U.S. Bitterness Lingers in Drug Agent’s Killing : 2 Charged in Kidnap but View That Mexico Was Inept Harms Ties

Despite signs of a more energetic effort by the Mexican authorities, American officials are still simmering over what they consider to be the ineptitude, malfeasance and deception of some Mexican officials in the investigation of the abduction and murder of U.S. narcotics agent Enrique S. Camarena.

On Saturday, two Mexican police officers were charged with the kidnap of Camarena, the Associated Press reported.

Confessed to Abduction

A spokesman for the attorney general said Gerardo Torres Lepe and Victor Manuel Lopez Razon, both Jalisco state judicial police officers, had confessed to abducting Camerena and taking him to the home of drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero. Because they knew the American drug agent would be killed there, the policemen were also charged with murder, the wire service said.

The spokesman said five other men had been charged with lesser offenses in the case, and warrants had been issued for six or seven other people, including Caro Quintero.

Despite such recent progess, though, differences between the United States and Mexico over the Camarena investigation have led to one of the most bitter disputes between the two governments in many years. The quarrel has brought into question the mutual trust that officials have labored to create, opening a wound that some say will be slow to heal.

“One of the great dangers in this kind of situation,” U.S. Ambassador John Gavin said in an interview, “is that it raises suspicions about honesty and corruption all across the board. This is something we wish to avoid. It is detrimental to our relationship.”

In part, the differences stem from the collision of two cultures. U.S. officials are exasperated at Mexican inefficiency and corruption, and the Mexicans are deeply offended by what they see as imperious demands from the United States and a disregard for Mexico’s sovereign right to deal with events within its borders.

In the Camarena case, Mexican pride was trampled by the sudden U.S. decision, after the Drug Enforcement Administration agent disappeared, to impose procedures that all but closed the two nations’ border at some points. However, some U.S. officials found it a useful way to impress on Mexico the depth of American displeasure over the lack of progress on the Camarena case.

Mexican Foreign Minister Bernardo Sepulveda went to Washington last week in the hope of dispelling some of the bitterness. He had a conciliatory meeting with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, but he did not succeed in changing official U.S. attitudes toward the case.

Corruption a New Matter

In a press briefing Tuesday, Sepulveda referred to the Camarena investigation as essentially “a police matter.” The next day, while the foreign minister was still in Washington, Jon R. Thomas, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics matters, said publicly that Mexican police corruption was part of the problem. “This corruption is a new matter,” he told a Senate committee.

Mexican officials have heatedly rejected the suggestion that DEA or FBI agents should accompany Mexican police on drug raids, an idea that the United States has been pushing for a long time and that it raised again after Camarena’s kidnaping.

However, U.S. officials here say that their frustration, even rage, is not based on cultural differences but on evidence that the Mexican investigation was deliberately bungled and that high-ranking Mexican police officials for weeks made no effort to find Camarena.

Among developments American officials cite to support their position are:

--On Feb. 8, the morning after Camarena was kidnaped, the Mexican police responded with what one U.S diplomat called “a big yawn” to the American plea for help.

Camarena’s wife and the chief of the DEA office in Guadalajara tried to file a complaint with the federal judicial police and were turned away. It required a second visit by the DEA official and by Consul General Richard A. Morefield to register the complaint, this time with the state judicial police.

“It took us all day Friday (Feb. 8) just to report that Camarena had been kidnaped,” a diplomat in Mexico City said. “Then, they didn’t do much Saturday or Sunday. They just sort of sat around.”

The inaction prompted a visit by outgoing DEA Director Francis M. Mullen, who was described as “really steamed” when he arrived in Mexico from Washington that weekend. Nevertheless, the investigation continued to move slowly.

--Personal intervention by Mexican Attorney General Sergio Garcia Ramirez was required on several occasions in order to get action on leads provided by the DEA. “We had to go to him to get anything done because nothing was happening at the local level,” an American official said. “It is not the best way to conduct business, obviously.”

--Raids and searches carried out by the Mexican police were considered wild goose chases by some DEA officials. Searches of empty houses and raids on places that turned out to be vacant lots were cited by one source, who said that U.S. officials came to believe they “were just being jerked around.”

--Important drug traffickers suspected of organizing the Camarena kidnaping were allowed to slip away. The most serious of these incidents involved the flight from Guadalajara of drug figure Caro Quintero, whose home was purportedly the site of Camerana’s murder.

Caro Quintero’s safe passage out of the airport Feb. 9, according to sources close to the investigation, was facilitated by Armando Pavon Reyes, commander of the Mexican federal judicial police, who was in charge of the Camarena investigation in Guadalajara.

One source said that Pavon was present at the airport and embraced Caro Quintero as he entered his private jet to leave, despite an order for Pavon’s arrest as a suspect in the kidnaping.

In another incident, a Honduran drug trafficker named Jose Mata Ballesteros was seen by DEA agents entering his Mexico City apartment, but it took police more than 24 hours to mount a raid. By then, he had disappeared.

Several U.S. officials used the expression “can of worms” to describe the Mexican investigation of the case and said they suspect that Mexican officials are closely tied to the illicit drug trade.

As some U.S. officials see it, further troubling questions were raised by the circumstances of the recovery of Camarena’s body and that of a Mexican pilot he worked with, Alfredo Zavala Avelar.

The bodies had obviously been buried, then exhumed and dumped at a remote place 70 miles from Guadalajara, where they were found by a passing farm worker. The bodies were found close to the scene of an earlier search.

“It’s bizarre, absolutely bizarre,” Gavin said. “We have a lot of questions. The appearance of the bodies can only be described as a macabre situation executed by animals.”

Close to Ranch

According to Mexican police, the bodies were found on the evening of March 5. The site was close to a ranch called El Mareno, where a shoot-out had taken place three days earlier between agents of the federal judicial police and a family the Mexicans described as suspected drug traffickers.

U.S. officials believe that the family was involved in gun-running, not drugs, and they doubt that there is any direct connection with the Camarena case.

The Mexican police say they were led to the ranch by an anonymous letter. U.S. investigators still have not been given a copy of the letter, although one American official was permitted to see it.

“It doesn’t mention the pilot at all, and, to me, that makes it really reek,” a U.S. diplomat said.

While recent developments have led U.S. officials to hope that the Camarena case will be solved, the resentments linger.

“We can’t blame them for the lack of results, I suppose,” a U.S. diplomat said, summing up the prevailing attitude, “but we can blame them for not doing enough soon enough. Could they have found Enrique alive? We’ll never know, because as far as we are concerned, they didn’t give it the old college try.”