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Ex-DEA officials: CIA operatives involved in 'Kiki' Camarena murder

By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times El Paso Times Posted:

ElpasoTimes.com

Former local DEA officials Phil Jordan and Hector Berrellez are alleging that CIA operatives killed the late DEA Special Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. This week's bombshell and widely publicized allegation, which come two months after Mexico's release of kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero from prison, set off a firestorm. Caro Quintero and two other high-level drug-traffickers had been sentenced to 40 years for their roles in Camarena's kidnapping, torture and murder. Former CIA contract pilot Tosh Plumlee joined Jordan and Berrellez in making the allegations. Celestino Castillo III, another former DEA agent and author of "Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War," said Jordan, Berrellez and Plumlee "are right on the money." In an interview with the El Paso Times, Jordan and Berrellez said they went public now because they only recently confirmed the allegations that CIA operatives were involved in Camarena's abduction, torture and murder. Berrellez said DEA informants in Mexico who were eyewitnesses identified two of the CIA operatives from a photo lineup that were present during Camarena's 1985 torture session, which lasted longer than a day. "The CIA operatives were two Cubans who claimed ties to U.S. intelligence," Berrellez said. Jordan and Berrellez said they've learned that the real reason Camarena was targeted was because Camarena's investigation had discovered that U.S. intelligence operatives were involved in drug-trafficking. Plumlee, who appears in a famous group photo taken in Mexico City in 1963, said he knows the pilot who flew the plane Caro Quintero used when the kingpin fled Mexico to Costa Rica to try to escape the arm of the law over Camarena's murder. "He was a CIA contract pilot, too," Plumlee said. "And I stand by my previous statements that I flew airplanes out of Caro Quintero's ranch in Mexico that carried drugs and guns." Plumlee said he encountered Kiki Camarena in the U.S. when the DEA agent was investigating the clandestine flights that ferried drugs from Central America to the United States. He said that looking back on things, he regrets telling Camarena that as far as he knew the U.S. government had authorized the suspicious flights. "I told him (Camarena) that 'we're on the same side,' " Plumlee said. What he told Camarena may have pushed the DEA agent to delve further into the suspicious flights, and this could have led to his abduction and death, Plumlee said.

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Plumlee has testified before congressional committees in prior years about the drugs and arms running that were intended to help fund the Contras' war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Plumlee formerly lived in the Las Cruces area. Castillo, who retired from the DEA, said all kinds of things went on during the Contra-Sandinista conflict. "One of my assignments back then was to train death squads, who went on to kill many civilians during the dirty wars of Central America, including the Guatemalan Kaibiles (special forces unit)," Castillo said Berrellez said the late Mexican federal law enforcement commander, Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni, told him before he was assassinated in McAllen, Texas, in 2003 that he should back away from the Camarena investigation because it was too dangerous. "He told me, 'Your government did it,' " Berrellez said. Before he was killed, Gonzalez Calderoni had threatened publicly to expose high-level corruption in the Mexican government. His murder remains unsolved. Christopher White, spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency's national headquarters, denied the allegations on Oct. 21. "These claims are absolutely ridiculous. I hesitate even dignifying them with a response," White said in a statement. Berrellez, a highly decorated former law enforcement official, was in charge of the task force that investigated Camarena's slaying. He said investigating drug traffickers in Mexico was risky because the (now defunct) Federal Directorate of Security, DFS, was thoroughly corrupt and worked for the drug cartels. A former DFS director who once was based in El Paso, Miguel Nazar Haro, was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury and arrested in 1982 in connection with running a major auto theft ring. U.S. attorney officials said the CIA told the court that Nazar was an asset, and he was set free. The DEA also wanted Nazar to be tried for protecting drug traffickers, but that never took place, former DEA investigators said. Nazar died last year of natural causes. Gonzalez Calderoni was stationed in Jurez when he worked with the FBI to bring down Pablo Acosta, a drug lord based in Ojinaga, Chihuahua, which is across the border from Presidio, Texas. The allegations by the three former DEA investigators and Plumlee are circulating in the international media. Jordan and Berrellez said they want justice for Camarena. They are also critical of a Mexican federal court order that allowed for Caro Quintero's release from prison on grounds that the wrong court tried him. Jordan said that Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carillo, two other high-level kingpins who were sentenced to prison for their role in the Camarena killing, could go free as well if their appeals proceed along the same lines as Caro Quintero's. "The U.S. government had a provisional arrest warrant for Caro Quintero, and we could have had him
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extradited, but our Department of Justice hasn't done anything to act on the arrest warrant," Jordan said. Jordan, a law enforcement consultant, is former director of the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center. He said DEA agents and their cooperating partners in Mexico had documented that Caro Quintero smuggled large quantities of drugs through the Jurez-El Paso corridor, mostly through the Valle de Jurez region. Jordan said Congress should hold hearings to investigate the allegations about the role that CIA operatives may have had in Camarena's kidnapping and killing. He said he's also ripe for a court hearing "so we can depose the Americans who were responsible for Kiki's murder, whether by commission or omission. We need to get them to testify under oath." Jordan said that contrary to some reports in the news media, neither he nor Berrellez alleged that the CIA killed Camarena. He said what they alleged is that CIA operatives, whether at the CIA's instigation or on their own, were present during Camarena's interrogation at the hands of his abductors. And the operatives allegedly helped Caro Quintero try to escape, and sought to interfere with the DEA investigation into Camarena's death. "I listened to one of the tapes of Kiki's interrogation," Castillo said. "We didn't get all the tapes, just some of them. The CIA gave them to us." Castillo, who finished a prison sentence at La Tuna for weapons violations, alleges that the charges against him were in retaliation for exposing government misdeeds from the Iran-Contra saga. "I am still fighting to clear my name," said Castillo, who served in Central America during the Contragate years. "I know what these men are saying is true, that the Contras were trafficking in drugs while the CIA looked the other way, because I served in the trenches of Latin America for six years when this was going on," Castillo said. In the past, the CIA has addressed allegations about the Iran-Contra drugs and arms scandal through reports of its Office of Inspector General, posted on the CIA's website, and in testimony before the U.S. Senate hearings presided by John Kerry, a former U.S. senator who is now secretary of state. Vice President Joe Biden, then a senator, was part of the committee.

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