‘The Owl’ Doesn’t Blink When He Calls Mexico a ‘Narco-Democracy’ : Corruption: Former anti-drug official Eduardo Valle Espinosa’s allegations have rocked the government.

MEXICO CITY —  The solitary corruption fighter who has rocked the government here and riveted the nation with his denunciations of “narco-politics” is not a tenacious prosecutor, a crusading politician or a tough cop.

They call him “the Owl.”

He is a bespectacled, fiercely outspoken journalist named Eduardo Valle Espinosa. He is a former ‘60s-era student activist, left-wing congressman and top aide to Mexico’s attorney general.

The Owl’s persistence has made him a controversial overnight sensation at a turbulent time: The assassination Wednesday of a prominent leader of Mexico’s ruling party--a crime being attributed to drug traffickers, political infighting or both--gives new urgency to Valle’s warning that drug-related violence is menacing the nation’s stability.

In May, Valle made headlines when he resigned as the head of an elite anti-drug unit and declared that corrosive corruption had turned Mexico into a “narco-democracy.”

But that was just a prelude.

With public attention focused last month on Mexico’s historic presidential elections, Valle sat down with Mexican investigators in Washington and gave seven hours of explosive testimony.

He provided detailed documents--investigative memos, wiretap transcripts. He named names, including a Cabinet-level official he linked to drug lords. And he discussed his theory that politically connected cartel forces took part in the March assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio, the ruling party presidential candidate.

The extraordinary allegations from a well-placed source have bolstered similar charges by critics of the government and triggered hasty denials from the Cabinet minister and an ambassador, playing into one of the most basic and universal concerns in Mexico today: The fear of the “Colombian-ization” of Mexican society. A recent survey by Mexico City’s prominent daily Reforma found that 80% of Mexicans believe that drug trafficking is the most serious threat facing the country.

Valle asserted in a recent interview with The Times that the drug cartels have become “a state within the state.”

“The difference is that in Colombia, the drug traffickers have negotiated directly with the state, as if they were another state,” Valle said. “In Mexico, it has not reached this point. It is hidden; it has not reached the Colombian level in form. But in terms of the power of the cartels, it has.”

For all the resulting media attention, Valle’s former employers in the attorney general’s office have seemed distinctly unimpressed. Six days after his first disclosures, the nation’s chief prosecutor issued an aggressive blanket denial of his charges.

But privately, sources in Mexico’s ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, appear to be taking Valle more seriously.

Political analysts say President-elect Ernesto Zedillo, who campaigned on pledges of sweeping law enforcement reform, may well use the Owl’s investigation to make an example of officials in the current government.

Although none would be quoted by name, Zedillo’s aides indicated that he has followed Valle’s disclosures closely and that he plans to make the fight against the cartels a top priority after he takes office Dec. 1.

The present government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari also may well act preemptively, using Valle’s charges to ferret out at least a handful of corrupt officials in what political analysts in the capital say is the traditional, end-of-term housecleaning in the six-year Mexican presidency known as the sexenio .

It remains to be seen whether any crackdown would go beyond the symbolic purges by past administrations and whether this week’s murder of Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the secretary general of the PRI and a close ally of both Salinas and Zedillo, will provide further impetus for reform.

But the most persistent speculation regarding “narco-politics” has centered on Emilio Gamboa Patron, the 44-year-old minister of communications and transport. Valle paints him as a point man for the cartels. Traffickers use the minister’s vast fiefdom of airports and highways to move drugs with impunity, according to Valle.

Gamboa, who has staunchly defended himself against the charges in a news conference, is a former rival of Zedillo’s for the ruling party presidential nomination.

But Valle’s charges go far beyond a single government ministry, embracing the biggest criminal case in the land--the March assassination that changed the course of Mexican politics.

Regarding the role of “narco-politics” in the Colosio case, Valle has offered several leads to the special prosecutor investigating the assassination. But he admits that he has little concrete proof for his suspicions.

So far, investigators have not found evidence against three Colosio campaign officials about whom Valle raised questions, according to sources close to the probe.

“As far as the Colosio case is concerned, Valle did not present new proof,” an official said.

Valle speaks well of the special prosecutor but expresses disgust with officials in the attorney general’s office, who have questioned his credibility in stinging tones.

In a brief statement dismissing Valle’s allegations, Mexico’s attorney general, Humberto Benitez, declared flatly that the former investigator “provided no proof that would implicate the public servants he mentions in drug trafficking.”

In response, Valle accused the nation’s top prosecutor of failing to follow up on the evidence he had provided during his Washington testimony.

“With surprising speed, they examine dozens of case files and reach the conclusion that there is insufficient proof,” Valle said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he now works as a foreign correspondent. “This is an arbitrary act without any foundation in law. It is a real embarrassment. I have lost all confidence in this institution.”

The voluble whistle-blower said he has not received any overtures from the Zedillo camp and remains dubious about the reformist talk.

He plans to continue the long-distance onslaught that has captured the imagination of the Mexican public and of the nation’s increasingly independent, hard-charging press. Besides his testimony, he has fired off letters to Salinas and unburdened himself in long interviews with reporters, at turns emotional, caustic and jovial.

“Forget about my safety. Who cares?” he said when asked about the risks. “Some people may say I am crazy. At least they say this guy is brave, he’s not corrupt.”

Valle, 47, was recruited in February, 1993, by former Atty. Gen. Jorge Carpizo MacGregor. Carpizo, who has a reputation for integrity, became Mexico’s interior minister early this year and most recently was in charge of the Aug. 21 federal elections that most observers concluded were the cleanest in Mexican history.

Valle makes an unlikely crime fighter. His political activity as part of the “1968 generation” of student militants cost him stints in prison and run-ins with federal security forces who waged a violent campaign against the Mexican left.

He was elected in 1985 to a three-year term as a federal deputy representing the Mexican Workers Party in Congress, where he met Colosio, then a fellow legislator. Despite his anti-Establishment background, Valle readily accepted Carpizo’s invitation to work as a close aide.

“The fight against drug trafficking is a fight for democracy, for our nation’s children and for the young people,” Valle said. “Perhaps some of my friends on the left do not understand that.”

With a team of handpicked young agents, Valle led a secretive and harrowing investigation targeting kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego of the Gulf of Mexico cartel. It is considered the nation’s most powerful narcotics organization, shipping cocaine north in partnership with the Cali cartel of Colombia.

Valle said he encountered pervasive interference by corrupt state and federal officials. And he said he discovered an alarming link between the cartel and top officials in the transportation and communications ministry.

The alleged go-between was Marcela Rosaura Bodenstedt Perlick, 31, a former federal police agent who is reputedly connected to the Abrego cartel, according to testimony and documents presented by Valle. Journalists have dubbed her the “Mata Hari” of the scandal.

Based on intelligence reports and wiretap records presented to investigators, Valle asserts that Bodenstedt used her friendship with the transportation minister’s chief of staff to make contact with Gamboa himself.

The government has admitted that Gamboa met with the woman last November, but officials say the only purpose of the meeting was to discuss a painting she wanted to sell. Mexican officials have said Bodenstedt is under investigation and apparently has left the country; they said she has not been charged. Scoffing at their statement that Gamboa did not know the woman’s alleged connections, Valle points out that the minister oversees the federal highway police, a force with significant drug-fighting responsibility.

Bodenstedt and traffickers had contact with a presidential aide and other high-ranking government officials, according to Valle. He also provided documents listing airstrips that are suspected of involvement in narcotics trafficking. And he testified that federal intelligence reports show links between officials, including Mexico’s current ambassador to Britain, and those suspicious airstrips. The ambassador vehemently denied the accusations in a letter published in mid-September.

Valle’s evidence includes voluminous records of high-tech eavesdropping throughout Mexico by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The Mexican press has published some of the material, complete with names and phone numbers of suspects, companies suspected of money laundering and surveillance logs.

“The protection isn’t just proved by the meeting with Marcela,” Valle told The Times. “It is the pilots and owners of airplanes with arrest warrants that have not been served. It is the runways that have not been investigated. These are structural problems.”

The standard line from the Salinas administration is that drug corruption, although serious, has not penetrated the government to a meaningful degree. But some political opposition leaders and other analysts agree with Valle that the threat is far greater.

In recent interviews, Baja California Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel cited his experiences in the border state, which this year was the scene of the Colosio assassination, the slaying of Tijuana’s police chief and a shootout between state and federal police--cases linked to both drugs and politics.

Valle presents an accurate picture, said Ruffo, a member of the opposition National Action Party, or PAN.

“I have seen cases where police officers were reluctant to act for fear of being betrayed,” Ruffo said. “This is very delicate. This is threatening the stability of the republic, not only the federation, but the government of the republic. This is very serious. It must be one of the most important tasks of the government. . . . What the Owl says has a lot of truth to it.”

Opposition leaders also suggest that the Colosio case could be connected to an attempted power grab by an alliance of drug traffickers and hard-line leaders of the PRI.

Valle believes that corrupt forces tried to infiltrate the presidential campaign and Colosio resisted them. “I cared a great deal for Colosio,” Valle said. “It cannot be permitted that they announce that a lone assassin killed him and then they leave it at that. I believe Colosio was killed because he did not (negotiate) with the drug traffickers or the ‘narco-politicians.’ ”

Valle testified that in the months before the March assassination, he learned that officials in the Colosio campaign had invited a brother of Abrego, the Gulf cartel kingpin, to a dinner for the candidate. He says he warned a close Colosio aide, and the invitation was rescinded.

Valle also expressed suspicion about two Colosio security chiefs, former federal police officers with alleged criminal pasts, and about Raul Zorrilla, campaign coordinator of special events and a former transportation sub-secretary under Gamboa.

Valle told investigators in Washington that Zorrilla had “immense responsibility” in the protection of traffickers while working for the Transportation Ministry, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Valle testified that he warned the candidate through intermediaries about Zorrilla, who he said was to be dismissed in a shake-up of the campaign staff then headed by Zedillo. Valle said that he had scheduled a meeting with Colosio to offer his assistance in campaign security March 25--two days after the assassination.

The special prosecutor’s office noted Valle’s allegations about Zorrilla’s role in the campaign in a Sept. 6 news release, saying all pertinent leads would be followed. But there has not been independent confirmation of the corruption allegations. While authorities have questioned the two security chiefs named by Valle, they have yet to question Zorrilla or look into the reported invitation to the kingpin’s brother, an official said.

Investigators so far have not found evidence contradicting the thesis that the accused assassin, Mario Aburto Martinez, acted alone, according to officials.

While the Owl awaits the outcome of his war of words, he has returned to the journalism trade far from home. He clings to his independence, insisting he is not protected by the U.S. Justice Department. In fact, he says American law enforcement officials have not aggressively pursued Colombian and Mexican drug lords for fear that revelations of government corruption could destabilize Mexico.

In an impassioned open letter to Salinas in August, Valle said he moved to Washington not because of fear but because of “priorities. The truth is more important than my life. About the Colosio assassination and about the domination by the Cali cartel of the Mexicans--85 million of us.”

Rotella reported from San Diego. Fineman, now on assignment in Haiti, reported from Mexico City.