Allegation Was Excised in Camarena Case

Federal prosecutors withheld a politically volatile allegation from attorneys who were defending two men accused in the 1985 killing of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico, documents show.

An informant who helped build the 1992 criminal case in Los Angeles contended that Mexico’s president at the time of the slaying and a former president discussed Camarena with a drug lord who allegedly ordered the agent’s kidnapping and murder two months later.

The accusation against former Presidents Miguel de la Madrid and Jose Lopez Portillo was made by Ramon Lira, a former Mexican policeman who worked as a bodyguard for the drug trafficker, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report.

But prosecutors provided only a sanitized version of the report, with the allegation excised, to attorneys for two defendants accused of conspiring with others to kill Camarena.

Lira was one of two paid informants who had placed both defendants at a Guadalajara house when Camarena was killed. But he was the only person to implicate the two ex-presidents in the plot--an allegation that some former U.S. ambassadors to Mexico call ludicrous.

Richard Drooyan, who is chief assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said “there was nothing sinister” about the deletion and suggested that it may have been made to avoid embarrassing Mexico’s highest officials. He said there was no reason to think that the deletion harmed the defense in the case because the government ultimately did not call Lira to testify.

But legal scholars contacted by The Times said that withholding the information could have harmed the defense because Lira’s allegation itself raises questions about the credibility of the U.S. government’s informants. Several also questioned why the deletion was made in a manner that would not have signaled to defense attorneys that something was removed.

“There is reason to believe that they didn’t want anybody to know they had deleted the information,” said William J. Genego, a former USC law professor who heads the rules committee of the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “There is no appropriate explanation for that, other than a bad explanation.”

Lira’s allegation, contained in his first formal statement to the DEA in September 1992, went far beyond those made by other informants in hundreds of pages of DEA reports released by the U.S. government. At the time, Mexican officials were already furious with the U.S. for relying on what they contended were unfounded allegations from unreliable sources.

After Lira made his explosive statement, the DEA went on to pay him thousands of dollars, move him and his family to the United States, arrange for him to receive immunity from prosecution and take several more statements from him, records show. Lira admitted involvement in Camarena’s abduction as well as the kidnapping of four U.S. Jehovah’s Witnesses who were tortured and killed after they knocked on the door of a Mexican drug lord’s home.

The full version of Lira’s initial statement was discovered recently during a Times review of 30,000 pages of government documents turned over last year to an attorney representing a defendant accused of other crimes connected to the Guadalajara drug cartel. By then, the investigation into Camarena’s kidnapping had been closed and the trials concluded.

Although Lira was not called to testify, records show that he provided investigators with corroboration for allegations by the only witness who placed businessman Ruben Zuno Arce and gynecologist Humberto Alvarez Machain in the house while Camarena was tortured Feb. 7, 1985.

Lira recently told a reporter that he had been brought to the courthouse and was prepared to testify at the men’s trial, but that government officials told him his testimony was not necessary.

The judge threw out charges against Alvarez. But Zuno, brother-in-law of former Mexican President Luis Echeverria, was convicted and is serving a life sentence in federal prison.

Four months ago The Times undertook an examination of new allegations regarding the case and turned up additional information. The findings raise questions about whether the government relied on perjured testimony and false information from paid informants. Based on the new information, the DEA is reviewing its own 10-year investigation, and defense attorneys say they plan to challenge the convictions.

Informants provided key testimony at two trials about alleged meetings where drug lords, corrupt police and government officials conspired to kidnap the DEA agent. The informants’ statements were critical to the convictions of at least three defendants, including Zuno. They also implicated several Mexican government officials who were not part of the U.S. trials.

In his initial statement, Lira said Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo had told him to wait outside as the drug lord entered a house in November 1984, about two months before Camarena was abducted. After an hour or so, Lira told the DEA, he opened the door for 15 to 20 seconds and saw President De la Madrid, former President Lopez Portillo and Gov. Enrique Alvarez del Castillo of Jalisco state sitting with the drug lord. Lira said that a pile of U.S. money was in front of the governor and that the group was talking about “Camarena” and the site of a recent DEA raid. Fonseca was one of more than two dozen people convicted in Mexico in the case.

John Gavin, ambassador to Mexico at the time Camarena was killed, has maintained that testimony implicating high-level Mexican officials in the kidnapping plot is false, in part because one of those officials was known to him as a staunch anti-drug ally.

As for the new information that Lira had implicated two former presidents, Gavin said, “There is no way such a thing happened. It is so false that not even the worst enemies” of the two men “would give it credibility.”

One of Gavin’s successors, John D. Negroponte, also said he had never before heard the allegation and did not believe it.

Alan Rubin, a former prosecutor who represented gynecologist Alvarez, said Lira’s allegation was “so patently incredible [that] there is no doubt it would have been helpful to the defense. And it appears that is why [prosecutors] withheld it.”

The statement, with the section implicating the two presidents removed, was turned over to attorneys for defendants Zuno and Alvarez during the trial. At the time, prosecutors had listed Lira as a witness they intended to call.

Deletions are common in reports that the government provides to defense attorneys. It is required to turn over only information that might help clear the defendants, and statements of prosecution witnesses to investigators.

What is striking in this case is that the excised passage was not blackened out, as is customary. The bottom of one page of Lira’s statement was whited out and the next page was missing--but the pages were renumbered sequentially. Defense attorneys say it was not readily apparent that any information had been withheld.

One of the prosecutors, John Carlton, said he was unaware of the deletion until a reporter pointed it out. His co-counsel, Manuel Medrano, now a TV reporter, said he did not remember the document at all.

Drooyan, who is supervising prosecutor, said he did not know why the deletion was done in such an unusual manner, and added that he had some questions about it.

He said he has great confidence in the integrity and judgment of the trial prosecutors.