Mexico official cites intel failures

Mexico's top security official said Tuesday that the country's intelligence agency has been hurt by budget cuts and staff reductions in recent years, weakening the government's ability to prevent attacks such as two recent pipeline bombings.

Answering angry questions by lawmakers in Congress, Interior Secretary Francisco Ramirez said the government has formed a special anti-subversion task force in response to the Sept. 10 and July 11 attacks claimed by leftist rebels, which affected gas and oil deliveries and cost businesses hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ramirez said President Felipe Calderon inherited a weakened Center for National Security and Investigation, or Cisen, when he took office Dec. 1.

"We received a Cisen that had structurally deteriorated over time and that was not clearly in shape to handle this type of events," he said.

He said low budgets, a lack of technology and the departure of about 1,000 agents in prior years had affected the agency's ability "to keep up on the movements of these groups" _ an apparent reference to the People's Revolutionary Army, or EPR, which claimed responsibility for the blasts at more than half a dozen ducts.

Ramirez said Cisen, the army, the attorney general's office and other security agencies established the new task force to protect the facilities of the state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex.

Calderon's administration had focused much of its attention on fighting drug traffickers in the first months of his term and appeared to have been caught somewhat off guard by the resurgence of the tiny guerrilla group, which had largely been dormant since the late 1990s.