Report that U.S. agency mum on drug killings angers many

By ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY – Mexican authorities are angry about a report that a paid informant for a U.S. government agency supervised murders in Mexico and that the agency did not share that knowledge, a senior Mexican law enforcement official said.

The actions of the informant and the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, were "reckless, irresponsible," said the official, who spoke this week on condition of anonymity.

Withholding the information risked the lives of Mexican and American federal agents and jeopardized a major federal investigation into the Juárez drug cartel, the official said. The Mexican government is determined to "get to the bottom" of the intelligence lapse, he said.

"Everything and everyone, whether U.S. or Mexican federal agents, was at risk here," the official said. "There were many lives at stake here."

ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa in El Paso said the agency's "previous comments about the ongoing investigation still stands. We have no other comment at this time."

Previously, ICE said it does not comment on pending criminal cases but "takes any and all allegations of misconduct seriously."

The Dallas Morning News has obtained a copy of an ICE classified memorandum on the activities of the informant. The 15-page memo provides dramatic new details about the first in a series of drug-related killings in Ciudad Juárez, which the memo said was committed with the help of two Mexican judicial police officers.

Among the details in the memo:

• The officers split $2,000 for killing a suspected drug trafficker known as "Fernando."

• The killing was ordered by Heriberto Santillán Tabares, a childhood friend of the victim and a top lieutenant in the powerful Juárez cartel organization of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

• The officers, who were on duty, strangled Fernando, then struck him in the back of the head with a shovel, which was later used to bury him in the back yard of the house where he was killed.

• The informant was so trusted that he was allowed access to a cartel safe house where he witnessed "everything they could need, stemming from groceries to women."

Cartel official captured

The informant's debriefing eventually led to the capture of Mr. Santillán, implicated more than a dozen state police officers and led to the discovery of 12 bodies buried in the back yard of a middle-class neighborhood in Juárez.

The informant's role, however, came to light only after an attempt by Mr. Santillán's drug trafficking gang, known as La Línea, to kill two U.S. undercover agents in Juárez, according to U.S. law enforcement officials.

ICE officials told the Mexican government that they did not share facts about the informant's activities because "the information was so unbelievable they couldn't believe it themselves," the Mexican law enforcement official said. The informant audiotaped the killing, according to the memo.

The Mexican official said he does not accept that explanation: "I didn't believe them then, and I don't believe them now."

He said the episode undermines the trust between the United States and Mexico that has been built over years and is enshrined in a bilateral treaty.

That treaty calls for close cooperation between drug and intelligence agencies of the two countries – including sharing of information, he noted.

"We have many questions like what role, or information, if any, does the informant have on a possible link between the cartel and the murder of women," the official said. "This was a big, big oversight, and we're still very angry."

Juárez investigation

The dispute comes amid an expanding investigation by the federal government into the killing of scores of women in Juárez over the last 10 years.

President Vicente Fox has appointed a special prosecutor to pursue those responsible for the crimes and a commissioner to improve conditions for women in Juárez.

He said Friday that his government would release preliminary findings from the investigation in two weeks.

"There will be good news for the people [of Juárez] and some bad news for the criminals and corrupt public functionaries that didn't comply with the law," Mr. Fox told visiting executives with the Associated Press Managing Editors.

A March 14 report in The Dallas Morning News on the activities of the U.S. informant was based on interviews with current and former U.S. law enforcement officials familiar with the memo.

The document contains rare insight into the hierarchy of the Juárez cartel, its inner workings and extracurricular activities, such as parties with women and recreational use of cocaine.

The memo also offers a wealth of detail about recruitment of police officers to carry out contract killings and the specifics of one such slaying, of "Fernando" – believed to be Fernando Reyes Aguado, an attorney from the state of Durango, Mexican officials said.

The memo says the informant's standing in the Juárez cartel quickly improved, apparently because of his participation in the killing.

"Santillán praised [the informant] for his/her participation in the murder and [said] that his/her participation could lead to his/her meeting with Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, [aka VCF]," according to the memo written by a special agent of ICE.

"Santillán also told [the informant] that he was now number four in running the narcotics business for the VCF organization." That was written Aug. 25, 2003.

For the next six months, the informant, who previously had been fired by the DEA for attempting to smuggle more than 220 pounds of marijuana into El Paso, continued working for ICE, supervising the murders of at least 14 more drug suspects, including a U.S. citizen, U.S. law enforcement officials said.

ICE knew of the killings but did nothing to stop them, Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials said.

Role in tobacco ring bust

U.S. sources said one reason the informant continued working for ICE was that he helped the agency complete a huge bust of a nationwide tobacco-smuggling ring. A 92-count indictment detailing the scheme was unsealed Jan. 28 in El Paso.

"Busting a tobacco smuggling operation cannot justify the taking of a life, not even that of a drug dealer," the Mexican official told The News.

The series of killings in which the informant was reportedly involved ended with the Jan. 15 arrest of Mr. Santillán, the alleged cartel lieutenant. Shortly after his arrest, the bodies of "Fernando" and 11 others were exhumed from the back yard of a house in Juárez.

Mr. Santillán is in an El Paso jail, awaiting trail on charges of drug trafficking and murder in connection with the deaths of at least five of the 12 men found buried.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone recently postponed a hearing in the Santillán case for six months, granting a request by the U.S. attorney's office, which maintained that the case was "complex and unusual" and that prosecutors need more time to gather evidence from the Mexican government.

Staff writer Ricardo Sandoval in Mexico City contributed to this report.