Family Source: Reforma (Mexico) (via World Press Review) Website: http://www.reforma.com.mx/ Pubdate: Tue, 14 Jul 1998

From Reforma, May 29, 1998 Published in World Press Review, August, 1998 Page 48

OPERATION CASABLANCA'S STING

In Operation Casablanca, billed as the biggest international sting operation in history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration ( DEA ) charged three of Mexico's largest banks with laundering millions in drug money for Mexican and Colombian cartels. Mexican officials called it a national insult: Whatever the banks had done, they said, Mexican authorities should have been informed of U.S. police activities in their territory. Here political Adolfo Aguilar Zinser expresses his anguished ambivalence about the incident. - WPR

U ntil the U.S. launched Operation Casablanca to catch money-launderers in Mexico, President Ernesto Zedillo had never been so stung by U.S. violations of Mexico's sovereignty. After issuing a cautious diplomatic note, Zedillo followed up in very concrete and undiplomatic language, publicly charging the U.S. government with giving its agents free rein in Mexico without informing Mexican authorities.

Far from offering an apology. President Bill Clinton told Zedillo he was awfully sorry to have to treat Mexico in this way but his government could not inform ours about its covert operations, and these operations would be repeated as often as necessary in Mexico and anywhere else in the world. A State Department spokesman added that Mexico should worry less about formalities and more about actually combating drug trafficking.

What is surprising about these exchanges is not the arrogance of the U.S. government but the unusual vigor shown by Zedillo in this case. Instead of taking refuge in diplomatic niceties, Zedillo insisted that the two countries seek a way to restore sovereignty through a commitment by the U.S. to respect binational agreements on the exchange of information and to punish U.S. agents who have violated the law. Foreign Minister Rosario Green says that the Americans have been asked for detailed information about their operations in Mexico. So far, the demands by Mexican officials have had little substance. They are like the daredevil stunts of a bullfighter trying to impress the crowd. Does the Foreign Ministry really believe that the U.S. Justice Department is going to humbly hand its agents over to Mexican authorities so that the offending agents can serve time in prison?

U.S. agents in Mexico enjoy complete immunity from prosecution by Mexican authorities. If a DEA agent were to be detained by a Mexican officer, the Camarena syndrome would explode all over again, and the U.S. government would accuse Mexico of kidnapping. [U.S.-Mexican relations hit a low in 1985, when DEA agent Enrique Camarena was killed in Guadalajara. The U.S. accused Mexican officials of collaborating with drug dealers in Camarena's murder. -WPR.] It is absurd to talk about protecting sovereignty through actions that the Mexican government will never dare to take.

If Mexico had any guts, it would stop observing bilateral agreements on information exchange. Secondly, it would suspend ratification of additional protocols to the extradition treaty signed by both countries. And thirdly, Mexico would ask the U.S. to recall all of its police agents stationed in Mexico. Surely some of those agents were involved in Operation Casablanca. But it will be hard to prove it or to detain them for investigation.

Zedillo's government lacks the political credibility to defend its sovereignty. The reason that the U.S. claims it is necessary to maintain the secrecy of its covert anti-drug operations is the risk that if the Mexican authorities find out, those actions would be sabotaged by the corruption prevailing in the Mexican government and the complicity of the police with drug traffickers. In other words, the only way to guarantee our sovereignty is to leave no doubt about the capacity of our political institutions to combat corruption on their own. The Zedillo administration is not doing that.

Much has been written recently about why the U.S. gave full media exposure to the results of a covert operation that has overstepped its bounds and threatened the entire Mexican financial system, a system that the U.S. itself has spent billions shoring up. For many Mexicans, the motives for Casablanca are questionable. Little has been said, however, about what may have suddenly inspired Zedillo to react with such patriotic zeal. Would it be wrongheaded to suspect that the president's defense of our sovereignty is not very sincere either, that his real motive is to conceal the corruption thriving at the highest levels of power in Mexico? The lack of credibility and moral authority of our government isthe true enemy of our sovereignty.

- -- Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, "Reforma" ( independent ), Mexico City, May 29, 1998