO, Tex. -- The five burly, sweat-soaked customs agents were in unfamiliar territory. They had come from frigid ports in Baltimore and Boston to work in the sweltering heat of the Southwestern border. But the biggest change was that they were looking at what was leaving the country, rather than what was coming in. "You know, early this week I met with President Obama, and this morning I met with President Calderon of Mexico," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told them during a tour last week. "And you guys are at the cutting edge of something new we're trying to do to make the border safer." [continues 961 words]
CUERNAVACA, Mexico -- The Obama administration's chief law enforcement officials traveled here on Thursday to meet with their Mexican counterparts and begin formalizing plans to join forces against the drug cartels that have unleashed a devastating wave of violence that threatens to spill over Mexico's northern border. The details of the agreements were not finished, the officials said, and they are expected to be announced when President Obama visits Mexico later this month. But the officials said they were looking at ways to improve cooperation in investigating and prosecuting gun smugglers, to upgrade shared fingerprint databases and to increase inspections of vehicles coming into Mexico. [continues 725 words]
Coast Guard Conducts Rare Joint Exercises With Navies ABOARD USS GENTIAN -- The Nicaraguan navy frigate knew nothing about the suspicious fishing boat speeding north along the Caribbean Coast except its menacing name: Chupacabras. The frigate intercepted the boat, named for a mythical blood-sucking creature, and sent a search team on board, guns drawn. Nicaraguan sailors climbed slowly toward the bridge. Then a gunman sneaked up from behind. Good thing for the sailors, this was only a test. "Never leave your back uncovered," said the New York-born instructor, Michael Hernandez. "That's the best way to get killed." [continues 550 words]
ABOARD U.S.S. GENTIAN, off Guatemala - The Nicaraguan Navy frigate knew nothing about the suspicious fishing boat speeding north along the Caribbean Coast except its menacing name: Chupacabras. The frigate intercepted the boat, named for a mythical blood-sucking creature, and sent a search team on board, guns drawn. Nicaraguan sailors climbed slowly toward the bridge. Then a gunman sneaked up from behind. Good thing for the sailors, this was only a test. "Never leave your back uncovered," said the Brooklyn-born instructor, Michael Hernandez. "That's the best way to get killed." [continues 882 words]
With Older, Less Brutal Drug Lords Now in Jail, a Younger Rivalry Has Killed About 1,000 in 3 1/2 Years. Nuevo Laredo, Mexico - The lucrative drug trade on the Mexican border seemed up for grabs after Mexican authorities arrested the powerful leader of the Gulf Cartel nearly three years ago. The rival Sinaloa Cartel sent Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a young upstart known as La Barbie, to do the grabbing. The wave of killings that followed has turned into an all-out drug war that has spread to almost every corner of Mexico, leaving about 1,000 people dead since March 2003 and bringing harsh criticisms from Washington about the failure of President Vicente Fox's government to end it. [continues 453 words]
Gunfights Abound in Nuevo Laredo The lucrative drug trade on the Mexican border seemed up for grabs after Mexican authorities arrested Osiel Cardenas, the powerful leader of the Gulf Cartel, nearly three years ago. The rival Sinaloa Cartel sent Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a young upstart known as La Barbie, to do the grabbing. The wave of killings that followed has turned into an all-out drug war that has spread to almost every corner of Mexico, leaving about 1,000 people dead since March 2003 and bringing harsh criticisms from Washington about the failure of President Vicente Fox's government to end it. [continues 418 words]
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - The lucrative drug trade on the Mexican border seemed up for grabs after Mexican authorities arrested the powerful leader of the Gulf Cartel nearly three years ago. The rival Sinaloa Cartel sent Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a young upstart known as La Barbie, to do the grabbing. The wave of killings that followed has turned into an all-out drug war that has spread to almost every corner of Mexico, leaving about 1,000 people dead since March 2003 and bringing harsh criticisms from Washington about the failure of President Vicente Fox's government to end it. [continues 1163 words]
MEXICO CITY - In an effort to fight harder against a growing domestic drug problem, President Vicente Fox announced Monday that the Constitution had been amended to allow local officials to investigate certain federal crimes, including drug trafficking. Currently all drug-related crimes, even low-level street deals, are considered federal offenses, and only federal agents are empowered to enforce laws against them. The authorities have long complained that there are not enough federal officers - about 20,000 - to stop the huge loads of drugs being shipped through this country to the United States, much less to stop the growth in small-time dealing on the streets. [continues 306 words]
MEXICO CITY - The Ministry of Defense reported this week that a feared organization of hit men that was started by corrupt officers of the Mexican military had forged an alliance with deserters from an elite Guatemalan military unit to help the Mexicans fight for control of drug-trafficking routes across the United States border. The ministry's report confirmed a warning in July by the United States Department of Homeland Security that said "unsubstantiated reports" had indicated that some Guatemalan military officers were training the Mexicans on a ranch just south of the border from McAllen, Tex. [continues 424 words]
MEXICO CITY - President Vicente Fox responded over the weekend to criticism from U.S. authorities about a recent surge in violence and illegal immigration along the border, saying that the United States shares responsibility for the problems and should work harder with Mexico to correct them. Fox said he rejected "forcefully" the statements by the Bush administration and governors of border states, contending they had unfairly depicted Mexico as a haven for organized crime, though his government has arrested more drug traffickers and dismantled more cartels than any of its predecessors. He also said Mexican immigrants had been portrayed unfairly as potential terrorists when they had in fact become a pillar of the U.S. economy. [continues 348 words]
Nuevo Laredo, Mexico OMAR PIMENTEL'S office seemed more like a secluded getaway than a police command post at the center of a drug war. Its walls were painted the blue-green color of the Caribbean Sea, and a mix of meditation music and New Age rock played on the stereo. There were no police scanners, no crime reports, no medals of honor, not a piece of clutter anywhere, except for a jar of Hershey's Kisses and a dopey-looking doll of a character from the children's movie "Monsters, Inc.," with its twiggy limbs and a frightened single eye. [continues 1163 words]
CANC=DAN, Mexico -- Mexican officials Thursday rebuked the United States for issuing a diplomatic alert about a wave of drug-related violence along the border in which a growing number of Americans have been kidnapped or killed. The State Department travel alert Wednesday said most Americans visit Mexico without mishap, but it warned of ``deteriorating security'' marked by a sharp increase in kidnappings and slayings that put Americans at greater risk. In a separate letter to Mexican officials, the U.S. ambassador, Tony Garza, expressed concern that state and local police on the Mexican side of the border had failed at ``coming to grips'' with the fighting among gangs struggling for control of the drug trade. And he wrote that violence could have a ``chilling effect on the cross-border exchange, tourism and commerce so vital to the region's prosperity.'' [continues 448 words]