Free Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers by Roberto Saviano Page A

said that it was Félix Gallardo and his people who had stayed behind to guard and question Camarena.
    The day he was kidnapped, Camarena’s wife reported him missing to the DEA office in Guadalajara, which immediately set wheels in motion to find him. Edward Heath, the DEA chief in Mexico, informed the United States ambassador, John Gavin, who asked Mexico’s attorney general, Sergio García Ramírez, to help locate his agent. In the end, it was the DEA and not the Mexican government which discovered that Camarena had been taken by members of what was by then known as the Guadalajara Cartel. 2
    Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Don Neto, is languishing in La Palma maximum security prison in the State of Mexico to this day, convicted of Camarena’s murder (though he never admitted to it) and of offenses against public health. Caro Quintero and Félix Gallardo were also arrested for their responsibility in the death of Kiki Camarena. Nonetheless, the DEA continued its investigation for another five years. In its Los Angeles office, a tenacious special agent by the name of Héctor Berrellez, the son of Mexican immigrants, was appointed to pursue the inquiry. What were they looking for? Who else did they think was guilty, if those who had ordered and carried out his murder were already behind bars? This was the beginning of Operation Leyenda. The investigation into Camarena’s death led to one of the most perverse episodes in Mexican–US relations over drugs.

The CIA and Mexican drug traffickers
    Lawrence Victor Harrison, better known as Torre Blanca (White Tower, probably because he was well over six feet tall), originally from the United States, was a technician who worked for years for Ernesto Fonseca, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Miguel Ángel FélixGallardo, setting them up with short-wave radio systems for communicating with one another and with their clients.
    On February 9, 1990, Berrellez and Schmidt contacted Harrison as part of Operation Leyenda. In their search for the truth about the death of their colleague, the special agents discovered the background to one of the darkest episodes in Mexican journalism: the murder of the influential Excélsior columnist, Manuel Buendía. 7
    The DEA report says:
Manuel Buendía-Tellesgiron [ sic ] supported candidate Delmaso [Alfredo del Mazo], PRI party member who aspired to be the President of Mexico. 8 Buendía conducted an investigation into the collusion that existed between Manuel Bartlett-Diaz, former secretary of the interior, Miguel Aldana-Ibarra, former head of the Mexican anti-drug program [of the PJF], and Manuel Ibarra-Herrera, former head of the Directorate of Federal Security (DFS), who were acting in consort with narcotic traffickers.
Between 1981 and 1984, Buendía received information from another reporter, Velasco, in Vera Cruz, that Guatemalan Guerrillas were training at a ranch owned by Rafael Caro-Quintero in Vera Cruz state. The operations/training at the camp were conducted by the American CIA, using the FS as a cover, in the event any questions were raised …
    Harrison told Schmidt and Berrellez that DFS representatives oversaw the training camp and allowed traffickers to move drugs through Mexico to the United States. However, it seems the DFS didn’t know that while its agents were acting in consort with the CIA and the traffickers, the PJF was doing its own investigation into drug trafficking at Caro Quintero’s Veracruz ranch. Members of the Federal Judicial Police arrived at the ranch, and were attacked by the guerrillas (he didn’t say which group). The upshot was nineteen PJF fatalities. Many of the bodies showed signs of torture.
    It seems the journalist Buendía had also managed to gather information about the CIA’s arms smuggling and its relations with well-known drug traffickers in Veracruz. Buendía contacted Zorrilla, head of the DFS, and told him all he knew. He asked for advice onhow to proceed. Zorrilla told Buendía that the question of