A10 The Nation


Violence follows move by cartels


cartels from A1


and turf battles that come with it. “The more pressure there is in


Mexico, the more the drug cartels will come to Central America looking for a safe haven,” Gen. David Munguía Payés, El Salva- dor’s defense minister, said in an interview here. The amount of cocaine moving through the region has risen sharply, although the overall vol- ume entering the United States is falling. Cocaine seizures in Cen- tral America nearly quadrupled between 2004 and 2007, accord- ing to the most recent U.N. data. The United States has allocated $258 million in anti-narcotics as- sistance for Central America since 2007 as part of the three- year, $1.6 billion Merida Initia- tive. But a report this month by the Government Accountability Office found that only 9 percent of the money promised under the initiative has been spent and that U.S. officials had no reliable way to determine whether it was mak- ing a difference in the drug war.


‘A paradise for criminals’ In remote, lawless regions of


Guatemala, the Mexican orga- nized crime syndicate known as the Zetas is setting up training camps and recruiting elite ex- soldiers to serve as assassins, arming them with weapons di- verted from the country’s mili- tary arsenals. Last month, four human heads were left near the Guatemalan Congress and elsewhere in the capital. The national police spokesman, Donald González, said the grisly display was the work of the Zetas and other Mexi- can traffickers. “Guatemala has become a


paradise for criminals, who have little to fear from prosecutors ow- ing to high levels of impunity,” the International Crisis Group, a conflict research organization, said in a June report. “High- profile assassinations and the government’s inability to reduce murders have produced paralyz- ing fear, a sense of helplessness and frustration.” Over the past two years, Guate-


mala’s top anti-narcotics official, two national police chiefs and the


S


KLMNO


TUESDAY, JULY 27, 2010


GE finds itself on wrong side of Obama’s defense agenda


by Dan Eggen For more than a year, General


Electric has been notable among U.S. corporations for enjoying generally friendly relations with the White House. The company was broadly supportive of Presi- dent Obama’s stimulus efforts, and its chairman, Jeffrey Immelt, sits on a White House economic advisory board.


FERNANDO ANTONIO/ASSOCIATED PRESS On one April night, nine people died in gun battles between rival Honduran gangs. Here police investigated a shooting near Tegucigalpa.


Murder rate comparison Homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, in 2009 except otherwise noted.


El Salvador 71 Honduras 67


Guatemala 52 Mexico 14


United States* 5.4 *2008


SOURCES: United Nations, FBI, local police data THE WASHINGTON POST


former president have been ar- rested on charges related to drug trafficking or corruption. Two former interior ministers are fu- gitives. In May, the Guatemalan president appointed, then re- moved after international pro- tests, an attorney general who U.N. prosecutors say has ties to mobsters. In Honduras, where a military coup last year toppled the presi- dent, Mexican cartels have estab- lished command-and-control centers to orchestrate cocaine shipments by sea and air along the still-wild Caribbean coast, of- ten with the help of local au- thorities, according to DEA and U.N. officials. Ten anti-narcotics officers were caught smuggling 142 kilos of cocaine last July. In December, Honduras’s drug czar, Gen. Julián Arístides González, was killed after trying to shut


down clandestine landing strips allegedly operated by Mexico’s Si- naloa cartel. Police in El Salvador say traf-


fickers are cultivating ties to street gangs such as MS-13 and 18th Street, building alliances that could eventually help those groups mature into international syndicates.


“Organized crime has pene-


trated the government,” said Jeannette Aguilar, a crime expert at San Salvador’s University of Central America, citing recent ar- rests of police commanders and prominent politicians. “We’ve made strides toward democracy, but this threatens to reverse that progress.”


According to Steven S. Dudley, a consultant for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the high homicide rates signal the expanding presence of Mexican drug cartels. Investiga- tors are finding more corpses bearing marks of torture or ex- ecution in well-coordinated hits by assassins armed with high- caliber weapons, trademarks of Mexican crime gangs. The newspaper El Diario de


Hoy in El Salvador recently counted 35 bodies found in plas- tic bags over a six-month span. A U.N. report found that the highest homicide rates were not in the largest cities, but in prov-


inces with strategic value to drug traffickers: along borders, coasts and jungles. Some victims had ties to the


drug trade; others were simply in the way. In Honduras, in the Car- ibbean province of Atlantida, one of every 1,000 residents was mur- dered last year. Central American migrants, in-


terviewed at three shelters as they crossed Mexico on the way to the United States, said they left their countries not only because of economic desperation but also to escape soaring violence.


Undermining democracy


The expansion of cartel power in the Northern Triangle threat- ens to undermine democratic gains made since the end of civil conflicts here in the mid-1990s. Analysts say the lucrative profits of the drug trade wield powerful influence in these countries, where half the people live in pov- erty. “The Guatemalan government is weak, and the drug cartels pro- vide services that the state does not,” such as health clinics, soccer fields and schools, said Fernando Giron Soto, a researcher at the Myrna Mack Foundation, a hu- man rights organization in Gua- temala City whose doors are guarded by armed sentries. “It’s the same thing that Pablo Esco-


bar used to do in Medellin” dur- ing the 1990s in Colombia, he said. In many areas of the Northern


Triangle, police are ineffective, if they exist at all, experts say. Gua- temala and Honduras have fewer than half as many police per cap- ita as Mexico, U.N. data show. In Guatemala, as many as seven of the country’s 22 provinces appear to be under the control of crimi- nals, according to the Interna- tional Crisis Group report. The region is awash in weap-


ons left over from the Cold War, making it an important source of arms for the Mexican cartels. Be- fore Guatemalan gun laws changed last year, anyone could legally buy up to 500 rounds of ammunition a day, said Sandino Asturias, a crime analyst for the Center for Guatemalan Studies. A special U.N. prosecutor’s of-


fice has been working in Guate- mala since 2007 to break the country’s culture of impunity, but it faces enormous obstacles. Of 6,548 murders last year, 423 sus- pects were arrested. However, that was a significant improve- ment over the previous year, when 128 homicide arrests were made, Asturias said. miroffn@washpost.com boothb@washpost.com


Booth reported from Mexico.


House Democrats feel hung out to dry on energy bill About this series


democrats from A1


visers privately complain that the speaker and the president left Democrats exposed on an un- popular issue that has little hope of being signed into law. Some Democrats liken the situ-


ation to that of the 1993 “Btu” tax. The House passed the tax, but the Senate never took it up. Many House Democrats felt hung out on a limb in the 1994 elections, when Republicans reclaimed con- trol of Congress for the first time in 40 years. House leaders stand behind the 2009 vote. Asked whether it was a mistake in light of the Senate’s in- action, Pelosi joked that she would answer a different ques- tion. “We staked out a bold posi- tion,” she said, “one that was a consensus within our caucus, one that received some Republican votes. We are very proud of it.” Throughout the winter and


spring, as the health-care debate dominated Washington’s atten- tion, lawmakers faced less scruti- ny on climate change and some thought the controversy might re- cede. But Republicans are reviv- ing it as a campaign issue. “That bill would just crucify


Missouri. Voting for it, it just didn’t make sense,” said state Sen. Bill Stouffer, who is one of two well-financed Republican pri- mary candidates hoping to un- seat Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton in the fall. The GOP is using the climate change vote to accuse Skelton, now in his 34th year in Congress, of drifting from his moderate Midwestern roots. “I vote for Ike Skelton. Every- body votes for Ike Skelton,” said Kay Hoflander, chairman of the Lafayette County Republican Par- ty. But when Skelton voted for the climate bill, “he quit representing his district,” Hoflander said. “Peo- ple now are saying, ‘Ike used to be one of us.’ ” Skelton, 78, rejects that accusa-


tion. He said his initial motiva- tion for supporting the bill was to “control the EPA.” Armed with a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that


LAUREN VICTORIA BURKE/ASSOCIATED PRESS Rep. John Boccieri of Ohio said he voted for a carbon cap because he was tired of wars based on “big oil.”


gave the Environmental Protec- tion Agency power to oversee car- bon emissions, the Obama ad- ministration issued Congress an ultimatum: Unless it acted, the EPA would step in and impose tough new regulations. Better to have Congress do the job, Skelton argued, than a government agen- cy that many farmers and manu- facturers in Missouri view with scorn.


Some Democrats are defending themselves on the volatile issue by doubling down and promoting their votes as forward-looking, and others are staking out more business-friendly ground with other energy proposals. To blunt some of the criticism, Skelton


joined Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R- Mo.) in sponsoring a bill that would ban the EPA from regulat- ing greenhouse gases — a meas- ure that Boccieri and other Mid- western Democrats support. Nowhere does the issue cut as sharply as along the I-70 corridor, the nearly 800-mile stretch from Pittsburgh to Kansas City that throughout the 20th century served as the nation’s economic engine. The coal-fired smoke- stacks and steel mills that once symbolized an honest day’s work throughout the region find them- selves under assault as emitters of environmental poison, creating a difficult political dance for the re- gion’s lawmakers.


This I-70 region is home to at least 20 contested House races and five open Senate seats, in- cluding in Ohio, where this month GOP Senate candidate Rob Portman launched a TV cam- paign calling climate legislation “a job killer for Ohio.” Repub- licans are trying to add the bill to a mix of tough votes that could flip enough races in this region to put the House back in GOP con- trol and seriously dent the Demo- cratic edge in the Senate. Of the 15 House Democrats in this corridor who are in contested races, 10 voted for the climate leg- islation, giving Pelosi the decisive margin in the 219 to 212 victory in June 2009. Many Midwestern


In this occasional series, The


Washington Post explores the critical states along the Interstate 70 corridor, which will have great influence over who holds power in Washington after this year’s midterm elections — and who sits in the Oval Office after 2012.


Democrats preferred not taking up the issue, at least until after health care was finished. Once Pe- losi moved what she calls her “hallmark” issue ahead of health care last year, Obama led a final push to get the necessary votes. Pelosi won over wavering Dem-


ocrats such as Boccieri and Reps. Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio), Baron P. Hill (Ind.) and Zack Space (Ohio) — each of whom faces a difficult reelection — after intense negoti- ations designed to soften the blow of the initial proposal. The House bill would place new pro- duction costs on power plants, factories and oil refineries, re- quiring U.S. emissions to decline 17 percent by 2020. Creating a commodities market, the bill would require polluters to buy “credits” to cover their emissions; Midwestern farmers, among oth- ers, could sell “offsets” for pollu- tants they didn’t emit. But lofty talk about the secur- ing the future of the planet is not likely to win over many voters who have lost their jobs. In Boccieri’s northeastern Ohio


district, the manufacturing de- cline has been sharp and painful. Ten years ago, there were 45,000 manufacturing jobs in the Can- ton-Massillon region. By spring, the number had been cut nearly in half, to 24,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Boccieri said he knows his con- stituents are focused on the pre- sent. “All the average voter wants to know is, ‘When my refrigerator is on, are my rates going to be lower or higher?’ ” kanep@washpost.com murrays@washpost.com


But now the White House and GE are clashing publicly over a fighter-jet engine — built by the company and its British partner, Rolls-Royce — that has been on the Pentagon’s chopping block for years, only to be rescued repeat- edly by Congress. The issue is poised to come to a head Tuesday during a House subcommittee markup for the annual defense appropriations bill, which Oba- ma has threatened to veto if it has the $485 million for the engine. GE — whose financing arm re- ceived billions of dollars in feder- al bailout funds — has launched a furious lobbying and media effort in recent months aimed at secur- ing funding for the engine, which would serve as an alternate for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Pratt & Whitney, the Pentagon’s choice for devel- oping an F-35 engine, has fired back with a lobbying and adver- tising campaign of its own. The dispute underscores the


latest effort by Obama and his de- fense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to target costly defense projects in the face of avid support on Capitol Hill. The battle not only threatens the fate of the Penta- gon’s budget, it could also in- terfere with the Obama adminis- tration’s plans to move ahead with a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay men and lesbians, which is included in the legislation. “The signals have been pretty clear that this is a very serious veto threat,” said Thomas A. Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, which has been sharply critical of the GE project. “It’s very unusual to see such a unified front on this kind of project.” The next-generation F-35, slat- ed to replace several types of U.S. military fighter aircraft, has been dogged by budget overruns and technical problems. GE and its supporters argue that proceeding with a second engine will force prices down through competi- tion, pointing to estimates from the Government Accountability Office indicating that such an ap- proach is likely to pay off in the long run. Gates and other administra-


tion officials strongly disagree, calculating that pushing ahead with the GE project will waste nearly $3 billion of taxpayer money. Administration officials declined to comment for this arti- cle.


GE has reported spending more than $15 million on lobby- ing through June, a 30 percent in- crease over 2009. Its roster of reg- istered lobbyists includes former House majority leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and former senators John Breaux (D-La.), Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Don Nickles (R-Okla.), records show. United Technologies, the par-


ent of Pratt & Whitney, has nearly doubled its lobbying so far this year, to $5.5 million, though it has a smaller and more defense- focused agenda than GE. All told, 75 lobbyists work for the firms in- volved in the fight for the second engine, and most are former leg- islative or executive branch offi- cials, according to the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity. “It’s been vicious,” said Rick


Kennedy, media relations manag- er at GE Aviation. Dave Manke, Pratt & Whitney’s vice president of aerospace de- fense policy, said the company has been outgunned on lobbying but has the advantage of Penta- gon support. “That’s a good posi- tion to be in,” he said. Kennedy and other GE back- ers, however, play down the ex- tent of the company’s conflict with the administration and say they are hopeful Congress will decide the issue in GE’s favor. The House already included the sec- ond engine in a defense authori- zation bill. “There are some sectors where


we’re completely in line with the administration and some law- makers, and others where we’re not,” Kennedy said. “We’re so large and so diverse, it’s under- stood that we’re not going to be aligned with them on every- thing.”


eggend@washpost.com


Staff writer Michael D. Shear contributed to this report.


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