Mexico Security Agents Aided Murder Figures, DEA Official Testifies

Agents from Mexico’s top national security agency guarded marijuana shipments and delivered hundreds of assault rifles to the narcotics traffickers believed responsible for the murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena, a high-ranking U.S. official testified Tuesday.

Vast marijuana fields in the state of Zacatecas were under the protection of state and federal judicial police and the Mexican Army because of “protection” payments from drug baron Rafael Caro-Quintero and his associates, James Kuykendall, former chief of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Guadalajara, testified in Los Angeles federal court.

DEA investigators learned in 1984 that agents of the Directorate of Federal Security (DFS), the Mexican equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency, were accompanying marijuana shipments in 45-foot trailers out of Zacatecas in central Mexico, Kuykendall said.

Accompanied by Caravan

Caro-Quintero, awaiting trial in Mexico in connection with the murder of Camarena, was accompanied by 60 DFS agents in nine vans and 15 automobiles during a trip to Zacatecas in May of 1984, the official testified.

Caro-Quintero paid off law enforcement officials in the area, including a $291,069 payment to the local commander of the Federal Judicial Police and “congratulated them on the good job they were doing,” Kuykendall said.

U.S. officials also received reports from informants that DFS agents were involved in securing two shipments of more than 247 assault rifles for marijuana growers in the area, Kuykendall said.

Corruption in the region, where some of Mexico’s most lucrative marijuana fields blanket the landscape, was so vast that one local police commander was planning, in 1984, to plant 100 acres of the plant himself, he said.

“It was apparent that growers and traffickers could operate in the Zacatecas area while they operated under the umbrella of Rafael Caro-Quintero’s protection,” Kuykendall said. “He appeared to have somehow obtained the protection of the various police organizations and military in the area.”

DEA agents operating in Mexico are limited to intelligence gathering and cannot conduct law enforcement activities, except through Mexican police agencies.

“We learned to work around the system, and when we did have action that needed to be taken, we would inform the Mexicans of as little as possible, as late as possible,” Kuykendall testified.

Defense lawyers for three men facing trial in Los Angeles in connection with Camarena’s murder have sought to introduce evidence of widespread corruption in order to show that Mexican law enforcement officials covered up for the true culprits.

But a spokesman for the Mexican government said Tuesday that Mexican officials have taken steps to clean up corruption in law enforcement ranks, when there is clear evidence.

“Wherever there is a drug problem--whether production, trafficking, demand, or consumption-- there is, unluckily, corruption associated with it, as well in Mexico as in the United States and almost everywhere,” Leonardo Ffrench , a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, said in a telephone interview.

“But as far as they (U.S. officials) don’t present any evidence, or hard proofs, of their statements (about individual Mexican officials), they cannot be considered but rumors or unfounded allegations,” Ffrench said. “Would the U.S. authorities act otherwise, if they were just simple complaints from a foreign country without giving them any evidence?”

Facing Charges

Raul Lopez-Alvarez, 28, and Rene Verdugo-Urquidez, 36, are facing charges in Los Angeles of having a direct role in the 1985 kidnap, torture and murder of Camarena and his pilot, a plot that federal prosecutors claim was carried out by Caro-Quintero and his cohorts in order to learn how far the DEA had penetrated their vast narcotics empire.

Jesus Felix-Gutierrez, 38, is accused of helping Caro-Quintero flee to Costa Rica after the murder.

Under cross examination by Felix-Gutierrez’s lawyer, Barry Tarlow, Kuykendall admitted that a snapshot of Camarena was found in the home of another of Zacatecas’ most powerful drug kingpins, Miguel Felix-Gallardo.

The photo appeared to have been taken in the office of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police in Guadalajara, Kuykendall said. DEA agents “have not been able to determine” how Gallardo obtained the photograph, he said.

Defense lawyers have suggested that another Mexican drug organization, perhaps Felix-Gallardo’s, may have engineered the killings.

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie on Tuesday ordered prosecutors to turn over two DEA reports indicating that at least two informants reported that an organization other than Caro-Quintero’s was behind the murders.