Growth Industry

As programs and entitlements are cut, Oregon, like many other states, has seen an explosion in the number of homeless teens on its cities' streets in recent years. The state legislature's response to this very visible sign of poverty was to pass Measure 11, which went into effect April 1, 1995. This Draconian measure allows 15-yer-olds to be prosecuted as adults, and 16-year-olds to actually be placed in adult prisons. It also mandates very long sentences, even for first- timers, with no possibility for parole. The list of crimes that can be prosecuted under Measure 11 makes it appear to target only the most serious crimes against persons or property, but days after it went into effect a Portland youth was charged with kidnapping, for pushing an acquaintance out the front door of a friend's home and punching him in the nose. The sexual-abuse section of the statute says that a 15-year- old who touches the buttocks of a 12-year-old, even with consent, must be sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison, 7 1/2 years which could be served in an adult prison. Just imagine the 23-year-olds we'll get out of THAT deal! It's no coincidence that Measure 11 went into effect on April Fool's Day. The voters don't have a clue as to the nature of the monster they are building.
As a result of Measure 11, Oregon now needs ten new prisons. California is also in the middle of a prison-building spree after the passage of their "Three Strikes You're Out" law, under which the theft of a 50-cent slice of pizza can get you thirty years in that state's brutal corrections system. The object of this tough-on-crime philosophy is obviously not to reduce crime (in fact, it turns misguided youths and petty crooks into full blown sociopaths), but to build prisons.
The prison business is the fastest-growing industry in the country, and the reasons are purely economic ones. In a world economy where most of the manufacturing is done in Third World countries, millions of Americans have been left with no meaningful work. The "make-work" of the prison industry, although it is degrading and produces nothing of value, is often the only alternative for the downsized.
More people are employed in the prison industries than in any Fortune 500 company except General Motors. A large majority of prison guards are young men and women fresh out of the military. Ninety-five percent of these are recruited by the Federal Bureau of Prisons before they are discharged. The skills learned in the military services are considered desirable by the B.O.P, but few of these recruits have skills that would be marketable in the civilian workplace. The regimented by-the- book life of the prison system is a perfect environment for those whose first life experience after high school was military service.
Small, depressed rural communities are targeted for prison construction because the money that prisons bring with them outweighs the usual fears of having one in your backyard. Escapes are so rare as to be almost nonexistent, and the theory that undesirable relatives of the prisoners will move into the area has been proven less of a problem than anticipated. Many people are put to work immediately upon the approval of a new prison site. Draftsmen, architects, engineers, construction workers, and material suppliers all benefit from the prison boom. After construction is completed, literally thousands of people will become dependent on the prison for their livelihoods. The B.O.P. has a policy of hiring 60% of its total staff from the local communities. It is common for husbands and wives to work together at their local penal institution.
Not only do local businesses such as laundries and food suppliers share in this new-found wealth, but a new breed of entrepreneur has also emerged, offering mail-order gifts, quasi-legal services for prisoners, and transportation/lodging for visitors. Another advantage to a small community is the fact that prisoners can be counted as citizens in a local census. With the population increasing by one or two thousand souls overnight, government allocations for sewer, water treatment, and road maintenance also increase. This is a big selling point for small towns where the population may actually double with the building of a single prison.
The alarming thing about all of this economic well being, is that it induces a political shift to the right in the hearts and minds of those affected. What prison guard or support staff in his or her right mind would ever oppose a bill that would lock up more people for greater lengths of time? How could a business owner who depended on this prison-generated income vote in favor of programs designed to decrease recidivism? It's a simple matter of job security.

Prisons for Profit

The private sector has not been able to ignore the lure of big bucks in the prison business. Federal officials are now comfortable with allowing private companies to run federal prisons, because the industry has gained experience running state and local jails. Wackenhut Corrections and Corrections Corporation of America, the two industry leaders, make a profit by housing prisoners for the federal government. Both trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
Corrections Corporation, a 13-year-old company based in Nashville, Tennessee, employs many former government officials, including, as director of strategic planning, Michael Quinlan, who directed the B.O.P. during the Bush administration. Wackenhut, of Coral Gables, Florida, has as its director, Norman A. Carlson, who preceded Mr. Quinlan as director of the B.O.P. Benjamin R. Civiletti, a former Attorney General, also works for Wackenhut.
In 1993 the Donald A. Wyatt Detention Facility was opened in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Wyatt is owned and operated by Cornell Corrections, a private company financed by investors. The facility had 300 beds and a contract with the federal government for $85 a day per prisoner, but no inmates. "Build it and they will come" seemed to be the philosophy at Cornell, and when they didn't come it was quite an embarrassment. Wyatt would need a full house to survive. The prison's financial backers, realizing that their investment was in jeopardy, mounted a vigorous lobbying campaign to divert prisoners from other states. Facing bankruptcy and angry bondholders, Cornell Corrections turned to a lawyer who specialized in brokering prisoners for private prisons. Attorney Richard Crane was paid an undisclosed sum when 232 prisoners were moved from North Carolina to Rhode Island soon afterward.
When Wall Street analysts and brokers, lawyers, corporate CEO's, and rich investors stand to profit from locking people up, you can bet that they will be throwing large amounts of money at politicians who favor the imprisonment of an ever growing segment of the population. In the short term, Cornell was lucky that North Carolina needed to relieve some overcrowding. Long-term, the prospects are frightening. At this point, can we be far from the days of the debtor's prison? The strongest power the government has, short of the death penalty, is that of incarceration. That power should not be handed to those motivated by profit.

Slavery '96

Contrary to what we learned in grade school, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution did not abolish slavery in 1865. The Amendment reads, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The purpose of this Amendment was not to abolish slavery, but to limit it to those who had been convicted of crimes. The sad fact is that great numbers of newly freed blacks were then "convicted" and forced to work without pay in state prisons. This simply transferred the ownership of slaves from private parties to the state. Today, with the advent of private, for-profit prisons and joint-venture prison factories, this ownership is shifting back to the private sector. Slavery has come full circle.
UNICOR, the prison manufacturing industry of the B.O.P., and by far the largest slaveholder in the U.S., makes a wide range of products for sale to other government agencies and contractors. UNICOR is the "preferred" supplier for these government customers. The word "preferred" in this case is intentionally misleading, and actually means mandatory. If the U.S. Navy needs 500 wooden chairs, and doesn't want to buy them from UNICOR because of over-pricing, poor quality, and slow delivery, it is required by law to ask UNICOR for an exemption. These exemptions are never granted, and this is how "preferred" becomes "mandatory." With this kind of lock on such a huge section of the market, the concepts of competition and free trade go out the window.
UNICOR operates 90 prison factories and is rapidly expanding. The products range from office and dormitory furniture to electronics. Individual states have modeled their prison factories after the federal example, with one dangerous difference: They market their products to the private sector. San Quentin inmates enter computer data for Bank of America, Chevron, and Macy's. Prisoners in New Mexico take hotel reservations by phone. Hawaiian convicts package golf balls for Spaulding, and at Folsom they manufacture stainless steel vats for beer brewers. The list goes on and on. Businesses all over the country are jumping at the chance to hire prisoners, and why not? There is no unemployment insurance to pay, no health benefits, vacation, sick leave, or payroll taxes. It is estimated that total prison sales will reach $8.9 billion by the year 1999.
And how about prison labor for strike breaking? It's certainly nothing new. In 1891 in Briceville, Tennessee, mine owners attempted to break the miner's union by using prison laborers. In what is now known as the Coal Creek Rebellion, union workers took over the mine and freed all of the prisoners, thus temporarily ending prison labor in Tennessee. More recently, young inmates at the Ventura Youth Facility in California made flight reservations by telephone for TWA while unionized flight attendants were on strike. The company then transferred ticket agents to flight attendant jobs.
What will happen to all of the free world workers who are displaced by the slave labor of the 90's is the most depressing thing of all. After their unemployment insurance runs out, and they discover that retraining is of no use when there are no jobs to be had, they will become members of the group most likely to end up in prison: the poor. At a January 1996 town-hall meeting in New Hampshire where Senator Phil Gramm was campaigning for the GOP primary, he pitched a proposal that would require all prisoners to work six days a week for sub-minimum wages manufacturing consumer goods in private no-frills prison "enterprise-zones." A woman in the crowd was heard to shout, "In order to get a job, an American is going to have to commit a crime!"

The Cycle

Despite a declining crime rate, a lot of money is being made from increasing incarceration. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this cycle will be broken anytime soon. As long as big business owns our political system and profits from prison building, the momentum of the Crime War will continue. One encouraging fact is that, at some point, there must be a level of diminishing returns. When every family in America has a member behind bars, a political change will be enevitable. Knowledge is the key to a free and equitable society. We must ask tough questions and demand answers. Remember, the Cold War lasted 50 years. Let us hope the Crime War ends sooner.

Drug-War Peace Breaks Out In Vancouver, BC Pot Speakeasies

The Vancouver Echo, March 26, 1997
By Mike Bell, staff writer
The work week is winding down and Arthrology is beginning to wind up. It's Friday afternoon and one of Vancouver's newest cutting edge social clubs is getting busy.
A buzz sounds every few minutes from the front door along a main street in the northeast corner of the city. This time Norm checks the surveillance camera before letting in a 50ish man in shorts and a cycling shirt. He looks around at the renovations and paint that in three months has transformed a filthy three-room warehouse into a comfortable collective with sofas and chairs scattered in small clutches, a tiny stereo system, video games, even a pet fish.
"Hey it looks great," he smiles to Norm and the men share a pat on the back before adjourning through the smoky haze scented with marijuana to a back room. On the other side of the curtains Norm maintains a kind of soft drug bar, selling all kinds of pot, hash and miscellaneous substances to customers of Arthrology, from the Greek "arthro" for joints, and "ology" the study of.
"Welcome to Arthrology," Norm tells all his new customers. An intimidating figure at 6 foot 4, 300 pounds, Norm tends to hold people's attention through his entire introductory spiel and so far everyone has played by the rules.
"We're a cannabis club," he continues. "We sell only cannabis products. No alcohol please, do your drinking after you leave, not before you come. This is a powder-free zone, nothing up your nose but your finger - anything other than your finger up your nose and your ass goes out the door. We reserve the right to install a dress code and control the altitude, aptitude and attitude of all guests. Video games are free," he points to three standing against the wall, " and the tea bar is by donation. The television has all the specialty channels - watch whatever you want - and there's games in the front room. Enjoy."
There are a few other common sense rules. No stolen property on the premises, no selling outside marijuana and no customers under 18, consciously in accordance with Canada's age of majority. Behave like you would in a pub, but replace your beer with weed.
Selling marijuana is the commercial end of the operation, the rest of the space is open. Some people sit and sip tea and play cards. Others stop by to smoke a bowl of high - grade marijuana in one of several waterpipes around the rooms and settle into a good book. Few stay less than 15 minutes. Norm wants to deter the constant in-and-out traffic that attracts attention and wants to keep new Arthrologists (club regulars) " to people you smoke with at your kitchen table." He's hoping some grassroots level groups will use the Arthrology space as a meeting place.
"It's totally open," he said invitingly. " People can do whatever they want here and I hope they'll use it as a place to organize, to get their groups together."
As the owner of one of several underground Amsterdam - style smoking bars that have stayed open as long as two years in Vancouver, Norm is hopeful a low key approach is the one that keeps Arthrology open. Vancouver police might have tolerated The Harm Reduction Club and its efforts to sell pot from a basement suite off Commercial Drive were it not for vocal spokesperson David Malmo - Levine and Marc Emery ( the Hemp BC owner arrested last year for selling marijuana seeds to undercover cops), police appear to have seen the writing on the wall and seem to be offering a break of sorts to those who operate discretely.
As far back as the Liberal government's LeDain Commission in 1973 when Jean Chretien and other commission members advocated softening up Canada's pot laws, politicians have been saying the current prohibition of growing, owning , smoking or selling marijuana is wrong. Four years ago then - provincial chief coroner Vince Cain recommended the legalization of soft drugs, now 73 year old senator Duncan Jessiman - who doesn't smoke it - wants pot legalized.
No substantive steps toward legalization have been taken since the Liberal party battled back to parliament, but there is a palpable sense that police know pot, like prostitution, isn't going away and will provide a similar level of tolerance for those who do their business away from bright lights and any attention.
"I know they've checked me out and I know they know I'm here," said Norm, " I just hope they realize that what's going on in places like this is not criminal. I've done a lot of shit, but for 15 years this has been my dream, now it's here. What this is is kind people selling kind herb to kind people and to say what we're doing is criminal is absolutely wrong."

McCaffrey - Drug Lords Kill 'Hundreds' Of Mexican Cops, Spend $6 Billion To Bribe Others

MEXICO CITY (Reuter, March 25, 1997) - Drug traffickers have murdered "hundreds" of honest Mexican law-enforcement officials in the past year, U.S. drug policy coordinator Barry McCaffrey said on Tuesday.
"Hundreds of honest police officers and prosecutors and judges have been murdered in the last year struggling to protect Mexican democracy," McCaffrey told the Mexican television network Televisa from Miami.
McCaffrey is the White House representative who coordinates the U.S. anti-drug effort.
An excerpt from the interview was broadcast on Tuesday night on the 24 Hours news programme.
International drug traffickers who move billions of dollars worth of cocaine, marijuana and heroin through Mexico each year are known to be violent, but officials have been reluctant to quantify the number killed while attempting to stem the tide.
McCaffrey also said drug traffickers spend $6 billion of their profits each year to bribe Mexican officials and grease the path for their illicit products.
"Violence and corruption are the two tools of international crime, and in this case it's with $6 billion of corruption money that comes from the United States," McCaffrey said. "So it's a terrible challenge to Mexico and the United States to work together for the years to come."
U.S.-Mexican relations in the war on drugs became strained recently during the U.S. "certification" process of determining whether Mexico is an aid-worthy ally in combatting the narcotics trade.
The Clinton administration, including McCaffrey, stood by Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, calling him an honest warrior even if many below him are corrupt.
The U.S. House and Representatives and Senate have taken less friendly views, voting to partially overturn Clinton's certification of Mexico.
Mexico has rejected the certification process as a unilateral attempt to trample over Mexico's internal affairs, while Mexican commentators have criticised the United States for providing the world's most lucrative drug market.

Clinton Gets Mexican Certification

"Senate Resolution Blasts Mexico's Anti-Drug Efforts
Congress: As expected, measure stops short of urging decertification, signaling victory for President Clinton."

Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1997
By Stanley Meisler, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON - The Senate on Thursday berated Mexico for "ineffective and insufficient progress" in the war on drugs but as expected held back from challenging President Clinton's certification of Mexico as a cooperative ally in the worldwide narcotics battle.
The vote on the resolution - a compromise hammered out by key senators and the administration's foreign policy team - was 94 to 5.
Its overwhelming passage could be counted as a political victory for Clinton, who did not want Congress to rile U.S.-Mexican relations by overturning his certification.
As a practical matter, the vote ended any attempt by Congress this year to decertify Mexico, an action that would have caused economic sanctions to take effect. Both houses begin their Easter recess today and will resume their sessions after the deadline for reversing the president on certification.
Clinton issued his ruling at the end of February, and Congress has no more than 30 days to change it.
But Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) warned the administration that there could be "a major battle next year" if the president ignores the resolution and Mexican officials do not provide evidence of major reform of the corruption within its anti-narcotics agencies.
The House passed a much tougher resolution last week but now must decide whether to accept the Senate version and send it to Clinton or seek a compromise. The House resolution, which Clinton pledged to veto, would have given Mexico three months to improve its drug-fighting efforts or then face decertification.
Under the Senate resolution, the president would be required to issue a report by September on the progress that both the United States and Mexico have made on a series of key steps in their joint war on drugs.
These steps include dismantling drug trafficking cartels, strengthening the relationship between the law enforcement agencies of the two countries, increasing joint patrols on the border, extraditing criminals from one country to the other, implementing money laundering laws, eradicating illegal drug crops in both countries and helping Mexico "identify, remove and prosecute corrupt officials at all levels of government."
Barry R. McCaffrey, the U.S. narcotics czar who took part in the talks that produced the Senate resolution, hailed it as "a tremendous outcome of many serious discussions."
He said that, while its passage tells "both nations we expect concrete results, it did put the issue of certification behind us."
McCaffrey said that he discussed the resolution with top Mexican officials during the day and told them it is "a good outcome that . . . respects the sovereignty of Mexico."
Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Jose Angel Gurria Trevino called the Senate decision a vote for cooperation and a "triumph of reason."
Saying his country still opposes the U.S. practice of certifying those countries it considers allies in the drug war, Gurria said Mexico would accept the Senate's compromise. He said both nations need to get on with tackling the real enemy - drug traffickers.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) assured senators that they would not be helpless if they did not approve of the president's report in September. "If we don't get action," he said, "the Senate has a powerful weapon. It's called the power of the purse."
The administration's anxiety about U.S.-Mexican relations was reflected in the major players that it sent to Capitol Hill to negotiate the Senate resolution. The negotiations included National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin and McCaffrey. At the last minute, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discussed the issue with Lott.
"I was shocked by all the people who got involved," Lott said.
The Senate negotiating team was led by Sens. Feinstein, Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas). In fact, according to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the initiative for a compromise came from the senators.
The president - despite having called senators to the White House to meet with key members of the Cabinet last week - realized only belatedly that he was facing "a runaway train" toward decertification, Lugar told reporters at lunch.
Hutchison and Feinstein "saved the bacon on this when the White House was headed into the drink," Lugar said.

Times Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus contributed to this story.

Mexico's Web Of Corruption

"Crime billions trap country in web of corruption"

The Toronto Star, March 22, 1997
By Linda Diebel - Toronto Star Latin American Bureau
MEXICO CITY - Even a decade ago, drugs in Mexico meant hippies smoking pot on a beach and a few loosely organized crime families shipping marijuana and heroin north across the Rio Grande.
They shipped cocaine, too, but the Colombians controlled the markets. The Mexicans were just the little guys. They took straight cash for helping the Colombians get their product through Mexico and over the border.
Mexico's phantom war on drugs

[photo caption:]
A police agent carries off marijuana plants from a field in Sinaloa, part of Mexico's huge and growing traffic in illicit drugs. Now, however, the drug mafia is so big in Mexico there are genuine fears the government is losing control of the country.

Drugs are a $37-billion-a-year business employing over 350,000 people. The drug industry has tentacles in every corner of Mexico and in every part of government and industry. It poses an increasing threat to Canada and the United States.
Mexico's new top drug fighter vows to bust the gangs
It's ugly. It involves executions, torture, kidnappings, extortion, disappearances and such widespread corruption that a Star investigation shows there is virtually no difference between narco-traffickers and federal agents. They're all involved in drugs, with police officers acting as executioners, facilitators and private armies for the cartels.
President Ernesto Zedillo has called the drug mafia "the biggest threat to national security" that Mexico faces in the late 20th century.
"They kill people," Zedillo said recently. "It's not just in Tijuana. They kill people in Mexico (City), they kill people in Guadalajara, they kill people in Sinaloa and they kill people in Tijuana."
The attorney-general was fired four months ago amid corruption charges. Top generals have been jailed for working for the drug lords. And, every few months, another widespread purge is announced, with mass firings of corrupt federal agents.
Apparently to no avail.
"Zedillo has a time bomb on his hands," says Tijuana human rights leader Jose Luis Perez. "We see the drug organizations with huge economic power. That could very soon turn into political power.
"This is the last war for Zedillo. If he can't change the rules of the game, civilian authority will be gone."
Marijuana, of course, is a huge problem, So is the growing export of Mexican methamphetamines - speed - and heroin.
But the big money is cocaine. An estimated 70 per cent of the cocaine imported into the U.S. comes from Mexico. In Canada, too, RCMP drug-fighting sources told The Star, cocaine is the largest drug problem, and growing quickly.
In the 1990s, the Mexicans took over from the Colombians, who found it increasingly difficult to ship north through Florida. As the Medellin and Cali cartels weakened, the Mexicans grew more sophisticated. They demanded payment in cocaine from the Colombians for using Mexico as a transshipment point, and soon set up their own distribution networks in Canada and the U.S.
"The Colombians are quite happy sitting back and leaving a lot more of it to the Mexicans," a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent told The Star.
These Mexican cartels are so rich, so powerful, they're able to pay breathtaking amounts in protection money. The DEA estimates that bribes could account for as much as 60 per cent of the total take of the drug business. The country is awash in dirty money.
A month-long Star investigation into Mexico's drug mafia in five states and in the U.S., including interviews with sources in hiding and access to secret federal documents, shows the extent to which Mexican officials, police agents and military officers are being corrupted and used by the drug bosses.
"This is, at heart, a government at the service of organized crime," said a senior law-enforcement lawyer.
"It's a circus. It's grotesque. What more can I tell you?"
The Star uncovered cases of payoffs, coverup, murder and kidnapping related to drugs. For example:
A former top-ranking national police agent, hailed for his fight against drug traffickers, was actually receiving $7 million a month in protection money from the cartels. This officer was very near the top of the heap for a long time, handling some of Mexico's biggest cases.
He spoke to The Star from hiding; the interview came after months of negotiations. Perhaps he agreed because he was scared, and wanted to tell his story. His quicksand world had shifted, and he thought they - narcos and police agents alike - wanted him dead. He was trying to get out. He said, "I have water up to my neck."
According to sources, he's now in hiding in the United States - probably protected by the DEA.
As he became increasingly more important as a federal drug agent, he worked for a series of narco-traffickers, including the Arellano Felix brothers, who run the Tijuana Cartel, and Hector Luis "El Guero (Blondie)" Palma, another capo made famous because his wife's head was sent to him in a box by a rival during a feud.
"The federal agents, the narcos, they're the same thing," said the source, who was "invited in" by more senior officers and protected at a high government level.
He said he was protecting the Arellano Felix brothers at the Guadalajara Airport the day Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo was gunned down in 1993, allegedly by the Tijuana Cartel. The crime - the first big assassination of a religious leader - shocked Mexicans.
Still, it remains largely unsolved.
A top investigator in the attorney-general's office described how he was pulled off a big drug case because he threatened the interests of the senior government official who protected drug lords in the northwestern border state of Sonora. Two years ago, he was sent to investigate a big drug bust in Tijuana. His work led him to prominent families and businesses in Tijuana, as well as in other cities along the Mexican-U.S. border.
To reveal names and locations would mark him for death.
`It was depressing. I thought we were getting somewhere'
He discovered that an important drug boss had been freed, after several tons of his cocaine had been found in a warehouse. After examining release documents, and figuring out which local officials were implicated, he excitedly contacted his superiors in the attorney-general's office in Mexico City.
"I sent the fax to Mexico City at 4 p.m. At 6 p.m., I was ordered back immediately to Mexico that very night," he said. "At first I thought they wanted to put more agents on the case, but I soon realized the investigation was dead.
"A judicial police commander, a friend, pulled me aside the next day and said, `How am I going to tell you the truth? You are getting in people's way.' He told me who in the attorney-general's office was in charge of handling the bribes from Sonora. He was very high up. I was mucking everything up.
"It was emotional for me. It was depressing, because I thought we were actually getting somewhere. I was very idealistic and naive."
No longer.
"I gradually started to realize the only reason federal agents, including me, carry out investigations, is so that our bosses can get more information on drug operations. Then, they use it as a bargaining chip to get bigger and bigger bribes from the narcos," he said.
The attorney-general's office, he said, is a cauldron of competing interests, with different officials backing different narco-bosses.
"I don't want to play that game," he said.
It appears there was a coverup in the 1990 murder of human rights leader Norma Corona. The Star obtained a confidential affidavit from the attorney-general's office that discloses a bizarre event. It shows that a senior government official back in Mexico City inexplicably knew where to find, in Tijuana, the bodies of two hitmen connected to her death.
Corona was gunned down in Culiacan, capital of the Pacific state of Sinaloa. She had been ready to go public with evidence linking the kidnappings and executions of four people to a top drug lord.
Corona had said she had proof the actual kidnappers and killers were federal judicial police (roughly the equivalent of Mounties) and federal agents.
After her murder, witnesses and "gatilleros (triggermen)" started showing up dead all over Mexico.
But, according to this sworn affidavit, a Tijuana police commander relates getting a late-night call, a few weeks after Corona's death, from deputy attorney-general Javier Coello in Mexico City. Coello apparently told him to go to a bridge and pick up the bodies of two hitmen. Police went, couldn't find anything, but were ordered back by Coello. Finally, they found "a Nissan with two male bodies, one in the front seat and one in the back and spent cartridges around the car."
A federal lawyer told The Star he believes senior officials in Mexico City were complicit in a coverup of Corona's murder.
Her killing has never been satisfactorily solved.
"Never have I been accused of the murder of Norma Corona," Coello, now a Mexico City lawyer, told The Star.
He added he might have made the phone calls, but wouldn't have known where to find the bodies. However, unprompted, he provided details not included in the affadavit, including the last name of one of the corpses - a hitman named Santillos.
Coello added: "I think this is just some kind of political manoeuvre. You see, in these kinds of cases, there are a lot of rumors . . . that I would have been protecting the murderers is absurd."
He's recently become famous elsewhere.
Police commander has mansions all over Mexico
At the recent Houston trial of a former Mexican deputy attorney-general, convicted of pocketing $12 billion in drug bribes, a witness testified Coello shared $2.6 million-a-month with two other federal prosecutors. The money apparently came from Gulf Cartel boss Juan Garcia Abrego, court was told.
Coello told The Star he didn't take bribes.
A recent report by the human rights commission in Sinaloa actually names federal judicial police and military intelligence as "presumed responsible" in last October's kidnapping of Culiacan business leader Romulo Rico, 54.
There's a link here to the Norma Corona case. Rico's brothers were witnesses to her murder. Later, one was jailed and killed; the other badly wounded, losing an eye, in an assassination attempt. Rico is still missing, one of 51 documented cases of Mexican citizens allegedly snatched by the military over the past three years.
A notebook dropped by the kidnappers in Rico's abandoned gray Oldsmobile lists federal police officers working as "gatilleros" (triggermen) for the Arellano Felix brothers' Tijuana Cartel.
The notebook had another startling tie-in. It links Rico's kidnapping to General Jesus Gutierrez. The general is the highly decorated former chief of Mexico's national anti-drug agency, who was jailed in February on charges of working for wanted cocaine king Amado "Lord of the Skies" Carrillo. U.S. officials say Gutierrez compromised the lives of U.S. and Mexican agents.
In interviews, several sources stressed that Mexico's public fight against drugs is a facade. In particular, they scoffed at "public relations" exercises in which federal agents routinely pile into choppers and head out into the mountains to burn a hectare or two of marijuana or poppies, reporters and photographers in tow.
"It's showbiz," said one ex-agent. He described how he was part of an operation to cut down marijuana, supposedly for destruction. Instead, his agents took the load to the warehouse of a drug lord near Guadalajara, northwest of Mexico City. They had army and police protection all along the way, with money changing hands at every stop.
Finally, other confidential government documents, obtained by the Star, describe sordid connections. They implicate former President Carlos Salinas' brother Raul, several prominent officials and 10 judicial police commanders in the drug mafia.
It's juicy reading.
One former police commander, for example, has ranches and mansions all over Mexico and a fortune worth $130 million. Another amassed a $75-million nest egg. Yet another racked up $30 million by reporting on other agents on the take, in what is clearly a nest of vipers.
Their pleasures, too, are noted.
Among other tastes, these former police commanders liked raising and racing purebred horses, collecting Rolex watches, flashing U.S. thousand-dollar bills, snorting cocaine and partying by night.
Above all, they liked keeping their names out of the media - except in relation to their good fight against the drug mafia.

"Mexico's New Top Drug Fighter Vows To Bust The Gangs"

`We are not a corrupt country,' says police chief

The Toronto Star, March 22, 1997
By Linda Diebel
Toronto Star Latin American Bureau
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's newest anti-drug chief yesterday pledged to root out corrupt civil servants and win battles against narco-traffickers where others have failed.
"We have all kinds of investigations going that should help us start arresting (drug lords) in the near future," said Mariano Herran, the new head of the National Institute to Combat Drugs.
In a similar breakfast with foreign reporters just two months ago, Herran's predecessor, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez, made the same arguments. But two weeks ago, Gutierrez was jailed on charges of accepting bribes from drug lords.
As well, last week, another general was arrested for offering a bribe to a federal police agent. The offer: $1.5 million or we kill your wife and family.
"That shows nobody is immune from corruption," said Herran. "But in my experience, the majority of Mexican public officials are not corrupt and are dedicated to their jobs.
"Personally, I've never been offered a bribe."
He added: "I don't agree we are a corrupt country . . . just some people have proven to be deviant."
Herran said his office has begun running drug tests on all officials in the federal attorney-general's office. Already, some 400 employees have been purged for testing positive.
"Our work and planning is not limited for 30, 40 or 90 days," said Herran. "We're working to obtain the most visible results in the least time possible."

"US Finds That Drug Trade Is Fueled By Payoffs At Mexican Border"

The New York Times, March 24, 1997
By David Johnston and Sam Howe Verhovek
CALEXICO, Calif. - At this dusty border crossroads east of San Diego, two federal immigration inspectors helped a Mexican drug ring move hundreds of pounds of cocaine across the border, simply by waving the smugglers through the checkpoint without even glancing inside their cars.
In El Paso, two federal customs inspectors tried to shake down an informant posing as a drug smuggler, one of them demanding more than $1 million to look the other way when cocaine-laden vehicles crossed from the Mexican border city of Juarez into the United States.
And in Zapata County, Texas, a remote stretch of the Texas-Mexico border, drug traffickers turned to local law-enforcement officials for protection in a big way: Most of the county's leaders, including the county judge, the sheriff and the clerk, were convicted of or pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of aiding the international drug trade.
Narcotics-related corruption does not stop at the Rio Grande or at a line in the desert separating the United States and Mexico, which has been rocked in recent weeks by reports that leading officials helped big-time drug traffickers.
Nothing on that scale has occurred on this side of the border, but corruption of law-enforcement officials - at the local and now federal level - has become a corrosive byproduct of the vast river of cocaine, marijuana and heroin that pours into the United States across the 2,012-mile border that reaches from Brownsville, Texas, to Imperial Beach, Calif.
Federal authorities have long thought that a few law-enforcement officials in remote border counties have been lured by the promise of easy money into leaving Mexican drug gangs alone.
Now, these same federal authorities say they have mounting evidence of systemic corruption in some of those counties. These include Zapata, where the county's leaders were convicted and forced out of office three years ago, and Starr County, Texas, where 79 people, including a deputy sheriff, were indicted a few months ago for taking part in a long-running marijuana smuggling operation.
There are signs of growing corruption in the federal ranks as well, including of customs and immigration inspectors, who had long been viewed as more stalwart lines of defense against the drug invasion.
Internal documents shared with The New York Times by current and former officials at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration highlight the drug-corruption issue: One 1995 memorandum, from the government's El Paso-based clearinghouse for drug intelligence to top drug officials in Washington, warns of "increased and constant receipt" of reports from informants, government employees and ordinary citizens about "the use of corrupt and compromised U.S. customs and immigration inspectors" to insure that drug shipments cross the border.
Indeed, other documents show that scores of these reports have been passed on to drug agency administrators or federal prosecutors over the last few years.
"The sorry truth is that people in law enforcement do not make a lot of money, and that's especially true for local officers," said Fred C. Ball, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration in McAllen, Texas, who now leads a federal interagency drug intelligence task force covering the entire Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
"In some of these counties, somebody will walk up to an officer with $50,000, $60,000 or more and say, 'All you have to do is just turn your head the other way tonight.' That's an explanation for why it happens," Ball said. "It's not an excuse."
Growth Industry: Traffickers' Choice Is Often Bribery
The problem here is limited compared with the scale of the accusations that have been shaking Mexico.
But by all accounts, narcotics-related corruption in the United States is serious and growing. A review of court records and interviews with state and federal prosecutors indicate that beyond the informant accounts described in the internal federal reports, at least 46 federal, state and local law-enforcement officials have been indicted on or convicted of drug-related corruption charges in the last three years in the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. And that includes only cases in which drugs were transported across the border by land.
That number is unprecedented, federal law-enforcement officials say, and yet it represents only a small part of the problem: When corruption often involves nothing more than passively allowing smugglers to go about their business, it is extremely difficult to detect and even tougher to prosecute.
As drug dealers have become more brazen and the volume and value of drugs moving across the U.S.-Mexico border have skyrocketed, many federal officials openly concede that they fear the problem will grow worse.
"These organizations are no longer mom-and-pop organizations paying people to carry drugs across the border in a knapsack," said Stanley Serwatka, the chief prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in El Paso. "They are General Motors. To maintain your profit structure you simply have to import in large quantities," which places a premium on paying off a border official.
Large-scale drug trafficking continues, experts say, despite vows by successive administrations in Washington to stop it. Traffickers, responding to America's interdiction efforts in the mid-1980s, shifted routes from Florida to Mexico, increasing their reliance on the Southwest border as a transit point.
The Customs Service reported that at five border crossings on the California-Mexico border, marijuana seizures increased to 3,518 in 1996 from 2,490 in 1995; that is more than 272,000 pounds of marijuana seized last year.
The heavy flow of drugs across the border has brought an increased law-enforcement presence, which has ratcheted up the pressure on traffickers. In the border area of San Ysidro, south of San Diego, the construction of a 10-foot-high, 14-mile-long steel fence between border crossings to deter illegal immigrants has forced narcotics smugglers to change tactics.
Instead of trying to bring drugs across at remote border areas, they are trying to get through at the legal ports of entry, a switch that has created a further incentive to bribe border officials.
Rudy M. Camacho, who manages the San Ysidro crossing, reports 10 to 20 multikilogram seizures a day from traffic there that reaches 45,000 vehicles a day.
"If you have a corrupt inspector, he can make $35,000 to $40,000 with a flick of the hand," said one investigator who asked not to be identified, referring to the motion used by border officials to wave vehicles through checkpoints. "They do it hundreds of times a day. Who can say they knew any car had a compartment with drugs inside?"
Court records from border towns offer a glimpse of just how seductive the lure of money can be, and of the ease with which border patrols and other government agents can satisfy drug traffickers' needs. The records show, for example, how border patrol agents and other federal employees are offered tens of thousands of dollars simply to "take a break" for a few moments at arranged times.
Jose de Jesus Ramos, a former El Paso customs inspector who pleaded guilty to cooperating with traffickers, matter-of-factly described how a few years ago he became corrupted after a fellow inspector appealed to his dissatisfaction with the Customs Service and the job's low pay.
"The situation was that if I was willing, there was always ways to make a little more money," de Jesus Ramos testified at the inspector's trial last year.
Soon, he said, he was meeting with traffickers in places like the parking lot of the Home Depot store in El Paso, collecting $5,000, then $10,000, then $20,000. With cellular phones and coded beeper messages, he said, it was easy to let drug couriers know which inspection booth was his.
Eventually, the two inspectors hatched plans to allow at least 1,000 kilograms of cocaine into the United States over a several-month period, charging informants posing as drug traffickers $1,000 per kilogram - or $1 million in all. The inspectors were arrested before putting the plan into effect.
Dozens of government officials interviewed in recent weeks said that corruption appears to be limited to a small percentage of the thousands of employees in federal, state and local law enforcement who work along the border.
But even these small numbers lend credibility to the long-standing fear among top government officials that expanded efforts to police the widening drug trade would inevitably lead to the corruption of people at all levels of the American criminal justice system.
So serious are the concerns about corruption that customs and immigration officials have taken extraordinary steps to make it harder for drug runners to buy an inspector.
For example, inspectors do not know where they will work until they arrive at the job, their rotation changing daily. Drug-sniffing dogs are used to check some vehicles before they arrive at an inspection booth. And throughout each day, officials carry out unannounced "block blitzes," subjecting random groups of 20 to 30 vehicles to intensive searches.

Quick Cash: Enticing Agents on Federal Level

Law-enforcement officials said that corruption typically begins gradually. Witness the case of Arthur Garcia, for 11 years a federal immigration inspector assigned to the border crossing here in Calexico. Garcia was convicted last year of drug smuggling and sentenced to eight years in prison.
In a federal courtroom in San Diego, Garcia, testifying in the case of a co-worker, described how he was enticed into protecting a drug ring. It started in the late 1980s when Rafael Ayala, a former employee of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, stopped by Garcia's house for what seemed like a social visit.
The men had known each other for years - Ayala had once worked with Garcia at an immigration detention camp - and had mutual friends and associates in Mexico and the Southwestern United States whom they would cross the border to visit as easily as a motorist in the United States might cross a state line.
According to Garcia's testimony, Ayala said that he had several businesses in Mexico, among them an operation that transported fresh shrimp across the border.
"He said it wasn't that much," Garcia recalled. " 'I've got a few customers that I'm bringing shrimp for, it's really not that much, I'd rather not go through all the red tape, to go through customs and import this stuff, I'd rather just bring in a little at a time.' "
Garcia, who was testifying against a customs inspector, Francisco Mejia, added, "He said I would be helping him a great deal," mainly by "not searching his car and allowing these to come in."
San Diego prosecutors said they later determined that there were 600 to 700 pounds of cocaine in each load, wrapped in bundles and carried in the trunks of cars. They later charged three members of the ring with smuggling six tons of cocaine in an 18-month period.
For an inspector earning $1,000 a month, the payoff for Garcia was staggering. After each time that he waved through a shipment without inspection, Ayala told him, "Stop by the house, I have some shrimp there left over." But when he got there, Garcia said, he was paid $500 to $2,000. And he got to the house three to five times a month.
Garcia's case was typical of drug-linked corruption in another way. He and another officer were caught when drug couriers, snared in a smuggling investigation and facing prison sentences, testified against the people who paved their way into the United States.
In El Paso, similar information from traffickers turned informants led federal investigators to Eduardo V. Ontiveros and to de Jesus Ramos, the two customs inspectors who were arrested before their cocaine-smuggling plan could go into effect.
Ontiveros was convicted of bribery and conspiracy to import drugs on the testimony of de Jesus Ramos. At the Ontiveros trial last spring, de Jesus Ramos, who pleaded guilty to bribery charges and agreed to testify for prosecutors, said he was lured in by the easy money and by Ontiveros' constant talk about low pay and low morale.
"He told me stuff like, you know, you know, that customs doesn't take care of you," de Jesus Ramos said. "I mean, it seemed like I was used and abused and left out in the cold." And that, he said, made it much easier to start taking money here and there. After all, he only had to let cars through.

Smugglers' Targets: Easy to Corrupt, Tough to Punish

The Garcia and Ontiveros cases are hardly exceptions. At the federal level, drug traffickers target for corruption the people with whom they have the most contact, the ones responsible on a day-to-day basis for keeping drugs out of the United States: primarily, employees of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Customs Service and the Border Patrol.
For example, an immigration service inspector in California, Susan Jane Gustafson, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import marijuana and in December 1996 was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Two months ago four Mexican traffickers were arrested in a case in which they paid more than $32,000 to an undercover agent posing as a corrupt immigration inspector. He was supposed to obtain certificates authorizing them to work in the United States that would be used in the smuggling operation.
In September 1995, a Border Patrol agent in Arizona was arrested and indicted on charges of importing cocaine after the Border Patrol intercepted a 1,200-pound load coming into the state. A trial is pending.
Investigators say such corruption can be difficult to ferret out because there are few signs: a dishonest official acts much like an honest official.
A corrupt employee almost never possesses drugs and never meets with a supplier. As a result, cases often come to light through suspicious fellow workers, the breakup of a drug ring or on the accidental discovery of a load of drugs that can be traced to a vehicle known to have been waved through a specific entry point.
Customs and immigration officials share the responsibility for inspections at border checkpoints, with the Border Patrol responsible for protecting areas between the checkpoints. As a car goes through a crossing, an inspector enters the license plate into a computer and watches the occupants for any signs of behavior that might indicate they are bringing in contraband. Officials can send a vehicle to "secondary" inspection, where other border officials conduct a thorough search.
More knowledge of the narcotics trade has enhanced the detection of corruption, according to law-enforcement officials working the border. "We have a better understanding of the major groups and how they are sending their loads across," said William J. Esposito, the deputy director of the FBI and formerly the bureau's top agent in San Diego.
Sometimes, corrupt inspectors are discovered through sudden unexplained income or a change in spending habits, which has led corruption units to incorporate Internal Revenue Service personnel in their ranks.
How much inspectors earn depends on the length and quality of their service, but officials said many of them make $30,000 to $35,000 a year. In some rural areas, the officials said, that is comparable to the local wage scales. Federal officials recognize that placing protection of the border in the hands of low-paid, low-level government employees increases the risk of corruption, but they argue that money is only one factor that draws an employee into drug trafficking.

Local Network: 'Big Man' in Texas Takes Hard Fall

In Hidalgo County, in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, Sheriff Brigido Marmolejo Jr. was a swaggering figure with a catchy campaign slogan: "A big man for a big job." He dominated regional law enforcement for 18 years, but he began attracting the attention of federal law-enforcement officials a few years ago after they received tips that he might be in the pay of drug lords.
Suspicions increased when an accused drug trafficker from Mexico escaped from his jail in April 1993, soon after he was arrested. The escapee, Raul Valladares, has been described by federal prosecutors as a chief lieutenant of Juan Garcia Abrego, a former drug kingpin who was convicted in Houston federal court last year.
No charges were brought against the sheriff in that incident. "A lot of people said that Marmolejo was untouchable, that he had insulated himself to a degree where it was impossible to catch him," said Ball, the leader of the Rio Grande drug task force. "He was smart enough not to do his deals on the telephone."
But using an informant inside the county jail, federal authorities were finally able to convict Marmolejo and his chief jailer in 1994 on racketeering, conspiracy and bribery charges. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for accepting bribes from a drug trafficker.
The case largely stemmed from the sheriff's involvement with Homero Beltran Aguirre, a convicted drug dealer who, from behind bars, ran the jail.
"It was a hotel and brothel for him," said Jose Angel Moreno, the prosecutor in the case. For a fee of $6,000 a month and $1,000 a visit, the sheriff allowed Beltran to have conjugal visits in Marmolejo's private office with his wife and his girlfriend, prosecutors said, and to conduct drug-related business from his cell. The bribes totaled at least $151,000.
The corruption of local law-enforcement officials along the border is a huge concern. Local officials can often exercise at least as much control as federal authorities do over the people and goods that cross the border.
In Texas, at least 21 local law-enforcement officials, including deputy sheriffs, jailers and constables, have been indicted on federal narcotics-related corruption charges in the last three years.

Stronger Defense: U.S. Pours Money Into the Battle

Senior law-enforcement officials say that corruption occurs mainly on the front line. And they acknowledge that as that work force is expanded in the Clinton administration's effort to combat drugs and illegal immigration, the threat of corruption rises.
So in tandem with that expansion, the FBI recently asked for an increase of its own: some $3.6 million more in its budget and 20 additional agents to track corruption cases along the border.
Several officials involved in anticorruption efforts said they hope that the visible commitment to vigorously prosecute corruption cases will deter most government employees from criminal acts. But they acknowledge that corruption is likely to continue.
"We've done a lot on the border," said Esposito of the FBI. "We still have a long way to go."

Noriega Says Feds Made Castro Bid

"Noriega Makes Claim"

The Plain Dealer, March 21, 1997, p. 10A
MIAMI - Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega claims federal prosecutors offered him a lighter sentence if he implicated Fidel Castro in drug smuggling, a charge the prosecutors denied yesterday. Noriega, who is serving a 40-year sentence for protecting U.S.-bound cocaine shipments through Panama, made the Castro claim in a television interview.

"China Top Cop Says Drug Problem Getting Worse"

BEIJING (Reuter, March 26, 1997) - China's top police official has called for tougher efforts to battle drugs, warning that dealers were becoming more dangerous and the problem was spinning out of control, official media said on Wednesday.
"Although the struggle against illegal drugs has scored notable achievements, the situation we are facing is still extremely grim," the People's Daily quoted Minister of Public Security Tao Siju as saying.
China had 520,000 registered drug users in 1995 but the actual figure was much higher, the newspaper quoted Tao as telling a national anti-drugs conference in Beijing.
"Drug-taking has brought increasingly serious harm to social order and economic construction," the China Daily quoted Tao as telling the conference.
"Drug-related crimes are increasing in China and the... worsening situation has not been effectively controlled," Tao said.
Drug dealers had become increasingly difficult to catch because they were inventing more innovative methods to transport drugs and evade detection, Tao said.
"Moreover, drug trafficking is already becoming organised and armed," Tao said.
Tao called for more efforts to wipe out the planting of narcotic-producing crops and for greater vigilance along border areas where drug trafficking had blossomed.
The drug trade had surged this year in southwestern areas such as the Guangxi region and Yunnan province that border the Golden Triangle of the major producing countries of Burma, Laos and Thailand, he said.
Border troops in those provinces had seized 218 kg (480 lbs) of heroin and 30 kg (66 lbs) of heroin from the start of this year to March 17, the China Daily said.
Soldiers had also arrested 246 alleged drug dealers involved in 189 cases, the newspaper said.
"Chinese frontier troops have drawn up careful plans and intensified cooperation with troops in neighbouring countries," it quoted pubic security officials as saying.
Chinese police had arrested 324,944 drug offenders from 1991 to 1997, seizing 21.4 tonnes of heroin and 12.6 tonnes of opium, Tao said.
Nearly 50,000 offenders were sentenced to punishments ranging from jail terms to death during the period, he said.
Police also found nearly 8.5 tonnes of marijuana and 4.37 tonnes of "ice," or amphetamines during the six years, he said.
Drug abuse, once virtually stamped out after the 1949 communist takeover, has made a comeback in recent years as market-oriented economic reform has loosened Beijing's control over people's lives.

"Southern Indian State Partially Lifts Liquor Ban"

HYDERABAD, India (Reuter, March 27, 1997) - India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh has partially relaxed a two-year-old ban on liquor but maintained its prohibition of country spirits, officials said on Thursday.
Liquor however still cannot be sold at bars and will be available only at a limited number of liquor depots with tightly restricted working hours.
The state assembly passed the legislation after seven hours of discussion late on Wednesday night, they said.
The bill permits the manufacture of what is called Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) or branded Indian liquor, but the manufacture, sale and consumption of arrack or country spirits continues to be banned.
The ban, in force from January 16, 1995 to honour an election promise, lost the state government an estimated 30 billion rupees ($836 million) in excise, revenue and sales tax.
"The total prohibition policy has totally failed," Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu told the state assembly. He said the state government had been unable to check smuggling and illicit manufacture.
"The liquor smugglers have formed mafia gangs. Corruption and lawlessness have reached disturbing proportions," Naidu said. "The enforcement efforts of the excise and prohibition and the police departments did not make much headway."
During the 26-month ban, the government arrested 310,000 people, seized 9,300 vehicles and destroyed over a million litres of IMFL, worth about 450 million rupees, officials said. (1$-35.85 rupees)

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