DEA Operative Details His Role in Kidnaping : Camarena case: He says he arranged the abduction of Mexican doctor with U.S. agent’s approval.

A longtime Drug Enforcement Administration operative says the plot to kidnap a Mexican physician accused of participating in the murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena was hatched in his fortified Los Angeles apartment.

Antonio Garate Bustamante, a 51-year-old former Mexican police officer, said in an interview that he arranged the controversial April 2 abduction with the approval of a DEA agent in Los Angeles. He said that for the last several years he has assisted the DEA in tracking down suspects believed to have been involved in the February, 1985, kidnaping and murder of Camarena.

DEA officials confirmed that Garate was the key go-between in arranging the abduction, calling him a longtime agency “asset,” a term frequently used to describe an informant and operative. They also confirmed key portions of his account of the abduction. And, Friday night, Mexico’s attorney general said he would issue an arrest warrant for Garate as the ringleader of the abduction.

In a lengthy interview this week in the apartment that serves as his headquarters--with two telephones constantly ringing and automatic weapons at the ready--Garate said the clandestine venture was carried out by 10 Mexicans, including federal policemen, who were promised a total of $100,000 to stalk and capture Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain and then fly him to El Paso.

“They call us bounty hunters,” Garate said, “but it was the challenge, you know.”

The daring abduction in Guadalajara, Mexico, which sparked a controversy between the United States and Mexico, was dubbed “The Wild Geese,” named for a 1978 commando movie starring Richard Burton.

Garate said his plans to abduct Alvarez were approved by Hector Berellez, a DEA agent in Los Angeles who heads Operation Leyenda, a nine-member unit investigating Camarena’s murder.

“I couldn’t do anything without their knowledge,” Garate declared.

Neither Berellez nor other members of the unit would comment on Garate’s account of the kidnaping. But one DEA official said Friday night that Berellez was not aware of the specifics of the kidnaping until it occurred. Berellez was one of the three DEA agents who arrested Alvarez in El Paso after the doctor was delivered.

Mexican officials up to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari have assailed the operation as an insult to their country’s sovereignty and threatened to discontinue cooperation in efforts to curb drug trafficking.

They maintain that the doctor’s kidnaping was a “rogue operation” mounted by DEA agents in Los Angeles, and have demanded to know whether Washington officials approved the mission.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh has ordered an internal investigation of the affair.

Acting DEA Director Terrence Burke would not confirm or deny whether top agency officials knew about the planned kidnaping. However, he dismissed Mexico’s allegation of a rogue operation. “I’m saying nobody works independently, no single agent works on his own.”

In the first inside account of the kidnaping, Garate said the operation was undertaken after two failed attempts between the United States and Mexico to swap suspects, including Alvarez.

“That’s when I called some friends--Mexican federales--and we did the operation,” Garate said.

DEA officials, including recently retired Director John C. Lawn, have long wanted Alvarez, a 300-pound gynecologist, who allegedly administered drugs to revive Camarena so he could be interrogated and tortured further by drug traffickers and some ranking Mexican law enforcement officials.

Camarena was abducted off the streets of Guadalajara and his mutilated body was found several weeks later, triggering a massive manhunt for the suspects.

Packing a hefty handgun on his right hip, Garate said Mexican officials brought the kidnaping on themselves by failing to punish all who participated in the murder.

“We’re not the dirty guys,” Garate said. “We did it because we had a reason and they started it.”

In part, the DEA has had to rely on shadowy figures, like Garate, who are familiar with the labyrinthian world of Mexican drug traffickers, law enforcement and politics.

“I know the crooks. I know Guadalajara,” said Garate, who once headed the Guadalajara State Police SWAT team. Garate said he is paid $4,000 a month for his DEA work, sometimes by check and sometimes in cash. He wore a blue work shirt, black jeans, white tennis shoes, a gold chain and a gold and diamond bracelet during the interview.

Several DEA sources said Garate in the past had ties to drug traffickers, and Garate acknowledged breaking the law while working as a Mexican police official. “I know people on both sides,” he said.

Garate said he has been working on the Camarena case in the United States since 1986, when he had to leave Mexico because he said drug traffickers put a $500,000 bounty on his head. Mexican officials said Friday night that Garate had been sought on unspecified criminal charges since 1985.

At first, the DEA attempted to get ranking Mexican officials to deliver Alvarez in exchange for two Mexican nationals who are wanted for stealing millions from banks and are believed to be hiding in the United States.

Ranking DEA officials, including Berellez and Bill Waters, who heads the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility in Washington, met with Pablo Aleman Diaz, head of the non-narcotics section of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, and a commander with the judicial police.

The Americans offered to find the two accused Mexican swindlers, one believed to be in San Diego and the other in New Mexico, and have them deported as illegal aliens.

The swap plan collapsed in late January, Garate said, when the Mexicans failed to deliver Alvarez.

At that point, Garate said, he got on the phone with friends in Mexico--”a few honest cops.”

Garate said some of the men were motivated by loyalty to him and others simply by the challenge. “They’re fighters. They’re The Wild Geese.”

Garate said the men conducted a lengthy surveillance of Alvarez in Guadalajara before he was snatched from his office on April 2.

The kidnapers drove Alvarez to Silao, a small town north of Guadalajara, and the next, flew him from the nearby town of Leon in a small plane to El Paso. There, he was arrested by Berellez and two other DEA agents.

“When Alvarez got off the plane he talked and talked, compulsively,” Garate said.

Alvarez’s lawyer, Robert K. Steinberg, told a federal judge in Los Angeles last week that his client was abducted by a group of men who identified themselves as Mexican police. Steinberg said the abductors informed the doctor that he was being arrested for performing an illegal abortion, which he denied.

Steinberg also said that Alvarez told him one of the men on the plane had identified himself as a DEA agent. If Alvarez was brought to the United States illegally, Steinberg said, “then that kidnaping is almost as bad as what my client is accused of.”

In an interview Friday, Steinberg for the first time said his client was “beaten up” and prodded seven times with an electric stun gun while he was being flown to El Paso. “A stun gun does not leave a mark,” Steinberg said.

But Garate maintained that no physical harm was done to Alvarez. “We photographed him all over, in the nude, to show that he wasn’t hurt.”

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie said at last week’s hearing that the manner of Alvarez’s apprehension was of “considerable concern” to him. He ordered DEA officials to appear at a May 25 hearing on the matter, and severed Alvarez from next week’s scheduled trial of four other men accused of involvement in the Camarena murder.

Garate said his crew incurred considerable travel and hotel expenses while carrying out the operation, including $30,000 to rent the plane.

The men were not paid up front for their work, Garate explained. “They know me. They trust me. . . . They did it for friendship,” he said.

Garate said the kidnapers have still not been paid.

“If I have to, I’ll sell my house in Arizona to pay them,” he said.

Friday night, Mexico’s attorney general announced that two active duty policemen, a former federal police officer, and three others had been arrested and charged with kidnaping Alvarez. He said arrest warrants would be issued for seven other individuals, including Garate.

A 10-page report issued by the attorney general said the pilot who flew Alvarez to the United States told Mexican law enforcement officers that Alvarez’s kidnapers said they were engaged in a joint operation of the DEA and Interpol, the international police agency.

The attorney general said Alvarez had been an ally of Mexican drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, now imprisoned in Mexico for his role in Camarena’s killing. However, his report added, “nothing or no one can justify” the illicit manner in which Alvarez was kidnaped and taken to a foreign country.

The report did not specifically condemn the DEA.

During the interview, Garate vowed he would never disclose who perpetrated the abduction. “I won’t stab my friends in the back,” Garate said, because it would endanger their lives.

Garate said he thought his role with the DEA could be endangered by talking. But he said he is angry about the DEA getting a bad rap for the kidnaping and that he was not concerned about diplomatic niceties.

“I’m a cop, not a politician,” he proclaimed. He also stated emphatically that no DEA agent set foot in Mexico to assist the kidnaping.

Asked if the DEA agents working on the Camarena case were heavy-handed, he responded: “In this kind of business you have to be tough. That doesn’t mean you have to be trigger-happy. You have to be stubborn and dedicated. We’ve been on this since it happened. We’re not going to stop.”

Garate’s apartment displays striking evidence of his hazardous line of work.

Propped against one side of his bed is an M-16 assault rifle. On the other is an AK-47. Still another semiautomatic rifle was spread out in parts on the bed. “This is the price I pay for the work I do,” he said.

Further evidence of Garate’s close ties to the Camarena investigation and the Alvarez kidnaping were provided by a large piece of art in his three-room apartment.

On the bedroom wall, there is a charcoal drawing of a commando unit and a helicopter. The drawing bears the DEA logo in the center and is entitled “The Wild Geese.” It was drawn for Garate by DEA agent Abel Reynoso, a member of the unit investigating Camarena’s death, and signed by him: “Por mi commandante Don Antonio Garate, 3-19-90.”