By Juan Alberto Cedillo and Ieva Jusionyte
After drug traffickers kidnapped DEA Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, they tortured him for over 30 hours, keeping him awake with injections, before a blow to the head with a crowbar ended his life in February 1985. Nearly four decades later, his case continues to reverberate on both sides of the Rio Grande, with accusations involving top Mexican politicians, including one still in office, and even CIA agents.
In the latest development, the U.S. government has declassified a memorandum sent from the U.S. embassy in Mexico City to the FBI director in March 1986. The memo reveals that U.S. agents were already suspicious of politician Manuel Bartlett Díaz’s involvement with the traffickers who kidnapped and murdered Camarena. Bartlett was Mexico’s Interior Secretary at the time of Camarena’s death, a position sometimes compared to vice president. He is currently the director of Mexico’s state electricity company, the CFE.
The document, released after two Freedom of Information requests by the authors, bears a declassification date stamp of August 12 this year. Spanning six heavily redacted pages, the memo is an update from the “Legat,” which in FBI terminology refers to an international office of the bureau and the “legal attaché” who heads that office. It references interviews with “confidential sources abroad” (CSAs), including what appears to be another Mexican official.
The memo states: “Legat, Mexico City strongly suspects that [redacted] narcotics protection activities…reached perhaps to the Secretary of the Interior (Gobernación) Manuel Bartlett Díaz. While this is merely strong suspicions because of indications of widespread corruption and extortion activities of [redacted] it is not difficult to conclude logically that these activities ultimately benefit top leaders in the Mexican government.”
The memo further references Bartlett, reporting that “the CSA speculated that Bartlett…,” but the rest of that sentence has been redacted. It adds that an informant’s “life would be in certain jeopardy” for talking to U.S. agents.
Bartlett has never been prosecuted in Mexico or the United States for working with drug traffickers. However, there have been allegations of his involvement in the Camarena case, including a report in Mexico’s Proceso magazine in 2021, which stated he would be detained for interrogation if he traveled to the United States. A Mexican opposition federal deputy claimed Bartlett was the “pez gordo” or “fat fish” behind the Camarena killing.
Former police officers from Jalisco state, now witnesses in the United States, have also accused Bartlett. While their statements were part of a DEA probe led by agent Hector Berrellez, who took over the investigation in 1989, the declassified memo shows that U.S. investigators had suspicions several years earlier.
Bartlett has denied any involvement in the Camarena killing. In 2021, he described the accusation as “a lie, a fallacy.”
Drug Lords With Friends In High Places
Much of the memo seems to rely on a key source, who appears to be a Mexican official of some rank. It says…
Source: Crashout Media
