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MEXICO CITY, Feb. 19 -- Just days before he was detained on charges of collaborating with drug traffickers, the head of Mexico's antinarcotics program was given detailed briefings on what the United States knows about Mexico's cocaine cartels, Administration officials disclosed today.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they had begun an immediate ''damage assessment'' to determine if secret information had been compromised or if United States drug informants have been placed in danger. One Administration official said tonight that the briefings had included ''really sensitive stuff.''

Another Administration official said the United States was especially concerned about possible threats to the informants who provided information to American drug and intelligence officers.

''If the information about them is closely held and only four people know about it, the way they work down there, they'll kill all four people,'' this official said.

American officials also said they feared that some ongoing operations intended to catch major Mexican cartel leaders might have been compromised.

''We're going to Plan B,'' one official said. ''You always have a contingency plan. You don't put all your eggs in one basket.''

American officials acknowledged they had no early warning that Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, the former commissioner of the National Institute to Combat Drugs, was under suspicion of doing business with one of Mexico's most powerful drug lords.

Mexican authorities confronted General Gutierrez with the accusations against him, forced his resignation and detained him on Feb. 6, but American officials said they did not learn of the charges until Tuesday, when they were announced by the Mexican authorities.

''This points to a major intelligence community failure,'' one American official said. ''He was detained since Feb. 6 and we didn't know it. We had no idea.''

At a news conference on Tuesday night, Defense Minister Enrique Cervantes Aguirre disclosed that General Gutierrez had received gifts, payments and real estate from the cartel controlled by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, one of Mexico's most ruthless and aggressive drug lords, and had provided protection to cocaine shipments for as long as seven years.

General Gutierrez, along with two of his top aides, was remanded today to a maximum security prison near Mexico City to face charges of racketeering and aiding the traffic of cocaine, Attorney General Jorge Madrazo Cuellar said.

The general will also face a court-martial at which, top military commanders have suggested, he may be tried for treason.

The events leave Mexico's antidrug program in disarray only two weeks before President Clinton is expected to certify to Congress that Mexico is making significant strides in its drug effort.

As head of a special closed agency set up in 1993 to insulate drug operations from the corruption of the civilian police, General Gutierrez was privy to Mexico's most secret counter-narcotics operations and had access to the most confidential intelligence Mexico has gathered about its cartels.

General Gutierrez traveled to Washington in late January with Attorney General Madrazo to discuss the transfer of American helicopters to Mexico for counter-narcotics operations.

General Gutierrez was treated to closed briefings by White House, Drug Enforcement Administration and intelligence officials, Administration officials said.

One official said the Clinton Administration is now trying to determine ''what we gave them, what format it took, whether a source could be identified by the way we shared the information or if methods were exposed.''

The arrest on drug charges of the officer who had been named only two months earlier to lead the drug agency left United States officials wondering who in Mexico, if anyone, could be trusted to carry on the fight against a flood of narcotics flowing from Colombia across the border into the United States.

Mexican leaders, struggling to be optimistic, cited the general's arrest as an example of President Ernesto Zedillo's determination to combat narcotics traffickers even at the risk of exposing top-level officials.

Armed forces commanders, however, made it clear they are convinced that General Gutierrez took part in a long-term scheme to enrich himself by working with the Carrillo Fuentes operation, believed to be the dominant cartel in Mexico.

The news conference that Defense Minister Cervantes gave on Tuesday night to announce the the general's detention was his first. He summoned every senior commander in the armed forces to the Defense Ministry auditorium to hear that military investigators had discovered that General Gutierrez received payoffs, vehicles and even an apartment from Mr. Carrillo Fuentes.

In an unusually emotional speech today to top commanders, General Cervantes called General Gutierrez a ''bad soldier'' who ''betrayed all the values'' of Mexico. He called the arrest a ''severe blow'' to the armed forces but insisted that the military would not be ''tempted to conceal'' the general's alleged crimes.

Extensive security measures surrounded the detention of General Gutierrez. The military inquiry began not long after he took over as drug czar and moved into a stylish apartment in Mexico City that Mexican officials said was obviously more than he could afford on his public salary.

The Defense Minister said that when he confronted General Gutierrez on Feb. 6. the general suffered a ''an important physical alteration'' and was hospitalized under detention.

Even in good times the United States has difficulty obtaining information from Mexico's armed forces, which still regard the giant neighbor to the north as part friend and part adversary. But President Zedillo adopted a policy of cooperating with the United States against drugs, while he moved military officers increasingly into positions of responsibility in narcotics agencies in an effort to circumvent the notoriously corrupt and inefficient civilian police.

American officials believed the information-sharing was improving.

General Gutierrez's downfall is especially problematical for the White House Drug coordinator, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who had publicly lauded the Mexican's integrity and patriotism.

General Gutierrez was named to the drug post by President Zedillo on Dec. 6, 1996. General Cervantes acknowleged that he personally recommended the general for the job because of the officer's record of tough measures against some of the major drug dealers in the central Mexican region where he served as commander for seven years.

But military investigators learned that General Gutierrez's Mexico City apartment was provided to him by one of Mr. Carrillo Fuentes' highest lieutenants. Using wiretaps, the investigators gathered evidence that top aides to the general had received large payoffs in dollars as well as vehicles and special encrypting devices from the Carrillo Fuentes organization.

An aide to General Gutierrez, Horacio Montenegro Ortiz, was accused of carrying out a kidnapping in September 1996 whose victim has never reappeared and is presumed dead. The armed forces also accused General Gutierrez of harboring army desertors and profiting from contraband operations in clothing and other goods besides drugs.

In an ingenious scheme, Mexican officials said, General Gutierrez protected his reputation as an effective anti-narcotics officer by attacking some drug organizations while working secretly with Mr. Carrillo Fuentes.

--Craig Pyes contributed reporting to this article from Washington.