The Murder of Manuel Buedia and DEA Agent Ki Ki Camarena

[Magda Hassan]

From Dr Sabow this morning.

Sunday, October 13th, 2013 | Posted by Robert O'Dowd
Kiki Camerena Killed on CIA Orders?
Borderland Beat Reporter un vato
El Diario de Coahuila (10-13-13) Proceso (10-12-13) By Luis Chaparro and
J. Jesus Esquivel
Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat
(This story will likely elicit much discussion, especially given the outrage that Caro Quintero's
release triggered in the U.S. Quien sabe? un vato)
A story that sounds like it was taken from a complex espionage novel has just exploded on U.S.
television. Enrique Kiki Camarena, the DEA law enforcement officer murdered in Mexico in
February, 1985, was apparently not the victim of the Mexican capo Rafael Caro Quintero, but
rather,, of a dark member of the CIA. This individual was the one charged with silencing the antinarcotics
agent for one serious reason: he had discovered that Washington was associated with the
drug trafficker and was using the profits from the drug trafficking to finance the activities of the
counterrevolution.
WASHINGTON (Proceso)(apro). Three former U.S. federal agents decided to end a 28-year
silence and simultaneously entrusted this journal and the U.S. Fox news services with an information
"bomb": Enrique Kiki Camarena was not murdered by Rafael Caro Quintero the capo that served
a sentence for that crime but by an agent of the CIA. The reason: the DEA agent discovered that
his own government was collaborating with the Mexican narco in his illegal business.
In interviews with Proceso, Phil Jordan, former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC);
Hector Berrellez, former DEA agent, and Tosh Plumlee, a former CIA pilot, claim that they have
evidence that the U.S. government itself ordered the murder of Kiki Camarena in 1985. In addition,
they point to a sinister Cuban character, Felix Ismael Rodriguez, as the murderer. KIKI
"It was I who directed the investigation into the death of Camarena", says Berrellez, and he adds:
"During this investigation, we discovered that some members of a U.S. intelligence agency, who had
infiltrated the DFS (the Mexican Federal Security Directorate), also participated in the kidnapping of
Camarena. Two witnesses identified Felix Ismael Rodriguez. They (witnesses) were with the DFS
and they told us that, in addition, he (Rodriguez) had identified himself s "U.S. intelligence."
The official story and the version that the DEA continues to assert is that Caro Quintero kidnapped,
tortured and murdered Kiki Camarena in February of 1985, in retaliation for the U.S. agent having
discovered his enormous marijuana farms and his processing center in the El Bufalo ranch.
Felix Ismael Rodriguez, "El Gato", has one of the murkiest histories in the U.S. intervention in
Central America, mainly in Nicaragua. To this Cuban who participated in the failed Bay of Pigs
invasion and after that, in the Vietnam War is attributed the capture, and therefore the
assassination, of Che Guevara in Bolivia on October 9, 1967.
Helping the capo
Interviewed separately, Jordan, Berrellez and Plumlee coincide on many details in the reconstruction
of the events that led the CIA to decide to eliminate Camarena.
The story that the three former agents describe begins with pointing out that El Gato Rodriguez, in
addition to having infiltrated the DFS, took a Honduran named Juan Mata Ballesteros, a person
known to Colombian traffickers, with him to Mexico.
In Mexico, according to the interviewees, Matta's mission was to obtain drugs in Colombia for the
Guadalajara Cartel, led by Caro Quintero in the 1980!s. The U.S. government allowed the Mexican
drug trafficker to sell cocaine, marijuana and other drugs wherever he wanted. Washington
benefited, since it shared the profits.
The portion of the money received by the CIA represented in Mexico by Rodriguez through Mata
was delivered to counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua, La Contra, in the form of weapons and
other military equipment. This is how the U.S. financed the guerrilla war against the Sandinista
regimen, then led by the current president of the Central American country, Daniel Ortega.
Death sentence
In his investigations into the drug trafficking activities that Caro Quintero led, Camarena discovered
the role that his government played in the illegal business to finance the Contras. And this, in the
opinion of the interviewees, was his death sentence.
"The CIA ordered the kidnapping and torture of Kiki' Camarena, and when they killed him, they
made us believe it was Caro Quintero in order to cover up all the illegal things they were doing (with
drug trafficking) in Mexico" emphasizes Jordan. He adds: "The DEA is the only (federal agency)
with the authority to authorize drug trafficking into the United States as part of an undercover
operation".
The former chief of EPIC, the largest espionage center in the United States dedicated to observing
what happens in Mexico and the common border, and who was also a DEA agent and Camarena's
boss when he was murdered, sums up in a quote what the discovery of its involvement in Mexican
drug trafficking represented to the CIA:
"The business with El Bufalo was nothing compared with the money from the cocaine that was
being sold to buy weapons for the CIA".
However, "Kiki" Camarena was not the only one nor was he the first to discover the perverse CIACaro
Quintero-Contra triangle.
The Mexican judicial police officer
Berrellez and Jordan maintain that the first person to inform of this incredible U.S. undercover
espionage operation in the early 1980!s was Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni, who was then the chief
of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police.
Gonzalez Calderoni fled from Mexico in 1993; he was accused of collaborating with the Juarez
Cartel and he sought refuge in the United States, where the DEA turned him into a protected witness.
In 2003, the former Mexican commander was murdered in McAllen, Texas.
I helped him, I sent a jet and brought him to California. Over here, now under DEA protection, he
became an informant and helped us a lot. The Mexican government wanted to extradite him, but I
did all I could to prevent that because I knew they would kill him over there. After that, he was
accused of corruption and illegal influences and things like that, but I'm telling you: it's not true
Berrellez states.
And that's how he told you about the CIA? he's asked.
Yes. He told me: Hector, get out of this business because they're going to fuck you over. The CIA
is involved in that business about Kiki'. It's very dangerous for you to be in this.' He gave me
names, among them that of Felix, and details and everything, but when my bosses found out, they
took me out of the investigation and sent me to Washington.
The twist to the story about the kidnapping, torture and murder of "Kiki" Camarena "is a
bombshell". What is not clear is why these three former U.S. agents waited 28 years to make it
known. They refuse to explain it.
He doesn't talk much
Plumlee, although he doesn't talk much, recalls that in the early 1980!s he flew a C-130 airplane to
take people from the Contras to receive training at a ranch that Caro Quintero owned in Veracruz.


I flew drugs on CIA airplanes and I knew the pilot that took Caro Quintero out of the country when
he was being persecuted by the government.
Did you know "Kiki" Camarena? Plumlee is asked.
He flew, before he was kidnapped, from Guadalajara to California to inform about the CIA
operations with narcos and the Nicaraguan Contras in Mexico, and I remember I said to him "We're
on the same team. Stay out of what I'm doing".
What else were you doing for the CIA at that time?
The United States government was into everything. We smuggled drugs, weapons, and we used the
money to finance the operation in Nicaragua.
How was your contract in all of this?
We were always subcontractors; that's why the CIA now said we didn't have those operations. But
everything is there…