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RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHINGTON DC
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RHMFIUU/FBI WASHINGTON DC

241776
2009-12-28 13:46:00
09MEXICO3634
Embassy Mexico
UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
09MEXICO3468|09MEXICO3617
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TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 9549
INFO RUEHXC/ALL US CONSULATES IN MEXICO COLLECTIVE
RHMFIUU/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON DC
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHINGTON DC
RHMFISS/CDR USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL
RHMFISS/HQS USNORTHCOM
RUEAHLA/DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
RUEABND/DEA HQS WASHINGTON DC
RHEHAAA/NSC WASHINGTON DC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC
RHMFIUU/FBI WASHINGTON DC
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR SNAR KCRM PHUM MX
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 MEXICO 003634 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR SNAR KCRM PHUM MX
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY ASSISTANT BRENNAN 
STRESSES COMMITMENT TO DEEPER COOPERATION  
REF: A: MEXICO 3617 
     B: MEXICO 3468 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary.  John Brennan, Assistant to 
the President for Homeland Security and 
Counterterrorism, used his visit to Mexico, 
December 14-15, to advance U.S.-Mexico 
cooperation against organized crime.  Accepting 
an unprecedented format for senior bilateral 
meetings, the GOM organized each session around 
critical themes including the integration of 
intelligence and operations, building capacity 
to effect prosecutions, money laundering, and 
arms trafficking.  Each meeting became the 
equivalent of a Mexico-U.S. Deputies or 
Principals meeting.  Mexico proposed 
establishing an intelligence fusion center to 
force comprehensive sharing and assessment of 
intelligence.  Both sides agreed our pilot 
projects in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez were 
essential to meet the concrete challenges posed 
by organized crime throughout Mexico in areas 
plagued by high levels of violence and crime. 
The press reported widely and favorably on the 
U.S. transfer of five Bell helicopters to Mexico 
at a ceremony during which Brennan delivered the 
keynote address for the U.S. side.  End Summary. 
 
Combining Efforts on the Four Pillars of Merida 
 
¶2. (SBU) The GOM agreed to put together a 
schedule of meetings with deputy or cabinet 
level representatives from key law enforcement 
agencies centered around thematic issues that 
drive our cooperation on law enforcement 
matters.  Discussions opened with an evaluation 
of progress and outstanding challenges on our 
four pillar approach (Disrupting and Dismantling 
DTOs, Institutionalizing the Rule of Law, 
Building a 21st Century Border, Building 
Resilient Communities).  At the outset, both 
sides agreed cooperation was never better and 
expressed the hope new levels of trust would 
produce a more integrated strategy and even 
better concrete results.  Presidential Security 
Assistant Brennan highlighted the need to create 
the proper architectural framework to achieve 
our objectives.  Success required interagency 
cooperation and appropriate funding.  We needed 
to focus on milestones for progress, hold 
ourselves accountable for shortcomings, and be 
prepared to make adjustments along the way. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Much of the discussion of Pillar One Q- 
disrupting and dismantling DTOs Q- centered 
around the need to fuse intelligence and 
operations.  Alejandro Ramirez, the Director of 
CISEN's Policy unit, stressed the importance of 
trust among Mexican agencies and between the 
U.S. and Mexico to our achieving greater success 
in the future.  Mexico wanted to identify 
priorities for cooperation on both sides of the 
border.  CISEN's International Coordinator 
Gustavo Mohar briefed on CISEN's efforts to 
organize agencies into a cohesive unit and 
develop a protocol for cooperation based on 
transparency.  He looked to teams from both 
sides to meet periodically to identify goals and 
plans for achieving them.  Noting some 
informants had been killed, the U.S. agreed 
greater trust was vital to making progress.  The 
Ambassador stressed our commitment to the 
creation of a fusion center to support targeting 
senior cartel leaders.  But for such a center to 
work, Brennan's concerns about systems 
engineering must be addressed: who will man the 
center, from what agencies, how will they be 
vetted, who will have the authority to decide 
that intelligence should lead to action, who 
will take action, and how will this be done 
under extraordinary time constraints? 
 
MEXICO 00003634  002 OF 005 
 
 
 
¶4. (SBU) In the U.S.-led discussion of Pillar 
Two Q- institutionalizing the rule of law Q the 
U.S. side focused on the need to build strong 
law enforcement institutions capable of not only 
investigating and apprehending criminal figures 
but effectively prosecuting them.  Reinforcing 
this message, Presidential Security Assistant 
Brennan recommended identifying concrete 
benchmarks for success in the area of 
prosecution.  Cooperation should transition from 
the federal level to the state and local level 
over time.  Respect for human rights respect 
needs to assume a central role in law 
enforcement activities.  We need to continue to 
leverage support from other countries and train 
trainers as a dividend multiplier.  Marisela 
Morales, the Director of the Attorney General's 
Organized Crime Division (SIEDO), remarked that 
Mexico had much to learn from the U.S. and hoped 
to borrow from the U.S. to better protect key 
witnesses. 
 
¶5. (SBU) In their Pillar Three discussion of 
building a 21st century border, both sides 
recommitted themselves to developing processes 
that promote commerce and guarantee security. 
It was essential to improve coordination, expand 
information sharing, and create evaluation 
mechanisms.  Brennan assured the Mexicans that 
DHS Secretary Napolitano appreciated the 
challenges and opportunities posed by our shared 
border and that she represented the strongest 
advocate for greater cooperation.  Both sides 
celebrated the December 7 signing of the 
Enhanced Declaration of Principles to Strengthen 
Bilateral Economic and Security Cooperation as 
reflective of our shared commitment to creating 
structures to improve border cooperation. 
 
¶6. (SBU) The Pillar Four discussion on building 
resilient communities centered on the need to 
develop a strategy to address the role of civil 
society in meeting the challenges posed by 
organized crime.  Brennan stressed the 
importance of attacking the culture of violence 
and unlawfulness, in part by giving communities 
greater ownership of the problems and the 
solutions.  He urged Mexico to develop a 
communication strategy that would target 
vulnerable communities, including Mexican youth. 
For their part, Mexican representatives 
discussed efforts to integrate social 
development into its crime fighting strategy. 
CISEN Director Guillermo Valdes recommended we 
look more closely at social trends, including 
drug addiction rates, as part of an effort to 
get ahead of the curve.  The Ambassador conveyed 
U.S. readiness to offer our expertise and 
experience to this end. 
 
Examining Progress, Challenges in Tijuana and 
Ciudad Juarez 
 
¶7. (SBU) Both sides appreciated the potential of 
our pilot projects in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez 
to offer a genuine understanding of the 
challenges on the ground.  Tijuana still faced 
considerable problems but had forged concrete 
progress on the law enforcement front thanks to 
greater information exchange and operational 
coordination between SEDENA and the municipal 
police.  Participants acknowledged Mexican law 
enforcement leaders in Tijuana deserved much of 
the credit in producing lower levels of crime 
and violence but still considered the experience 
there instructive when looking at other parts of 
Mexico. 
 
¶8. (SBU) Mexico was hopeful we could visit 
Ciudad Juarez January 14-15.  In the meantime, 
 
MEXICO 00003634  003 OF 005 
 
 
Mexican participants described efforts to tackle 
the record levels of violence there with a new, 
more integrated approach.  Mexico's Federal 
Police will assume the lead for law enforcement 
and focus on closing down establishments linked 
to criminal activities such as drug trafficking 
and prostitution in violent sectors of the city; 
the Mexican military will step back from law 
enforcement functions and dedicate itself 
primarily to manning perimeter checkpoints (see 
reftels).  Jorge Tello, the Executive Secretary 
of the National Public Security System, insisted 
Mexico was dedicating all resources at its 
disposal to address the challenges both in terms 
of attacking organized crime but also building 
alliances with civil society.  We hope to learn 
more about the particulars of the Mexican 
strategy, particularly when it comes to 
fostering greater cooperation across agencies in 
undertaking effective operations targeting 
cartel figures, when we visit Ciudad Juarez 
January 14-15. 
 
Identifying the Keys to Success 
 
¶9. (SBU) Over lunch, Secretary of Public 
Security Genaro Garcia Luna struck all of the 
right chords in his expansive survey of the 
challenges that face Mexico and the U.S. in 
combating organized crime.  He described the 
objectives of organized crime as fourfold: 1) 
intimidate enemies competing with them over 
routes and territory; 2) foster impunity based 
on fear; 3)increase the political costs of 
confrontation; and 4) promote a counter culture 
of crime.  Garcia Luna described efforts to 
transform the law enforcement community's 
institutional capabilities.  The Federal Police 
has expanded from 6,000 to 32,000 officers of 
which the number of intelligence analysts would 
increase from 80 to 600.  He sought to 
facilitate greater information exchange and 
overall interoperability across Mexico's 
numerous and disparate police entities through a 
mechanism we know as Plataforma Mexico.   In 
addition to reducing the levels of criminality 
and violence, he described the need to work 
effectively with Mexican state and municipal 
police forces as one of his greatest challenges. 
Garcia Luna expressed his appreciation for 
President Calderon's undivided commitment to 
fighting organized crime and his satisfaction 
with U.S.-Mexican cooperation, suggesting if 
both sides held firm we would see a reduction in 
violence. 
 
¶10. (SBU) Brennan revisited the need to 
construct a strong institutional framework to 
advance the full array of our objectives through 
an integrated approach.  Without the right 
architecture it would be impossible to develop 
and implement a coherent strategy.  Under this 
approach, it was necessary to identify an 
individual who would lead Mexican efforts to 
fuse intelligence and operations and who would 
be trusted to represent the interests of all 
agencies and not manifest a bias toward his/her 
own agency.  When it comes to conducting timely 
operations based on intelligence, it is 
important to reduce the levels of decision 
makers and empower the right people at lower 
levels to make decisions.  Noting that it was 
difficult to craft the right design, Brennan 
suggested Mexico consider engaging a systems 
engineer who has no institutional bias toward 
any law enforcement entity.  Rounding out this 
discussion, the Ambassador suggested focusing on 
the Mexican interagency's performance on past 
cases with a view to learning from those 
experiences and conducting tabletop exercises in 
order to improve future efforts. 
 
MEXICO 00003634  004 OF 005 
 
 
 
Forging Cooperation on the Principal Challenges 
 
¶11. (SBU) Our last meeting centered on combining 
efforts to meet four separate challenges. 
 
-- Mexico's Southern Border:  SEGOB 
Undersecretary for Population, Migration, and 
Religious Affairs Alejandro Poire Romero spoke 
honestly to the challenges posed by Mexico's 
porous southern border with Guatemala and 
Belize.  The government was taking steps to 
foster greater formality, increase security 
levels, impose more customs controls, and expand 
cooperation with the neighboring governments. 
He looked to cooperation with the U.S. under 
Merida to deliver essential training and 
infrastructure equipment. 
 
-- The Head of Mexico's Financial Intelligence 
Unit (UIF) and the Mexican lead on anti-money 
laundering Luis Urrutia focused on Mexico's 
efforts to restructure its anti-money laundering 
architecture.  As Mexico had recently adopted 
legislation on money laundering, Urrutia 
stressed the need to develop protocols for 
greater interagency cooperation.  A lack of such 
coordination had obstructed progress on 
individual cases in the past.  Presently, he 
worked closely with the DEA but hoped to expand 
cooperation with ICE officials.  He expressed 
his desire for greater access in the future to 
bank accounts and property in the U.S. to 
facilitate investigations.  ICE representative 
Tracy Bardoff discussed her agency's work on a 
study to develop a baseline for our efforts on 
money laundering and bulk cash smuggling. 
Brennan remarked the U.S. needed to do more to 
develop a more comprehensive and coherent 
strategy to combat money laundering and that he 
was committed to developing that strategy upon 
his return to Washington. 
 
-- Arms Trafficking:  Mexican representatives 
noted that the majority of weapons authorities 
seized from criminal organizations originated 
from the United States.  Both sides, however, 
applauded steps to improve cooperation, noting 
our joint working group had met five times over 
the last five months.  We noted U.S. prosecutors 
were pursuing cases of multiple purchasers of 
weapons that have turned up in Mexico.  Delivery 
of Spanish e-trace beginning in December would 
help us develop new cases against arms 
traffickers.  It was agreed that the U.S. and 
Mexico would pick 3-5 cases that could be built 
to prosecute arms traffickers in the U.S.  Both 
sides would collaborate to review a set of 
standard issues to be addressed with all arms 
seizures that could then enhance chances for 
prosecutions. 
 
-- Judicial Cooperation:  DOJ stressed our 
commitment to providing extensive training to 
Mexican judicial officials under Merida. 
However, it was essential Mexico move ahead 
expeditiously in adopting criminal code and 
procedural code reform to maximize the efficacy 
of our training programs. 
 
Helicopter Transfer Scores Good Press 
 
¶12. (SBU) The Mexican press reportedly widely 
the hand-over ceremony of five Bell-412 
helicopters as representative of increased 
cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico in the 
fight against organized crime.   Reports 
indicated that the hand-over was only the 
beginning of a large supply of equipment and 
other support provided to Mexican authorities by 
the U.S. Government under the Merida Initiative. 
 
MEXICO 00003634  005 OF 005 
 
 
Many indicated the U.S. would deliver upwards of 
$632 million in equipment and other assistance 
in 2010 alone.  Quoting Brennan's remarks 
describing the initial hand-over as substantial, 
some reports also indicated President Obama was 
committed to going beyond the original 
assistance envisioned by Merida. 
 
¶13. (SBU) Comment.  The visit by Presidential 
Security Assistant Brennan reinforced just how 
far the U.S.-Mexico relationship has evolved on 
security matters.  We have moved well past a 
sterile debate over the risks to Mexico's 
sovereignty posed by greater cooperation towards 
a productive exchange about how to maximize the 
fruits of our combined efforts when it comes to 
matters such as money laundering and arms 
trafficking.  The message that Mexico needs to 
adopt a security architecture that promotes 
interagency cooperation and operational 
efficiency was delivered loud and clear.  Our 
present challenge lies now in helping Mexico 
make that happen.  Our upcoming joint visit to 
Ciudad Juarez will provide a concrete 
opportunity to focus on how both sides step up 
to the challenges posed by unacceptable levels 
of violence.  The recent operation that netted 
notorious organized crime leader Arturo Beltran 
Leyva reminds us how much promise our 
cooperation holds out.  Our January Policy 
Coordination Group meeting should afford us a 
chance to take stock of progress and outstanding 
challenges.  End Comment. 
 
PASCUAL