The Murder of Manuel Buedia and DEA Agent Ki Ki Camarena

[Linda Minor]

Tosh,
Did you ever hear the name of Col. Karl E. Henion?

Henion Boss of
Military District
AUSTIN, Aug. 5.—(UP)—Col. Karl E. Henion has been assigned as chief of the Texas military district here. He succeeds Col. Marcus E. Jones, who retired July 31.
As district chief, he will direct the training and administration of more than 40,000 army reservists in Texas, and will exercise general supervision of 59 flight school and college ROTC units. Mrs. Henion is the former
Elsie Schmitt, San Antonio.
San Antonio Light--8/5/1953
-------
Army's New Plan
For Reservists
Is Being Checked
AUSTIN — The Texas Military District has been selected as the district in the five-state Fourth Army area to test the Department of the Army's new mobilization assignee
plan for obligated reservists, Colonel Karl E. Henion, District Chief, announced today.
In all, there are six districts in the United States, one in each continental Army area, which will test the plan during the period Jan. 1 to June 30, 1954.
The Department of the Army has directed that certain returning enlisted men with a Reserve obligation be given mobilization assignments to an active Army, National Guard, or Army Reserve unit.
Assignment to an active Army unit will be for a period of one year after which the obligated reservist may be transferred to a Reserve or National Guard unit for an additional three years. If the reservist is given a mobilization assignment to a National Guard or Reserve unit, the duration of the assignment is four years.
A mobilization assignment to any unit does not require training during peacetime with the unit to which assigned, Col. Henion said but it does require the reservist's nail to active duty with the unit on, or shortly after, mobilization
day. If the unit is not called within four months after mobilization day, mobilization assignees are to be made available for call to active military duty as filler replacements.

The 37th Infantry Division, Camp Polk, La., has been designated as the organization to which active Army mobilization assignments will be made by the Texas Military District. Mobilization assignments are being made on the basis of primary or secondary MOS's (military occupational specialties) to vacancies in the National Guard or Army Reserve units. Assignments to the 37th Infantry Division will be made by primary MOS.
Mobilization assignees to the 37th Infantry Division will be selected from those transferred to the Army Reserve who have at least six years obligated Reserve service remaining as of the date of such transfer, except those who have had prior National Guard or Army Reserve service, those who have undergone hardships and suffering in or as a result of combat in accordance
with criteria established by Army commanders, and those
who are subject to delay because of national health, safety and Interest, and hardship and compassionate
reasons.
These active Army mobilization assignees will be credited with not to exceed one year towards qualifying for transfer to the Standby Reserve. They will remain to assigned
to the active Army unit for one year unless they sooner volunteer and are accepted for enlistment in a National Guard unit or for assignment to an Army Reserve
unit with the objective of full participation and attainment of retirement credits.
THE PARIS (TX) NEWS, FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1954

[Tosh Plumlee]

I did not know him, but I knew of him. He and Capt Seiwell were at Fort Hood Texas for a short spell. (1954-55) (I was in ShermanTank Drivers school at the time with the Texas National Guard. Col Henion served in WWII and was( I think with the Joint Chief with Ike in 1944 and worked with the OSS teams that went into France right after D Day)

He was one of the persons who help set up the Ft Bliss RTC (Recon Training Command) units which some later went to army Intel units at Ft Sam Houston, I went to army flight school at Ft Sam in 1956 and I think he was associated with that aviation section and school in some way, but not sure.

Sometime after 1956-57 some of that group went to Ft Benning parachute jump school. I went there for six weeks. When we got back to Ft Sam Houston the Col was in charge of all training and Intell activites, as well as all army reserve activites including the Forth Army at Dallas Love Field. I was re assigned from the 49th Armord Div, Texas National Guard to the Fourth Army Reserve at love Field. Capt. Seiwell was my CO, I went to work for Southwest Airmotive company at Love Field while in the fourth army. During this time frame Col Henion was, I thought at San Houston or Austin Texas with the Texas National Guard. I never knew him and I could be wrong on some of this, but this is all from memory and its been a long time.

However, I did get an Invitation from the Forth Army to attend a furneral for the Col about 1983 or 84, in Texas. I think he is buried in the Austin area of Texas.... if this is the same person.

note: not sure of the date but the Fourth Army was mustered into the 5th army and became part of the Fifth Army. Some of the records of the fourth were lost in the St Louis records center fire of 1972-73 ??

[Linda Minor]

Capt. and Mrs. Karl Eugene Henion, who arrived recently from the Philippine Islands, are now located at the West Texas Military Academy, where Captain Henion will be the
military commandant. Mrs. Henion was, before her marriage, Miss Elsie Schmitt, daughter of Mrs, Annette D. Schmitt.
San Antonio Express--9/9/1926
=======
NEW CHIEF of the Texas Military District is Col. Albert
A. Homer of Austin. He succeeds Col. Karl E. Henion who retired from active military service in August. Col. Horner is former chief of staff of the V Corps in Germany and
previously served as deputy chief of TMD from 1947 to 1950.
San Antonio Express--9/7/1954
=======
National Resources
Conference Slated
AUSTIN —Col. Guy H. Kissinger, member of the faculty of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces In Washington and advance officer for the National Resources Conference, has conferred in Austin with Col. Albert A. Horner of the Texas Military District concerning a conference to be held here.
Col. Horner stated that the National Resources Conference is to concern interrelated military and economic problems involved in mobilizing resources for national security. The problems which will confront the country in a mobilization for war and the methods and procedures for making the best use of national resources will be discussed.
The conference is to be conducted by a team of Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force officers from the faculty of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces located at Ft. Leslie J. McNair, Washington, D. C.
Big Spring Daily Herald--1/27/1955
========
An obit for Col. Horner, known as "Jack Horner," appears here at the end:
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/agenda/2008/d...092208.pdf

Notice he was born in Russia but grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was in intelligence in WWII in IX Corps in Pacific.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/a...-corps.htm

http://www.441st.com/
In the interests of efficiency, and to prevent overlapping with other agencies, activities of CIC were limited to: surveillance of subversive activities, individuals, or ideological movements, national or foreign, that had an adverse effect on the purposes and objectives of the occupa*tion; and to intensify security surveillance under the general intent of counter espionage. This clarification of the mission eliminated an unaccountable number of crim*inal investigations and other irregularities, not of a counterintelligence nature, with which CIC had found itself involved. While the basic plan of having a CIC unit in each prefecture had remained constant, administrative control of such units was maintained at Corps level. When I and IX Corps were located in Kyoto and Sendai, CIC had its regional headquarters in the same cities.
------------
WASHINGTON (UPI) — Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, ousted
from his South Korean post in a personal showdown with
President Carter last week, got a plum reassignment in
Atlanta yesterday as chief of staff of the biggest American army command in the world.
Singlaub, 55, was named chief of staff of the U.S. Army
Forces Command, which stretches over 10,000 miles and
includes 296,000 active personnel.
As chief of the staff headquarters, not a command post,
Singlaub will be outranked by the commanding general and some half-dozen other senior officers. A Pentagon spokesman described the transfer as "lateral."
Gen. Bernard W. Rogers, Army chief of staff, announced
that Singlaub will assume the command at Ft. McPherson in Atlanta effective June 27.
Singlaub, who served in three wars and holds numerous
military decorations, was removed from his job as third ranking Army officer in South Korea for saying publicly that
withdrawal of U.S. ground troops there would lead to another Korean war.
Carter— who plans to withdraw the troops and had made
his policy clear to the military — reacted swiftly and with
anger when he saw Singlaub's comments headlined in a
Washington Post story. He summoned the general to
Washington May 21 for a personal meeting, and Singlaub
emerged without his Korean command.
It was the first time Pentagon officials could recall a
President personally recalling and removing a field commander since Harry Truman removed Gen. Douglas
MacArthur as supreme commander of Korean war battle
troops in 1951.
And because of the dramatic style Carter used, there was
expectation the two-star general would be relegated to an
Army boondocks post on reassignment. But that was not the case. His new command stretches 10,000 miles from Guam through the U.S. trust territories of the Pacific across the continental United States to Puerto Rico and down to Panama....Singlaub replaces Maj. Gen. John Henion, whose appointment as commanding general of the IX Corps in Japan was announced in April.

Carter said in his Thursday news conference he had not
"fired" or "punished" Singlaub but felt the general could not function effectively in Seoul with the Koreans knowing his views on the planned American troop withdrawal.
Carter said he still plans lo withdraw the 33,000 U.S.
combat troops from South Korea over the next five years,
believing the Seoul government will be able lo defend ilself
by then with support from American air and sea forces if
necessary.
THE ARGUS
Fremont-Newark, Calif.
Saturday, May 28, 1977
---------
Oakland Tribune--April 15, 1977
Commander in Japan
WASHINGTON (AP) -Maj. Gen. John Q. Henion was named yesterday to become commanding general of U.S. Army military personnel in Japan.
------
As it so happens, John Q. Henion was the brother of Karl. Both were sons of Irving W. Henion, who had been appointed to a special assignment as postmaster for the Army in the Pacific years earlier.

[Magda Hassan]

Release of DEA Agent Kiki Camarena's "Murderer" Is Game Changer for CIA

Posted by Bill Conroy - August 10, 2013 at 10:17 pm
Narco-Trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero Knows Where All the Skeletons Are Buried in the US' Dirty Drug War
The recent release from a Mexican prison of Rafael Caro Quintero a godfather in Mexico's narco-trafficking world rips a scab off a long metastasizing tumor in the US drug war.
A Mexican federal court on Friday, Aug. 9, overturned Caro Quintero's 40-year sentence after 28 years served because, the court contends, he was tried wrongly in a federal court for a state offense. Caro Quintero was convicted of orchestrating the brutal torture and murder of US DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena who was abducted on Feb. 7, 1985, after leaving the US Consulate in Guadalajara, Mexico, to meet his wife for lunch. His body was found several weeks later buried in a shallow grave some 70 miles north of Guadalajara.
Caro Quintero's release from prison brings to the surface once again some longstanding, unsettled questions about the US government's role in the war on drugs. The recent mainstream media coverage of Caro Quintero's release has focused, in the main, on the shock and anger of US officials who are now waving the Camarena case in the public arena like a bloody flag, arguing his honor, and that of the nation's, must be avenged in the wake of Mexico's affront in allowing Caro Quintero to walk free.
What is not being discussed is the US government's complicity in Caro Quintero's narco-trafficking business, and, yes, even in the Camarena's gruesome murder.

Breaking It Down

In his definitive book about the US drug war, titled "Down by the River," journalist Charles Bowden reveals that DEA special agent Camarena spent some time in Mexico with another DEA agent, Phil Jordan, in May 1984, prior to Camarena's abduction. Jordan, at the time, pointed out to Camarena that they were being followed.
Camarena replied calmly that the individuals who were tailing them worked for Mexico's intelligence service, the Federal Security Directorate, or DFS in its Spanish initials.
From Bowden's book:

Camarena brushes off Jordan's alarm by noting that DFS is trained by the CIA and is functionally a unit in their mysterious work. And he says they are also functionally "the eyes and ears of the cartels."

That is a stunning revelation, that the CIA and DFS were "functionally" working in unison and simultaneously the DFS also was in league with Mexico's narco-traffickers which at the time included Caro Quintero along with his partners Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, considered the top dogs in Mexico's then-dominate drug organization, The Guadalajara Cartel.
In fact, the DFS also was accused of being complicit in the kidnapping and murder of Camarena and the subsequent attempt to provide protection to Caro Quintero who was eventually apprehended in Costa Rica after allegedly getting to that country with the help of the DFS.
Caro Quintero and Fonseca Carrillo were eventually convicted and jailed for their roles in Camarena's murder and the killing of his pilot, Alfrado Zavala Avelar. Each was sentenced to serve 40 years in a Mexican prison. Caro Quintero was 37 at the time.
But Camarena was not the only victim of DFS corruption during that era. A famous Mexican journalist, Manuel Buendia, who in the mid-1980s was investigating the connections between corrupt Mexican officials and narco-traffickers, including Caro Quintero, was murdered in 1984 allegedly with the assistance of DFS' leadership.
A story by noted Mexican newspaper columnist Carlos Ramirez, translated and published by Narco News in 2000, describes the circumstances surrounding Buendia's murder as follows:

Buendía was assassinated on May 30, 1984, on a street near the Zona Rosa of México City. The investigation was covered-up by the Federal Security Agency [DFS]. The last investigations undertaken by Buendía into drug trafficking led him into the rural indigenous areas of the country. Buendía had responded to a newspaper ad by the Catholic bishops in the south of the country where they denounced the penetration of the narco in rural Mexico but also the complicity of the Army and police corps.
Buendía did not finish his investigation. His assassination came almost a year before... the assassination of US anti-drug agent Enrique Camarena Salazar in Guadalajara had exposed the penetration of drug traffickers in the Mexican police.
… Agents of the the Political and Social Investigations Agency and of the Federal Security Agency were discovered as protectors of drug trafficking in México. The Attorney General of the Republic, in the investigation of the assassination of Camarena, found credentials of the Federal Security police in the name of drug traffickers. Caro Quintero escaped to Costa Rica using a credential of the Federal Security Agency [DFS] with his photo but with another name. ….
That which Buendía was investigating months before was confirmed by the assassination of Camerena, a DEA agent assigned to the US Consulate in Guadalajara. …

Documents

The DFS was disbanded in 1985, after Camarena's murder, and integrated into Mexico's version of the CIA, called CISEN in its Spanish initials. CISEN still works closely with US agencies and officials, including the CIA, but it is the legacy of DFS and its partnership with the CIA that is being brought to the surface once again with the recent release of Caro Quintero.
In particular, a DEA Report of Investigation, prepared in February 1990 and obtained by Narco News, provides some detailed insight into the DFS/CIA connection. The DEA report was referenced in media coverage of the US trial of four individuals accused of playing a role in Camarena's murder.
From a July 5, 1990, report in the Los Angeles Times:

The [DEA] report is based on an interview two Los-Angeles based DEA agents conducted with Laurence Victor Harrison, a shadowy figure who, according to court testimony, ran a sophisticated communications network for major Mexican drug traffickers and their allies in Mexican law enforcement in the early and mid 1980s.
On Feb. 9, according to the report, Harrison told DEA agents Hector Berrellez and Wayne Schmidt that the CIA used Mexico's Federal Security Directorate (DFS) "as a cover, in the event any questions were raised as to who was running the training operation."

That training operation, according to the DEA Report of Investigation, involved "Guatemalan Guerrillas" who "were training at a ranch owned by Rafael Caro-Quintero" in Veracruz on Mexico's East Coast.
More from the DEA report:

The operations/training at the camp were conducted by the American CIA, using the DFS as cover, in the event any questions were raised as to who was running the [camp].
…. Representatives of the DFS, which was the front for the training camp were in fact acting in consort with major drug overlords to insure a flow of narcotics through Mexico and into the United States.
… Using the DFS as cover, the CIA established and maintained clandestine airfields to refuel aircraft loaded with weapons, which were destined for Honduras and Nicaragua.
Pilots of these aircrafts would allegedly load up with cocaine in Barranquilla, Colombia, and in route to Miami, Florida, refuel in Mexico at narcotic trafficker operated and CIA maintained airstrips.

Tosh Plumlee was one of the CIA contract pilots flying drug loads into the US at the time. Plumlee told Narco News that among the places where his aircraft landed while working these missions was the Caro Quintero-owned ranch in Veracruz, Mexico.
"I was flying sanctioned operations transporting cocaine out of Colombia and into the United States," Plumlee says. "[DEA agent Kiki] Camarena knew all about those operations."
Plumlee attempted to blow the whistle on the arms-and-drugs transshipment operations in the early 1980s, prior to Camarena's death.
The following excerpts are from a February 1991 letter written by former US Sen. Gary Hart and sent to US Sen. John Kerry, then chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications.

In March of 1983, Plumlee contacted my Denver Senate Office and met with Mr. Bill Holen of my Senate Staff. During the initial meeting, Mr. Plumlee raised certain allegations concerning U.S. foreign and military policy toward Nicaragua and the use of covert activities by U.S. Intelligence agencies.
… Mr. Plumlee also stated that Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador were providing U.S. military personnel access to secret landing field and various staging areas scattered throughout Central America.
He specifically cited the Mexican government's direct knowledge of illegal arms shipments and narcotic smuggling activities that were taking place out of a civilian ranch in the Veracruz area which were under the control and sponsorship of Rafael Caro-Quintero and the Luis Jorge Ochoa branch of the Medellin Escobar Cartel.
… Mr. Plumlee raised several issues including that covert U.S. intelligence agencies were directly involved in the smuggling and distribution of drugs to raise funds for covert military operations against the government of Nicaragua. …

Heads in the Sand

Even prior to Caro Quintero's surprise prison release on Aug. 9, it appears he was being allowed to carry out his narco-business from a comfortable jailhouse condo with little interference from authorities in Mexico. As evidence of that fact, in June of this year DEA announced that the US Department of the Treasury had "designated 18 individuals and 15 [business] entities" as being linked to Rafael Caro Quintero.
"Today's action," the DEA press release states, "pursuant to the Kingpin Act, generally prohibits US persons from conducting financial or commercial transactions with these designees, and also freezes any assets they may have under US jurisdiction."
In other words, the US government is alleging that even while he was incarcerated, Caro Quintero continued to run his drug empire through third parties who were laundering millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains on his behalf.
How is that possible, unless Caro Quintero continues to have extremely good connections within the Mexican government that have an interest in assuring his drug money is laundered?
If that's the case, why would those same government officials have any interest in extraditing him to the US to stand trial?
Similarly, why would those with any real juice in the US government want to put Caro Quintero on trial, at least in an open court, if he has the knowledge to expose corrupt covert US operations that played a role in the murder of a US DEA agent?
The only way to hide that complicity would be to shield Caro Quintero's trial from public view under a national-security cloak even though the charges against him are criminal in nature (drug-trafficking and murder) and should not implicate national security. As further evidence of that fact, the CIA has already told the media that the allegations about the Agency's involvement in Caro Quintero's Veracruz ranch are bogus.
''The whole story is nonsense,'' CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield told the Associated Press in 1990. ''We have not trained Guatemalan guerrillas on that ranch or anywhere else.''
But its worth noting that since the CIA issued that statement, a UN-sponsored truth commission found that the US, through agencies like the CIA, did play a role in training the death squads responsible for murdering or disappearing some 200,000 Guatemalans most of them civilians during the course of that nation's bloody 34-year civil war. Some 626 massacres played out in the 1980s alone, when the CIA-sponsored Veracruz, Mexico, "Guatemalan Guerrilas" training operation was allegedly underway.
From a 1999 Washington Post story on the truth commission's findings:

… The commission found that the "government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some state operations."
... Documenting the atrocities, the report found the army "completely exterminated Mayan communities, destroyed their dwellings, livestock and crops" and said that in the northern part of the country, where the Mayan population is largest, the army carried out a systematic campaign of "genocide."

Given that backdrop, it appears Caro Quintero, now 61, is clearly a man who may well know too much about US national security operations.
The DEA issued a statement after Caro Quintero was ordered released from prison, making it clear, at least from a public-relations perspective, that the agency still very much wants to track him down and put him behind bars in the US.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is deeply troubled to learn of the decision by a Mexican court to release infamous drug trafficker Rafael Caro-Quintero from a Mexican prison. Caro-Quintero had been serving a 40 year prison sentence in connection with the kidnapping, torture and murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in February 1985.
Caro-Quintero was the mastermind and organizer of this atrocious act. We are reminded every day of the ultimate sacrifice paid by Special Agent Camarena and DEA will vigorously continue its efforts to ensure Caro-Quintero faces charges in the United States for the crimes he committed.

But why stop with Caro Quintero? Why not go after everyone who had a hand in the drug-war corruption that led to Camarena's death? Why isn't DEA clamoring for that outcome?
I think we all know the answer to that question. And you can bet Caro Quintero does as well, and will do everything in is power to assure he isn't held up as the lone scapegoat in some drug-war fairy tale.
So what are our drug-war warriors to do when faced with such a house of mirrors? Well, that's what rival narco-traffickers and shadowy intelligence-agency assets are used for in the Big Game, no?
Caro Quinero likely has far more to fear from a well-placed sniper's rifle than he ever will from anything resembling a true justice system in Mexico, or the US.
Stay tuned….
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/noteboo...jA.twitter

[Peter Lemkin]

The 'War on Drugs' is SUCH a sick JOKE - and always has been. No joke, however, how many lives end or are destroyed by it and the cartels [who work together much of the time - a few feuds over turf and funds, at times]. This latest twist is a strange one...but not the first, nor likely the last.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Brilliant.

Tosh Plumlee started this thread in 2009.

And these dark deeds continue to resonate and develop.

If DPF has a raison d'etre, you are seeing the ripples here.

[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…

[David Guyatt]

Interesting from Tosh.

It has been said by a great many many that the US are deeply mired in the global drugs trade because of the black funds this provides them - not to mention personal wealth some benefit from. The "fat man" seems to have quite a long list of bodies strewn behind him, doesn't he?

[Magda Hassan]

Reagan administration, CIA complicit in DEA agent's murder, say former insiders

Posted: Friday, December 06, 2013 - By John McPhaul
Former DEA El Paso boss: Agent Camarena had discovered the arms-for-drugs operation run on behalf of the Contras, aided by U.S. officials in the National Security Council and the CIA, and threatened to blow the whistle on the covert operation.
Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan meets with Caspar Weinberger, George Shultz, Ed Meese and Don Regan to discuss the president's remarks on the Iran-Contra affair, in the Oval Office on Nov. 25, 1986. Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library, official government record/Wikimedia Commons




First in an exclusive Tico Times series in two parts
Two former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency contract pilot are claiming that the Reagan Administration was complicit in the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena at the hands of Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero.
The administration's alleged effort to cover up a U.S. government relationship with the Mexican drug lord to provide for the arming and the training of Nicaraguan Contra rebels, at a time when official assistance to the Contras was banned by the congressional Boland Amendment, led to Camarena's kidnap, torture and murder, according to Phil Jordon, former head of the DEA's El Paso office, Hector Berrellez, the DEA's lead investigator into Camarena's kidnapping, torture and murder, and CIA contract pilot Robert "Tosh" Plumlee.
"We're not saying the CIA murdered Kiki Camarena," Jordan said. But the "consensual relationship between the Godfathers of Mexico and the CIA that included drug trafficking" contributed to Camarena's death, he added.
"I don't have a problem with the CIA conducting covert operations to protect the national security of our country or our allies, but not to engage in criminal activity that leads to the murder of one our agents," Jordan said.
Camarena had discovered the arms-for-drugs operation run on behalf of the Contras, aided by U.S. officials in the National Security Council and the CIA, and threatened to blow the whistle on the covert operation, Jordan alleged.
Berrellez said two witnesses identified, from a photo lineup, two or three Cuban CIA operatives who participated in Camarena's interrogation.
Plumlee said he and three other pilots ran tons of cocaine into U.S. military bases on return trips from delivering weapons to Contra rebels in Central America, and was warned by Camarena that he would be busted. Plumlee has a long and colorful history of working for the CIA, beginning with flying arms to Cuba before Fidel Castro's takeover in the 1950s.
Jordan said the cover story Plumlee had been told by his CIA "handler" William Bennetee that his cocaine flights into U.S. military bases were part of a drug interdiction program to penetrate and dismantle the cocaine routes of Colombian drug lords Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa was unimaginable, since the DEA, which would have had to approve the program, had no knowledge of it.
"I don't know of any DEA administrator that I worked for who would have sanctioned cocaine smuggling into the United States in the name of national security, when we are out there risking our lives," Jordan told The Tico Times.
The CIA reacted indignantly to the allegation of complicity in Camarena's murder. "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," an agency spokesman told Fox News.
The DEA said only that U.S. justice has gotten to the bottom of the Camarena case.
"DEA believes that the individuals responsible for the torture and murder of Special Agent Kiki Camarena have been identified and indicted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. They include Rafael Caro-Quintero and 15 others," said the agency in a statement.
An agency spokeswoman declined to elaborate.

Mexican former drug cartel boss, Rafael Caro Quintero, was serving his conviction at Puente Grande prison in Guadalajara when he was released last July. The U.S. government is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture and prosecution in the United States.
AFP



Plumlee said he worked undercover as a CIA contractor for the civilian aviation company SETCO, flying between points in Mexico, South and Central America and the United States, delivering arms for the Contras.
Various investigations, including one by the CIA's Inspector General, established that SETCO was an airline controlled by Honduran drug trafficker Juan Matta Ballesteros, and also was the principal company used to traffic arms to the Contra rebels.
Matta Ballesteros is currently serving time in a U.S. federal prison.
Plumlee said he flew a C-130 transport plane in and out of Caro Quintero's ranch in Veracruz, Mexico, to Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia, to Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador, and to a secret airstrip on the Santa Elena Peninsula in Costa Rica, among other locations, carrying arms south from the U.S. to the Contras and cocaine north to U.S. military installations, including El Toro Marine Air Base in southern California and Homestead Air Force Base in Florida.
Plumlee estimated that among them, the four pilots smuggled about 40 tons of cocaine in the operation.
The pilot said he had no worry about being caught by civilian aviation or military authorities because he carried "coded transponders" that identified his plane as a "spooky" flight warning off any official scrutiny. The transponders permitting such flights could only have come from the White House, Plumlee said.
The programs were code-named "Grasshopper," for the El Toro route and "Roosterhop," for the Homestead route, Plumlee added.
Berrellez said he's convinced the drugs were taken from the airbases by traffickers with connections to the Contras and sold on the streets.
In fall 1984, Plumlee met at the Oaxaca Café in Phoenix, Arizona, with agents from the Phoenix Organized Crime Detail and the Arizona Tri-State Task Force, including Camarena, to discuss his SETCO flights.
When Plumlee told the agents the flights were sanctioned by the U.S. government, "Kiki said, That's horseshit. You're lining your pockets,'" Jordan recalled. "He could not believe that the U.S. government could be running drugs into the United States."
Alarmed by Camarena's threats to bust the operation, Plumlee went to Bennettee and told him about Camarena's warning, saying that he had no intention of going to jail and would blow the whistle if indicted.
Bennettee told Plumlee not to worry. "Camarena isn't going to do anything," he reassured the pilot.

DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, who was tortured and murdered in 1985. Courtesy of U.S. Justice Department.




About five months later, on Feb. 7, 1985, Camarena was kidnapped in Mexico by agents of the Federal Security Directorate (DFS by its Spanish acronym), which the former DEA agents say were both the eyes and ears of the CIA in Mexico and at the same time at the beck and call of Mexico's powerful drug cartels.
According to Plumlee, the DEA agent had written a series of memos complaining about official lethargy in bringing the gunrunning operation under control.
"Kiki said, What do we have to do, does someone have to get killed to do something about this?'" Plumlee said.
Jordan added that the use of a drug dealer's property by the CIA for the purpose of helping the Contras didn't sit well with the DEA agents.
"That's the way we're brought up, so to speak," he said. "When we see someone running drugs, we want to bust them, not work with them."
Three weeks after he disappeared, Camarena's decomposing body was found on a ranch. He had been tortured, it was later learned, in a brutal three-day ordeal that ended in his death. Officials blamed Caro Quintero, who, they said, had exacted revenge on Camarena for busting Caro Quintero's multimillion-dollar marijuana plantation in Chihuahua, Mexico.
But Berrellez charges the CIA with complicity in the murder, based on the cozy relationship between the CIA and DFS, and between the DFS and the Guadalajara drug cartel, the timing of Camarena's threat to Plumlee, and the fact that the CIA was able to produce two or three of the tapes of Camarena's interrogation, but failed to provide three or four other similar tapes.
"Kiki was sacrificed because it was thought that he was on to them," Berrellez said.
Plumlee said the White House was concerned about a leak that might have incriminated officials in the illegal arming of the Contras. He said he knows this because he was given access to intelligence reports and briefing materials during his testimony in 1990 to the Senate committee chaired by then-Senator and now-Secretary of State John Kerry. Much of Plumlee's testimony was given in closed session and remains sealed as a national security secret, the pilot said.
"They wanted to talk to Kiki about the arms, not drugs," Plumlee said.
The alleged support for the Contras by Mexican drug kingpins, including Caro Quintero and Miguel Félix Gallardo, is not new. The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post reported on the relationship between the Reagan government and the drug lords in 1990, according to the book "Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America," by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall.
But the alleged connection between the Reagan Administration's Contra policies and Camarena's murder has only surfaced after the release in July of Caro Quintero from prison where he served 28 years of a 40-year jail term and has been widely reported in the Mexican and Central American press.
Some in the Mexican press went so far as to say that the CIA, not Caro Quintero, killed Camarena.

The Contra's Southern Front, April 22, 1983. Mario Castillo/La República/Tico Times




The fact that witnesses have placed CIA operatives at the scene of Camarena's kidnapping and interrogation tells Jordan that the CIA operatives should have told their handlers ahead of time and stopped it.
"If it were the other way around and it were DEA operatives with knowledge of a possible kidnapping of a CIA agent, the DEA would never allow it to happen," Jordan said.
Plumlee said he is talking now because he wants to cover himself now that the issue has come into public view, and also to set the record straight, as some news sources, especially in Mexico, have blamed the CIA directly for murdering Camarena.
Plumlee produced a letter dated Feb. 11, 1991, written by former Sen. Gary Hart to then-Sen. Kerry saying that Plumlee had been in contact with his office about the arms and drug trafficking between 1983 and 1985, and that Hart's staff had informed the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees but "no action was initiated by either committee."
Bill Holden, Hart's national security adviser and now a county commissioner in Arapaho County, Colorado, said he met with Plumlee several times.
"I have no reason not to believe Plumlee," Holden said. National Security Council adviser Lt. Col. Oliver North "was involved in a lot of nefarious activities that led the Reagan Administration into Iran-Contra."
Iran-Contra was the scandal that rocked the Reagan Administration when it was revealed that the government had sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to finance the Contras.
Berrellez said the 76-year-old pilot is risking a lot to speak out, as he could still be prosecuted for the drug trafficking and even as an accessory to murder for flying Caro Quintero from Veracruz across the border to Guatemala when the drug lord made his escape from Mexico en route to a short-lived stay in Costa Rica in March 1985.
Even before the Iran-Contra scandal broke, two reporters from the Associated Press, Brian Barger and Robert Parry, had published a series of articles reporting on alleged drug trafficking by Contra rebels.
The articles focused on companies that served as fronts for both aiding the Contras and running drugs, but did not hint at drug running on the scale alleged by Plumlee.
In 1996, Gary Webb, reporting for the San Jose, California-based Mercury News, broke a story linking Contra drug running to the proliferation of crack cocaine in Los Angeles that had bred addiction and gang-related violence.
Though the "Dark Alliance" series was based on a case that had already been aired, the series hit a nerve by implying that the a U.S. government-backed rebel group (the "CIA's army" as the series repeatedly stated) was responsible for a crack epidemic that began in L.A. and spread to other communities, especially black communities, across the country.
Soon thereafter, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all published articles shooting down Webb's reporting, saying that the amount of drugs run by the ring in Webb's article could not by itself have sparked an epidemic on a scale experienced by U.S. cities.

Reporter Gary Webb wrote the "Dark Alliance" series linking Contra drug running to the proliferation of crack cocaine in Los Angeles. He committed suicide in 2004, although the cause of death has been highly disputed. Screenshot from interview by School of Authentic Journalism 2002 seminar in Merida, Mexico




The particular ring written about by Webb, headed by Nicaraguan drug traffickers Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon, was not big enough to have fueled the crack epidemic and provided relatively little money to the Contra cause, the news reports said.
Berrellez admitted that he can't make a firm connection between the Contra drug flights into southern California, but said he is convinced the Meneses-Blandon drug ring had access to cocaine flown into El Toro Marine Air Base, adding that the ultimate buyer of the drug for street sales in Los Angeles, "Freeway" Ricky Ross, dealt in tons of cocaine and had Meneses and Blandon as his suppliers.
"I was working in Los Angeles at the time, and I can tell you we knew of no interdiction program at El Toro," Berrellez said. "The Contras were running drugs from Central America and the Contras were providing drugs to street gangs in Los Angeles. That's your connection."
Initially supportive, Webb's editors, in the face of the criticism, backed off the story, saying the articles had overreached. Webb was demoted to a backwater suburban beat and eventually quit the newspaper. Unable to find work at another major daily, he committed suicide in December 2004.
But outrage over Webb's allegations prompted the CIA to assign the agency's inspector general, Fredrick Hitz, to investigate the extent of the CIA's knowledge of cocaine trafficking by the Contras.
The Hitz report found no evidence the CIA was involved in the trafficking, but did ascertain that individuals and companies related to Contra operations were involved in the trafficking, and that the CIA did not act in an expeditious manner to stop it.
As for Caro Quintero, since his release, the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture and prosecution in the United States.
Said Jordan: "From my own opinion, he has to worry more about CIA operatives than he does the Mexican government or the CIA."
Coming up in part 2 of the series, the role of Costa Rica's secret northwestern airstrip.

http://www.ticotimes.net/More-news/News-...er-06-2013

[David Guyatt]

The CIA reacted indignantly to the allegation of complicity in Camarena's murder. "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," an agency spokesman told Fox News.

As if...