A Counterintelligence Approach to Controlling Cartel Corruption

May 20, 2009

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

Tracking Mexico's Drug Cartels

Rey Guerra, the former sheriff of Starr County, Texas, pleaded guilty

May 1 to a narcotics conspiracy charge in federal district court in

McAllen, Texas. Guerra admitted to using information obtained in his

official capacity to help a friend (a Mexican drug trafficker

allegedly associated with Los Zetas) evade U.S. counternarcotics

efforts. On at least one occasion, Guerra also attempted to learn the

identity of a confidential informant who had provided authorities with

information regarding cartel operations so he could pass it to his

cartel contact.

In addition to providing intelligence to Los Zetas, Guerra also

reportedly helped steer investigations away from people and facilities

associated with Los Zetas. He also sought to block progress on

investigations into arrested individuals associated with Los Zetas to

protect other members associated with the organization. Guerra is

scheduled for sentencing July 29; he faces 10 years to life

imprisonment, fines of up to $4 million and five years of supervised

release.

Guerra is just one of a growing number of officials on the U.S. side

of the border who have been recruited as agents for Mexico's powerful

and sophisticated drug cartels. Indeed, when one examines the reach

and scope of the Mexican cartels' efforts to recruit agents inside the

United States to provide intelligence and act on the cartels' behalf,

it becomes apparent that the cartels have demonstrated the ability to

operate more like a foreign intelligence service than a traditional

criminal organization.

Fluidity and Flexibility

For many years now, STRATFOR has followed developments along the

U.S.-Mexican border and has studied the dynamics of the cross-border

illicit flow of people, drugs, weapons and cash.

One of the most notable characteristics about this flow of contraband

is its flexibility. When smugglers encounter an obstacle to the flow

of their product, they find ways to avoid it. For example, as we've

previously discussed in the case of the extensive border fence in the

San Diego sector, drug traffickers and human smugglers diverted a good

portion of their volume around the wall to the Tucson sector; they

even created an extensive network of tunnels under the fence to keep

their contraband (and profits) flowing.

Likewise, as maritime and air interdiction efforts between South

America and Mexico have become more successful, Central America has

become increasingly important to the flow of narcotics from South

America to the United States. This reflects how the drug-trafficking

organizations have adjusted their method of shipment and their

trafficking routes to avoid interdiction efforts and maintain the

northward flow of narcotics.

Over the past few years, a great deal of public and government

attention has focused on the U.S.-Mexican border. In response to this

attention, the federal and border state governments in the United

States have erected more barriers, installed an array of cameras and

sensors and increased the manpower committed to securing the border.

While these efforts certainly have not hermetically sealed the border,

they do appear to be having some impact - an impact magnified by the

effectiveness of interdiction efforts elsewhere along the narcotics

supply chain.

According to the most recent statistics from the Drug Enforcement

Administration, from January 2007 through September 2008 the price per

pure gram of cocaine increased 89.1 percent, or from $96.61 to

$182.73, while the purity of cocaine seized on the street decreased

31.3 percent, dropping from 67 percent pure cocaine to 46 percent pure

cocaine. Recent anecdotal reports from law enforcement sources

indicate that cocaine prices have remained high, and that the purity

of cocaine on the street has remained poor.

Overcoming Human Obstacles

In another interesting trend that has emerged over the past few years,

as border security has tightened and as the flow of narcotics has been

impeded, the number of U.S. border enforcement officers arrested on

charges of corruption has increased notably. This increased corruption

represents a logical outcome of the fluidity of the flow of

contraband. As the obstacles posed by border enforcement have become

more daunting, people have become the weak link in the enforcement

system. In some ways, people are like tunnels under the border wall -

i.e., channels employed by the traffickers to help their goods get to

market.

From the Mexican cartels' point of view, it is cheaper to pay an

official several thousand dollars to allow a load of narcotics to pass

by than it is to risk having the shipment seized. Such bribes are

simply part of the cost of doing business - and in the big picture,

even a low-level local agent can be an incredible bargain.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 21 CBP officers

were arrested on corruption charges during the fiscal year that ended

in September 2008, as opposed to only 4 in the preceding fiscal year.

In the current fiscal year (since Oct. 1), 14 have been arrested. And

the problem with corruption extends further than just customs or

border patrol officers. In recent years, police officers, state

troopers, county sheriffs, National Guard members, judges,

prosecutors, deputy U.S. marshals and even the FBI special agent in

charge of the El Paso office have been linked to Mexican

drug-trafficking organizations. Significantly, the cases being

prosecuted against these public officials of all stripes are just the

tip of the iceberg. The underlying problem of corruption is much

greater.

A major challenge to addressing the issue of border corruption is the

large number of jurisdictions along the border, along with the reality

that corruption occurs at the local, state and federal levels across

those jurisdictions. Though this makes it very difficult to gather

data relating to the total number of corruption investigations

conducted, sources tell us that while corruption has always been a

problem along the border, the problem has ballooned in recent years -

and the number of corruption cases has increased dramatically.

In addition to the complexity brought about by the multiple

jurisdictions, agencies and levels of government involved, there

simply is not one single agency that can be tasked with taking care of

the corruption problem. It is just too big and too wide. Even the FBI,

which has national jurisdiction and a mandate to investigate public

corruption cases, cannot step in and clean up all the corruption. The

FBI already is being stretched thin with its other responsibilities,

like counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence, financial fraud

and bank robbery. The FBI thus does not even have the capacity to

investigate every allegation of corruption at the federal level, much

less at the state and local levels. Limited resources require the

agency to be very selective about the cases it decides to investigate.

Given that there is no real central clearinghouse for corruption

cases, most allegations of corruption are investigated by a wide array

of internal affairs units and other agencies at the federal, state and

local levels.

Any time there is such a mixture of agencies involved in the

investigation of a specific type of crime, there is often bureaucratic

friction, and there are almost always problems with information

sharing. This means that pieces of information and investigative leads

developed in the investigation of some of these cases are not shared

with the appropriate agencies. To overcome this information sharing

problem, the FBI has established six Border Corruption Task Forces

designed to bring local, state and federal officers together to focus

on corruption tied to the U.S.-Mexican border, but these task forces

have not yet been able to solve the complex problem of coordination.

Sophisticated Spotting

Efforts to corrupt officials along the U.S.-Mexican border are very

organized and very focused, something that is critical to

understanding the public corruption issue along the border. Some of

the Mexican cartels have a long history of successfully corrupting

public officials on both sides of the border. Groups like the Beltran

Leyva Organization (BLO) have successfully recruited scores of

intelligence assets and agents of influence at the local, state and

even federal levels of the Mexican government. They even have enjoyed

significant success in recruiting agents in elite units such as the

anti-organized crime unit (SIEDO) of the Office of the Mexican

Attorney General (PGR). The BLO also has recruited Mexican employees

working for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, and even allegedly owned

Mexico's former drug czar, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who reportedly was

receiving $450,00 a month from the organization.

In fact, the sophistication of these groups means they use methods

more akin to the intelligence recruitment processes used by foreign

intelligence services than those normally associated with a criminal

organization. The cartels are known to conduct extensive surveillance

and background checks on potential targets to determine how to best

pitch to them. Like the spotting methods used by intelligence

agencies, the surveillance conducted by the cartels on potential

targets is designed to glean as many details about the target as

possible, including where they live, what vehicles they drive, who

their family members are, their financial needs and their

peccadilloes.

Historically, many foreign intelligence services are known to use

ethnicity in their favor, heavily targeting persons sharing an ethnic

background found in the foreign country. Foreign services also are

known to use relatives of the target living in the foreign country to

their advantage. Mexican cartels use these same tools. They tend to

target Hispanic officers and often use family members living in Mexico

as recruiting levers. For example, Luis Francisco Alarid, who had been

a CBP officer at the Otay Mesa, Calif., port of entry, was sentenced

to 84 months in federal prison in February for his participation in a

conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens and marijuana into the United

States. One of the people Alarid admitted to conspiring with was his

uncle, who drove a van loaded with marijuana and illegal aliens

through a border checkpoint manned by Alarid.

Like family spy rings (such as the Cold War spy ring run by John

Walker), there also have been family border corruption rings. Raul

Villarreal and his brother, Fidel, both former CBP agents in San

Diego, were arraigned March 16 after fleeing the United States in 2006

after learning they were being investigated for corruption. The pair

was captured in Mexico in October 2008 and extradited back to the

United States.

'Plata o Sexo'

When discussing human intelligence recruiting, it is not uncommon to

refer to the old cold war acronym MICE (money, ideology, compromise

and ego) to explain the approach used to recruit an agent. When

discussing corruption in Mexico, people often repeat the phrase "plata

o plomo," Spanish for "money or lead" - meaning "take the money or

we'll kill you." However, in most border corruption cases involving

American officials, the threat of plomo is not as powerful as it is

inside Mexico. Although some officials charged with corruption have

claimed as a defense that they were intimidated into behaving

corruptly, juries have rejected these arguments. This dynamic could

change if the Mexican cartels begin to target officers in the United

States for assassination as they have in Mexico.

With plomo an empty threat north of the border, plata has become the

primary motivation for corruption along the Mexican border. In fact,

good old greed - the M in MICE - has always been the most common

motivation for Americans recruited by foreign intelligence services.

The runner-up, which supplants plomo in the recruitment equation

inside the United Sates, is "sexo," aka "sex." Sex, an age-old

espionage recruitment tool that fits under the compromise section of

MICE, has been seen in high-profile espionage cases, including the one

involving the Marine security guards at the U.S Embassy in Moscow.

Using sex to recruit an agent is often referred to as setting a "honey

trap." Sex can be used in two ways. First, it can be used as a simple

payment for services rendered. Second, it can be used as a means to

blackmail the agent. (The two techniques can be used in tandem.)

It is not at all uncommon for border officials to be offered sex in

return for allowing illegal aliens or drugs to enter the country, or

for drug-trafficking organizations to use attractive agents to seduce

and then recruit officers. Several officials have been convicted in

such cases. For example, in March 2007, CBP inspection officer Richard

Elizalda, who had worked at the San Ysidro, Calif., port of entry, was

sentenced to 57 months in prison for conspiring with his lover, alien

smuggler Raquel Arin, to let the organization she worked for bring

illegal aliens through his inspection lane. Elizalda also accepted

cash for his efforts - much of which he allegedly spent on gifts for

Arin - so in reality, Elizalda was a case of "plata y sexo" rather

than an either-or deal.

Corruption Cases Handled Differently

When the U.S. government hires an employee who has family members

living in a place like Beijing or Moscow, the background investigation

for that employee is pursued with far more interest than if the

employee has relatives in Ciudad Juarez or Tijuana. Mexico

traditionally has not been seen as a foreign counterintelligence

threat, even though it has long been recognized that many countries,

like Russia, are very active in their efforts to target the United

States from Mexico. Indeed, during the Cold War, the KGB's largest

rezidentura (the equivalent of a CIA station) was located in Mexico

City.

Employees with connections to Mexico frequently have not been that

well vetted, period. In one well-publicized incident, the Border

Patrol hired an illegal immigrant who was later arrested for alien

smuggling. In July 2006, U.S. Border Patrol agent Oscar Ortiz was

sentenced to 60 months in prison after admitting to smuggling more

than 100 illegal immigrants into the United States. After his arrest,

investigators learned that Ortiz was an illegal immigrant himself who

had used a counterfeit birth certificate when he was hired.

Ironically, Ortiz also had been arrested for attempting to smuggle two

illegal immigrants into the United States shortly before being hired

by the Border Patrol. (He was never charged for that attempt.)

From an investigative perspective, corruption cases tend to be handled

more as one-off cases, and they do not normally receive the same sort

of extensive investigation into the suspect's friends and associates

that would be conducted in a foreign counterintelligence case. In

other words, if a U.S. government employee is recruited by the Chinese

or Russian intelligence service, the investigation receives far more

energy - and the suspect's circle of friends, relatives and associates

receives far more scrutiny - than if he is recruited by a Mexican

cartel.

In espionage cases, there is also an extensive damage assessment

investigation conducted to ensure that all the information the suspect

could have divulged is identified, along with the identities of any

other people the suspect could have helped his handler recruit.

Additionally, after-action reviews are conducted to determine how the

suspect was recruited, how he was handled and how he could have been

uncovered earlier. The results of these reviews are then used to help

shape future counterintelligence investigative efforts. They are also

used in the preparation of defensive counterintelligence briefings to

educate other employees and help protect them from being recruited.

This differences in urgency and scope between the two types of

investigations is driven by the perception that the damage to national

security is greater if an official is recruited by a foreign

intelligence agency than if he is recruited by a criminal

organization. That assessment may need to be re-examined, given that

the Mexican cartels are criminal organizations with the proven

sophistication to recruit U.S. officials at all levels of government -

and that this has allowed them to move whomever and whatever they wish

into the United States.

The problem of public corruption is very widespread, and to approach

corruption cases in a manner similar to foreign counterintelligence

cases would require a large commitment of investigative, prosecutorial

and defensive resources. But the threat posed by the Mexican cartels

is different than that posed by traditional criminal organizations,

meaning that countering it will require a nontraditional approach.

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