Word: agente
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...murder, it has evolved from the cartel's last-ditch way to protect market share into its preferred means of communication. "They rule by terror," says Errol Chavez, special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's San Diego office. According to testimony from former associates, Ramon often rises in the morning announcing, "I feel like killing somebody today," then satisfies the urge in ways designed to build the legend, feed the fear. Trademarks include "the Colombian necktie"--cutting an informant's throat below the chin, then pulling his tongue through the wound as he bleeds to death...
...mutation. Their uncle Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, an ex-cop from the violent Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, was the first Mexican drug capo to link up with Colombia's cocaine cartels in the 1980s. He and other druglords shared the Tijuana corridor, but after they savagely murdered DEA agent Enrique Camarena in 1985, in league with senior police and political figures, Mexican authorities put them in jail. Into Tijuana roared the seven Arellano brothers, including the handsome Benjamin, their CEO; chubby Ramon, the enforcer; finance-whiz Eduardo, 44, the money launderer; and the eldest, Francisco, 51, the gregarious, cross...
...years ago, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo sent an earnest young police reformer, Jose (Pepe) Patino, to help clean up Tijuana's corrupt police force. "Of all the [Mexican police] I've ever worked with, he's the only one I ever felt was honest," says a DEA agent who has investigated the cartel for years. For his safety, Patino lived in San Diego. But in April 2000, two Mexican federal police comandantes--who had been polygraphed, vetted and trained by the U.S. to serve in a "clean" new antidrug unit--allegedly lured Patino and two aides into a trap...
...circumventing Tijuana and going right to Los Angeles without paying the Arellanos' fee--as proved by last month's record U.S. seizure of 13 tons of cocaine being ferried overseas by Ukrainians. No one is suggesting that the era of the Tijuana cartel is over, but as DEA agent Chavez says, "We're definitely pushing back...
...know something's out there you can't do something to fix it," says the agent. "That's why so many agents kept their stuff locked up in their desk where it couldn't get screwed up." Name a sensitive, headline-making case and you can find a flap over lost-and-found documents. The humiliations range from the Congressional investigations into director J. Edgar Hoover's massive COINTELPRO domestic surveillance program to the overzealous terrorism investigation by the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) to the Chinese espionage cases of the late 1990s...