Innovations for Successful Societies
	

AN INITIATIVE OF
THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 
AND THE BOBST CENTER FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE




Series: 		Centers of Government	
	
Interview no.:		M 4

Interviewee: 		Dr. Sigrid Arzt			

Interviewer:		Robert Joyce

Date of Interview:	3 February 2015

Location:		Mexico City, Mexico
		


Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice
Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties


JOYCE: 	Today is Tuesday, February 3rd, my name is Robert Joyce I am here in Mexico City with Dr. (Sigrid) Arzt (Colunga). Dr. Arzt, thank you very much for joining me this morning. 

ARZT:	You're welcome. 

JOYCE: 	I was hoping to get started with a bit of your background before joining the (Felipe) Calderón administration.  

ARZT:	Yes. Previous to my integration to the Calderón administration, I was head of an NGO (nongovernmental organization) called Democracia de Derechos Humanos y Seguridad. This was an NGO dealing with issues of security, human rights and transparency. The idea of the NGO was to gather public information on these topics and suggest to the government a series of policy recommendations. Before that, I had been in charge and responsible for the area of the academic work on the Fundacion Rafael Preciado.

	I had worked at the CISEN (Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional - Center for Research and National Security), the intelligence agency, over different periods of my professional life as a consultant and also as a public servant. In the early '90s, basically the first two years of the (Ernesto) Zedillo administration, I was Technical Secretary to the first Attorney General that was from the opposition, Antonio Lozano Gracia, and I worked there for two years. 

	I did my BA (Bachelor of Arts) at University of Iberoamericana where I wrote a thesis comparing the job policy between Mexico and Colombia towards the certification process with the US that was qualified as one of the theses and got recognition for that. I did my Masters at Notre Dame University and my Ph.D. at UM in International Relations. So it is basically-that is my background. 

	I did academic work on issues of national security, and I was very involved during the year 2004 on the promulgation of the national security law with another group of experts, academic experts on these topics and that is basically a snapshot. 

JOYCE: 	Thank you. In 2006 you joined the Calderón administration? At what point did you join? 

ARZT:	I joined the Calderón administration. I was involved since the beginning of his campaign. I couldn't be publicly identified for one reason. At that time, in the year 2003, the National Action Party had proposed me as a substitute at the Electoral Institute, at the Federal Electoral Institute. So if one of the electoral commissioners separated themselves, I was in a position of becoming part of it. So we thought it was not a good idea to be publically involved in the strategy. 

	I coordinated my consulting and expertise knowledge on the topics of security through Ernesto Cordero (Arroyo) who is currently a Senator. Ernesto and I go way back because he was the Academic Director for the Fundación Miguel Estrada, (Iturbide) which is the think tank at the Camara de Diputados, and I was at the National Action Party so we worked together. We knew our way of doing things. 

	Officially I joined the Calderón transition team in October 2006 just eight weeks before the takeoff of his administration. 

JOYCE: 	What was your title? What was your position in the first part of the Calderón administration?

ARZT:	My position in the Calderón administration was what is called Technical Secretary of the National Security Council. That is a new position that derives from the National Security Law that was passed by the (Vicente) Fox administration in the year 2005. Because it was almost at the end of the Fox administration, the person that had that position was basically working hand-in-hand with CISEN, with the intelligence agency. 

	When the position was offered to me in the previous hours of the takeoff of the Calderón administration, I talked to the President about the importance of-.  

JOYCE: 	President Calderón? 

ARZT:	President Calderón, about the importance of bringing-let me give you a little bit more background.   

JOYCE: 	Sure.

ARZT:	The National Security Law for the first time had this position, this appointment. It was trying to model the National Security Advisor in the US and Canada. Basically this is the position that will be the last filter of the national security strategy, all issues within the national security community. Evidently we are not so big as any of our northern neighbors but the idea was that the President would have hand-in-hand a person of his trust and confidence, knowledgeable about national security things and coordinating the policies of the rest of the agencies. 

	Who are the rest of the agencies that are involved in the National Security Council? It is the Attorney General's office, the Ministry of Foreign Relations, the Ministry of Finance, the President himself, CISEN obviously, the intelligence community, at that time the Secretary of Public Security, the Secretary of Interior, the Secretary of Accountability or Funcion Publica, the Secretary of Communications and Transportation and I'm missing one, but it is in the law. It is basically ten-ah, the National Defense and the Navy. That is the National Security Council. 

	Within the National Security Council, for the first time, the President was allowed to appoint a Technical Secretary. That Technical Secretary had to report directly to the President and had a budget to do its work and human resources.    

JOYCE: 	Okay. 

ARZT:	When these figures started and because of the timing of the Fox administration, that was all settled in the civilian intelligence agency at CISEN. 

JOYCE: 	So prior to this CISEN had-. 

ARZT:	The resources-. 

JOYCE: 	Coordination, had coordination responsibility. That was the longstanding policy before this national security-. 

ARZT:	That was the longstanding-there wasn't-. At the beginning of the Fox administration, there was another intent: to have National Security Advisor reporting directly to President Fox who was a very knowledgeable man, an intellectual [Indecipherable], but unfortunately he was unable to gather the human resources and the lobbying against him. The confrontations between him and particularly the Minister of Foreign Relations (Jorge) Castañeda (Gutman) made it basically impossible for the survival of that starting agency. That is sort of the background.

	Back again when the deliberations of the National Security Law took place in the year 2004, the figure came back again and eventually the legislators passed it. But because of the timing it ended up being part of CISEN, of the civilian agency. 

JOYCE: 	Because that was how Fox had been doing it. 

ARZT:	That was like Fox, and CISEN didn't like to share the coordination process. That is important because the first agency that felt they were going to be competing because of the coordination efforts was CISEN. The first critical obstacle to starting the Technical Secretary office for Calderón, [the group] that didn't like the idea, that lobbied against that possibility, was definitely CISEN. Particularly, those that surrounded that director of CISEN. Guillermo Valdés and I knew each other a long way back, but at the starting point, the kickoff of this position, it was critical to make them understand, particularly the leadership of the bureaucracy that the idea behind the Technical Secretary at the time of the law was that the President had someone immediately at his disposal that would make probably recommendations or opinions or policies that would not necessarily be responding to the interest of each of the agencies that are involved in the National Security Council.  

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	So I was sort of the last filter. 

JOYCE: 	Now this position is different than other Technical Secretaries in the Office of the Presidency. 

ARZT:	Yes.

JOYCE: 	Could you-? 

ARZT:	It is different for two reasons because the Office of the Presidency... Every time an administration kicks off, it has the authority to arrange its administration; so they have total leverage. That is simply kind of a bureaucratic, legislative, administrative decision. So the Office of the Presidency had its Technical Secretary for the Cabinet of Infrastructure. Secretary Technical for the Commission of Social Policy, but none of these have the obligation, as in my case of two things; 1. Report directly to the President and 2. Report and be accountable to the Congress. None of the rest of the members of the technical secretaries of the topics of the cabinet were called in every six months to present a report to a bicameral commission which is built up by three senators and three deputies. 

	None of the other technical secretaries had to their disposal for what they did a direct budget-whereas I had an amount of money. 

JOYCE: 	Set aside by law.

ARZT:	Set aside by law. The rest in fact simply depended on the budget the presidency had and will have for their team and their human resources. But in my case I had my own budget. It was subsumed within the presidency, but by law I had direct responsibility over that. 

JOYCE: 	What sort of-when you say accountable to Congress, what sort of things would you be accountable for separate from the ministers of the security cabinet? 

ARZT:	Basically I had to report on the discussions that were held at the National Security Council. We would prepare reports explaining to them what were the policies of national security. They could inquire of us about specific investigations or the use of the resources. We are far from being like the US where your legislators are vetted at the national security committees and that sort of thing. So you have to be aware that for example we were tremendously cautious about the kinds of documents that we would handle because we knew that the next day they would be on the front page of any newspaper. 

	So we built in working a lot on verbal reporting and less on a document because we knew that handing it to the members, even when we requested from them to sign a letter of confidentiality, we had problems controlling that. But basically, we would give them panoramas in the almost two years and a little bit more that I was in that position. I would always go accompanied by the director of CISEN, Guillermo Valdés (Castellanos) because we shared some responsibilities within the law of national security, a lot of coordination between him and I. So we would go, both of us, we would prepare in conjunction that report. We knew how to handle some of the topics together. 

JOYCE: 	So you mentioned that you reported directly to the President. How did your position interact with other Office of the Presidency positions, the chief of staff for example?

ARZT:	We had two things going on. In fact, probably that was one of the conflicting and permanent tensions in the way of administering the coordination because I had sort of two hats. I was named the Technical Secretary of National Security and at the same time I was responsible for the Technical Secretary of Security and Governance. So everything that had to do with the Ministry of Interior and politics, and democracy, and human rights was also my responsibility. So it was a little bit complicated. In terms of-we had-the law requests that at least twice a year, the National Security Council gathers; that's by law. 

	Because of the dynamics of the policies built in on the security we would be using the meetings of the Technical Secretary for Security weekly. So the coordination with the chief of staff was basically deciding the agenda issues, providing information that he might need to share with the other technical secretaries. So we would have meetings to see the agendas and those kinds of things but for the most part I would have my own personal encounters with the President in specific sessions-"sesiones de acuerdo," we would call them, where he would be calling me about specific issues. One example is the Merida initiative. The Merida initiative was-the way we built the administration of the Merida initiative at the federal government was that the foreign minister-the representative of the under-secretary of North America plus the director of CISEN and myself would be the three legs, or the three pillars that will coordinate all the needs of all the agencies of national security. We would need to evaluate the requests that they would have for example, to get airplanes for the Navy, gadgets of night for the Defense Act and stuff like that. But none of these agencies could have one-on-one discussions with the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), with the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) with all the umbrella of agencies in the US. 

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	Because I was the person responsible within the Merida Initiative, I had direct contact of the follow-up of those cases with the President. I didn't have to report any of those things to the chief of staff.  

JOYCE: 	But in your role as technical secretary-. 

ARZT:	The National Security Council.

JOYCE: 	But also in your role as Technical Secretary of Secretary of Governance, those sorts of follow-ups went through the chief of staff?  

ARZT:	Yes, we would have meetings basically where we would meet all the technical secretaries. He used to have sort of a table of policies of how the policies and the deadlines-. 

JOYCE: 	This is (Juan Camilo) Mouriño? 

ARZT:	This is Mouriño and also who came after him was-.  

JOYCE: 	Gerardo Ruiz (Mateos).

ARZT:	Yes, Gerardo Ruiz, Antonio no, the ambassador at the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)-I can't remember his name and I just saw him. What we would do is that they would have sort of a system, a control map for each group of policies or at least the most important ones. We would have these very big meetings where each one of us would be saying okay, 'What's the deadline for the whole?' When the administration kicks off, the administration has six months to deliver the National Development Plan by constitution.

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	With those you have the sectorial plans, the security plan, blah, blah. So we had been working-for the first six months we would have to deliver and have meetings with the different administrations. The idea was based on a hundred policies that he had announced over the hundred days, what was the follow up. We underlined to Gerardo or to Mouriño or to the President himself, [explaining] who was delayed and why we had the delay.

JOYCE: 	Which minister?

ARZT:	Which minister and saying, 'Well we think that he is delayed and he hasn't delivered this document or this data because of these reasons.' There was a lot of demand for information and some of these agencies really didn't have the capacity to develop that information. For example, no coordination among them. 

	Another was, for example, the whole discussion for-to build the first National Security Plan. It was a permanent modeling between CISEN and myself who had the leadership to sit down, the ten, eleven members of the council. At some point the President said, "She has the mandate from the law so she has to be the one." Then I had second level leadership at CISEN trying to do their own plan and then lobbying it with the different agencies-particularly the military were very surprised so they went and told the President that. They were making some disorder, those kinds of things of coordination. 

JOYCE: 	Why was it a battle with you and CISEN? Was the law not clear? 

ARZT:	The law is not sufficiently clear, that's one thing. There are points in the law that make us share competence over things. Secondly it was really the first time that CISEN had someone who was not from CISEN, especially at the second level leadership. So CISEN had its own organizational culture and obviously I could tell the President things that I thought that CISEN was backward or that things had not been tried in the past or that didn't function and that they popped as the new idea or the new policy-I had sufficient background after more than ten years studying academically these kinds of things and then being at least in two of the agencies to be the last word and not a complete ally. I had a wonderful relationship with Valdes but it was the second-level leadership that was permanent conflict with me, with the Ministry of Public Security. Mine is [Indecipherable] compared to the tensions, the constant tensions between the Attorney General, the Ministry of Public Security. 

	Then there was the other reason, that there was a high level of pressure to bring pieces of information of a big puzzle. So if that piece of information that will draw the final puzzle came through CISEN they would be [Indecipherable], oh, these are the key men. Then it came from the Defense or it could come from the Navy. There was a permanent tension of who had the last piece of the puzzle and that made a lot of competition among the agencies. 

	I wasn't part of that because I didn't have that level of cooperation and information. It was not my mandate to have it but I was responsible that when the President asked for information I would need to gather all the information of all the agencies to build the final document. So that was the permanent-sort of-leading, coordinating tension. But we gave a lot of information out to the other cabinet members, Technical Secretaries. For example, one of the things of the security policy that has been very, very underplayed, for those that follow the security strategy of President Calderón, was the prevention and social policies that he had in coordination for the security strategy. No doubt he had a very heavy deployment of forces, the police, the Navy, the defense, the deployment to different states, but at the same time the reforms in the constitution and a number of things. 

	At the same time, he had three critical pillars of social preventive policies. One was the recovery of open spaces, so I had to work with SEDASOL. The safe schools, so I had to work with the Ministry of Education, and the policies of anti-drug consumption so I had to work with the Ministry of Health. Because of those three I would have weekly or monthly follow up meetings with, not only with my partners at the presidency, but also with those responsible within the social development sector because this was hand-in-hand with the security strategy.      

JOYCE: 	Did that extra level of coordination present any special challenges? It is one thing for you-there is a sort of natural level of tension when you are coordinating with ministries-. 

ARZT:	Yes.

JOYCE: 	We can imagine other technical secretaries facing similar challenges. Now you also have to go into a field-there is a social policy Technical Secretary responsible for these things. Now you have to coordinate with these ministries as well. Do you encounter any sort of special pushback because of that?

ARZT:	Not really. It was very clear from my colleagues that that part of coordination was hand-in-hand with them so I didn't have any more tensions than the other tensions or inter-bureaucratic, interagency things happening. They face it equally in terms of-well, it is politically-it addresses better if the minister delivers the information to the President. So they would face kind of the same challenges in terms of not getting the full story or only getting pieces of the story. So at the presidency level we had a very cordial and very fluent working-well not from my experience at least that I would say that we had now this problem or those problems, we didn't. 

JOYCE: 	You mentioned the National Security Plan and the development of that. Could you talk about that process a little bit? 

ARZT:	Yes, basically the law mandates to have a National Security Plan. That plan has to be approved by the National Security Council and basically what it draws is the map of the public policies of national security. It doesn't talk or discuss the allocation of resources but it punctuates what is the national security policies of the agencies and their interests. So, for example, it was very clear for what I call the hardcore of the National Security Council the Navy, the Defense, CISEN, [Indecipherable], the Secretary of Public Security, were very clear about the distinction between public security and policies of national security. 

	But for example, the people involved from the Ministry of Communications and Infrastructure, were clueless. They just didn't even understand the concept. It was very difficult and it took a while to make them identify that based on their functions why were they sitting in the National Security Council. But the process that we built in is that now, from the National Development Plan, from each of the agencies, to bring about the security policies, the National Security policies. After a process of deliberation distinguishing what were threats and what were risks, make a catalog of things that the council will be following up in the course of the six years. 

	What we did was we had a number of meetings in the course of the year 2008 and then those meetings, at some point-the document was reviewed by the person that was sort of responsible for all the plans, Sofia Frech. We had a number of discussions because there were item issues that were critical for the national defense and the Navy and she wanted to erase them. So we had discussions, very long discussions between herself and myself because her criteria was that the plan was too long. 

	I'm like, it is not a matter of being long or short; it is a matter that each of the agencies said-had a list of items, of issues that they consider critical. It was particularly important for the Navy and for the defense to have some of these item issues because in the way their bureaucracies operate, once they have that as a frame, they can deliver what they call directives. Those directives give the map of where the resources, human and financial, need to be going. So those are the kinds of things that were put in place. 

	By that time there was in the month of October-probably the end of October and the beginning of November, a decision from President Calderón to bring in as an adviser Jorge Tello. 

JOYCE: 	This is before he takes office? 

ARZT:	No, this is in the year 2008; 2007 had gone complete and 2008 we were almost finishing 2008 and President Calderón tells the office and those of us but particularly calls me in to tell me that he has taken the decision to hire as an external adviser Jorge Tello, who was a man that in the end of the '90s was Director of the Intelligence Agency. Tello gets there because there was a tremendous amount of pressure from the entrepreneurs of Napoleon because the security in Monterey and the metropolitan area had basically collapsed. They thought that his cabinet in security plus those of us within the presidency were too young to know how to deal with these things. So they put a lot of pressure on Calderón and Calderón decided to bring in Jorge who has been, who had not been working on the security sector for the last twelve years. His last position was as under-secretary of the Ministry of Gobernacion and he became very famous because under his watch 'El Chapo' Guzmán left jail. 

	But he knew-he had a personal relationship with the Attorney General and he was the, he had a personal relationship also with the Secretary of Public Security. Interesting thing was that he didn't have a legal mandate. 

JOYCE: 	So he was regarded-. 

ARZT:	That generated a tremendous amount of tension between the members of the cabinet. 

JOYCE: 	You were still in your position.

ARZT:	I was still in my position.

JOYCE: 	And he comes in as an external adviser and an adviser who has a very foggy sort of mandate right?

ARZT:	Yes, very foggy mandate and a mandate that is not whole by law. So one of the first confrontations that he has with the team is that he starts taking decisions of how to deploy human resources for example, [Indecipherable]. It was particular tension, a very big tension between the [Indecipherable] and the role this man was holding. Tello would be going-he would go and call in the governors and would make commitments about how to deploy federal police and that without making knowledgeable the minister and not part of deliberation about particular strategy. 

	Then he started doing those things also with the Minister of Defense and at some point the Minister of Defense invited us, Tello and myself. I remember very vividly how the Minister of Defense had a booklet with the law of the national security law and turned around and told to Tello just tell me where is your mandate that you are allowed to do those kinds of things because she has the mandate, you don't have the mandate so you have to stop doing what you're doing.    

JOYCE: 	That was when?

ARZT:	That was in December of the year 2008. 

JOYCE: 	Which secretary was that?

ARZT:	Defense. 

JOYCE: 	That's not (Genaro Garcia) Luna, that's someone else.

ARZT:	No that's (Guillermo) Galván. So Tello tried to explain what were the arrangements done, what was the reason why. He tried to verbalize to the general what were the reasons behind his appointment. After that meeting I asked the President for a meeting and described to him that situation and told him that for him to operate in the terms that at least you had verbalized it, we had to take a decision that he needed my position because he was doing things that had provoked a number of problems in coordination, considerably with Galván and with Garcia Luna. In my opinion that was working against him and the movement and advance of public policy and the strategy, particularly the tactical and operational workings.   

JOYCE: 	Yes.

ARZT:	So at that time he said I'll think about it but I don't want you to leave the office. Let's discuss how we can-. I said, well if it is a matter of not leaving the office I'm willing for him to take this position but he needs to be aware that he will be held accountable to the Congress. Knowing that he has a good relationship with Valdes that shouldn't be a problem. The problem was that he didn't want to have that legal responsibility.   

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	So that took a few months of tensions, problems, a whole line of issues came there inside. So at the end, by the month of March of 2009, I presented my resignation. 

JOYCE: 	Let's back up again to the security plan. 

ARZT:	Okay.

JOYCE: 	What does this plan say about different responsibilities of the different agencies? You have the military, intelligence forces, the federal police, and lots of countries face these sorts of challenges of whose responsibility is what. The FBI and the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) clash often with these sorts of problems. What does the National Security Plan say about that?

ARZT:	It doesn't give direct mandate to each one of the agencies and that is important. It talks more-it draws more on item issues. You would need to make the crossing between what the National Security Plan does and identifying the specific responsibilities of the ministries. Then you need to cross it with sectorial plan of each of these ministers. So you would have the plan, the National Defense Plan written by the Ministry of Defense. The plan-the National Interior Plan written by Gobernacion. The National Public Security Plan written by the Ministry of Public Security. So you need to cross those plans with the National Security Plan to identify who had what responsibilities. But the idea behind is evidently that there has to be a heavy level of interagency cooperation.

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	Then there is another, Robert. Within the security apparatus you had sort of two levels because you had the National Security Council but then you have the National Public Security Council.  

JOYCE: 	Okay. 

ARZT:	The National Public Security Council has the same members, but in addition, it is the political deliberation body with the 32 governors.  

JOYCE: 	So it is the national security team plus the 32 governors or representatives from the 32. 

ARZT:	Yes.  

JOYCE: 	Okay. 

ARZT:	This is an important thing for you. It is a very complex body of institutions around and I can send you-I have a schedule but if you allow me a piece of paper I think-. 

JOYCE: 	I have a feeling this will be very valuable. 

ARZT:	So you have-this is the presidency, obviously you have the National Security Council and you have these different ten agencies who deal with national security policy. But from the Secretary of Public Security at the time of this administration, the Calderón administration, there was another important political appointment which is the national-the Public Security National Secretary. So my equivalent but for public security. It is called Secretariado Ejecutivo de Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Publica. Okay?

JOYCE: 	Okay.

ARZT:	This guy-. 

JOYCE: 	Reports to? 

ARZT:	Garcia Luna. 

JOYCE: 	Wow, okay. 

ARZT:	This guy, the appointment, although he reports to Garcia Luna the appointment is done by the President. The mandate that involves the law for him is the National Public General Law, but these guys-it is very important because this figure was created in 1997 during the Zedillo administration and reported to Gobernacion. In terms sort of like today with (Enrique) Peña (Nieto). Because what they did is they dissolved the technical expertise of the public security and it was taken-.  

JOYCE: 	Because SSP (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública) was created during Fox's administration right?

ARZT:	Yes, that was the starting point of Fox. At that time when Fox created the Ministry of Public Security, Fox tried to cut Secretariado Ejecutivo de Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Publica from Gobernacion. It took a while and in fact Fox couldn't do it. So this guy is important because he gives out money-. 

JOYCE: 	To the governors. 

ARZT:	To the 32 governors. 

JOYCE: 	Yes, right, and during both Fox's and Calderón's administration-?

ARZT:	Calderón gave this position to Garcia Luna. 

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	He would have to report to Garcia Luna. 

JOYCE: 	And politically that adds another level of intrigue because they precontrol many governors' seats. 

ARZT:	Basically you would have-by law they at least need to meet twice a year. You would have what we call a previous meeting, a closed-door meeting. There was a tremendous level of coordination between Genaro Garcia Luna and myself for the agenda items. 

JOYCE: 	Of that meeting.

ARZT:	Of this meeting, because I was the last resort of telling the President well, these are the items. 

JOYCE: 	Does the President attend that meeting?

ARZT:	Yes, he holds the meeting; he is the one who conducts the meeting. So you had the closed-door meeting and then the public meeting. In August of 2008, which is the breaking point in terms of the major balance and keeping up in crisis for Calderón, is when he delivers what they call the National Accord for Justice, Security and Legality. That has some 72 commitments and they were commitments on the three levels of government, the commitments of the federal government, the commitments of the governors and the commitments of the municipal level plus a tremendous amount of-it was also signed by the media, the most important media representatives, the most important trade union leaders, political figures that had done advocacy for example. The SOS guy was sitting at the table. The idea was to have the three levels of government to commit themselves more seriously to the public policy of security, of public security. That came, the vetting, transparency on the exercise of resources, those kinds of things. 

	The figure here-what happened is when I took off-when I left the presidency, the President named-and I'll tell you-he named Monte Alejandro Rubido, who is today the man of the Public Security Commission. 

JOYCE: 	Which is now back under Gobernacion.

ARZT:	Exactly. But this man has been what I call colloquially part of the intelligence community, the inventory. He has been in this for decades and he had worked with Tello. So Tello leveraged his way not to be still obliged and mandated by the law but having Monte Alejandro, a person with whom he had a personal relationship, to be responsible for the National Security Council. But unfortunately the way things started happening within the presidency was that Tello was able-the polite word would be charmed-Gerardo, [Indecipherable] and Alejandro Sota and he had a lot of leverage to decide on the items of the agenda. He left Monte Alejandro's side. So that lasted for probably six months. 

JOYCE: 	At what point does Tello become- 

ARZT:	Tello comes- 

JOYCE: 	In 2009? 

ARZT:	No, I think 2010. At the end of 2009 probably and then he lasted very few because then it was given to (Alejandro) Poiré. The decision of having Poiré as a spokesman for the security strategy. 

JOYCE: 	So -.

ARZT:	You have myself, then Monte Alejandro, then Tello, then Poiré and Poiré leaves Jessica Duque. 

JOYCE: 	Okay, got it. 

ARZT:	And this is only for the Technical Secretary of National Security. 

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	Then you have this other guy who does the public security one, the policies. There you had Alcantara, Monte Alejandro also went there and I don't remember who finished the position but at some point I think Tello also spent a few months but I need to see in my notes. But this one is probably the one that had more-at the presidency office definitely this one had the most nominations, changes. 

JOYCE: 	So given this pretty complicated setup and given the National Security Plan, first my question is, how useful is the National Security Plan if the nature of security things is sort of that they come up. So how useful is this plan that says for the next six years we're going to have these priorities. How useful is that when the nature of security is that things sort of come up and then also what authority did you have in your position to really demand from these ministers that they accomplish the things that they said that they would accomplish?

ARZT:	In terms of the lookout of the plan, it particularly gives guidelines to the National Defense and the Navy; for them it is a core document. As I was telling you before, it was sort of a departing point where they then connect their own ministry plans and from that there is the National Development Plan. Then there is the National Security Plan together with the sectorial plan, the National Defense and Navy that gives them-because they are so rigid, the structures, and organizations, but gives them the mandate to build in their directives, the instructions to the military zones. So that's how it trickled down. 

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	In the case of the public security or gobernacion it is much more political. It is much more response to emergencies. So you probably have also-and you do have, the Public Security Plan and you have the Human Rights Plan and you have the Interior Ministry Plan but then it is not-the consideration is to have a follow through of it. It becomes much more political because their bureaucracies did not have the organization procedures as the military had where they document everything for example. That has been going for decades; that's not new. Simply that is the way the military and the Navy operate. Probably the closest one is the Ministry of Foreign Relations because of the diplomacy. But in the case of gobernacion and the case of the public security they will have it there. There is the mandate and they're supervised by the Ministry Funcion Publica, the accountability sort of agency to follow through the plans. The plans have percentages and have deadlines and have assignation of resources so bureaucratically the plan becomes the guide for the allocation of resources for example. Those things have to be reported to the Ministry of Accountability, Funcion Publica and then reported to La Cuenta Publica to Congress. 

	But let's put it honestly, they have no leverage politically, but they are-that is the way the Ministry of Funcion Publica will have a follow up on that. 

	Now, in terms of your second question, I had total power. I really had a lot-I would say that I had an advantage in my position and that was the cabinet members are political appointees, always. There are differences between the civilians and the military, obviously. Particularly, those who are in the Ministry of Hacienda and Comunicaciones and Gobernacion, their motivation is not only being ministers of A, B, C, but ministers also have political aspirations.

	For the Navy and for the Defense that's it, that's the top of their goal. But these guys have different political motivation. In my particular case, I took-I believe two important decisions. One was not being a public figure. I would never do public statements, for example. So I didn't need to be competing for the media with those ministers. That was very clear for me. That was one. 

	Then second I worked very closely with them that when information was not delivered to me in the terms that were supposedly expected, I would do a lot of conversations with them saying I don't want problems with the under-secretary, but this is not the information that needs to be handled, and I would deal with the ministers.    

JOYCE: 	So you would get the information from the under-secretaries and it wouldn't necessarily be what you needed. Then you would go-. 

ARZT:	To the minister, I would go to the ministers. Because this was-the level of demand over information was enormous. 

JOYCE: 	Now do the ministers ever push back and say, sorry, but who are you?

ARZT:	No, in those terms no, never. I didn't have problems in those terms. 

JOYCE: 	You were understood to represent the President? 

ARZT:	Yes, it was very clearly understood. Then the other important thing is that because we were a very tiny team, it really demanded a lot of collegial work. So my team, which was small, needed to have the same skills of being transparent and have a very good communication because we would usually, for a very operative, building up of information of documents, probably you would have working teams where it would be a general director for example. It was important that the general director knew who was representing from the presidency needed to be taken seriously. There was, obviously as with any bureaucracy, some tensions, some not, but some of those who worked on my team had already been in the bureaucracy in the past so they knew their way around. We were able to deliver the documents.

JOYCE: 	How big was your team?

ARZT:	My team when I left, we were at the end 18. By the end of the administration I understand that they closed up with Jessica something around 60 people. 

JOYCE: 	Sixty?

ARZT:	Yes, but the reason why-there was a turning point when Poiré took the part of the spokesman. 

JOYCE: 	So Poiré served as spokesperson for security issues but also this technical secretary role.

ARZT:	Yes, and from there he jumped to CISEN. 

JOYCE: 	He went from two hats to three.

ARZT:	Yes. Then he went from here to CISEN.

JOYCE: 	Briefly.

ARZT:	One month or two months and then [Indecipherable]. 

JOYCE: 	Right, okay. 

ARZT:	But I was told-. 

JOYCE: 	Did Jessica continue with this spokesperson role as well? 

ARZT:	No. The only one of all of us who did this role was Poiré.

JOYCE: 	So why does Poiré grow the office?

ARZT:	Because of the need-I understand the need he had to build the information of the media. 

JOYCE: 	So he needed communications people. 

ARZT:	He needed more communications people, more people who could draw the bulletin, the press releases, those kinds of things. Probably sixty is too much but it certainly at least quadrupled from what I had-from the starting point that we had.   

JOYCE: 	Did you hire this team?

ARZT:	Yes, I hired them all and I vetted them all. 

JOYCE: 	How did you know who you wanted? 

ARZT:	I had-some of the persons that were here on the team had already worked with me during the transition period. It was very funny-well, not funny, it was very stressful in fact-because in October the people that were drawing the security within policies-I don't even know if this story has been told to you. Within the way Mouriño was doing the administration of the transition team he had come close to what used to be known as the doubla which was Garcia Luna and (Eduardo) Medina-Mora (Icaza). Garcia Luna and Medina-Mora positioned themselves as being a team that will deliver all the public security policies and tremendous good level of coordination because they knew each other.

JOYCE: 	Who is Mora?

ARZT:	Medina-Mora is the Attorney General, currently the ambassador to the US. So during the transition team Mouriño would have conversations with them and start drawing the policies. Cordero, who was the person responsible for the public policies, was seeing that things were not being delivered and these were only dealing with public security and policing but no one was seeing the national security, the defense. At the time during the transition team the President was approached by the military and the Navy about the levels of salaries that they were having and no one wanted to deal with those things. 

JOYCE: 	Yes.

ARZT:	So I was invited to do those things eight weeks before the team started. So at that time, because I had these specific things that needed to be drawn and documented on the vetting, the policing, the public security, I hired a team of about six persons, knowledgeable about the security stuff. We built the general framework of the security strategy. 

	When I took the position I brought in some of these people and some of them I knew from the past. Either we had experience at the Attorney General or we worked together at CISEN or we worked together in academia or someone recommended me a person. For example, there were three people who had had a tremendous amount of experience in the public administration. So underneath me there was a guy called Ernestoli who was sort of my administrative operational coordinator. He had been a bureaucrat and knew public administration, twenty years of experience. That was key because given the fact that I was responsible for the exercise of public resources and that I had to report them and I had to build up a plan. He had all that meticulous experience that I didn't necessarily have that length.  

JOYCE: 	Right.

ARZT:	He had been administrative coordinator of [Indecipherable] and [Indecipherable] and he had gone through so many that he knew all the legal administrative responsibilities that any bureaucrat is holding. Then there were two other ladies that had also been in the bureaucracy, one particularly in the bureaucracy of the Ministry of Interior handling things of human rights and governance and those kinds of things. The other lady had worked at CISEN for many years. 

	Then we had a larger group of people that basically came from experiences of doing low-level consulting, either at SIDE or at Ibero on these issues. That is the way I built it. I thought it was very important that from the very beginning, because there was a tremendous amount of pressure that the security team sector was vetted, even when I was not obliged all the team was vetted to CISEN to say these are my guys and if you have any concern of trust or that we could leak information or those kinds of things, these guys are vetted.   

JOYCE: 	So you gave them over to the intelligence people to vet.

ARZT:	Yes.

JOYCE: 	What was your relationship with the cabinet coordinator position?

ARZT:	With who? With Gerardo? 

JOYCE: 	I think he is the one who holds the position first and later on it is Sofia Frech Possibly she takes the role around the time you leave the administration.

ARZT:	Yes, probably. Because Sofia was much more at the level-at least in the beginning, coordinating the developments of all the plans. 

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	When I left we were finalizing that so-. 

JOYCE: 	When you left Patricia was the- 

ARZT:	Administrative, yes. 

JOYCE: 	So what is your relationship with Ruiz as cabinet coordinator in the beginning part of the administration? 

ARZT:	Well the one that had the-as cabinet coordinator, had a very good relationship with Gerardo because basically Gerardo and I know each other way back. Gerardo and I were together when President Calderón was the Chief President of the National Action Party. So we go way back, 1997 to 2009 so we knew each other. 

	From that time when President Calderón was the head of the National Action Party and had known Gerardo Ruiz, [Indecipherable] and I don't know if she claims it, but I was the person that hired for the first time Alejandra Sota because at the National Action Party there was a unit called political analysis and I was responsible for it. So I hired Alejandra Sota to do political analysis as she had just finished out from a time as a recommendation of Alonzo luJambio 

	So my coordination with Gerardo is anything of information he needed, we would be in contact; we will discuss the agenda, the follow up, so we had a very good coordination and I didn't have problems with him.    

JOYCE: 	What sort of things would he come to you for? 

ARZT:	He would sometimes ask-. 

JOYCE: 	What did he need from you? 

ARZT:	He basically was-he had the map, this big charge. That was built together between him and Frech. So he was be required-asking me how was the follow up of that thing. For him that instrument was critical. That was basically our relationship. When the explosions of Pemex took place in the year 2007 he would come to me to understand the dimension of the security apparatus within Pemex which he didn't know. He knew very well the company but he didn't know the size of the company and why some of these things were basically out there with no protection. 

	When Pemex came and said, now I need this huge budget because I need to secure all this I said wait, wait, wait. First we don't have that amount of money and second we have to build up a risk map to say where-there was already numerous evidence of leaking of oil. So we had to build up a map and he was very interested in that. So I would go and explain to him, okay, this is what Pemex says, this is what evidence is out there. I think we could put more security here, here or here and we have other options. We have the drawings, we have deployment. Building an umbrella of alternatives for him to follow up. That was my relation very specifically with Gerardo in that topic for example.  

	When the National Accord for Security, Justice and Legality-I had a tremendous amount of coordination-. 

JOYCE: 	In 2008.

ARZT:	In 2008. A tremendous amount of coordination with Mouriño because Mouriño was Minister of Interior and he had a direct responsibility to leverage the terms of the accord with the governors. So we had a very clear division of responsibility. He would be going back and forth about the item issues whereas I would be working with the whole of the administration. We had a huge meeting where all the agencies were sitting down and we were seeing the items building up. What were the NGOs demands, what the media had said, where we could build commitments from the media based on for example the Colombia experience, how things were being reported. So we were in permanent coordination for a week, a very intense week to build this because he would go back to the governors and say, "Look, are you willing to commit to the vetting of the police, the transparency of the resources," blah, blah, blah. They would go back and forth, back and forth.   

JOYCE: 	Then he would turn around and work with you. 

ARZT:	Yes, and we were in constant communication because we needed to really have this accord and we had this expression in Spanish "totalmente planchado" without tricks, ironed straight. You know what happens, you have this huge National Security Council, and it was going to be launched there. So that was one of the most intense coordinations with gobernacion.   

JOYCE: 	You talked about the National Security Plan and then the sectorial plans. I imagine the National Security Plan has goals like reduce crime rate, reduce number of murders in the country, these sorts of goals?

ARZT:	Those are in the sectorial plans.

JOYCE: 	Oh really. 

ARZT:	You find those specific mentions at the sectorial plan. You will have, for example, in public security, a drop of 50% of homicides, 100% of vetting police officers.   

JOYCE: 	So what does the national level plan goal look like? 

ARZT:	It is much more general; it doesn't put specific goals. It draws on general policies and then you go to the ministries' plans to find the specific goals because from those specific goals are the ones that get supervised by the Funcion Publica secretary and eventually reported to Congress.  

JOYCE: 	How did you push the ministries to make their sectorial goals respond to the national goals?

ARZT:	Through working sessions. They would bring the issues and at that time we would also have the team of Sofia working with us because she was the one who would follow from the National Development Plan and then these-you could call them-you had-I considered it an administrative mess because you would have concept plans, the National Security Plan, the Human Rights Plan, the Plan Against Violence for Women. These are concept plans you could say. 

JOYCE: 	Yes.

ARZT:	Then you have also the obligation that each ministry draws its own plan. So in that-(laughing)-in that mess the plan of the agency becomes the most important reference because it is within the plan that the specific goals are set. Then for example, Sofia's team would go into negotiations with the agencies to say, well it is not enough to say that you will drop crime 50%. It is not enough that the Attorney General says that it is going to vet only 80% of its personnel. It is not enough that in the course of the next three years you will improve the salaries of the Navy and defense. 

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	They would enter into a negotiation over the goal items between the team of Sofia and for the most part those who are responsible for the administration of resources. 

JOYCE: 	Okay, in the ministries. 

ARZT:	In the ministries, the Oficial Major. 

JOYCE: 	What is your position in this?

ARZT:	What happened is that my position in this is when the Oficiales Majores were concerned that this lady didn't understand very well why certain issues were important, they would ask my intervention. Then I would go and talk to her about why certain items were critical. That was my role in these definitions. Sometimes she would ask me to accompany her because it is impossible that you have a person that can understand-her expertise is education; her background was education. In that nobody would challenge her. 

	Then you had the guys from infrastructure, you had myself from security and she would impose the terms and she didn't have a very good diplomatic style and that generated tension. So sometimes those in the situation would come to me and ask me to see how we could find a middle ground over what were their concerns and what she was mandating. 

JOYCE: 	How did you get ministries to agree to goals like reducing the homicide rate or reducing the crime rate? That has a lot more to do-it is not only up to the-. 

ARZT:	The minister. 

JOYCE: 	Right. It is not only up to that ministry's work. It is that ministry plus the Attorney General, then there are 32 states. 

ARZT:	And 2500 municipalities and homicide is a local issue. 

JOYCE: 	Right, that's exactly my question. How do you get the ministers to say I am accountable for this goal over all of Mexico; how does that work? 

ARZT:	It came basically as a result of a campaign promise. Because it was a campaign promise I think that very few had the precise understanding that it was a goal that was not a proper goal. But it was a way in the case of Garcia Luna to say, "No, I can deliver this." Because there was a connection between the levels of violence-by the Fox administration you were closing among 3000 homicides, organized crime related so it was very low compared to what then the Calderón administration faced. But it was the ministry itself-the ministry itself had two things, political motivation-I'm capable of delivering this, I have the technical expertise and he has a mandate. It is amazing. I am totally convinced that it is an incorrect mandate because as you just very clearly pointed, when a homicide occurs it is impossible because you don't have the human resources of deployment. It is particularly at the starting point of the Calderón administration because the goal was to have 40,000 federal police that were going to be deployed and commanded by Genaro Garcia Luna. But when we started he only had barely 7000, so it was very difficult. But in the discourse, in the responsibility of saying this is what I can deliver because these governors at the end will come to me and ask me sort of for the recipe. We will be able to work together. 

	Not understanding, particularly on the side of Garcia Luna-and I think that was his Achilles' heel-that the relationship with the governors will always be political.  

JOYCE: 	Yes.

ARZT:	Even when he would have ten items of what each one of the 32 had to do, they had political motivations. For example, very clearly you can identify that the majority of the governors were panistas (from Partido Acción Nacional, the National Action Party). So what they would do is they would call in for the help of the federal government, but once the bomb was out there and the fire was up to his neck-for example, Governor Gonzalez, because he had the peak of violence and crime and organized crime and everything, he would call in the help of the federal administration. The federal administration would go into the state, talk to his members of his cabinet, make a series of commitments and suggestions, saying 'let's start vetting the police, reviewing your salaries, your strategies of deployment, let's see how we can work hand-in-hand between the Navy, the defense and the federal police in coordination with your state police,' but it wasn't [Indecipherable], because once the sense of emergency was gone, we had tremendous amount of obstacles to follow through. That was a permanent confrontation between the federal cabinet security members and the governors. They would simply do this cyclically.   

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	They, except for a few cases-you could say in the case of Baja California it worked because they were both panistas. Yes, but the administration had tremendous problems-the reason why President Calderón also went into Michoacan was because Lazaro Cardenas Batel had already, during the election period, come close-they are friends, they know each other very well, but he told him, 'This thing is out of control. So I need your help.'

	So he deploys federal persons to Michoacan and then Yanego comes in and the coordination and the interagency is totally gone. So Calderón is constantly muscled because of the political motivations that his strategy could not be the correct one. Then potentially, in the long run, the plan could be very good positioning for the succession directly. 

JOYCE: 	Changing topics a little bit, how did the dynamic change at the top level of the Office of the Presidency when Mouriño left? You had Mouriño as chief of staff, Ruiz as cabinet coordinator, yourself as technical secretary to the National Security Council, how do things change once Mouriño leaves? 

ARZT:	Well you know he doesn't leave.

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	This tragic event happens and so the President has signs, so Gerardo now has to coordinate the Office of the Presidency, coordinate with Patricia who-the role of Patricia is important for one thing because Patricia is responsible how the money is exercised within the presidency. 

JOYCE: 	Okay. 

ARZT:	That gives her muscle of leverage. Then at some point it was a permanent tension between Gerardo and herself because she has resources. She gets to report, decide. Everyone that needed resources had to document it, that request of resources. So the Technical Secretaries, as I mentioned before-in my case it was different because I had my own resources. So I had a collegial relationship with her to allocate-in fact we had to build in a plan of increasing the security within the building and so we hired a study for the technology of biometrics and a number of things that would change within the building and it was between Patricia and myself with reporting and giving the advances to Gerardo.

	Gerardo knew all the things. So basically worked with each one of the Technical Secretaries but he had in particular more inclination for the economic and infrastructure way. So because he had this particular inclination he would demand much more of those technical cabinet persons. 

JOYCE: 	Right.

ARZT:	In my case it was just giving follow up on things that were of his particular concern or interest or if at some point-he didn't travel very much with the President and for some issues, like for the constitutional reform of the accusatory system-he wanted to understand the things so he would ask me for documents or giving him presentations or those sorts of things. 

	So I would say the cooperation and the coordination was very fluent, at least in my experience. That could be because I knew him that way; I knew what were his interests, how he liked the information. We had worked together before. So that helped me.

JOYCE: 	Just so I understand the-you just laid it out very well how the national security team worked. So at the beginning of the administration you have Mouriño as chief of staff-.

ARZT:	Yes.

JOYCE: 	And Ruiz answers to him.

ARZT:	Yes.

JOYCE: 	And Ruiz handles cabinet coordination with the technical secretaries at the different cabinets. So his relationship to you is that with gobernacion issues, the Ministry of Interior issues.

ARZT:	Yes. 

JOYCE: 	Then Mouriño leaves and becomes Minister of Interior and then passes away in a plane crash. 

ARZT:	Yes.

JOYCE: 	Who replaces him as chief of staff? 

ARZT:	Gerardo. 

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	Gerardo and the chief coordinator becomes Antonio Vivanco. 

JOYCE: 	Okay, as cabinet coordinator. 

ARZT:	Yes, and also I'm missing one because I also dealt with as cabinet coordinator there was someone else. He then became Secretary of Communications and Infrastructure. His name doesn't pop out. Remember Antonio Vivanco was technical secretary for Infrastructure cabinet but then he moves to be coordinator, then also this other guy-I hope his name comes. Dionizo Perez Jacquin.

JOYCE: 	Okay. Can you write that down for me? 

ARZT:	The other one is Antonio Vivanco. They both held positions as technical secretary cabinet, infrastructure, economy, and he then moved to become the Secretary of Communications and Transportation (SCT) became the Director of Comision Federal de Electricidad They moved from presidential to these positions.

JOYCE: 	Got it, thank you. How do things change in-going towards the end of 2008 with regard to your role in following up with the security goals that were set out in the beginning of the administration versus dealing with things that are coming up?

ARZT:	The ways that things that were coming up would be handled weekly through cabinet meetings. 

JOYCE: 	And the President would attend those?

ARZT:	The President would attend those. The team was much more reduced. You didn't have the twelve; you would have basically the five, the Navy, the defense, CISEN, gobernacion, the attorney, six and five and the Ministry of Public Security. That is what I call the core group. When for example the things like Pemex pop out, for the following up meetings the minister of Hacienda, (Agustín) Carstens, would be called in for those meetings. When these kinds of things would come out it was with this core group and it was routine. Then the President would take positions and deliberate with the team and they would offer options and what was not discussed in these meetings was certain level at some point of the tactic and operations on some occasions because the President would be interested in having details he would call in the responsible head of the ministry for that operation. That could be the defense minister, it could be the navy minister, the attorney with Secretaria de Seguridad Publica or only the Secretaria de Seguridad Publica, and then he could also have an accord with intelligence director, with Valdez. You probably have interviewed others so you probably already know that the President was very keen on micromanagement of some things. This was an issue of particular micromanagement. 

	When I was sitting in the position we would basically have weekly meetings. If things were tremendously heavy we could probably have two meetings a week but that also depended tremendously on the amount of the agenda for the President because he had to juggle other issues. He would have social development. During the year 2007 evidently the security question came up very heavily in press releases, in his positions, in a number of things. 

	There was a concern that that would be the only issue. So there were discussions within the presidency cabinet members that they would do this sort of announcement. Each year they would launch sectorial policy. Let's assume that 2007 was going to be security and then for the year 2008 they were going to launch the social development policy. So articulate permanently the policies, the announcement, sort of the media strategy. 

	I was very outspoken that that was not going to work because the moment they would come out and announce these very openly, if we had four beheadings on the front page, the announcement was gone, so they would have to be very curt. Then I was called in with the President and those that were proposing that to explain myself and to see why I thought that that was not going to work. I gave him the whole picture of what had happened during the year 2007 with important announcements and how everything was just smashed by the security staff. So it ended up not being launched that way. 

	They tried to explore other mechanisms but the security and the commitment of the President and the security really absorbed a considerable amount of time at least during my experience when I was there. 

JOYCE: 	You think other parts of the President's policy, other sides of the administration, social development, the economy, suffered because of this?

ARZT:	No, because he was truly a workaholic. It was very funny. I used to leave-this is very anecdotal but it will give you a picture. I would go drop my kids and drive to the office. I would be sitting in front of my desk at 8:40. He would already be sitting reviewing stuff. We all had a communicator so we would know when we turn on the communicator and who was at the office at the time. He would be working very early and he would be asking for information. My team for example learned very badly that I would be asking for information at 4 o'clock in the morning because I had been requested for information at that time. So there was a tremendous demand for information. That happened to the economic sector, to the social development sector. He was a very high demander of information to have the picture. 

	It was much more in terms of important announcements that they would be clouded by the way the media was following the security things. 

JOYCE: 	So it was more of a media message. 

ARZT:	It was a media message more than having an impact on the way the [interruptions]-yes, I would say that. It was funny because when we had some-most of the team were men.

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	This is really truly a gender question, a gender issue because my colleagues, Antonio, Dionizio, Gerardo would say, "Oh, let's meet to follow up on this issue at lunch." I had as a rule that I would have lunch with my kids. So I would say why don't we do breakfast. I am at 8:30 in the morning in the office and they'd say yes, but we are in breakfast or we are in the gym. We had these-we would start making jokes because I said I only go to a lunch and miss the lunch of my kids if I have to be with the President; if not, I'm very sorry. Dionizo , Antonio, let's meet at 8 o'clock in the evening. If you could do those things, I couldn't do it. That is very anecdotal.

JOYCE: 	Those kinds of things come up.

ARZT:	Those kinds of things come up because they have a way-all of them. For me getting to the position, I was absolutely clueless that Calderón was going to offer me, I never saw it as an opportunity to jump to become a legislator for example or cabinet member. For me, my career at that moment had been the top of what I had aspired to. A number of my colleagues had political motivations. So they were doing politics. I simply didn't have time. I wasn't seeing myself as a congresswoman or as a senator whereas at least half of them ended up doing those things and ended up in those positions. So that is an important difference of how you would strategically decide how to follow and how to do things and what would be your relationship, in some cases more with the party, less with the cabinet. That is an element you have to consider. 

JOYCE: 	Right. Do you think-you mentioned the President would have these cabinet meetings weekly and then possibly follow up with the ministers bilaterally. 

ARZT:	Yes.

JOYCE: 	Did these bilateral meetings hinder the coordination aspect of the cabinet at all?

ARZT:	No, because what happens is that the ministers will bring documents and presentations and those, in the case of the security would end up on my desk basically. Sometimes with literally notes, hand notes of the President, "can you follow up on this Sigrid?" "Can you check the numbers? Can you request additional information?" So that document as any of the other documents of any of the other sectorial will end up of the desks of the Technical Secretary of the Cabinet of Infrastructure or Economy or Social Development.

JOYCE: 	Got it.

ARZT:	He would send those documents to the team. 

JOYCE: 	So the minister would come with a memo of what he wanted to cover with the President and that memo after the meeting would end up with the technical secretary.

ARZT:	Yes, it could go two ways. It could go through his Secretaria Particular, the role of Itza. He would hand it to Itza or he would hand the documents to Gerardo but in any case what would happen is these documents would end up at the desks of those of us who had the cabinet administration, the secretary technical cabinets. 

JOYCE: 	So it was never a problem of making bilateral promises, bilateral agreements, the President and the minister and that affecting another ministry's plans or strategy? 

ARZT:	Not in my experience. The kind of problems that I was witness to was this thing that I was building on previously for you that during the transition period they built these teams, these doubla. When the administration started and took off, whereas because of the way he wanted to continue with that doubla team of two strategy, Medina-Mora in fact tried to send orders to Genaro Garcia Luna and that made a tremendous amount of conflict which was very well known and transcended to media and that was a problem. They had to be called in a couple of times from the very beginning by Mouriño and then from Fernando Gomez Mont (Urueta) because these will be permanent tensions between them. Also the President intervening in the role that each one had. The difference in style.

	The Attorney General is the FBI muscle, but in terms of resources to deploy it is very tiny. It has a huge bureaucracy but in terms of operational capacity it is very reduced where that muscle really had-was in federal police and secretariat. So there were permanent tensions there. The President had taken the position that one of the most important critical policies was the building up of the police, not only the federal police but the 32. Let's put it this way, Genaro was much more of a technical guy whereas Medina-Mora is what we call a lobo de mar, more political, diplomatic, savvy guy. Because of the styles that generated tensions with the governors so gobernacion had to intervene because the mandate to have the relationships with gobernacion-with the governors go through gobernacion.   

JOYCE: 	Got it. What about more like operational confusions between the military and the police, between intelligence and the police and intelligence and the military? Did those sorts of things get complicated because of bilateral meetings? 

ARZT:	No, not really because when specific operations came to place, the President would have the meeting with the team that would follow the operation. You had sort of two kinds of deliverables. You would have say operation A with a target. So the President would call in the navy, the defense, the attorney and federal police and Secretaria de Seguridad Publica. He would deliver the instructions, say okay, you go after this target. So they had to coordinate very well and who would do that follow up because it was a tactical operation was CISEN.   

JOYCE: 	Okay. 

ARZT:	You would have Operation B, where let's say SEDENA had a piece of information from the US or from his intelligence, would probably come and request authorization from the President to follow up and then he would at some point need to refer that result to the President. So you had both models.   

JOYCE: 	Got it. So either way there was a step build into the process to bring everybody into the loop. 

ARZT:	Yes. One of the things that you have to be very aware is that there is a considerable amount of asymmetry in the capacity-building of each of the institutions. 

JOYCE: 	Okay.

ARZT:	What do I mean by that? By the time Calderón started his administration the human resources deployment of CISEN were very reduced. They had been systematically reduced during the Fox administration. So having 5000, they started with Calderón something like 2000, or 1800. It was really important to have it clear because that meant undercover, technical capacity to intervene communications, so you had a reduction on the body of the civilian intelligence. Then you had an intention during the Fox administration of building up Attorney General's capacity especially against organized crime. There you had-within the Attorney General, the intelligence [end of file one]

JOYCE: 	Sort of looking back, what would you say were the hardest parts of the coordination and follow up aspects of your position? 

ARZT:	The trust is an important one.

JOYCE: 	The ministers?

ARZT:	The ministers' trust. I didn't know-there are two aspects to it. I had to coordinate military and civilian personnel. What helped to build up a very close relationship with both ministers, the navy and the defense is because people around them, close to them in the structure had been students of mine at the National College of Defense. So they knew my background. So that built-they gave information to both ministers and there are two things on their mindset. It is the instruction of the President. If he appointed her or [Indecipherable], those are the ones we have to work on. That's one thing. But building trust is important. 

	Then on the civilian side I knew from the past Guillermo, we had a very collegial relationship. I knew much less the first Minister of Gobernacion, Ramirez Acuna, who had been a governor but people around him knew me. So it does help a personal relationship with those close of the cabinet members. I knew Genaro. I didn't know Medina-Mora because I had known Genaro when I was hired back in the '90s by CISEN to do some projects. So it was sort of basically catching up. 

	One of the things that is important to have success is that you are able to build with them a sense that the deliverable is their deliverable, it is not your deliverable. At least that helped me considerably. It wasn't showing off myself saying oh, this is the public policy but putting an important weight on showing that this was the result of collegial work. In fact, because of the sizes of the ministries they were the ones to be praised. That is important. 

JOYCE: 	So presenting the success as their successes. 

ARZT:	As their successes, yes, very important, especially because most of the successes have dealt with a specific result and target of operations, detentions, seizures and I don't have a mandate over that. My mandate is much more strategic in terms of policy vision. I didn't have any mandate at all in moving operations and practice. I would learn of some of those because the President would ask me to but that made a difference in importance between the relationship those ministers had with the President. 

JOYCE: 	What would you say the biggest structural flaws of this setup were that you saw? 

ARZT:	Having to report to so many people, that would be one definitely. 

JOYCE: 	To Congress, to the President-.

ARZT:	More than to Congress, within the presidency. For example one of the flaws in my immediate experience was having these two hats. Let's say the weekly follow up which was almost minute to minute through the technical security cabinet versus the responsibility and the mandate of the national security policies. The meetings would need to be taking place every two months by mandate of law. So having those two hats made it difficult. 

	At times also the President would go and tell-for example he would turn around and would say to Gerardo, follow up on this. Gerardo would come and tell me, follow up on this. Then I would have the Ministry of Interior-oh by the way, I had an accord with the President and now I need to follow up on this with you. So to juggle those things. 

JOYCE: 	It is not always those bilateral agreements would reach you via the President's staff, sometimes they would reach you via the minister? 

ARZT:	The document will reach me but if the minister considered having an important way he would probably even drop-after talking to the President by my office and say, "We need to build some follow up on this." Or he would simply call me on the phone and tell me, "I had assigned person B to be in coordination with you to follow on this because the President wants to know in a week or two weeks' time the result."

JOYCE: 	Got it. 

ARZT:	So you will have to be coordinating-you will have input from different sources and you would have to juggle with those and I think that is an issue. Plus, for some, the National Security Law has a flaw which is even when it is the council and it demands that things be delivered there and the policies get to be drawn from there, we don't have the level of expertise or follow up like in the US. You have specific mandates, for example, to share intelligence. You had a great reform after 9/11. There is no specific mandate, for SEDENA, to share military intelligence. It is more done as they build trust in their partners. 

	For example it is not even regulated, for the civilian it is. But as in anything in this matter it goes through personal relationships and institutional relationships. For example, the Attorney General's office, because of the type of mandate that it has which is to finalize an investigation, generate the detention and get the sentence there are levels of sharing intelligence with the rest of his partners. 

JOYCE: 	Right. 

ARZT:	So in the way that is structured it is not very efficient. 

JOYCE: 	Right. Would you attribute any major mistakes, shortcomings in the administration to this structure?

ARZT:	I think that they were trying to replicate some of the administrative models that had worked in the past but to be very blunt for the most part my colleagues had no experience with the bureaucracy. They were really truly newcomers to the administration. That was an issue too. The ministers could have the knowledge and the technical and the political diplomacy and some of my immediate cabinet colleagues didn't have that, they were too young. Sometimes that became a mistake because they would demand things that even the ministry couldn't deliver. It was part because of the lack of knowledge and how young they were. So I think that it is important-especially for some cabinet positions, that whoever you put in the presidency does have to have a level of knowledge over the topic you're handing to that person. It can become very tiresome that you have this technical secretary requesting information but not having at the beginning the understanding that not necessarily all that information-first it is out there or second it is the agency that has it. So that could-.   

JOYCE: 	Sometimes they had sector knowledge or public policy knowledge but not necessarily the knowledge of the institutions. Okay, we'll mark that as a yes for the tape. Looking back how well would you say President Calderón met his national security goals?

ARZT:	I would say that looking back, at the end, there was sort of-I would say-there is a graph where you can build up sort of five pillars. One of those pillars was truly building up institutional capacity. That is putting the resources, human and financial at CISEN, building up the federal police, and ameliorating the salaries of the navy and defense so you stop the rotation. There was a tremendous amount of people leaving. 

	So in the overall of the goals put within-one that we didn't discuss but for example within the national security we had an item on epidemics. When the-within the National Security Plan one of the risks-very low in the Agenda de Riesgos we call them, it was a very low item, I think 18 or something like that, but the protocols and procedures built to operate the NH1M or whatever, I wasn't there anymore, but it was a result. The success of the control, the [Indecipherable] not to extend the capacity to align all the efforts on the three levels of government in health on a very critical issue, that would spread very quickly-that was part of the National Security Program. The deliverable was success. 

	Part, very sort of slightly was in the plan but I don't think there was a sense of urgency. For example, building up cyber security. That was an issue that from the very beginning was an item issue of interest for the navy but he wouldn't have very much solidarity from the others. It was introduced, things were done, but the end result is very asymmetric. It really ended up being because the top minister was interested on the issue. It was there in the plan, but not that they all share the same interest on that issue for example. So you would have some successes and some not there.   

JOYCE: 	What about the social policies that you mentioned earlier? Do you think that there was adequate follow up? 

ARZT:	I think that there was adequate follow up and probably from the three-the two most successful were the recovery of public spaces in SEDASOL and the building up-because that is an important issue, the building up of first step attention to addictions. There was no infrastructure in the country. There was a tremendous lack of understanding and the number of drug addicts, especially among the youth had grown considerably. 

	That strategy for example, ended up building the capacity at the state level because that would be first. Of the three, the most complex one to work with was Cepa because you had to deal with Union teachers, with the directors of the schools, with a tremendous huge bureaucracy at CEP. So I would say it was the less clearly successful one. There were places where they went through the issue talking about safe school for them was to put metal detectors. 

	I would say, "No, no, that's not safe school. Safe school is-let's coordinate the efforts at the municipal level, at the state level, prepare the professors to talk about alcohol and addiction and drugs, terms even of the perimetal security of the schools where you had already pushers of drugs.'  

JOYCE: 	A much more comprehensive plan.

ARZT:	Yes, and that was very difficult because they had four hundred other priorities starting to tighten up the quality of the education. We were item four hundred and one basically. 

JOYCE: 	All right, last question, if you could give advice to someone taking your position in a new administration what would you say? 

ARZT:	I would say that you have to be very clear of the limits of the human resources and financial resources you have in terms of how you organize and you coordinate yourself because it remains to be a small office at the end. Personally I honestly think that that is not a position to have if you have political aspirations because your main responsibility is to be the final adviser on this topic to the President. If you are clouded by political motivations then you will be doing-you might not be doing-what is key is that you are there as a personal expert on the topic and you should be honest about telling the President that has been tried in the past and had these effects, or this is new and you have to push on that. 

	At least how I always thought that position had to be conceptualized. Those would be my recommendations definitely. If you have political aspirations then target the Office of the Presidency, it will give you more leverage. To be honest the country is not in condition to have someone who has political aspirations juggling, muscling information to the President on such a critical issue where you-and he was very aware the cabinet members had political interests. So you are there because you have technical expertise and you should abide by your technical expertise. That would be my recommendation.

JOYCE: 	Thank you very much. 

ARZT:	You're welcome. 


Innovations for Successful Societies				Series:  Centers of Government 
Oral History Program						Interview number:  M4
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