Harrison's testimony implicated then-Secretary of the Interior, Manuel Bartlett, in the murder of Enrique Camarena, the DEA agent who had been murdered a year earlier on the orders of Rafael Caro Quintero, second-in-command of the Guadalajara Cartel. Attention was focused on Iran and Nicaragua, not Camarena. Rodríguez, who lives retired in Miami, where there is a significant community of former CIA veterans, was central to the Contra operations in Central America. Jordan and Berellez reached their conclusion about Rodríguez based on the navigation map drawn by Harrison, who was an assistant to Ernesto Fonseca, Don Neto, who was also accused and served time in Mexico for the murder of Camarena.
That episode closed, leaving only the murder of Camarena and the alleged responsibility of Bartlett in that crime, which drugged the bilateral relationship with the U.S., open and alive based on Harrison's testimony. Bartlett has always vehemently denied all allegations regarding the crime of Camarena Salazar, which, however, have never ceased to pursue him. But for Mexico, it was of immense relevance because it was the first time the alliance between drug trafficking and the highest echelons of government was exposed. Harrison directly named Bartlett as having been an important actor in the murder of Camarena and Manuel Buendía, the most influential political columnist of the last quarter of the 20th century.
These were the times of the Cold War. The weapons were for them, and the investigation focused on whether Reagan knew of this secret agreement, which violated the Boland Amendment, which specifically prohibited military assistance to the Contras. The DEA, which made the Camarena case its leitmotif and argument to gain budget, never took its eye off Bartlett. The claim that the CIA participated in Camarena's murder comes from Phil Jordan, who was the director of the Intelligence Center in El Paso, and Héctor Berellez, who headed the DEA investigation in Mexico regarding the murder.
The complaint did not progress during those neoliberal times, nor in the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who, like then-President Carlos Salinas, protected him by appointing him director of the Federal Electricity Commission and using his propaganda machine to cover him when Caro Quintero was recaptured in 2020, due to pressure from the Biden Administration. Today, Bartlett, who has kept a low profile since the end of the Obrador administration, is back in the spotlight because the government of President Sheinbaum expelled Caro Quintero to the United States last Thursday, as part of a desperate strategy to prevent President Donald Trump from imposing tariffs this Tuesday.
John D. Negroponte, from his position as ambassador in Honduras, had built, along with the CIA, an army of mercenaries, the 'Contras,' to fight against the Sandinista regime. Both identified Félix Rodríguez, a legendary CIA figure who participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the pursuit and murder of Ernesto Che Guevara. The declaration seemed unrelated to what was being discussed there and was never a topic during the intense interrogations of Senate lawyers to North. Caro Quintero pleaded not guilty upon arriving at the courthouse in Brooklyn, but everything is just beginning.
Bush, former CIA director, pardoned him and became a commentator for Fox News and a representative of the powerful National Rifle Association. The defense focused on the accusation that the CIA had ordered the murder of Camarena, hoping that with so many decibels everyone would forget about Bartlett, as was the case for some. After almost four decades of requesting his extradition to the United States, it fell to them like Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada last year, from the sky, expeditiously and without any judicial proceedings. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush demanded the immediate extradition of Rafael Caro Quintero and closed the Mexican embassy in retaliation. On the first day of testimony, which overflowed the audience, two large tables with documents were set; on one of them was the testimony of Víctor Lawrence Harrison, a protected DEA witness, of 59 pages.
