Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers (8 page)

On February 7, 1985, Don Neto and Caro Quintero met at midday at the Camp to finalize details of the kidnapping, due to take place at 2 p.m., just as the US consulate was closing. But first, El Güero had to identify the agent. He went in, and came back rapidly. The consulate was very close to the the Camp.

“Ready,” El Güero told Caro Quintero.

It was as easy as that. Various US government employees working at the Guadalajara consulate revealed the identity of DEA agent Camarena, delivering his head on a platter. But it remains unclear how El Güero had these contacts in the visa section, and why they told him who Camarena was.

Immediately, two of Don Neto’s men, guided by El Güero, went off after Camarena. To kill time, Don Neto invited Caro Quintero to a restaurant of his called El Isao. Caro declined, so the older man lunched there with two of his gunmen. When he returned to the Camp, he found a crowd of Félix Gallardo’s hired guns and Caro Quintero’s bodyguards. In one of the bedrooms was the kidnapped
agent. They’d thrown him on a bed with his hands bound and his eyes blindfolded. As if it were a bad omen, Don Neto began to feel ill. He was cold all over, then feverishly hot, so he went to lie down in an adjoining bedroom. From there he could hear the voice of Félix Gallardo, who seemed to have his own concerns about the DEA investigations. After a while Ernesto asked his aide, Samuel Ramírez, to put some questions to the agent: “Find out why he’s been going for me so much, what’s the reason for that?” Samuel went to the room where the agent was, accompanied by Javier Barba and two of Félix Gallardo’s men. At that point Camarena was still in good physical condition, and aware of what was going on. After questioning him, Ramírez reported back to Fonseca:

“He says his investigation is mainly focussed on Félix Gallardo, because they’ve just seized a big cocaine shipment of his in New Mexico and Texas. He says the second most important person in his investigation is Rafael, and you’re the third.”

With Don Neto by this time were Caro Quintero and a slim figure, six feet tall with a pale complexion, prominent cheekbones, and dark hair combed back with a parting: Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo himself, the Boss of Bosses. If Don Neto was reassured by this news, it upset Félix Gallardo, who promptly left the room to question Camarena himself.

“I don’t feel well, I’m going to La Pasadita to get something for it,” said Don Neto to Caro Quintero, getting up off the bed. “I leave you in charge. Make sure nothing happens to him, put people you can trust to look after him and to get him whatever he needs.”

“Ok,” nodded El Príncipe.

Don Neto left Caro Quintero’s house along with Ramírez, and went to rest. The following morning he returned to speak to Camarena. That would undoubtedly be one of the worst days of his life.

Don Neto’s confession

On the afternoon of April 9, 1985, Don Neto found himself at No. 9, Lázaro Cárdenas, in the ornate seventh-floor office of Florentino Ventura, the implacable commander of the PJF and head of Interpol in Mexico.

There was no messing with Ventura, and the drug trafficker was reluctant to experience first-hand the kinds of torture this policeman used to obtain a confession. So his first formal statement was fluid and full of detail. Fifty-five years old, with thirteen of them spent trafficking, helpless and washed-up, Don Neto confessed that he and Caro Quintero had made the decision to kidnap Camarena; he gave a blow-by-blow account of the day the Prince had told him that the DEA agent was past talking.

After Camarena’s death and his quarrel with Caro Quintero, Don Neto spent two days shut up at home, partly because of rage, but also out of caution. The press and the radio were hammering out the news of Camarena’s kidnapping. Feeling the strain, Don Neto then sought refuge in Puerto Vallarta, in an elegant villa lent to him by Paty, the woman who ran the house in Guadalajara, an up-market prostitute who he often paid for her services. Not long afterwards, on April 7, Don Neto was arrested at the Bugambilias condominium in the resort city, along with Ramírez and nineteen other gunmen.

In those days, of course, people like Fonseca, Caro Quintero, or Félix Gallardo never acted as if they were on the run—and nor do the majority of their colleagues in Mexico today, unless the government announces a specific manhunt. In fact, such drug barons made a show of their impunity—attending high-society parties, throwing extravagant orgies with the best mariachi bands to celebrate the birthday of a police chief, or buying fleets of luxury imported vehicles to shower on senior figures in the Jalisco state government and the local and federal police.

Rafael Caro Quintero felt so far above the law in Guadalajara that he regularly shot up other people’s cars, without the least fear of consequences. This was something that profoundly galled Don Neto, who told him off on more than one occasion: “Look here, compadre, don’t be a jerk, if you keep messing up you’ll set the whole city against you.” Rafael, of course, ignored his advice.

According to the explanation Don Neto gave to Interpol’s Ventura, his arrest in Puerto Vallarta was the result of carelessness. That day, one of his men, Ramiro, had gone out drinking with a group of gunmen known as Los Gallos, who worked for Félix Gallardo. Emboldened by alcohol, they beat up someone who immediately
called the municipal police. The officers shadowed Ramiro, and happened on the house where Don Neto was hiding. After an exchange of fire, the occupants were all arrested.

Don Neto vehemently denied to Ventura any responsibility for the murder: he’d been sick at the time, he couldn’t have been present when they tortured Camarena. He’d intended to talk to the American agent on February 8, but didn’t, because by then Camarena was a goner. On April 11, Don Neto amplified his statement and said that it was Félix Gallardo and his people who had stayed behind to guard and question Camarena.

The day he was kidnapped, Camarena’s wife reported him missing to the DEA office in Guadalajara, which immediately set wheels in motion to find him. Edward Heath, the DEA chief in Mexico, informed the United States ambassador, John Gavin, who asked Mexico’s attorney general, Sergio García Ramírez, to help locate his agent. In the end, it was the DEA and not the Mexican government which discovered that Camarena had been taken by members of what was by then known as the Guadalajara Cartel.
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Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Don Neto, is languishing in La Palma maximum security prison in the State of Mexico to this day, convicted of Camarena’s murder (though he never admitted to it) and of offenses against public health. Caro Quintero and Félix Gallardo were also arrested for their responsibility in the death of Kiki Camarena. Nonetheless, the DEA continued its investigation for another five years. In its Los Angeles office, a tenacious special agent by the name of Héctor Berrellez, the son of Mexican immigrants, was appointed to pursue the inquiry. What were they looking for? Who else did they think was guilty, if those who had ordered and carried out his murder were already behind bars? This was the beginning of Operation Leyenda. The investigation into Camarena’s death led to one of the most perverse episodes in Mexican–US relations over drugs.

DEA versus CIA

The story was “ridiculous.” The CIA hadn’t trained Guatemalan guerrillas on Caro Quintero’s ranch “or anywhere else,” declared the veteran CIA spokesman, Mark Mansfield, on Wednesday, July 4,
1990. The CIA was not involved in drug trafficking, he told the
Los Angeles Times.
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At the time, extracts had just come to light from a classified DEA document dealing with the trial, then underway, of three of those accused of killing Camarena: Rubén Zuno Arce, a businessman and brother-in-law of former president Luis Echeverría; the Honduran businessman and drug trafficker, Juan Ramón Matta Ballesteros, a partner in the Medellín Cartel and of Félix Gallardo; and one of Don Neto’s bodyguards, Juan José Bernabé. In all, the Los Angeles district court indicted twenty-two people for the murder of the DEA agent.

Those were the first years of the George H. W. Bush administration, and Republicans thought the earthquake of the Iran-Contra scandal had already done all the damage it could. They were wrong. The US government was to be shaken by a fresh scandal within its own intelligence agencies, whose repercussions it was impossible to measure. At the epicenter were Mexico and the Guadalajara organization—now the Sinaloa Cartel—to which El Chapo Guzmán belonged. At the same time, various officials in the government of President Carlos Salinas had been shown to be in collusion with the drug trade. The “report of investigation,” classified as “secret” and signed on February 13, 1990, by Los Angeles-based special agents Wayne Schmidt and Héctor Berrellez, was so fantastic it seemed made up.
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Paragraph after paragraph, the seven-page report had all the ingredients of a thriller: a murdered journalist, the brother-in-law of a former president who’s actually a drug trafficker, corrupt politicians and policemen, drug barons, guerrillas, and the CIA as the icing on the cake.

The DEA document tells what happened in Mexico at the beginning of the 1980s, events which coincided with the launch of the Iran-Contra plan by President Ronald Reagan and his vice president, George H. W. Bush. For almost a decade (1981–89), the CIA backed the armed movement of the Nicaraguan “Contras” who were trying to overthrow the government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). During the Cold War, Washington saw the FSLN as a major threat to the region because of its Marxist-Leninist leanings, and worried about a new Cuba developing in Central America.

In December 1982, Congress passed a constitutional amendment put forward by the Democrat Edward Patrick Boland, which prohibited the CIA from spending any more money on trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Nonetheless, in 1984 the Reagan administration got a budget allocation of $24 million to support the Contras—less than the amount they’d hoped for. At the beginning of that same year, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane suggested encouraging other countries to contribute something to the cause. The person responsible for this operation was Lieutenant Oliver North.

With the Reagan administration insisting on continuing to fund the Contras, in 1985 Congress placed tighter restrictions on the CIA, the Department of Defense, and any other US government agency, preventing them from lending direct or indirect support, through military or paramilitary operations, to any group or country. The ban forced the CIA to pull many of its personnel out of Central America: “Their departure left a void that North was to fill.”
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When the Iran-Contra scandal broke in 1986, Reagan’s team admitted that “some of the funds obtained from the sale of US arms to Iran were destined for the Contra.” Many regard this as the most serious case of corruption in US history, involving key agencies like the CIA and the DEA. A number of CIA employees not only ignored the ban imposed by Congress, but colluded with drug traffickers in Latin America to obtain funds for the Nicaraguan Contras. The main countries involved in these operations were Panama, Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia and Guatemala.

In 1986, three special commissions were set up in the United States to investigate the matter: the Tower Commission, the Walsh Commission and the Kerry Commission. The results took months, but the conclusions were clear: various Latin American drug barons had been helped to export narcotics into the United States, provided they also donated money to the Contra movement. The traffickers involved included members of the Pacific organization, like Félix Gallardo, Caro Quintero, and Fonseca Carrillo, as well as members of the powerful Medellín Cartel. The planes that took off from the
United States with “humanitarian aid” for the Contras—meaning medicines and weapons—returned laden with drugs that came mainly from Colombia.

The Tower Commission, set up by Reagan at the end of 1986, was chaired by the former secretary of state under Jimmy Carter, Edmund Muskie, and had the task of cleaning up the president’s image. Its investigations, which lasted just four months, came to the conclusion that while the Contras were indeed financed with money from the drug trade, Reagan had no detailed knowledge of it. On the instructions of US Attorney General Edwin Meese, the FBI also opened an investigation into the affair. In December 1986, Judge Lawrence Walsh was appointed to preside over an independent commission of inquiry. Finally, the commission headed by the Democratic senator, John Kerry, began its investigations in January 1987 and published its report on April 13, 1989: it found that the State Department gave support to the Contras and was involved in drug trafficking.

The Kerry report recognized that the drug traffickers provided assistance to the Contras including “cash, weapons, planes, pilots, air supply services, and other materials.” It also recorded that the US State Department, as part of a program to fly in “non-lethal aid,” had contracted the services of various drug barons. In some cases, such payments were made even “after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.” The most damning of Kerry’s revelations was, wrote the journalist Robert Parry, that “US government agencies knew about the Contra–drug connection, but turned a blind eye to the evidence in order to avoid undermining a top Reagan-Bush foreign policy initiative.”
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The CIA and Mexican drug traffickers

Lawrence Victor Harrison, better known as Torre Blanca (White Tower, probably because he was well over six feet tall), originally from the United States, was a technician who worked for years for Ernesto Fonseca, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Miguel Ángel Félix
Gallardo, setting them up with short-wave radio systems for communicating with one another and with their clients.