Now-DEA Operative Heard Camarena Killing Discussed, Witness Says

A government-paid informant testified Friday in Los Angeles federal court that a man who later became a Drug Enforcement Administration operative participated in a December, 1984, meeting at which drug lords discussed killing DEA agent Enrique Camarena.

The witness, Enrique Placencia Aguilar, said that Antonio Garate Bustamante met with about a dozen other men at the Guadalajara home of one of Mexico’s major drug lords.

Garate has played a major role in arranging for several individuals to become prosecution witnesses for the Camarena murder trial.

Placencia said that he worked under Garate on the Guadalajara police SWAT team during 1981 and subsequently was employed by Garate as a driver.

Placencia testified that Camarena’s photo was passed around during the December, 1984, meeting at the home of drug lord Ernesto Fonseca Carillo. He said this was the first meeting where drug traffickers discussed the idea of killing Camarena, contradicting another prosecution witness who said that the first such meeting was held two months earlier. Camarena was kidnaped and killed in February, 1985.

DEA officials said they had no immediate comment on Placencia’s statements about Garate. Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel Medrano, one of the prosecutors, also declined comment.

Defense lawyer Martin R. Stolar said that “Garate should have been indicted, but instead he turned himself into a witness factory and produced a bunch of bought witnesses.”

Garate earlier this year testified that he had been the architect of a controversial DEA-inspired kidnaping of Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, a Guadalajara gynecologist indicted for his alleged role in Camarena’s murder.

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie is considering whether to keep Alvarez in custody and put him on trial later this year or return him to Mexico, where he also faces charges in the Camarena murder.

Placencia had testified earlier in the trial about the December, 1984, meeting. But he was not asked whether Garate or anyone else discussed kidnaping or killing Camarena. On Friday, he was asked if they discussed kidnaping Camarena. He responded: “They discussed killing him.”

He was asked later if Garate had participated in the discussion. He responded that he had. Garate, a DEA operative since 1986, has been living in Los Angeles in recent years. He could not be reached for comment Friday.

Earlier Friday, Placencia testified that he saw defendant Javier Vasquez Velasco, along with several other men, beat an American writer at a Guadalajara restaurant on Jan. 30, 1985, just a week before Camarena was kidnaped.

On that day, John Walker, the writer, and his friend Alberto Radelat, a Cuban medical student, were murdered after they inadvertently walked into a party of Mexico’s major drug traffickers at a Guadalajara restaurant and were mistaken for DEA agents.

Vasquez has been indicted in Los Angeles for the murders of Radelat and Walker. Judge Rafeedie has consolidated that case with the Camarena case because he felt there was a substantial connection between them.

Placencia said Vasquez was serving as a bodyguard for drug traffickers at the party. He said Vasquez was the same man he had picked out in a photo lineup and in a group photo last September. But a month ago, Placencia, in a low point for the prosecution, failed to pick out Vasquez in the courtroom.

Placencia testified that the victims were still being beaten when he left the restaurant. The bodies were later buried in a Guadalajara park. Placencia was asked why he had not reported the beatings of the two men to Mexican authorities at the time. He responded that to do so would have endangered his life.

The witness also said there were officials of four Mexican law enforcement agencies dining with the drug traffickers while the men were beaten: the federal security directorate, the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, the Army’s rural defense command and the Political and Social Investigation agency.

On cross-examination, defense lawyer Gregory Nicolaysen established that some of Placencia’s statements varied from testimony he gave to a federal grand jury last year.

Placencia said he has been paid about $50,000 by the DEA since becoming a informant in February, 1987. He acknowledged on cross-examination that he had served 10 months in a Mexican jail in 1985 on a cocaine conviction.