F
Fox News report contended that U.S. Central Intelligence Agency assets *were
present during 30 hours of
torture*<http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/10/us-intelligence-assets-reportedly-played-role-in-capture-dea-agent-in-mexico/>
administered to Camarena before he died, and that a CIA contract pilot
flew his alleged killer, Mexican drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, to
Costa Rica.
Caro Quintero was nabbed in a raid on his San Antonio de Belén mansion by
Costa Rican cops and DEA agents on Easter Week of 1985, and he was
summarily deported to Mexico. Fox News incorrectly reported that the
Mexican government nabbed Caro Quintero.
The drug kingpin was recently released from a Mexican prison on a legal
technicality after serving 28 years of a 40-year sentence and has since
vanished. He is once again a fugitive and is being sought for extradition
to the United States.
According to Fox, CIA agents were present at Camarena’s torture by virtue
of having infiltrated the Mexican government’s now-defunct Federal Security
Directorate (DFS by its Spanish acronym), which at the time was so corrupt
that it served as a protector of drug trafficking cartels.
“Our intelligence agencies were working under the cover of DFS. And as I
said it before, unfortunately, DFS agents at that time were also in charge
of protecting the drug lords and their monies,” said former DEA officer
Héctor Berrellez, in charge of investigating Camarena’s murder.
“Berrellez says two informants from the Mexican state police, who witnessed
Camarena’s torture, independently and positively identified a photo of one
man, a Cuban, who worked as a CIA operative who helped run guns and drugs
for the Contras,” said the Fox report.
[image: Enrique Camarena]
DEA agent Enrique Camarena.*Courtesy of U.S. Justice Department.*
A CIA spokesman roundly denied the accusations of involvement in Camarena’s
murder, telling Fox News that, “It’s ridiculous to suggest that the CIA had
anything to do with the murder of a U.S. federal agent or the escape of his
killer.”
The Mexican magazine Proceso, which interviewed the same three U.S. drug
enforcement sources as Fox, went further, saying that *the U.S. government
ordered Camarena’s murder* <http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=355283> because he
had stumbled upon the effort to run cocaine into the United States and use
the proceeds to help arm Nicaraguan Contra rebels fighting to unseat the
Sandinista government.
Proceso identified Camarena’s killer as the legendary Cuban CIA operative
Felix Rodríguez, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion and someone at the
scene of the 1967 execution of Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara in
Bolivia.
According to Proceso, Rodríguez introduced the drug trafficker Juan Matta
into Mexico to act as a link between Colombian drug traffickers and Caro
Quintero's Guadalajara cartel with part of the proceeds from the
trafficking going to the CIA to help fund the Contras. The CIA ordered
Camarena kidnapped because he had come across Rodríguez's operation, Phil
Jordon, former director of the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center told El
Proceso's *Jesús Esquivel <https://twitter.com/JJesusEsquivel>*.
Jordon, the former director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center,
confirmed to Fox News that CIA assets were in on Camarena’s interrogation.
“In [Camarena’s] interrogation room, I was told by Mexican authorities,
that CIA operatives were in there. Actually conducting the interrogation.
Actually taping Kiki,” Jordon told Fox.
A former pilot for the CIA, Tosh Plumlee, told Fox that he was hired by
U.S. intelligence to fly covert missions and that “he flew C-130s in and
out of Quintero’s ranch and airports throughout Central America during the
1980s.”
“The United States government played both ends against the middle. We were
running guns. We were running drugs. We were using the drug money to
finance the gun running operation,” Plumlee said, Fox reported.
The reports revive old accusations that the CIA was somehow involved in
running cocaine between South America and the U.S. in order to raise funds
for the Contras, at a time that the U.S. Congress had prohibited the CIA
from arming the Contras.
In response to an outcry over the publishing of a three-part series in San
José Mercury News that linked Contra drug money to the crack cocaine
epidemic in Los Angeles, in the United States, the CIA’s Inspector General
issued a report that denied agency responsibility in the drug trafficking,
but acknowledged that the CIA-contracted pilots and other “assets” used by
the CIA were involved in drug trafficking.
According to Fox News, “In 1998, CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz told
Congress he ‘found no evidence ... of any conspiracy by CIA or its
employees to bring drugs into the United States. However, it worked with a
variety of ... assets [and] pilots who ferried supplies to the Contras, who
were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.’
“Hitz said the ‘CIA had an operational interest’ in the Contras. And while
aware the rebels were trading ‘arms-for-drugs’ the CIA ‘did nothing to stop
it.’ ”
The author of the San José Mercury News series, Gary Webb, drew widespread
criticism for linking the CIA to the proliferation of crack cocaine in the
United States, and three major newspapers, the New York Times, the Los
Angeles Times and the Washington Post published stories ostensibly
debunking the series.
Webb’s editors acknowledged flaws in the reporting and assigned the
reporter to a lesser post covering a northern Californian suburb.
Webb eventually quit the newspaper and, unable to find a job with any other
major news outlet, committed suicide in December 2004.
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