U.S., Mexico team up to fight drug cartels

MEXICO CITY — To avenge the arrest of their leader, Mexican drug cartel commandos went on a rampage this summer across the lawless state of Michoacan, seizing 12 Mexican police officers and dumping their bound and stripped corpses in a pile beside a busy highway.

The slaughtered federal agents, it later emerged, had something in common: All had been vetted and trained by the U.S. government to work alongside its anti-narcotics agents. Officials said the American connection made them high-value targets for the cartels, who are lashing back ruthlessly against a military crackdown involving unprecedented cooperation between the two countries.

After decades of mistrust and sometimes betrayal, Mexican and U.S. authorities are increasingly setting aside their differences to unite against a common enemy. According to interviews in Washington and Mexico City, the two countries are sharing sensitive intelligence and computer technology, military hardware and, perhaps most importantly, U.S. know-how to train and vet Mexican agents. Police and soldiers secretly on the cartels' payroll have long poisoned efforts at cross-border cooperation against some of the world's most dangerous criminal organizations.

"The recognition by both sides, at the highest levels, that we have a shared responsibility for drug trafficking and serious crime in Mexico is a watershed change," said John Feeley, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico.

The newly robust partnership is still risky, uneasy and freighted with old suspicions. U.S. law enforcement officials said it is being forged with the assurance by the U.S. State Department that Mexico's weak law enforcement agencies will overcome a history of incompetence and corruption, and that the closed ranks of the Mexican military, which operates with virtual impunity, can get past its hostility to outsiders.

U.S. officials also acknowledge that the growing cooperation is still a gamble. With their almost limitless resources, drug traffickers have corrupted top crime fighters in President Felipe Calderon's administration, including the head of the attorney general's organized crime unit. A cartel spy penetrated the Interpol office here and claims to have worked inside the U.S. Embassy to steal secrets from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The new relationship goes well beyond, and builds upon, the Merida Initiative, the $1.4 billion U.S. anti-narcotics package to Mexico launched in 2008. That three-year agreement includes the promise of Black Hawk helicopters, night-vision goggles and gamma-ray scanners to search for guns and cash at the U.S.-Mexico border.