Nicaragua: CIA-contra drug charges resurface

[Judi Lynn]

Nicaragua: CIA-contra drug charges resurface
Submitted by Weekly News Update... on Tue, 11/05/2013 - 00:37 Central America Theater

The torture death of US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique ("Kiki&quot Camarena near Guadalajara in the western Mexican state of Jalisco in February 1985 was linked to drug running by the US-backed "contra" rebels seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua, according to two former DEA agents and a former pilot for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Camarena was kidnapped by criminals working for Rafael Caro Quintero, a founder of the so-called Guadalajara Cartel, and was executed at one of Caro Quintero's ranches. According to the US, the cartel targeted Camarena because he had uncovered Caro Quintero's marijuana growing and processing operation. Under pressure from the US, the Mexican government eventually captured Caro Quintero and sentenced him to 60 years in prison for Camarena's murder.

The new allegations appeared on an Oct. 10 broadcast by the right-wing US-based Fox television network and in an Oct. 12 article published by the left-leaning Mexican weekly Proceso. Both reports were based on interviews with Phil Jordan, an ex-director of the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC); former DEA agent Héctor Berrellez, who said he directed the investigation of Camarena's death; and Tosh Plumlee, who worked as a pilot for SETCO, a CIA-linked airline that flew military supplies to the contras. It isn't clear why Fox chose to air the allegations now, but attention on the Camarena murder increased after a Mexican judge released Caro Quintero from prison on a technicality on Aug. 9 of this year.

According to the Fox and Proceso reports, CIA operatives had infiltrated Mexico's now-defunct Federal Security Directorate (DFS), many of whose agents provided protection for Caro Quintero's criminal activities in the 1980s, including the Camarena kidnapping and murder. CIA infiltrators were present when the DEA agent was killed, the reports allege. "I was told by Mexican authorities…that CIA operatives were in there," Jordan said to Fox News. "Actually conducting the interrogation. Actually taping Kiki." Ex-DEA agent Berrellez gave Proceso the name of at least one CIA operative he claimed was involved. "Two witnesses identified Félix Ismael Rodríguez," he said.

The Cuban-born Félix Rodríguez was a long-time US agent who was active in the Bay of Pigs invasion, in the Vietnam war and in the October 1967 execution of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto ("Che&quot Guevara in Bolivia. In the middle 1980s Rodríguez was in El Salvador working with another Cuban-born agent, Luis Posada Carriles, supplying contra operations. According to the Proceso report, Rodríguez introduced the Honduran drug trafficker Juan Matta Ballesteros to the Guadalajara cartel. Matta allegedly used his Colombian connections to supply cocaine to the cartel, with the complicity of the CIA, which received part of the money and used it to supply arms and other military equipment to the contras. The reason for Camarena's murder, according to Proceso, was that Camarena had "discovered that his own government was collaborating with Mexican narco trafficking in its illicit business."

More:
http://ww4report.com/node/12736

[center]

Félix Rodríguez, the drunk leaning on the stage in the left
foreground, and Tosh Plumlee, trying to hide his face with
his coat, in a photo taken of Operation 40, a CIA
assassination unit, in a Mexico City night club. Porter Goss
is behind Félix Rodríguez & the late Barry Seal, behind him.[/center]