Anna Cabrera wasn’t someone I knew. I hadn’t ever even heard of her, yet there she was, popping up on my Twitter followers list and sending me a message. She worked, she said, for the Assuntos Internos – Internal Affairs – department of the Federal Police in Mexico City and was interested in speaking to me about my whistleblowing experience. It was not, by any means, the first time I’d ended up speaking to curious sounding people about what I had done – I’ve been very privileged to chat with other whistleblowers like Adhyl Polanco, a cop in the NYPD who exposed the misuse of quotas in the department and was treated horrendously for the privilege. Dr Eli Silverman too, an academic who’d once praised the use of CompStat but turned coat on discovering the wholesale manipulation of New York’s crime figures and published his own book, The Crime Number Game, decrying it. My proudest memory of all of these conversations is now a printed and framed email which I keep on a wall, whenever I have one. I’m most ecstatic to say I have had email conversations with the living legend Frank Serpico – the original police whistleblower turned into an international idol after Al Pacino portrayed him in the 1970s film. Frank was shot in the face after exposing NPYD corruption. Anna, however, was still a serving public official and, up until this point, she was the only one who had shown any interest at all in my experience. The UK police forces had deliberately forgotten about my awkward little existence. They changed the code of ethics, sure, but only the words. British policing is still stuck in its insular dark ages. As it turned out, Anna had been introduced to my story by Silverman and, with some funding made available by the US State Department, she wanted to fly me over to Mexico City to take part in an international symposium on ethics in law enforcement as a specialist, guest speaker. I couldn’t quite believe it at first and, until I’d seen the official email addresses, found myself unusually wary. The offer was legitimate though and, in October 2014, I was flown out to Mexico City for a week, staying at a five-star hotel on the Paseo De La Reforma overlooking the iconic Angel of Independence.
Mexico City greets you with warm air, even in mid-October, I discovered. I’d been on a plane for around ten hours and was just glad to be outside, cigarette in hand and utterly bewildered by Spanish – which I don’t speak – when Anna came to pick me up with her Inspector, Luis Martinez. I recognised Anna from her profile photographs and both of them were in uniform so, I figured, even though the car was unmarked, my chances of getting kidnapped and decapitated had reduced from a ninety-percent certainty to a solid fifty-fifty.
In the car I stared out of the window, taking in the strange sights and sounds, while Luis and Anna jabbered away to each other in Spanish. Even speaking fluent Italian, less than half of it was decipherable as anything more than a general sense of idle chit-chat. Whenever Anna reverted to English, her accent was heavily Americanised, whereas Luis retained his native pronunciation. They took me to the hotel, a grand old building, where we found a large crowd still dispersing from around the Angel, backlit that night in pink and purple.
“We’re lucky we just missed the protest,” Anna told me. I immediately felt a pang of guilt because I had no idea what was going on, or if this was just a normal fact of life. Something regular. She must have picked up on my quizzical expression. “A group of students were kidnapped in Iguala. It’s a town in Guerrero. They’re dead. The local police killed and buried them.”
It took me a few moments to digest this news. “The police killed them?”
“Yes, we have a lot of corruption, the police chief was arrested today,” she replied.
Just under a month before my arrival, forty-three students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College had gone missing in Iguala de la Independencia1, a small, historic city about sixty miles away from Chilpancingo, the state capital of Guerrero. It’s around eighty miles south-west of Mexico City and has a population of over a hundred thousand people. In 1821 the declaration which ended the war of independence was signed in Iguala, hence it’s known as the birthplace of the Flag of Mexico – which was originally called the Flag of Three Guarantees. The state itself takes its name from Vicente Guerrero, a prominent leader in the Mexican War of Independence who went on to become the second President, and is the country’s only state to take its name from a public figure. While it has a healthy tourism industry, being home to Acapulco amongst other resorts, Guerrero has the highest level of migrants to the United States due to lack of education and employment. Many of the villages have been left with no men at all, women taking up most of the work. In part, this has allowed over fifty prolific criminal gangs to infest the region which is now regarded as the epicentre of Mexico's opium poppy production, with the Mexican supply of street-sold heroin dominating the United States drugs market.
Guerrero also has healthy marijuana and methamphetamine industries, which combine with the trafficking climate to drive continuously high murder rates as the cartel's fight for the ultimate control of the dark economy.
According to the official reports of the Iguala massacre of students2, they had commandeered several buses to travel to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre – an event in Mexico City where police and security forces killed up to three hundred political protestors just days before the Olympics opened. It was during their journey that local police intercepted them and some form of confrontation ensued.
Details of what happened may never be known, and it has been alleged the mayor and his wife were directly involved, but an official investigation concluded the students were already in custody when they were handed over to the Guerreros Unidos ("United Warriors") cartel and killed. There were, however, also reports linking Federal units to the incident, with some evidence suggesting military personnel in the area were either directly engaged in the kidnapping, or were present and failed to respond and assist the students. The mayor and his wife fled after the incident, only to be arrested in Mexico City in October, and Iguala's police chief, Felipe Flores Velásquez, was arrested in Iguala on the day of my arrival, October the 21st.
The events caused social unrest in Guerrero itself, with attacks on government buildings taking place. The state Governor, Ángel Aguirre Rivero, resigned in the face of state and nationwide protests – such as the one which was dispersing in front of the Angel after my flight landed. Up until that point in time, it was the biggest scandal Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had faced and resulted in broad and scathing, international condemnation of his government.
It was only after I had left, on the 7th of November, that the Attorney General, Jesús Murillo Karam, announced plastic bags containing human remains, possibly those of the missing students, had been found at a riverside in Cocula. It remains the case in 2017 that only two of the students have been officially confirmed dead after their remains were identified by the forensic team at the Austrian University of Innsbruck.
Of the eighty or so suspects arrested in relation to the massacre, forty-four were police officers.
The reality of it hit me like a breezeblock around the back of the head when Anna told me the story and I made my way up to the hotel room in a dazed state. I was halfway around the world, in a place where the police kidnap and kill protestors and I was giving them an anti-corruption speech. Wriggling my toes on the plush carpet as I mulled this over, I was overwhelmed by a new sensation of missing The Job. I felt out of water and incapacitated, unable to act, and my body clock was up the spout. It should have been morning but it was evening, I’d lost or gained a day and couldn’t decipher which and I had a full schedule starting early in the morning, so I tried to sleep, wandered to the restaurant next door and ate when I couldn’t, then tried again and succeeded.
Waking up the second morning I had no idea where I was. A brief panic engulfed me in the hotel room as my mind reassembled the time and reminded me, dumping an unwelcome burst of adrenaline. A lingering remnant of the damage done by my escapades at Scotland Yard which brought on a full panic attack. Anna picked me up from the bay i
n front of the lobby a short while later. She was in her own car and took us on a journey much shorter than I had anticipated in the dawn sun – five minutes later we arrived at the Federal Police building on the opposite side of the Paseo.
“I could have walked you know?” I laughed, eyeing her curiously.
“And if something had happened to you, I’d be in a whole world of trouble,” she replied. The reality of the security climate hit me once again. For all intents and purposes, I was a foreign dignitary working with the police, which made me, as strange as it sounded even as a thought, a target.
The agenda for the day was a tour of facilities, so we exchanged the car for a seat on a coach and were joined by other Federal agents and a number of staff from the CNS, the Comisión Nacional de Seguridad. The security services people were quite pleasant and thoroughly curious as to who the British guy in jeans and an open-collared shirt was. I raised a few eyebrows, shall we say, as we waited to depart. I didn’t understand the delay until I saw the trucks, and again reality bit. At the front and back of the coach were our motorcade escorts, two pick-up trucks with lights and sirens blaring, and two officers armed with assault rifles riding in the back of each, watching traffic and ready to fire. I have never been on a coach journey quite like it, travelling code blue across a city of millions to a Federal Police base where the first part of our facilities tour began.
We arrived in time for an official flag raising ceremony as part of a national celebration, where all of the other guests and a group of children sang the Mexican national anthem. I had no idea what was going on and copied a young girl, placing my hand on my heart which raised a few smiles. Afterwards, Anna quietly whispered to me, “Why did you put your hand on your chest, it’s only for women.” Normally I’d have been embarrassed but I laughed raucously, shrugged it off and excitedly ran along to the next stop, an armed display by the rapid entry team, followed by a trip to the Blackhawks over at the aerodrome. I was like a school kid through all of this, then we took the two turns I’d been most eagerly waiting for, heading to the Incident Operations Room for the Federal Police and then their Special Operations Incident Command facility.
The Ops Room was much better equipped than I could have imagined and everything was new. Having experienced the crumbling legacy of UK policing’s IT infrastructure, my admiration was genuine – the Mexicans weren’t playing at it, as we often do. A broad panel of brand new flat screens adorned the far wall and agents busily occupied themselves responding to calls for service while the Duty Superintendent briefed us. The set up was impressive and the cloud-based software was fast and intuitive, with a multi-platform link from vehicle records, driver licence databases, and criminal records, to social security system and employment databases. I excused myself from the overview briefing and spent my time with one of the agents, working on a real-time intelligence package for a live incident, passing the package to the officers on the ground electronically. Somewhere in the city, a fully equipped and robust Dodge Charger kitted out with the latest technology and weaponry, had just received everything they needed to be able to intervene safely in an attempted domestic murder perpetrated by a violent gang member. It was a far cry from an antiquated incident report being delivered to a broken touch-screen in a six-year-old Vauxhall Astra with a solitary traffic cone in the boot if you were lucky.
Special Operations was a treat too. Video link technology had them connected with each officer as they controlled a live anti-cartel operation in the mountains. The deployment was strictly military in style, even utilising mortar weapons on a heavily armed farm complex while the team was under heavy return fire. It wasn’t crime-fighting I was watching, it was combat. The Commander was eyeing me intently and asked, via Anna, what my view was. “Where do I sign up?” was my only reply. While I might have left the job, The Job still hadn’t left me and had there been a way to make it happen, I’d have started basic training there and then.
After a brief buffet lunch, alongside the weapons of the firearms presentation, it was time to move on to our second port of call: the CNS facility. So, we re-embarked the coach and our escort led us across the city in the same no-nonsense style. I found myself lost in thought, daydreaming really. There had been a point not so long ago when I couldn’t think of anything worse than putting on the uniform which I’d once been proud of, but there in Mexico City I would have done it in a heartbeat, volunteering for Special Operations and doing some of the real dirty work. Because, sometimes, that is what needs to be done.
“You miss it?” Anna asked me, catching my private thought with a degree of accuracy I wasn’t anticipating as we walked into the President’s underground bunker.
“Every single day,” I replied, just before I pointed out the military deployments on the huge array of screens were based on flawed crime data.
And that’s how I eventually ended up being an investigative journalist – after becoming a bankrupt publican, then heading back to Mexico once again in 2016 and exposing corruption in the murder figures which implicated state governments, including that of Guerrero.
It was gravity, I suppose.
Or, perhaps, just an addiction to kerfuffle.
INTEL: JANUARY - AUGUST 2017
One:
I didn’t know any of this in 2016. Like everyone else, I thought the world had simply fallen victim to a deceitful bus and some idiotic, gun-toting rednecks.
I was wrong, I’m not ashamed to admit. We all were. But from that mistake arose what I see as a collective duty, to at least try and put things right and make sure it never happens again.
The term ‘hybrid warfare’3 was first mentioned sometime around 2005, so the story goes, and the year after it was used to try and describe the tactics deployed by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Since then, the term “hybrid” went on to occupy most of the discussions around modern and future warfare, while also being broadly adopted by senior officials and military groups.
The concept of a “hybrid threat” was first introduced in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s Strategic Concept of 20104 and then incorporated in the NATO Capstone Concept5, defining hybrid threats as “those posed by adversaries, with the ability to simultaneously employ conventional and non-conventional means adaptively in pursuit of their objectives.” Their 2010 Strategic Concept, entitled Active Engagement, Modern Defence (AEMD) was, according to the organisation: “A very clear and resolute statement on NATO's values and strategic objectives for the next decade.” They set their stall out decisively, I suppose as an aid to the uninitiated, saying: “Collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security are the Alliance's essential core tasks in today's transformed security environment, an environment the Alliance is equipping itself for both politically and militarily.”
I have always thought of myself as relatively aware of the world in which we live, dared to believe I was in the know, even, but the first concession I had to make was that I knew very little – and not least about NATO. It was just something I’d grown up hearing mentioned all the time but my understanding of it, even after policing, was limited. I now understand this was simply because I have been privileged to have lived through a period in history when war was always very far away. When things were comfortable on the doorstep. I’ve been lucky enough, like many of us, to not need to know.
According to the organisation itself, recapping essential history in the concept’s preamble: “The political and military bonds between Europe and North America have been forged in NATO since the Alliance was founded in 1949; the transatlantic link remains as strong, and as important to the preservation of Euro-Atlantic peace and security, as ever. The security of NATO members on both sides of the Atlantic is indivisible. We will continue to defend it together, on the basis of solidarity, shared purpose and fair burden-sharing.” Straight away it became obvious why NATO is perceived as a threat to its enemies, and why – very squarely – Russia is placed in the category of a potential threat, with particular focus on its ba
llistic and nuclear weapons being placed on or located within reach of the European borders. NATO makes clear an active and effective European Union contributes to the overall security of the Euro-Atlantic area, defining the union as a unique and essential partner. “The two organisations share a majority of members, and all members of both organisations share common values. NATO recognizes the importance of a stronger and more capable European defence,” the AEMD states, adding: “We welcome the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which provides a framework for strengthening the EU’s capacities to address common security challenges.” They also clearly refer to the value of the United States, saying non-EU Allies make a “significant contribution” to these efforts. From the beginning, it is easy to see why a country such as Russia may have wished to involve themselves in the affairs of both EU member states and the United States. A response to a response, to a response. Yet, the hand of reciprocal co-operation was firmly on offer.
“Notwithstanding differences on particular issues, we remain convinced that the security of NATO and Russia is intertwined and that a strong and constructive partnership based on mutual confidence, transparency and predictability can best serve our security,” the AEMD adds.
Though the idea of a hybrid threat has come a long way since the concept was first introduced, it was drafted to included cyber-threats, political disruption, state-engaged criminality, and extremism, in addition to traditional warfare threats. Reading it in 2017, it feels like they had a good idea something was cranking up but not precisely what. Perhaps it was the deus ex machina moment, a device introduced to solve the unsolvable. The draft Capstone Concept, while it sounds like something straight out of Jason Bourne was a document completed in August 2010. It articulated the “unique challenges posed by current and future hybrid threats” and explained why these developing challenges required an adaptation of strategy by NATO, so it could adjust both its structure and capabilities accordingly. Capstone discussed both a general approach to dealing with the (then) new hybrid threats, as well as laying down a framework for the organisation to deliver an effective response should such threats manifest in reality. The draft was central in informing the development of the new AEMD Strategic Concept and, even in those early days, NATO was sure “analysis and maturation” would support Capstone’s implementation. The paper also suggested broader implications for NATO’s core military components.
Alternative War: Unabridged Page 2