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Few cases illustrate the untrustworthiness of intelligence in the drug war more than that of Javier Herrera, a former officer in charge of operations for the federal police.
In a reformist move rare for Mexico, Herrera wrote directly to President Calderon last year, alleging high level corruption inside the government. Many police operations, he told the president, were a joke -- poorly planned, pointless, conducted with no clear goal beyond creating the appearance of action.
Drug traffickers and the corrupt cops who work for them responded to the threat Herrera posed in their usual way -- by casting him as the bad guy. Not long after he wrote to the president, Herrera was arrested on the basis of information obtained from an informant who said that Herrera had accepted a $1 million bribe from Chapo. But when Reveles, the founder of Proceso, looked into the allegation, nothing made sense.
The "witness," it turned out, was a small time forger who had been picked up late one night by federal agents and taken to an interrogation room, where he was handcuffed to a chair and coerced into making a false allegation against Herrera.
"That's when the torture began," the man wrote in a letter recanting his testimony against Herrera. "It was both physical and psychological, consisting of electric shocks to the lower part of my back and death threats to me and my family for not agreeing to do what they asked. They told me I was accused of fraud by people in Acapulco and that I was fucked because one of them had family high up in SIEDO."
The man was taken to another room and ordered to sign a statement against a former federale, whom the agents said had received a suitcase filled with cash in Acapulco. It was only later, after the man saw pictures of Herrera in the press, that he recognized the officer he had falsely accused. "I fear for my life and that of my family," he wrote. "The responsibility for what happens to me belongs to the federal authorities."
Given how thoroughly the cartels have infiltrated every level of law enforcement, it has become virtually impossible to separate the corrupt cops from the courageous ones being set up for a fall. One senior federal police officer who spoke to me was praised by officials as a brave cop and dismissed by journalists as "the worst of the worst." The officer complained that Operacion Limpieza was damaging morale. "It's hitting us hard," he says. "People don't trust us. The elites are terrified. They have lost faith in authority." He points to the arrest of Noe Ramirez, the head of SIEDO charged with accepting $450,000 in bribes from Mochomo's cartel. "I knew him very well," the officer says. "He was a nice guy. I still don't think he's guilty. How do you know that Felipe isn't a double agent sent by the narcos as part of a psychological war?"