Vasconcelos en The Washington Post

Mexico's José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos.
By Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 8, 2008; Page C01
Even in death, José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos let someone else grab the limelight.
Vasconcelos, who had quietly dedicated his life to fighting crime and remaking Mexico, was aboard a government Learjet that crashed Tuesday in a spectacular fireball in downtown Mexico City.
Headlines after the crash focused on the death of Juan Camilo Mouriño, 37, the interior minister, head of domestic security and the second most powerful man in Mexico after the president. Miguel Monterrubio, a popular government spokesman who used to work at the embassy in Washington, was also among the 14 people killed and has been widely lauded.
But in most accounts, Vasconcelos, for years the nation's top organized crime prosecutor, has barely been mentioned. Though he held one of the world's most dangerous jobs, or perhaps because of it, he worked largely out of the spotlight.
"He was not out there making a name for himself," said Joe Bond, a top Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was posted in Mexico and worked closely with Vasconcelos. "He always took second seat, even though he was the main guy leading the war on drugs."
Vasconcelos was a prime target for drug-cartel hit men, and he received many death threats. Last January, Mexican police arrested three men with assault rifles and grenade launchers on charges that they were plotting to kill him. He, his wife and two grown children lived with suffocating security around the clock.
"It was a miserable life for him and his whole family," Bond said. "But he was very focused on doing his job. For us, he was always the guy to go to."
When we first met him in May 2002, he was sitting behind his desk on the upper floor of a government office building in downtown Mexico City. He worked behind a wall of bodyguards, men with machine guns everywhere, at street level, at the elevator, outside his office.
For years, he worked in these conditions, a lawyer trying to outfox the country's most wanted criminals, many of whom had well-equipped armies of their own and ran syndicates worth billions of dollars.
He attended too many funerals for police officers and prosecutors who turned up dead -- many hideously tortured -- at the hands of drug traffickers. With bribes and threats, the narcos have been stunningly successful at turning cops, soldiers and prosecutors into informants or executing them -- or both.
When we asked him about the risk he was taking for a government salary, Vasconcelos shrugged. He said he was just doing his job.
He was unforgettably serene. His black hair was graying, and he had bags under his eyes and the beginnings of a paunch, which we chalked up to his almost caged life, lived largely behind bulletproof glass. He didn't bring up the steel-bending stress he was under, but when we asked about it again, he finally offered that he meditated every day. He said his Catholic faith was important to him.
Unsung Prosecutor Brought A Shadowy Trade to Justice
He spoke of his hopes for his children and his country. He wished for a Mexico free from the gruesome violence, which has only gotten worse lately: Yet another headless corpse was suspended from a bridge in Ciudad Juarez this week.
He feared that Mexico could become like Colombia, where drug traffickers in the 1980s nearly took over the country. Unless the traffickers were defeated, he said, "our children are going to be suffering tomorrow."
He worked in dim light; perhaps it was more soothing than the usual harsh fluorescent lights of bureaucracy. During that first interview, two small sticks of Japanese incense burned on a table near his desk, which was piled high with indictment papers for alleged assassins and drug traffickers.
Though he lamented America's demand for drugs, and the fact that drug cartels bought most of their guns north of the border, Vasconcelos didn't blame anyone but Mexico for Mexico's problems.
He railed about corrupt police officers, whom he called "criminals dressed as public servants," and was angry about how deeply the drug cartels had penetrated his government.
He described a remarkable system in which the prosecutors working under him were organized into small cells. Each cell reported only to him, and they didn't talk to each other. "Only I see all the information," he said. "That helps prevent leaks."
In addition to his calm, there was an incredible purposefulness about Vasconcelos. He didn't talk very often to the press, and he agreed to meet with us only after repeated requests. But once he started, he talked for two hours.
He was particularly proud of the capture of Benjamin Arellano Felix, one of the most wanted men in Mexico and the United States. His 2002 arrest by military commandos, acting on intelligence developed by Vasconcelos's team, was one of Mexico's biggest victories against the drug cartels.
A few hours after Arellano Felix was in handcuffs, Vasconcelos met the man he had been tracking for five years and found him "smart but very, very cold."
"I told him he had been lucky before," Vasconcelos said, "but that this time he lost."
Vasconcelos played down his role and gave lavish credit to the DEA and the Mexican military. And, indeed, on the day after the arrest, there was little or no mention of Vasconcelos in the papers.
So little has been said about him now, after his death, that some of his friends are dismayed. Samuel Gonzalez Ruiz, who worked with Vasconcelos and was the top anti-drug prosecutor in the late 1990s, said he and others were upset that President Felipe Calderón spoke so sparingly about Vasconcelos at a memorial service Thursday.
"Many of the medals that some people won in the last few years were not really theirs -- they were won by the work of José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos," Gonzalez said in a telephone interview yesterday. "He will be remembered for his courage. And he will be a guide for the next generation of people who will fight against organized crime."
Vasconcelos left the attorney general's office four months ago to oversee Calderón's push to overhaul Mexico's outdated and often corrupt judicial system.
In Mexico, speculation is rampant about whether the plane crash was the work of drug cartels. Mexicans have long been accustomed to investigations that never seem to get to the bottom of high-profile deaths, and many suspect something sinister despite government assurances that initial indications suggest an accidental crash.
Vasconcelos stayed on in a harrowing job for years longer than duty required, bravely serving his country without fanfare, until the moment he died, at 51.
We can't help but imagine that in the last seconds of his life, as the plane hurtled toward the ground, he was calm -- and not terribly surprised.
Engine fell off Mexican plane before crash, official says
* Story Highlights
* Jet's left engine fell off as plane traveled between 250 and 300 kmh, reports say
* No traces of explosives found in wreckage; no foul play suspected, official says
* Interior minister, former deputy attorney general among those who died Tuesday
* Mexicans had speculated that drug lords were behind crash
***

El diario The Washington Post, difunde una entrevista que le realiza El corresponsal Mary Jordan al titular de UEDO-PGR José Vasconcelos; se publico el 13 de junio del 2002;

Dice el matutino que el “hermetismo de los fiscales encargados de la lucha antidrogas” y una mejor labor de los servicios de inteligencia de México, han permitido la captura de importantes capos del narcotráfico.
Dijo entonces Saantiago Vasconcelos: “ninguno (entre los fiscales) sabe en los que está trabajando otro, solamente yo veo toda la información, ésto ayuda ha prevenir que haya filtraciones (de información)”.
The Washington Post también destacó que los fiscales mexicanos como Vasconcelos, trabajan en una especie de bunkers, férreamente resguardados y coordinados con los servicios de inteligencia militar que se manejan de una manera similar.
“El fiscal Vasconcelos “medita todos los días para mantenerse concentrado, algunas veces quema incienso japonés en su oficina, un bunker en el corazón de la ciudad de México, Distrito Federal”, subrayó el diario más importante de la capital estadunidense.”
***

Mexico Waging Its Drug War One Prosecutor at a Time
Chief Says Leak-Preventing Tactic Aids in Pursuit of Cartel
By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, May 31, 2002; Page A27
MEXICO CITY, May 30 -- Five men and one woman in a heavily guarded downtown office building guard dangerous secrets. Talking about them could get them fired or even killed. So in isolation, the elite government lawyer’s work toward the same goal: dismantling the Arellano Felix drug cartel.
"No one knows what the others are working on. Only I see all the information," said Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico's chief anti-drug prosecutor, who lives behind a wall of bodyguards. "That helps prevent leaks." In an interview, Vasconcelos described how Mexico has changed the way it fights drug trafficking by creating isolated cells of prosecutors forbidden from talking to one another. He also offered new details about the capture of Benjamin Arellano Felix, a drug lord with a $2 million U.S. bounty on his head, and of the changing state of Mexico's largest smuggling cartel.
Even a few years ago, the Arellano Felixes and other drug kingpins were able to move around Mexico with relative impunity, tipped off to arrest plans by government informants. U.S. officials said the cartel has had hundreds of officials on its payroll. But these days, authorities have made an important arrest every month. More than a dozen major traffickers have been captured in the past year by Vasconcelos's group working alongside an equally secret military intelligence unit.
Vasconcelos's secret six are the prime investigators for the nation's top drug cases. Unlike in the United States, prosecutors here not only bring cases to court, but also carry out the prior detective work. Vasconcelos said that reorganizing the anti-drug task force into independent cells has cut down on leaks. Each group pursues a separate part of the investigation, such as Colombian cocaine suppliers or money-laundering operations.
Isolating the six chief investigators also controls the damage if an investigator is forced to talk -- or is bribed into doing so. Since the mid-1980s, assassins for the Arellano Felix cartel have killed dozens of prosecutors, judges and police officers, often after torturing them.
In total, 47 prosecutors are on Vasconcelos's task force, all vetted, polygraphed and psychologically tested. Eighteen are women. According to Vasconcelos, female investigators are proving especially effective "and more discreet."
The boss of Vasconcelos's counterpart unit in the military has never been publicly identified. Vasconcelos, who is in constant contact with him, referred to him as "my mirror." He said the military investigators are likewise divided into secretive cells.
U.S. officials said the military anti-drug unit has received training from the Defense Department and CIA. The unit's agents were tailing Benjamin Arellano Felix's wife and children in the days before his arrest.
Vasconcelos said the cartel is undergoing a leadership change after the arrest of Arellano Felix in March and the shooting death in February of his brother, Ramon Arellano Felix, the cartel triggerman. With those two out of the picture, law enforcement officials on both sides of the border predicted that the cartel was finished, or nearly so. But Vasconcelos said it continues to operate.
Now, he said, his team is setting its sights on two lesser-known Arellano Felix brothers, Eduardo and Javier. Vasconcelos said that Eduardo is a physician and Javier has a college degree, making them unusually well-educated traffickers.
He said it was still unclear whether any one person has taken control of the cartel. "There is no one I can point to and say for sure: 'He's the one,' " Vasconcelos said. But, he said, the cartel continues to ship cocaine, heroin and other drugs into its distribution territory, primarily California, Illinois and other Midwestern states.
Vasconcelos said his team is also looking for Manuel Aguirre Galindo, known as "The Horse" because of the shape of his face, and as "The Promote r" because he developed many of the cartel's ties with Colombian cocaine suppliers.
Donald J. Thornhill Jr., a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent in San Diego, said it remained to be seen whether the new cartel leadership "has the juice that Benjamin and Ramon had."
The "cold, psychotic killings" Ramon performed -- said to number in the hundreds -- were a key reason the cartel flourished, Thornhill said. The cartel is believed responsible for as much as one-third of the cocaine consumed in the United States, either by directly supplying it or by charging other traffickers for passage through Mexico and into the United States, he said.
In all, there were seven Arellano Felix brothers. With one dead, two in prison and two being sought, two brothers remain who have never been publicly linked to the family business.
The DEA is printing new "wanted" posters about the cartel that include pictures of Eduardo and Javier Arellano Felix. "Coming soon to a border crossing near you," he said.
Vasconcelos said that cooperation with the DEA and other U.S. agencies has improved and helps crack the drug cartels. But he said the most important factors have been closer cooperation with the military investigators and keeping his team uncorrupted.
Vasconcelos meditates every day to keep focused. At times, he burns Japanese incense in his office, a bunker in the heart of downtown Mexico City. A religious man with a calm demeanor, he spoke philosophically about his work: "Each cartel is like a person -- each has its own personality."
In the end, he said, family was the chink in Benjamin Arellano Felix's armor. Vasconcelos said his team got a key break two years ago, when a white Volkswagen Jetta was spotted at a homicide scene in the northern city of Monterrey. Investigators started watching the car, and when it turned up again at a suspected cartel house in Monterrey, they found Arellano Felix family videos inside.
One of the daughters, seen on the videos, has a pronounced facial deformity. So investigators pored over school yearbooks in Monterrey until they spotted the girl, registered under a false name, Vasconcelos said. They traced her to her Monterrey address, but by the time they got there, the family had made another of its frequent moves.
Vasconcelos said they kept up discreet surveillance on the white Jetta and its owner, who turned out to be Benjamin Arellano Felix's young personal assistant, hoping that it might eventually lead them to the family. Earlier this year, the DEA passed on information about money couriers traveling from Tijuana to Mexico City. Mexican investigators, following that tip and their own intelligence, spotted the white Jetta at the Mexico City airport and followed it to Puebla, 70 miles east of the capital.
At about the same time, investigators from the military anti-drug unit spotted Benjamin Arellano Felix's wife at a city office in Puebla, paying property taxes. She led investigators to the same house where the white Jetta had led other agents.
Vasconcelos said investigators then set up surveillance on the house. He said they were careful not to watch the house 24 hours a day, as they could have been detected by Arellano Felix's security men. So he said investigators dressed as pizza delivery men, street sweepers, vendors pushing carts and in other disguises, keeping watch on the house as closely as possible.
Then one day, Vasconcelos said, they noticed a sharp increase in the security around the house: Suddenly, men appeared on nearby bridges, carrying cell phones and radios, but no weapons.
Vasconcelos said a decision was made quickly to raid the house even through the government was not sure its target was inside. Elite soldiers stormed the house at 1 a.m. on March 9 and found Benjamin Arellano Felix. Vasconcelos said he raised a gun initially, but put it down quickly in the face of overwhelming force.
Shortly after the arrest, Vasconcelos met the "smart, but very, very cold" man he had been tracking for five years, and had finally checkmated. "I told him he had been lucky before," Vasconcelos said, "but that this time he lost."