MEXICO CITY — A major drug cartel has infiltrated the Mexican attorney general’s office, and one cartel worker said he even spied on Drug Enforcement Administration operations from inside the U.S. Embassy, Mexican prosecutors said Monday.
Five officials of the Attorney General’s Organized Crime unit were arrested on allegations that they served as informants for the Beltran-Leyva Cartel, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said. He added that there are indications other spies still work inside his agency.
The embassy employee, who also worked for Interpol at the Mexico City airport, is a protected witness after telling Mexican officials in Washington that he leaked details of DEA operations, an official at the Attorney General’s Office told The AP on condition of anonymity. He said he was not authorized to speak on the record.
U.S. Embassy officials had no comment.
Separately, a U.S. official announced Monday that a high-ranking Mexican immigration official had been caught in Arizona with 170 pounds of marijuana in his vehicle.
The revelations of corruption inside the control centers of the U.S.-Mexican anti-drug effort were a major blow to Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s anti-drug campaign, in which he has sent tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police officers across Mexico to combat violent cartels.
Calderon himself has long acknowledged corruption is widespread in police forces. Monday’s case represents the most serious known infiltration of anti-crime agencies since the 1997 arrest of Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, then head of Mexico’s anti-drug agency.
