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Revenge of El Nerd, part II
Insight on the News, Oct 21, 1996 by Jamie Dettmer
Moments after he received the red, white and green sash of office 18 months ago, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon vowed in his inaugural address to launch an all-out drive against corruption. Nearly all past Mexican presidents have made a similar inaugural pledge to clean up their country's politics and law enforcement--none were worth the paper they were written on. But in Zedillo's case, the pledge appeared serious.
As an indication of his earnestness, the new post-North American Free Trade Agreement president declared he was appointing the leader of the conservative opposition party, Antonio Lozano Gracia, as attorney general.
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His announcement drew sustained applause from foreign dignitaries present in Mexico's congress for the transfer of power from the outgoing president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, to Zedillo. Washington clearly was relieved. "El Nerd," as Zedillo is nicknamed in Mexico, looked as though he would be a stand-up partner for America in the fight against drugs.
Now, though, Zedillo's anticorruption campaign, or "renovacion moral," looks to be a sham. His attorney general--a man upon whom Washington placed much faith--is being buffeted by allegations of drug-related corruption. His accuser, Ricardo Cordero Ontiveros, a former top antinarcotics cop, has been arrested and sits incommunicado in a Tijuana prison. Even US. congressmen are being denied access to him. The country has been rocked by a wave of high-profile assassinations of federal prosecutors and top law-enforcement officials (see "Murder and Corruption Boil South of the Border," Aug. 26). Mexico's narcotics traffickers have never had it so good.
And efforts to identify who was behind the killing in 1994 of the reform-minded politician Luis Donaldo Colosio appear to be going nowhere. The lack of progress in the Colosio investigation--he was gunned down while campaigning for the presidency as the ruling party's candidate--raises questions not--just about Lozano but Zedillo himself. After all, Zedillo was Colosio's campaign manager and a personal friend of the slain politician--he only became president, reluctantly albeit, as a result of the 1994 assassination. If Zedillo can't discover who were the so-called "intellectual authors" of the killing of his friend3 then what is his anticorruption pledge worth?
An internal document from an oversight section in the Mexican attorney general's office, or PGR, obtained by news alert! goes some way in explaining why the Zedillo administration so far hasn't been able to solve the murder and why the prospects are not good for a successful conclusion to the investigation.
According to the four-page document--written in May--the inquiry is being obstructed by Lozano himself and other senior officials within the PGR who are "serving the interests of ex-president Carlos Salinas." The senior PGR officials named are: Vicente Diaz de Leon Acosta, Jose Antonio Gandara Terrazas and Diego Valadez.
There has been much speculation in Mexico that Salinas' brother Raul, who is in a Mexican jail in connection with another 1994 assassination, somehow was connected to Colosio's murder. And according to the document, Salinas' former personal secretary, Justo Ceja Martinez, has been responsible for coordinating the sabotage of the investigation.
The PGR document that outlines Ceja's alleged role also goes on to list 80 high-ranking and middle-ranking Federal Judicial Police officers who paid $20,000 to $30,000 for their posts. The list includes three commandantes and 17 subcommandantes. "The document contains excellent information about the relationship between Salinas and Lozano and Lozano's team," remarked Eduardo Valle Espinosa, who led Mexico's antinarcotics efforts in the early 1990s and now lives in exile in the U.S. Is Zedillo unaware of the connections? Unlikely.
RELATED ARTICLE: Clintons' Wiggly Can Forms
Are the Clintons expecting a full-court IRS audit into their Whitewater-related finances? Or has independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and his prosecutors started a new tax line of inquiry?
News alert! has discovered that the team of lawyers at the Washington-based firm of Williams & Connolly retained by the Clintons has been reinforced by a tax specialist. According to congressional sources, James T. Fuller, an old Williams & Connolly hand, has been brought in. Fuller served in the 1970s as the staff assistant to the chief counsel at the IRS.
Although it isn't clear exactly on which returns Fuller will be working, the Clintons' 1992 ones would seem the most likely--they have quite a history. Nearly everyone who has handled them has taken a different view of whether they should reflect a net Whitewater loss or gain for the first family. The returns would have been uneventful except for the fact that it was in the 1991-92 tax year that the Clintons sold their interest in Whitewater to James B. McDougal for $1,000. In a letter to the late Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, Little Rock accountant Yoly Redden suggested the Clintons "may be able to claim a $10,000 to $15,000 loss." Foster commented in a letter to Robert Barnett of Williams & Connolly: "Because of the numerous problems with Whitewater records and the commingling of funds with other companies and individuals, I believe many explanations may have to be made if we claim a loss. I do not believe we should claim a gain, because the Clintons did suffer a loss." In 1992, the Clintons publicly claimed they lost $25,000 on Whitewater. Foster agonized about the return and covered seven pages with handwritten comments, including the remark, "can of worms you shouldn't open." Finally, the return showed a $1,000 gain.
COPYRIGHT 1996 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
