By Douglas Farah and Molly Moore
                  Washington Post Foreign Service
 

                  Two years ago, U.S. and Mexican officials, frustrated by corruption in
                  Mexican law enforcement agencies, pushed the Mexican army to take the
                  lead in fighting the drug war. Forming the backbone of the effort were
                  new, vetted units trained by U.S. Special Forces and given helicopters for
                  mobility.

                  But now the program, begun with high hopes and effusive praise from
                  senior officials of both countries, is facing the same evil it was formed to
                  combat. Around 80 members of the elite units have been under
                  investigation in recent weeks on allegations that some of them took
                  hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to sneak cocaine-filled suitcases
                  and illegal aliens through the Mexico City airport on their way to the
                  United States. Nine of these Mexican soldiers have been jailed on formal
                  charges and five more have been detained.

                  On Sunday, Mexican civilian anti-drug authorities removed 40 of the
                  troops -- all trained under the Special Forces program -- from their
                  assignments at the airport as a result of the corruption investigation.

                  The episode, which has left some U.S. drug enforcement officials newly
                  disillusioned, comes amid a rapid and widespread expansion of training of
                  foreign armed forces by U.S. special operations troops -- an initiative that
                  has proceeded largely without public debate or congressional oversight. In
                  Mexico, as in much of Latin America, the operational focus is on
                  combating the drug trade. But here, as in Colombia, U.S. training has not
                  succeeded in stemming the corruption and human rights abuses that have
                  plagued anti-drug operations in the past.

                  The Mexican units, whose leaders were given Special Forces training at
                  Ft. Bragg, N.C., are called Airmobile Special Forces and are widely
                  known by their Spanish acronym GAFE. The United States pays $28
                  million a year for the program and 252 Mexican officers were trained in its
                  first 18 months, with another 156 officers scheduled for training by the end
                  of fiscal 1998, according to the Pentagon. The U.S.-trained officers then
                  train other groups in Mexico, and by now there are supposed to be 42
                  100-man units stationed around the country.

                  Candidates for the GAFEs, supposedly the cream of the Mexican army,
                  are vetted by Mexican and U.S. officials. Those sent for training in the
                  United States have their names checked against databases of suspected
                  drug traffickers kept by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the CIA
                  and the Defense Intelligence Agency. They also receive higher salaries
                  than troops outside the units to make bribes less tempting.

                  The GAFE troops who worked at the Mexico City airport were trained
                  by Mexican trainers, not directly by U.S. Special Forces. But U.S.
                  officials said the indications of possible graft were a blow to their efforts to
                  establish several corps of uncorruptible drug fighters on both sides of the
                  border.

                  "After a while you wonder what the hell you are doing there," said one law
                  enforcement official. "There is no one there we can trust completely. This
                  was supposed to be the group we could trust and work with."

                  Of equal concern with the arrests themselves, U.S. and Mexican officials
                  said, was the fact that the elite troops, whose mission was to be deployed
                  around the country as combat-ready shock troops to attack drug cartels,
                  were being broken up, seconded to other agencies and given routine
                  duties such as patrolling the airport.

                  "I don't know why those troops were there. That is not what they were
                  supposed to be doing," one Mexican official familiar with the program said
                  of the airport arrests. "They are supposed to be the door-kickers and
                  have the capacity to go after the drug traffickers and offer the best support
                  available. It is a matter of concern to us they reportedly were loaned out
                  to other agencies, and we are investigating why that is."

                  Another senior Mexican official acknowledged that the arrests were
                  "worrisome because we expected them [the elite troops] to have more
                  commitment, to be able to have more trust in them. . . . We tried to get the
                  best people, but we are not always successful."

                  U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and congressional
                  investigators said there were indications that a senior general in the upper
                  ranks of the GAFE had assigned the troops to the airport in an effort to
                  protect illegal activities.

                  "There is no other reasonable explanation," said one congressional staffer
                  investigating the case. "Those are the indications we are getting."

                  The detention of the GAFE members comes as U.S. law enforcement
                  officials have begun to question the units' usefulness in fighting drug
                  trafficking. U.S. officials said the GAFEs have participated in only one
                  arrest of a major drug trafficker -- Adan Amezcua, nabbed earlier this
                  year.

                  The latest corruption charge is only one of a continuing series of
                  disappointments in joint programs designed to improve drug-fighting
                  efforts in Mexico, transit zone for an estimated 60 percent of the cocaine
                  and two-thirds of the heroin entering the United States.

                  A June 30 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the government
                  watchdog agency, found that much of the $76 million in U.S. anti-drug aid
                  given to the Mexican military by the Department of Defense in fiscal years
                  1996 and 1997 was spent on aircraft and helicopters the Mexican army
                  has been unable or unwilling to use.

                  And the report found that two Knox-class frigates the Mexican navy
                  purchased from the United States for use in counter-drug missions "were
                  not properly outfitted and are currently inoperable."

                  U.S. and Mexican officials said they were more concerned, however,
                  about the corruption allegations. Law enforcement operations at Mexico
                  City's Benito Juarez International Airport were taken over by a GAFE in
                  April 1997. Within the last five months, nearly 20 of the approximately 80
                  officers and troops assigned to the airport have been arrested on charges
                  of protecting drug shipments, assisting illegal immigrants and shepherding
                  electronics and other high-duty imports past customs agents, according to
                  Mexican investigators.

                  The most recent case, the detention of 14 soldiers on Aug. 9, began when
                  a general who oversees the federal police in Mexico City received an
                  anonymous letter alleging that anti-drug agents at the airport were
                  protecting drug loads and facilitating the entry of illegal immigrants from
                  South and Central America.

                  According to a Mexican investigator familiar with the case, the members
                  of the anti-drug unit protected suitcases each containing 22 pounds of
                  cocaine that arrived on an Avianca flight from Bogota, Colombia, every
                  Tuesday for the past six months. Military officials reportedly were paid
                  $2,500 for each suitcase delivery, the investigator said.

                  One military officer who works on the airport detail, and who agreed to
                  be interviewed on condition of anonymity, said the anti-drug officers
                  routinely pull suitcases containing cocaine off the luggage carriers between
                  the point where they are unloaded from the aircraft and the point where
                  bags are inspected by drug-sniffing dogs. After the dogs have examined
                  the luggage cart, the source said, the officers toss the cocaine-filled
                  suitcases onto the baggage conveyor belt.

                  In addition, members of the law enforcement units allegedly used their
                  airport passes to lead illegal immigrants from international flights to the
                  adjoining domestic terminal, bypassing immigration proceedings and
                  allowing them to illegally board flights to cities close to the U.S. border.
                  One Mexican investigator said members of the Mexico City military team
                  had been assisting an average of 20 illegal immigrants a week for the past
                  six months and were paid $500 per person for a total of about $240,000.

                  A senior military officer, who asked that his name not be used, defended
                  the airport agents who work for the military unit, alleging that the only
                  evidence of wrongdoing against the officers is "some change in their
                  lifestyles -- the way they dress, the cars they drive -- but that's not strong
                  enough to get them."

                  U.S. officials and news reports in Mexico have tied the airport GAFE to
                  an attempt to protect two loads of cocaine totaling 1,335 pounds that
                  arrived on two flights from Bogota on Aug. 20.

                  Two other members of the military unit were arrested in March on charges
                  of attempting to protect 332 pounds of cocaine that arrived as baggage on
                  a commercial flight from Bogota, according to the federal attorney
                  general's office. Mexican authorities also linked two other cocaine
                  shipments -- one of which was hidden amid religious books -- totaling
                  512 pounds to that investigation.