Talk:Kiki Camarena

Untitled

This article is prohibitionist propaganda, POV to the extreme. The man was sent on a fool's errand, killed, and now he's a propaganda poster. It need cleanup, and a more balanced point of view. If it weren't for drug prohibition, the man would not have been killed by some group of Al Capones like he was. (24.68.140.36 (talk) 22:04, 25 October 2008 (UTC))

It is a well-known fact to any LEO involved with Mexican drug activity that corruption exists, from the lowest rurale right up to the top, in Mexico's government. The U.S. government and U.S. Chamber of Commerce have willingly turned a blind eye to this in their greed for profits at the expense of both the American and Mexican citizens. People like Enrique Camarena, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Campean pay the price for that greed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.11.104.98 (talk) 17:56, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Where was he born? Why no one mentions the book "Desperados" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Galindes (talk • contribs) 10:21, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

--> Update information about this entry. According to recent data, the DEA was responsible for the murder of Camarena (http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=355283) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.82.178.50 (talk) 07:48, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Conspiracy Theories

Can we have some argument to delete these conspiracy theory claims? I followed the link and there just aint nothing to prove any of what it claims, and to put a misbegotten and ridiculous conspiracy theory on the same level as fact seems too much relativism even for wikipedia... and, how do I put this? the unstable comments by the people up above lead me to think they're the ones responsible for this hijacking

thanks - Eli

discrepancies

this article states that: "On 1984, acting on information by Camarena, 450 Mexican soldiers backed by helicopters destroyed a 1000-hectere marijuana plantation known as 'Rancho Búfalo', where more than 3,000 farmers worked these fields,[1] the annual production which was later valued at $8 billion"

how ever, another one thats talking about Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, person who was running Rancho Búfalo, states that "An undercover agent from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Enrique Camarena managed to infiltrate deep into the drug trafficking organization and had become close to Félix Gallardo. On 1984, acting on information by Camarena, 450 Mexican soldiers backed by helicopters destroyed a 1000-hectere marijuana plantation known as 'Rancho Búfalo', where more than 10,000 farmers worked these fields, the annual production which was later valued at $8 billion."

So witch is it 3,000 or 10,000 theres a huge difference —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uku1234 (talk • contribs) 19:31, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Good catch. I edited both articles to read: "where thousands of farmers worked these fields..."

Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk)

The golf tournament held in honor of Mr. Camarena is held in Miami, not Fresno. There is a tournament in Fresno affiliated with the Camarena Health Center, however that has nothing to do with this individual. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.29.4.205 (talk) 22:44, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

• Hello. Do you have a source for that? Maybe we can fix the info in the article. Cheers. ComputerJA (talk) 16:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Nickname

references indicate his nickname was kiki, not kike, regardless of whether this is a feminine name in spanish. any evidence that his nickname was not kiki should be presented first. And, to anyone completely ignorant of this word, kike is a slur against jews, so there better be a good reason (ie better references than the DEA) for replacing this nickname. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:34, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Enrique Camarena was not a Jew, so I am sure you realize that his nickname was used in a completely different context. Kike is the nickname used for the name Enrique and is a very common nickname in Latin America. Some references to Enrique's nickname being Kike:

1. [1]
2. [2]

Next are some references specific to DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar being nicknamed Kike:

1. [3]
2. [4]
3. [5]
4. [6]
5. [7]
6. [8]
7. [9]
8. [10]
9. [11]
10. [12]
11. This reference is straight from the DEA: [13]

Cheers, --BatteryIncluded (talk) 01:27, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

The only thing that you (user MDEVER802) "established" is that you did not read nor used the talk page, and that political correctness in USA prompted the nickname change, as shown by Google hits. Following this, and WP:COMMONNAME I will allow your edit - rather performed as a bully. Please discuss changes to articles when they are contested, and void Wikipedia:Don't be a dick. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 20:35, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I removed some no longer valid and poor references from the above links. That being said, I think you amply made your case, Enrique's nickname in Spanish was "Kike". I think that both nickname variants should be displayed, that because this is the English Wikipedia, we should list the English version of his name and also list the Spanish version for completeness. Banaticus (talk) 20:55, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Please do not edit other people's posts other than format. The point is not who is right (we all are) but that this is the English language wikipedia and it has preference for using English language references, and per WP:COMMONNAME we should use the "most common name" in English. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk)

Right, which is why the lead-in sentence uses his English nickname. For completeness, however, we should list both, just so this little edit war doesn't happen again. By the way, just to clarify, are you saying that you objected to my removal of dead links and urbandictionary.com as good references in your post? If so, I apologize. I feel that my edit make your post stronger, however, because it basically only shows good valid references. As I said, you amply made your point. :) Banaticus (talk) 21:08, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth...another legacy

A memorial statue of Enrique Camarena sits in the lobby of the public library in Vallejo, California. Why Vallejo?

Georgejdorner (talk) 22:00, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Because a national foundation was created in his honor. That planned statue is at the courthouse in Vallejo: [14]. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 22:05, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Source

• http://books.google.com/books?id=qbjZAAAAMAAJ&q=Kiki+Camarena&dq=Kiki+Camarena&hl=en&ei=BGphTseqKczUgAevxdCWAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAg
• Gilbert, James N. Criminal Investigation: Essays and Cases. Merrill, 1990. ISBN 0675212006, 9780675212007

WhisperToMe (talk) 23:45, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Reference

John McPhee "The Gravel Page." The New Yorker 71:46 (29 January 1996), 44ff. McPhee (in one of 3 stories about forensic geology) describes the FBI forensic geologist's work that proved that Camarena's body was not unearthed at the place that the Mexican Federal Police announced when they produced the body. The geologist's ability to locate the actual original burial site (a dozens and dozens of miles away) by analyzing soil clinging to the body for it's mineral content and unique characteristics is fascinating and compelling, and the Police had not counted on this. The evidence, presented by the FBI geologist in court, lead directly to the convictions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RhyoliteTopaz (talk • contribs) 05:02, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Article name change

Is there any consensus on renaming the article to his given name? It should be enough to mention it (his alleged nickname) in the lede, especially given concerns above concerning the arguably (not that Id be inclined to do so - incidentally the 'spanish version' is a slur in English, to the best of my knowledge) borderline slur in addition to use of diminutive for a murder victim apparently because the gentleman had a spanish sounding name, etc. I'm just not convinced wikipedia is a venue for adding insult to injury, arguably unless someones going to argue this was his cover story for witness protection. We all have our motivations but I'm not seeing any reasonable person needs to see this devolve to the point of childishness. I'd also think Giulio Regeni warrants a mention, if not Wayno Simmons. As well as the other agent(s) relatively recently. What do you think. I'd also think Micheles glorification of violence is relevant at some point, even if it only illustrates the mentality which causes these sorts of problems at the highest levels. I've had all sorts of runins with these guys myself but even I'm unconvinced we have to keep kicking them even after they're dead. Incidentally, what was the deal they refused to name the training center after him but put his name on a golf competition instead? Seriously. Personally I think this guy was set up or scapegoated, if not the witness protection mentioned above. Plus with this 'the CIA did it' I'd think we'd be looking at someone like Wayne Simmons. If he's who I think he is, he's nothing nice when it comes to things like torture. 55378008a (talk) 18:24, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

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Vietnam service

Although Camarena served in the Marines during the Vietnam War era, no reliable sources found as of yet state that he actually served in Vietnam during the war. Accordingly, Category:American military personnel of the Vietnam War was removed from the article. Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 11:54, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

CIA and Camarena killing

I've found a host of high-quality academic sources that discuss the role of the CIA in Camarena's killing in detail. The section that we have on this topic should not be a single article from El País, even if that is Spain's flagship newspaper. Here, I'm posting a paragraph from a review of a number of books on the topic. The review is titled "Spies, Assassins, and Statesmen in Mexico’s Cold War", is published in Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe (Amsterdam Iss. 103, Jan/Jun 2017, pp.143-155) and is written by professor Wil Pansters, head of the Department of Social Sciences of University College Utrecht.

In May 1984, the influential journalist and columnist Manuel Buendía was brutally shot in the back in the centre of Mexico City... In a painstaking investigative process, the authors along with other journalists in Mexico and the U.S. became convinced that the Buendía and Camarena killings were linked, and much of the book is about the Bartleys trying to put the different pieces together. The most important element is that the interests behind both killings go beyond criminal interests and reach into the political domains on both sides of the border. In the mid-1980s, Mexico's one party regime confronted serious challenges, while the Reagan administration was deeply involved in a Cold War battle against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Buendía and DEA agent Camarena had each separately discovered that the CIA was running a dark network, which involved Mexican and Central American drug traffickers that imported cocaine into the U.S. and facilitated the movement of arms to the contras. Nicaraguan contras were trained at a Mexican ranch owned by one of the country's most notorious capos. CIA pilots flew many of the planes. The DFS functioned as the go-between, and hence involved the Ministry of the Interior. The Mexican army provided the necessary protection, and got a bite of the pie. Since the overriding concern of the CIA was the anti-Sandinista project, it trumped the DEA's task of combating drug trafficking, and covertly incorporated (or pressured) parts of the Mexican state into subservience. Buendía had found out about the CIA-contra-drugsDFS connection, which seriously questioned Mexican sovereignty, while Camarena learned that the CIA had infiltrated the DEA and sabotaged its work so as to interfere with the clandestine contra-DFS-traffickers network. They knew too much and were eliminated on the orders of the U.S. with Mexican complicity. Later official investigations attempted to limit criminal responsibility to the dirty connections between drug traffickers, secret agents and corrupt police, leaving out the (geo)political ramifications.

The review ends up quoting from "Eclipse of the Assassins. The CIA, Imperial Politics, and the Slaying of Mexican Journalist Manuel Buendía," by Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia Erickson Bartley. University of Wisconsin Press, 2015. That book concludes,

The preponderance of evidence... persuades us beyond any reasonable doubt that Manuel Buendía was slain on behalf of the United States because of what he had learned about U.S.-Mexico collusion with narcotics traffickers, international arms dealers, and other governments in support of Reagan administration efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Camarena was... killed for the same reason.

I'll work to expand this section in the coming weeks. -Darouet (talk) 21:16, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

• @Darouet: Great, thanks for taking on this task. Would you be interested in creating a separate article about this? I feel that if we expand this section, we'll give undue weight to this point of view (POV). The POV is not considered part of the mainstream narrative. MX (✉ • ✎) 21:23, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

• Jaydoggmarco and Darouet: First off, I appreciate your interest in this article. Hopefully we can all work together to improve it. I've been wanting to get to it for years, but now that the Narcos: Mexico series was released, I decided to wait since I know a lot of old information would surface again.

Before there's an edit warring, let's try to keep the discussion here. What are your thoughts on creating a seperate article about the alleged involvement of the CIA? We have to be careful with undue weight since I'm sure there's a lot to write about. MX (✉ • ✎) 02:40, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks MX for your note. I should point out that Jaydoggmarco hasn't actually contributed to this conversation and has instead repeatedly removed sourced content, describing it as "fringe" with no justification or sources to support that claim.

It appears that Enrique Camarena Salazar is above all noteworthy because of their death. For that reason it is not appropriate to create a separate article about their killing, in my opinion. -Darouet (talk) 03:26, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

It's a fringe conspiracy theory with no supporting evidence, Two conspiracy theorists with self published books don't count as a reliable source, Also in the news story there's no evidence that the people interviewed were actually who they say they are, I'm not going to let you add conspiracy theories on this article. Jaydoggmarco (talk) 22:38, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I suggest a brief pause before doing major editing of this section of the article. Regarding the El Pais story, The "American television network" it mentions was the Fox Network. Here is a link to the story as broadcast. Here is a link to a print version. The DEA agents were, of course, Phil Jordan and Hector Berrellez. The "ex-CIA contractor" was Tosh Plumlee. It is hard to imagine a more dubious or non-RS source than Plumlee. Rgr09 (talk) 13:06, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Rgr09 — I've edited with you at another controversial CIA-related article and respect the work you have done there — I don't know if you recall but you actually changed my mind in that case. Though I haven't fully agreed with you there at Operation Mockingbird your interest in the details of the case have improved the article and provided a strong basis for further article improvement in the future. I'm happy to pause here to discuss what should go into Camerena's article.

As a basis for discussion, is there any chance you have access to the University of Wisconsin 2015 book, "Eclipse of the Assassins: The CIA, Imperial Politics, and the Slaying of Mexican Journalist Manuel Buendía," by Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia Erickson Bartley? The book is also available online [15] for some university libraries. The last chapter or epilogue of the book provides a long and scholarly account both of the Camerena killing and of the subsequent media stories and revelations. I'm happy to try to share if that's possible. Given your interest in this topic I'd rather you had access to the whole epilogue rather than snippets that I provide through quotations here on the talk page. -Darouet (talk) 16:05, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Darouet Didn't mean to imply I have dibs on the article! Look forward to reading your comments here and/or article edits as they come.

I should have access to the Bartleys' book in a couple of weeks and I will be sure to read it carefully.

There have been poorly written and sourced stories making claims of CIA involvement in Camarena's death, hence my concerns. In addition to the 2013 Fox story involving Plumlee (seems nothing further came out of that), there is a book in Spanish by a Mexican writer named Esquivel. Many, many problems with this book. Others may have more to say on that. Rgr09 (talk) 21:42, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Source: InSight Crime

On the issue of sourcing, I found this 2013 article by Steven Dudley and Michael Lohmuller of InSight Crime that came out shortly after the Fox News and Proceso reports. (Per the renowned Wilson Center: "InSight Crime, a joint initiative of American University in Washington, D.C., and the Foundation InSight Crime in Medellin, Colombia, which monitors, analyzes and investigates organized crime in the Americas" and Dudley is one of its co-founders.) A few snippets:

The story connecting Mexico’s infamous Guadalajara Cartel to the United States’ top spy agency in the 1980s is not fiction, even if the assertion that the agency helped kill a US drug agent probably is.

There is, however, little documentation to back up the claims of CIA involvement [in the death of Camarena] and the statements of the sources [i.e. Jordan, Berrellez, and Plumlee] are not all rock solid.

And while the story is still percolating via Proceso, it has not picked up momentum in the United States for reasons that are clear: it is still thin.

During his trial, neither [Matta Ballesteros] nor his lawyers ever raised the CIA’s possible connections to the cartel or the agency’s possible role in the murder of Camarena. Matta Ballesteros was eventually sentenced to multiple life sentences in a US prison where he remains to this day. So, conspiracy theories aside, the record shows an indirect connection between the CIA and the Guadalajara Cartel via Matta Ballesteros and possibly a more direct connection via the Mexican police. However, the assertion that the CIA presided over the murder of a DEA agent seems — with the documents that are publicly available now at least — more conspiracy theory than reality.

So, there is that for reference. - Location (talk) 20:59, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

"InSight Crime" is not a peer-reviewed academic or well known journalistic source, and all the high quality and journalistic sources we're using here are more recent, published in the last five years. At best, we could note that Steven Dudley from InSight Crime and Michael Lohmuller from the Center for Advanced Defense Studies had earlier written that evidence for CIA involvement was weak. -Darouet (talk) 21:26, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

They have less problematic sources though. I think Location's debunking of the book is enough to not include it in the article.2600:1700:BFA1:AEB0:B960:7AF:BB57:4A82 (talk) 23:15, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Darouet: InSight Crime is a project affiliated with American University that studies organized crime in Latin America, and Dudley is an expert on Latin America and fellow of the Wilson Center. They are frequently cited by major publications. To pooh-pooh that in favor of a source (i.e. Bartley and Bartley) that relies on Tosh Plumlee, Daniel Hopsicker, Terry Reed, Gary Webb, and John Simkin/Spartacus is almost laughable, especially after the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, Central Intelligence Agency Office of Inspector General, and United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have addressed in lengthy reports the conspiracy theory that the CIA was running drugs to support the Contras. - Location (talk) 00:02, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Source: DEA Museum Lecture Series, October 29, 2013

For future reference, I found this link to "Brought to Justice: Operation Leyenda" in the DEA Museum Lecture Series, October 29, 2013; the transcript is here. The panelists include "Former Administrator Jack Lawn, who led DEA during Operation Leyenda, retired Special Agent Jack Taylor, the Inspector in Charge of the Camarena kidnap/murder case in Los Angeles, and journalist Elaine Shannon whose research into the Camarena case resulted in the book Desperados, the basis of the NBC TV miniseries Drug Wars: the Camarena Story." On pages 39 to 41, the panel addresses a question submitted by a retired DEA agent:

There has been much recently said in the press that the CIA bears some responsibility for the murder of Special Agent Camarena. That it was linked in some way to the Iran Contra scandal. These claims come from former DEA Special Agents who claim they had a leadership role in the murder investigation. Please comment on these claims.

Without mentioning Berrellez or Jordan by name, Jack Lawn replies:

As a youth I read Aesop's Fables. This - this is another fable not worthy of individuals who would serve in DEA. Anyone who uh, knows who we are knows this investigation, and should know that when it came to our finding out what happened in this case, it was the CIA who told us about the tapes. It was indeed the CIA who came at one point and said, we are so proud of what you did in the case of Kiki Camarena. And, we hope that our organization would do like things if something happened to us. Our, cooperation - our coordination with CIA, in this case has always been above board. In drug cases as I recall uh, so uh, I - I feel it unfortunate that two of our former agents who had come to that conclusion, where, as I understand it, has no basis in fact.

Jack Taylor then states:

There was - there was - during my tenure investigating this case there was absolutely zero evidence of any involvement with the CIA uh, complicit with Camarena's death.

Elaine Shannon responds to Taylor's comment:

But, if I may follow up, the CIA did have a relationship with the DFS. Uh, this relationship uh, may not have included advance knowledge that somebody was going to kidnap and kill a DEA agent. What do you think, Jack?

Taylor replies:

I don't believe the CIA had advance knowledge, because their personnel is also in jeopardy in countries throughout the world. But, Elaine is absolutely right. When I - I talked about the interstate transportation of stolen motor vehicles with the DFS. Uh, the DFS, at least in that investigation, was working in Mexico with the CIA. They are counterparts in a number of investigations. Uh, but again, because uh, CIA also doesn't work with angels in the gathering of information, their working with the DFS is not surprising. Their mission there is to gather intelligence. And, if they can gather intelligence from corrupt people like DFS, they'll certainly do that. But, again, I would be shocked to learn at some point in the future, that CIA had advance knowledge of the taking of Camarena, and did not pass that information on. They were most cooperative during the investigation. They're good partners with us internationally. And, I think it's - it's shameful that anyone would draw them into this - this investigation at this point.

If the claims or Berrellez or Jordan are inserted into the article, then some part of their superiors' views of those claims should be provided, too. - Location (talk) 15:40, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Great point Location. I may add this to the Felix Rodriguez article. I have to say that this whole allegation smells (to high heaven). For one thing, its got the same problem Gary Webb's allegations had: cartels swimming in money while (supposedly) aiding the Contras....yet the Contras desperate for monetary support at the same time.Rja13ww33 (talk) 20:09, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Sure. I don't think that verbal comments made at a symposium should be given equal weight to academic publications or even newspaper articles. But I would also want readers to know that Lawn and Taylor made these statements. -Darouet (talk) 20:33, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Well I think at least a brief mention of the denial is in order.....but I will also admit I don't see how these allegations getting reprinted in "academic" publication(s) somehow enhances their probative value. At the end of the day you are left with a story. (Not sure how you "study" that academically.)Rja13ww33 (talk) 21:00, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Bartley book

I have started looking at Russell Bartley's book "Eclipse of the Assassins," mentioned in the section above. It will take quite a while to go through it, but it is already worth noting that Bartley lists Tosh Plumlee as a source. Plumlee was also a source for the 2013 Fox news story on CIA involvement in the Camarena kidnapping and murder, and was very likely a source for J. Jesus Esquivel's Spanish language book on the Camarena case (La CIA, Camarena y Caro Quintero: La historia secreta). Unfortunately, Plumlee is not a reliable source. He is best known for his claim to have worked with Mafioso Johnny Roselli as part of a CIA attempt to stop the assassination of JFK (see here). I don't yet know how central he is to Bartley's book, but I would not be in a rush to cite "Eclipse" in the article. Rgr09 (talk) 15:02, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

• @Rgr09: I agree. What do you think about adding it in a "Further reading" section? Would that still be problematic? MX (✉ • ✎) 15:35, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
  • @MX:I have even stronger doubts about Eclipse today after reading more of it, including a citation of a deposition from Richard Brenneke, a central figure in the October Surprise conspiracy theory who among other problems falsely claimed to have worked for the CIA. I wouldn't put it anywhere in the articles on either Camarena or Buendía at this point. Rgr09 (talk) 15:07, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
    • @MX and Rgr09: Richard J. Brenneke was cleared of the charge of perjury by a unanimous jury [16], who concluded that his statements about his relationship with the CIA were accurate. Furthermore the Bartley book does not rely strongly on Plumlee, and has received favorable reviews in academia. The description of the book as unreliable is thus based on a false assessment of the book's sources, ignores the book's reception and academic standing, and replaces the policies of WP:V and WP:RS with WP:OR. I don't agree with this approach. Rgr09 if you want to exclude the Bartley source and associated academic sources on this basis suggest that we go to dispute resolution to resolve this issue. -Darouet (talk) 01:10, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
      • @Darouet and MX: I'm still reading Eclipse of the Assassins so I will not take up the talk page with a long discussion now. I think the book has many problems that are not addressed in the review you cited, which itself is by no means a strong endorsement of Bartley's claims. You should also not rely too much on the wikipedia article on Brenneke, which is in need of a careful rewrite. Rgr09 (talk) 06:39, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
      • The May 6, 1990 NYT article only states that Brenneke was acquitted of the charges; it does not state that the jury "concluded his statements about his relationship with the CIA were accurate". The veracity of Brenneke was addressed in the April 1989 Kerry Committee report Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy (see pages 130-132); the WaPo summarized those findings: "Another widely quoted contra-accuser, Richard Brenneke, never had the Central Intelligence Agency connections he claimed and was found to be otherwise unreliable as well, the report said." The House October Surprise Task Force's 1993 report Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980 also found that Brenneke made shit up. So, Congress gets involved with Brenneke's stories not once but twice and both times they find that he cannot be believed... yet Bartley and Bartley mention none of this and still chose to use him as a source. - Location (talk) 19:32, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

@Darouet: @Rgr09: Speaking of stuff, we could make a Wikipedia article on the book itself. As per Wikipedia:Notability (books) a book may have an article if there are at least two or more independent secondary sources, which includes book reviews. Use the book reviews as sources and link to them, and it will be easy for the public and fellow Wikipedians to consult the book's reputation. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:57, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

@Rgr09: @Darouet: @MX: I have started a Wikipedia article on the book itself at Eclipse of the Assassins. If there are details about the book's sourcing which can affect multiple articles you can use Talk:Eclipse of the Assassins to explain them in detail. It is important to cite the secondary book reviews and/or the page numbers (with ISBNs, if necessary) of the original work. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:38, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks @WhisperToMe: that's very helpful! Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I'm looking forward to contributing to your article on the book if I can.

If there are enough sources, might also be interesting to start an article on the Justice Department's new investigation into the Camarena murder. From reading newspaper articles on that investigation, it seems there are a lot of details from early investigations that have been described by reliable sources, but are not sufficiently covered here. -Darouet (talk) 03:20, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Recent edits (May 2020)

Jaydoggmarco, Darouet, Ringerfan23, and Classified20, please reach a consensus on the talk page (or a noticeboard) about the desired contents of the article, especially related to the section on the CIA's involvement. Feel free to ping me or any other admin before the 3 days' protection is up if there's a consensus and the article can be unprotected. Enterprisey (talk!) 00:21, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Eclipse of the Assassins can't be used as a source due to the numerous factual errors (as shown here,) It also lists conspiracy theorist Tosh Plumlee as a source. As well as Richard Brenneke, a central figure in the October Surprise 1980 conspiracy theory who falsely claimed to have worked for the CIA. Jaydoggmarco (talk) 22:32, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

We need a reliable source to state that a book is unreliable. @Jaydoggmarco: do you have a reliable source of this kind? The book is written by two university professors, published by an academic press, and has multiple favorable reviews published in academic literature. Citing a wikipedia editor's opinion, when they have no credentials and admit they have only read a small portion of the book, isn't sufficient. One thing you could consider is finding a reliable source that criticizes the book, and including that criticism with a citation in the article.

@Enterprisey: I know you're just trying to do your job by responding to edit warring here — but if you're willing to help with discussion here that would be appreciated by both of us I think. -Darouet (talk) 16:41, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Actually the book is unknown and as a result a detailed debunking is hard to find. Given that the people interviewed and cited in the book are known kooks and liars i think that would be reason enough for not using the book as a source. I don't have the book so someone who has it has to do it. You make it sound like Kiki being killed by the cia is a mainstream viewpoint held by journalists and historians when it's actually only held by a handful of fringe sources and you have not shown any evidence to prove otherwise yet you continue to spam this article. Jaydoggmarco (talk) 20:15, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

@Jaydoggmarco: thanks, those are interesting ideas. But if the University of Wisconsin publishes this book, and if two academic journals written by professional historians support the book, and if media and even the DEA official investigating Camarena's case agree, why should I trust you, and not them? Especially when you admit that you haven't read these sources, and don't have any sources to offer contradicting them? -Darouet (talk) 01:52, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I didn't say i didn't read them, I said that they are fringe books so finding info on how to debunk them is impossible, The two DEA agents are friends with Tosh Plumlee, Eclipse doesn't even have any reviews on amazon. It's very clear that you have a agenda to push and that anything i say to you will fall on deaf ears. Jaydoggmarco (talk) 03:48, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@Jaydoggmarco: Would you be willing to participate in a "dispute resolution" process, Wikipedia:Dispute resolution? An experienced editor would mediate between our concerns to help us arrive at an agreement. @Enterprisey: Last time this was an issue I went to WP:BLPN, where Nomoskedasticity was the only editor to comment and suggested I just add the content. Having gotten a favorable response there but with Jaydoggmarco adamant that Camarena sources are fringe, I guess I'll try WP:RSN now. -Darouet (talk) 13:02, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I have to say, some of the posts here are hard to take seriously. A book published by UW Press is "fringe"? Because there are no reviews on Amazon?? Give me a break... Nomoskedasticity (talk) 13:13, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Comment from an otherwise uninvolved editor: I agree with Jaydoggmarco and Rgr09 on this. Any source that relies on Tosh Plumlee (claims to have been in Dealey Plaza during JFK assassination) or Richard Brenneke (known fabricator for claims about October Surprise conspiracy theory) should be treated with extreme skepticism. - Location (talk) 08:35, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't have the time to get involved with the complicated issues in this article, but I can offer a few more comments. First, the Kiki Camarena article can indeed be expanded greatly. A simple factual presentation of all the twists and turns in the case would be LONG, but expanding this would, I think, be a much more useful contribution than adding in Barley's WP:REDFLAG claims. There have been close to a half dozen trials and appeals over the Camarena murder, the last of which ended in a major setback for the prosecution when two convictions were tossed in 2017. The USA Today article cited in the article gives some idea of how messy the whole thing has become.

Bartley is basing his account in part on some of the people mentioned in that article, including Hector Berrellez and his "witnesses". The quote about these witnesses being "incredible" probably does not mean "amazing", but instead "not credible." We will see if the DOJ is able to move forward with this. If not, unfortunately, there will probably not be ANY coverage in newspapers.

In my opinion, Bartley's book is also "not credible". I understand that it seems like publication by the UW Press should mean more, but sometimes it happens that reliable presses publish unreliable books; the JFK assassination has produced more than one unfortunate example of this.

Nor do i feel that the small number of reviews Eclipse has received warrant any great confidence either. I am positive that the two reviews I have seen so far were neither written by people who know much about either the Buendía or Camarena cases. Even so, they are far from ringing endorsements of what should be earthshattering claims, and this is wise.

Bartley cites books by Daniel Hopsicker, by Terry Kent Reed, by Gary Webb, he cites websites like John Simkin's Spartacus Educational. All of these are BAD sources. He relies on Plumlee without any mention of his fundamental unreliability, he relies on Brenneke without any mention of his well known unreliability. The list could go on.

Basically, this is a REDFLAG issue. Panster's review (the 'other' source cited below is also Panster) already has criticisms of Bartley, Freije's review has even more criticisms. Equally important, neither addresses some of the basic and KNOWN issues for B&B's account. For the claims that B&B make, you need much stronger support than this. Rgr09 (talk) 11:41, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Dang! I have not read the book, but Hopsicker, Reed, Webb, and Simkin/Spartacus also taint any publication that cites them.

I removed the bit in the lede that states that former CIA agents have made the allegation that the CIA was complicit. In this context "CIA agents" refer to Tosh Plumlee, and his claims are not mentioned in the body of the article. At the very least, he should be referred to as an "alleged former CIA agent". Here is an example of how reliable sources bungle conspiracy material: Ex-CIA contract pilot had front row view of the JFK assassination, served on team to prevent it, met Oswald. On the other hand, we do have a reliable source describing his penchant for fabrication: "It is noted that Plumlee tells a very confusing, illogical story, with a complete lack of specifics, and that he has indicated that he has, in the past, used his imagination for the purpose of making his story more believable, i.e. in that he has admitted making up names of persons allegedly contacted by him." - Location (talk) 21:14, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Darouet do you have anything to counter what Location has said. Two other people have also debunked the source. Defend yourself and explain.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:bfa1:aeb0:10cd:a915:510f:e09f (talk) 06:44, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Location Another source debunking Simkin/Spartacus and Plumlee. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2013/conspiracy-act "The authors repeatedly cite a website, www.spartacus-educational.com, run by British history teacher John Simkin, as authoritative. But in fact the site simply reproduces a host of conspiracy theories that first appeared elsewhere. “It’s very shoddy, not well-sourced,” says Arthur Goldwag, author of Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies and The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right. In fact, many of the books repeatedly cited in footnotes are other conspiracist tracts offering their own speculations — speculations that Belzer and Wayne elevate to ostensible facts by footnoting them as if theirs were an academic thesis." and "McAdams, author of JFK Assassination Logic: How To Think About Claims of Conspiracy, also does a methodical job on Plumlee, a self-identified CIA pilot who claims he flew counter-conspirators into Dallas to try to halt the assassination. Belzer buys his story. But McAdams and others who have looked into it report that nobody can find a shred of credible evidence that such a thing ever happened. Plus, McAdams cites National Archives material on how law enforcement found Plumlee a frequent, unreliable crank who pestered them needlessly, along with FBI records indicating Plumlee had fabricated crime-related information in the past."— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:bfa1:aeb0:10cd:a915:510f:e09f (talk) 09:27, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Darouet stop adding back information without reaching a consensus. Please respond on the talk page.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:bfa1:aeb0:69d3:f43c:2778:b2df (talk) 19:37, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

IP: Please sign your posts and stop edit warring. A rough head count of the editors who have posted on the talk page and are responsible for reverting the passage seems to be split. - Location (talk) 20:50, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

IP, your efforts to ping me aren't resulting in my being notified. I'm not sure if that's because you're not signing your posts, or because you're sometimes using improper formatting when trying to ping me, or if it's a problem on my end (it might be). I'll respond in the section at the bottom. -Darouet (talk) 16:20, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

References

Additional source

Here's another peer-reviewed source we might consider: [17]. Relevant passage:

Fourth, the transformations discussed above acquired additional significance in 1985 when corrupt drug trafficking law enforcement relations led to the kidnapping and murder of DEA agent Enrique ´Kiki´ Camarena and his Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala. The incident ushered in a new and prolonged phase of US pressure on Mexican authorities. The Camarena affair constituted a turning point in the recent history of state-crime governance in Mexico, as it brought to light the complicity between drug traffickers and the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), which enjoyed the support of or worked on behalf of the CIA.

Nomoskedasticity (talk) 13:21, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Year of graduation needs change

Year of high school graduation should be 1966 according to the source. Chrose1 (talk) 08:56, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Content discussion: CIA and Camarena

There seems to be a split in views on the sources appropriate for the article. I suggest discussing some of the content that is getting inserted and removed so rapidly in the article. I hope we can come to a consensus on at least some of that material and get back to a more stable article. Please leave the disputed content up somewhere so that we can discuss it, I don't care where. Here is my list of things I would like to discuss about it. Since this is mostly Darouet's material, I hope D. could respond.

• There is a sentence about halfway down that says:

"Former cartel kingpins told USA Today that a DEA official and CIA operative participated in meetings with the cartel where Camarena's abduction was discussed."

This is not right. The USA Today article (Updated 4:27 a.m. TST Feb. 29, 2020) says "former Mexican police officers Ramon Lira, Rene Lopez and George Godoy, who had worked as security guards for cartel kingpins spoke with USA TODAY and recounted that they told investigators a DEA official and a CIA operative were present at meetings where Camarena’s abduction was discussed." So this needs fixing if it is to stay. I hope there is consensus on that. Note that these were not police officers investigating Camarena's murder, they were police hired by the traffickers as gunmen.

• The disputed last sentence of the lead paragraph says:

Some Mexican journalists, historians, and witnesses, including former CIA agents, state that Camarena was killed with the complicity of the CIA after he uncovered its drug trafficking operations in Mexico, which were used to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.

First, who are the former cia agents (plural)? This is not answered anywhere in the article. Please explain and give a source so I can check it. Second, who are the Mexican journalists (plural)? They are not cited anywhere in the article. Please explain and give a source so I can check it. Third, who are the historians? are you referring to the Bartleys? Or do you include others? Do you include Panster in this group? If so, please cite where Panster explicitly says that he believes that Camarena was killed with the complicity of the CIA because etc. Fourth, who are the witnesses that say they believe Camarena was killed with the complicity of the CIA because etc. What were they witnesses to? Is this an opinion, or did they see or hear someone do or say something. Look forward to a careful, thorough discussion Rgr09 (talk) 02:43, 6 August 2020 (UTC).

Specific issues and sources

@Rgr09: these are specific issues, all of which can be addressed by reliable sources. First of all, as a matter of policy in this discussion and in the article we need to rely upon reliable sources (WP:RS - I'm sure you know the policy — so that we and readers can verify all statements made in the article mainspace, and also here on the talk page. This means relying upon academic books [18], journal articles [19][20][21], and high quality newspaper articles (e.g. well known papers and investigative reporting, as in [22],[23],[24]). It also means avoiding primary sources, e.g. from US intelligence agencies (e.g. [25]).

• 1-2 CIA and DEA agents/assets) You are correct that the last sentence of the lead paragraph is inaccurate. It should state "including two DEA agents and two persons stating they worked for the CIA," instead of "including former CIA agents." These include Berréllez and Jordan of the DEA, and Harrison and Plumlee of the CIA. The citations for this would be:
  • the historians Bartley and Bartley (p. 394 notes Berréllez, DEA, and Harrison, CIA; p. 407 notes Héctor Berréllez, Phil Jordan, DEA, and Robert "Tosh" Plumlee, CIA),
  • the historian Wil Pansters (2018 [26] notes Harrison p. 153 and "former DEA agents" p.154)
  • this LA Weekly article [27] (both Berréllez and Harrison),
  • and USA Today [28] (Berréllez).
• Note that perhaps even more important than statements from former DEA and (apparently) CIA agents are statements from Mexican police and officials, which also deserve a mention in the lead, and discussion in the article body.
• 3 Journalists) You ask what Mexican journalists have written that the CIA was involved in the killing of Camarena. This is surprising since so many of the English-language academic sources discuss Mexican reporting:
  • Above all the famous article from Proceso [29] whose title frankly declares "Camarena was executed by the CIA." The article begins, "Three former US federal agents decided to end a 28-year silence and simultaneously entrusted this newspaper and the US station Fox News with the following: Enrique Kiki Camarena was not assassinated by Rafael Caro Quintero - leader who served a sentence for that crime - but by a CIA agent. The reason: the DEA agent discovered that his own government collaborated with the Mexican drug trafficker in his illicit business. In interviews with Proceso, Phil Jordan, former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC); Héctor Berrellez, ex-agent of the United States Drug Administration (DEA), and Tosh Plumlee, ex-pilot of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), claim to have evidence that the United States government itself ordered the execution of Kiki Camarena in 1985, and they also point out the sinister Cuban character Félix Ismael Rodríguez as the murderer... In separate interviews Jordan, Berrellez and Plumlee agree on many of the details of the reconstruction of the events that would have led the CIA to decide upon the elimination of Camarena." A good summary of Proceso's reporting can be found in Spain's El Pais [30].
  • Wil Pansters summarizes, "In a painstaking investigative process, the authors [Bartley and Bartley] along with other journalists in Mexico and the U.S. became convinced that the Buendía and Camarena killings were linked, and much of the book is about the Bartleys trying to put the different pieces together." (p.152) [31]
  • Another worthwhile [32] investigative piece can be found here [33].
• You are wholly correct that text on "cartel kingpins" is inaccurate, and I have corrected this. I regret the error, which I originally introduced here [34]. The full quote from the USA Today article is, "The Justice Department began reexamining the case last year after admitting that forensic evidence used to convict two men in Camarena’s death was badly flawed. A federal court tossed their convictions in 2017. Weighing whether to retry the men, federal authorities reinterviewed witnesses. Some told startling stories, alleging that U.S. officials had secretly been involved with a cartel that was delivering huge quantities of marijuana and cocaine to the USA, according to people familiar with the case who were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly. Three of the witnesses – former Mexican police officers Ramon Lira, Rene Lopez and George Godoy, who had worked as security guards for cartel kingpins – spoke with USA TODAY and recounted that they told investigators a DEA official and a CIA operative were present at meetings where Camarena’s abduction was discussed. They claimed the DEA official accepted money from the cartel."
• 4 Witnesses) Lastly, the "witnesses" refers to:
  • the USA Today piece [35], which reports that "U.S. Justice Department agents and prosecutors obtained statements from witnesses implicating a Central Intelligence Agency operative and a DEA official in the plot to torture and murder Camarena, according to the witnesses, Camarena’s widow and others familiar with the case who were interviewed by USA TODAY... Prosecutors and agents confirmed to Camarena’s widow, Mika, that witnesses provided the accounts allegedly connecting the CIA operative and DEA official to the plot, she said in an interview... " The article names some of the witnesses.
  • The Bartley book discusses these witnesses on pages 425-434. As far as I can tell, by "CIA" these witnesses mean Félix Rodríguez in particular. According to that book there are 4-5 witnesses, perhaps more who were less credible, who either observed Rodríguez involved in planning the abduction, or saw him participate in Camarena's torture.
• Historians in addition to the Bartleys) The Pansters and Freije reviews don't criticize Bartleys' hypothesis that the CIA was involved in Camarena's killing: Pansters endorses it and Freije considers their evidence "compellng... but circumstantial." Pansters' main critique is that the Bartleys are overly personal in their account. Pansters summarizes as follows:

  • In a painstaking investigative process, the authors along with other journalists in Mexico and the U.S. became convinced that the Buendía and Camarena killings were linked, and much of the book is about the Bartleys trying to put the different pieces together. The most important element is that the interests behind both killings go beyond criminal interests and reach into the political domains on both sides of the border. In the mid-1980s, Mexico’s one party regime confronted serious challenges, while the Reagan administration was deeply involved in a Cold War battle against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Buendía and DEA agent Camarena had each separately discovered that the CIA was running a dark network, which involved Mexican and Central American drug traffickers that imported cocaine into the U.S. and facilitated the movement of arms to the contras. Nicaraguan contras were trained at a Mexican ranch owned by one of the country’s most notorious capos. CIA pilots flew many of the planes. The DFS functioned as the go-between, and hence involved the Ministry of the Interior. The Mexican army provided the necessary protection, and got a bite of the pie. Since the overriding concern of the CIA was the anti-Sandinista project, it trumped the DEA’s task of combating drug trafficking, and covertly incorporated (or pressured) parts of the Mexican state into subservience. Buendía had found out about the CIA-contra-drugsDFS connection, which seriously questioned Mexican sovereignty, while Camarena learned that the CIA had infiltrated the DEA and sabotaged its work so as to interfere with the clandestine contra-DFS-traffickers network. They knew too much and were eliminated on the orders of the U.S. with Mexican complicity.

• Freije summarizes,

  • The second half of the book uncovers the authors' proposed motive for the Buendía assassination: his knowledge of Mexico's connection to the Iran-Contra affair. According to the authors, Buendía learned that the Mexican government was aiding the CIA in its proxy war against Nicaragua's leftist government. Specifically, the CIA used a Veracruz airfield to transport weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras, and at the same time the agency trained Contras on the ranch of Guadalajara Cartel kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero. Bartley and Bartley find confirmation for these claims in US court case files, which include statements by ex-CIA and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents asserting that such operations involved the knowing collaboration of Mexican politicians, the DFS, drug traffickers, and the CIA, among others. Using these testimonies, which come from the trial for the 1985 murder of undercover DEA agent Enrique Camarena, the authors hypothesize that the United States played a role in the Buendía and Camarena murders to prevent the so-called “Veracruz link” from surfacing (p. 195). The evidence for US involvement is compelling but, as Bartley and Bartley acknowledge, circumstantial (p. 394).

• If there are any specific modifications of text that you propose, based on reliable sources, I'll be happy to contribute. I won't be involved in unreferenced and personal speculation about the reliability of academics or journalists who are writing on this topic. -Darouet (talk) 20:03, 6 August 2020 (UTC) Note: I have added numbers to annotate my post, so that they can be referenced according to the numbers given by Rgr09 below. -Darouet (talk) 15:37, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Response

@Darouet:Thanks for the prompt answer to my questions. I'll summarize my understanding of your answer: 1) former CIA agents referred to Plumlee and Victor Harrison. 2) DEA agents refers to Phil Jordan and Hector Berrellez. 3) Mexican journalists refers to Luis Chaparro and J. Jesús Esquivel, authors of the Proceso article. 4) witnesses refers to persons named in the USA Today article (there were 3), and/or 4 or 5 witnesses mentioned in the epilogue to Bartley's book, 5) you say the witnesses either observed Rodríguez involved in planning the abduction, or saw him participate in Camarena's torture. 6) Historians refers not just to the Bartleys, but to Panster and Freija. Let me know if I got any of this wrong.

You cite mostly the epilogue of the Bartley book. Have you read all of the book? You also linked earlier to a webpage in the Tucson Sentinel. This is not a newspaper article, but an excerpt from an unfinished book by Charles Bowden called "Blood on the Corn," discussed in Bartley (p. 430-431). I do not think it belongs in the article, if you want to include it please explain why.

Now for my response.

I agree that enough is in print to include something in the article about the various claims floating around, but these various claims, by different parties, are inconsistent, contradictory, and mostly hearsay. It is all marginal material and should be treated by WP with circumspection since most of it involves claims about living persons.

Chronologically, these claims were all made after multiple trials of various people accused of involvement in the Camarena kidnap/murder. There is still no adequate description in the article of these long, involved proceedings. A good description of these is much more important than this material. In fact, you need to know about the trials to really understand the material proposed for insertion.

D. wants to put it in now, however, and apparently is not interested in adding material about the trials, only Bartley and Berrellez. If no one else does it, I may eventually get around to it. In the meantime, if we are to add this material now, I do not agree that ANY of it belongs in the lead. Chronologically and in terms of its importance it does not belong there, and placing it there is undue weight. I hope D. could respond to this.

We should also talk about other basic issues. Going back to the sentence from the lead, D. has changed it to:

Some Mexican journalists, historians, and witnesses, including former DEA agents and CIA assets, state that Camarena was killed with the complicity of the CIA after he uncovered its drug trafficking operations in Mexico, which were used to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.

I do not accept much of this. The DEA agents are not witnesses, they should be described as former DEA agents, that is all. By witness, I mean someone who might testify to this claim in court. Jordan did not testify in ANY of the trials. He agrees with Berrellez, that is all. Please provide a source for Jordan as a witness of any kind or drop him as a witness. Berrellez believes the claim you give: "Camarena was killed with the complicity of the CIA after he uncovered its drug trafficking operations in Mexico, which were used to fund the Contras in Nicaragua" (I will call this claim 1). This does not make him a witness for claim 1. Please provide a source that Berrellez is a witness for any portion of claim 1 or drop him as a witness.

Nor do I accept the description of Plumlee and Harrison as CIA assets. Plumlee is a well-known figure, who has made well-publicized claims that he took part in a CIA attempt to "abort" the assassination of President Kennedy. Not many reliable sources discuss him or his claims because they are so absurd. However, his claims are discussed by Vincent Bugliosi in the endnotes to his book Reclaiming History (p. 587-588). Bugliosi calls him "a fraud so pathetic that he is an insult to those who make their living by fraudulent means."

What does Plumlee claim about Camarena? He claims that he was the pilot of the plane that on February 8th 1985 dramatically took Caro Quintero out of Guadalajara airport while a squad of the MFJP watched him get on the plane and depart, to the fury of 4 DEA observers (an event portrayed in Narcos Mexico s1e9 for fans).

There is not an iota of proof that Plumlee did this. Plumlee has never produced a molecule of evidence that he was EVER associated in any way with the CIA. Yet it is true that Bartley describes as Plumlee as a former CIA contract pilot (p. 407). He gives no reason for saying this. He also fails to acknowledge anywhere in his book Plumlee's incredibly dubious prior claims.

This is a problem with Bartley that neither review you cite mentions. Probably none of them, Bartley included, were aware of how problematic Plumlee is. Sooner or later, however, the issue of Plumlee's credibility is bound to be raised by a reviewer, or other historians discussing Bartley in related matters. This is a problem with inserting Bartley in the article now. The book is under reviewed, and obvious problems, exemplified by the book's treatment of Plumlee, have not yet been discussed by reviewers. This means it is not a good basis to add the extraordinary claims Bartley makes to the article.

If Plumlee is to be mentioned in the article he should be described only as someone who CLAIMS he was a contract pilot for the CIA. His dubious prior claims should be mentioned. I hope D. could respond to this issue here.

Victor Harrison was a witness at one of the Camarena trials. He set up a communications net for the Guadalajara drug lords and was later recruited by the DEA as an informant, thereby avoiding potential legal problems in Mexico and the U.S. Bartley is convinced that Harrison was CIA and this is the foundation of Bartley's belief that the CIA was involved with the Guadalajara cartel.

This differs from the Berrellez-Jordan-Plumlee claims, which were the basis for the Proceso story. As a result, Bartley is dubious of at least some of the Proceso story. He is critical of Berrellez's 2013 claims in several places in his epilogue. He accepts Plumlee's claim that he was a CIA contract pilot, apparently based on nothing more than Plumlee's word, but I think it is also fair to say he does not necessarily accept everything Plumlee said.

The claim that Harrison was a CIA asset is basically unsourced in Bartley. Yet Harrison is certainly very important for his conclusions. This causes problems again with treating Bartley as a reliable source. I hope D. could respond to this as well.

One more place I disagree with the sentence is how it characterizes what the witnesses saw. As I read it, the sentence says that all these people all state the entirety of claim 1. This is not true. The witnesses, whether it is three or four (I can't find five mentioned), do not suppport all of claim 1.

Bartley's epilogue discusses who saw what, and the USA Today article tells us more. Based on these sources, however, one thing the witnesses do not do is support all of claim 1. A couple apparently say they saw Rodriguez at a meeting. One apparently says he saw Rodriguez interrogate (not torture) Camarena. I find no source for the claim that they say Rodriguez did these things because he represented the CIA and CIA wanted to find what Camarena knew because they were engaged in drug trafficking with one or all of the cartel members. How could they know this? Did the CIA tell them? Please give a source that says the witnesses' observations, not opinions, support ALL of claim 1 or recast the sentence.

Finally, stated in this way, the sentence seems to deny that Camarena's death had anything to do with financial losses the cartel's product, transportation, or sales incurred from Camarena's work. In other words, he was killed only to cover up the CIA link and that's all. I do not believe this is so, I do not know of any other work on the subject that makes this claim. I am browsing through the book again to see if that is really what Bartley thought. I didn't have this impression before. Rgr09 (talk) 06:08, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

My problem with this sentence, then, wherever it appears in the article, is that it confounds what people saw with what they thought and with who said what. I think it also mixes up two or three different stories, specifically Bartley and Berrellez et al. Just one sentence, but it sums up many things we disagree on. Rgr09 (talk) 06:08, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Rgr09: I'll respond to your additional considerations shortly, but a few brief points are in order:

• The Tucson Sentinel piece [36] by journalists Molly Molloy and Charles Bowden is listed as a "report" and described by the paper as "a three-part series." It might be based upon work for an unfinished book, but it is incorrect to state that it is not an investigative report.
• Your summary of my response to your initial objections is almost correct. 1-2 DEA-CIA agents) These are the agents named by the Bartleys [37], some of whom are also named by Pansters [38], LA Weekly [39] and USA Today [40]. 3 Journalists) the Bartleys do reference the Proceso article [41], but there's additional coverage in the international press (e.g. El País[42]), and Pansters also writes, "In a painstaking investigative process, the authors [Bartley and Bartley] along with other journalists in Mexico and the U.S. became convinced that the Buendía and Camarena killings were linked." Therefore ascribing this merely to Proceso is wrong. 4 Witnesses) The USA Today article [43] names three witnesses, but does not state that the named witnesses are all the witnesses described by the sentence, "U.S. Justice Department agents and prosecutors obtained statements from witnesses implicating a Central Intelligence Agency operative and a DEA official in the plot to torture and murder Camarena, according to the witnesses, Camarena’s widow and others familiar with the case who were interviewed by USA TODAY." The LA Weekly [44] writes that "Twenty-three informants from Operation Leyenda were murdered while Berrellez was supervisor or shortly thereafter. Nevertheless, he managed to bring over to the United States as many as 200 informants and place them in witness protection, quarantined from one another — indeed, unaware of who was in this country — as a precaution to prevent them from comparing notes. Ten of the informants were eyewitnesses to the kidnapping and murder of Kiki Camarena." 5 Felix Rodriguez) I didn't say witnesses observed CIA agent Rodriguez involved in planning the abduction and torture (really, interrogation): that's what was reported by the Bartleys and journalists. 6 Historians) Yes, historians refers to the Bartleys, Pansters and Freije.
• I'm deeply skeptical of any approach that tries to assume greater expertise on this topic than that of historians who have spent their lives studying the cartels and drug violence in Mexico and the region. Relying upon the summaries provided by historians is what we should do. For my part I have read substantial portions of the Bartley book, but it's around 500 pages long, and I've focused on the epilogue, because it provides a summary of the authors' findings. -Darouet (talk) 16:09, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

OK, @Rgr09: you make a few additional points. You write a, Plumlee) that Plumlee is an unreliable source, but is treated by historians as trustworthy, thus compromising their findings. However, if you read the Barley book, the Pansters and Freije reviews, and the newspaper articles, you see that Plumlee is just one source among many, including documentary evidence from the trials you reference, that allow the journalists and historians to come to their conclusions. You also write that b, Harrison) "the claim that Harrison was a CIA asset is basically unsourced in Bartley," so that any conclusions that involve Harrison may also be suspect. However, Harrison describes himself as an employee of the CIA [45], and Pansters repeats this claim in his own voice [46]. c Rodriguez/CIA You write that Rodriguez was not seen torturing Rodriguez, merely interrogating him while he was tortured. You also write that Rodriguez might not have represented the CIA, and so any claim that the CIA was involved in Camarena's death because Rodriguez was is flawed. In response I must say that from the naive perspective of a biologist who has never been involved in torture, the moral distinction between interrogation and torture while torture is ongoing escapes me. I'll also note that in every one of the sources we're discussing, the authors very prominently state that the evidence indicates CIA involvement in Camarena's death, whether they discuss Rodriguez or not. That is, statements being made here rely upon exact phrases taken from reliable sources, not and not upon reading into Rodriguez's specific role. Lastly, you write that a lead sentence implicating the CIA d Cartel finances) implies that Camarena was not killed because of his impact on the finances of the cartels. In response, I'd just say that I don't think the text implies any such thing. And I think any educated historian / journalist / reader would understand that the CIA and cartels could theoretically both collaborate to kill a DEA agent for their own reasons. -Darouet (talk) 16:33, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

"CIA agents"

I'm going to jump in here. Various versions of the lede have stated that "CIA agents" have claimed that Camarena was killed with the complicity of the CIA. There are various issues with this. First of all, the meaning of "CIA agent" is vague and I would think professional historians and journalists would be a bit more careful using the term. Robert "Tosh" Plumlee has claimed in various places that he was an employee of the CIA (i.e. a CIA officer) and as far as I can tell, Lawrence Victor Harrison did not make that same claim. Darouet cited the LA Weekly's interview of Hector Berrellez in writing "Harrison describes himself as an employee of the CIA". This is what the LA Weekly article states:

Once in the safety of Berrellez's office in L.A., Harrison told his story. He said he was a CIA agent who was trained in Virginia and assigned to pose as an English instructor at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara. He was to infiltrate the leftist student groups on campus and point out their leaders to the Mexican authorities. He said the students he identified invariably disappeared. Harrison found he didn't have the stomach for the political espionage, so his control agent reassigned him to handle radio communication between DFS and the drug traffickers in Guadalajara they were assigned to protect.

Harrison may have described himself as an employee of the CIA at some point in time, but the LA Weekly article only indicates that Berrellez said Harrison made that claim. In 1990, Harrison was reported to be a DEA informant who claimed he trained Guatemalan guerrillas at Rafael Caro Quintero's ranch. This AP report is in line with other news accounts of the time reporting on his testimony:

In testimony Harrison has said he audited classes at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1960s, went to Mexico for the first time in 1968 during a student rebellion there, and settled there in 1971. He has denied ever working for a U.S. government agency.

You would think that if Harrison claimed to be a "CIA agent", that would make it in to the story. (By the way, the AP report also states: "'The whole story is nonsense,' [CIA] spokesman Mark Mansfield said. 'We have not trained Guatemalan guerrillas on that ranch or anywhere else.'") So, on the point of whether Harrison was a "CIA agent" are we to believe Bartley and Bartley who are relying on Berrellez's claim (Pansters is clearly citing Bartley and Bartley), or are we to believe Harrison himself? And on the point of whether Tosh Plumlee was a "CIA agent" are we to believe Bartley and Bartley who are relying on Plumlee's claims, or are we to believe the SPLC who wrote:

"[Plumlee is] a self-identified CIA pilot who claims he flew counter-conspirators into Dallas to try to halt the assassination. [Richard] Belzer buys his story. But [Marquette University political scientist John] McAdams and others who have looked into it report that nobody can find a shred of credible evidence that such a thing ever happened. Plus, McAdams cites National Archives material on how law enforcement found Plumlee a frequent, unreliable crank who pestered them needlessly, along with FBI records indicating Plumlee had fabricated crime-related information in the past."

I am curious to see suggestions on how to resolve these statements in sources that are quite divergent. - Location (talk) 18:57, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

It's not surprising, nor is it contradictory, that a CIA agent declares that they are not in the CIA in 1990, but then tells multiple sources 23 years later that yes, they were in the CIA. -Darouet (talk) 22:15, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

If Harrison was truly a CIA agent when he testified that he did not work for the government, then he lied under oath. On top of that, the CIA officially stated that his story was "nonsense". That is most certainly peculiar.

What about Plumlee? Is the SPLC wrong about him? - Location (talk) 22:19, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Based on what you and Rgr09 have written, I take no position on Plumlee: he's cited by other sources, but since his own testimony merely confirms what everyone else is saying, I can't see what special importance he has.

As to Harrison, the 1990 AP report [47] states, "He has denied ever working for a U.S. government agency." I don't know if that means under oath or not. Now he tells Russell and Sylvia Bartley in their 2015 book that he worked for the CIA ("disillusioned former CIA spy, Lawrence Victor Harrison"), a point repeated by Pansters in his 2017 review [48] "a former CIA agent, Lawrence Victor Harrison", and Harrison tells journalists he was in the CIA too (2015 story) "Harrison told his story. He said he was a CIA agent who was trained in Virginia." It's also repeated by Chuck Bowden in his 2015 piece [49]: "It is a simple arrangement: He is a CIA operative embedded in DFS and assigned by DFS to assist and guard major drug people in Guadalajara."

Lastly, you think it's peculiar that the CIA would describe reports of their participation in a murder as "nonsense?" What response would be normal, in your mind? -Darouet (talk) 00:16, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

1) So if Plumlee is directly referenced in the article, or indirectly referenced as an unnamed "CIA agent", then you have no objection to using the SPLC article that mentions "law enforcement found Plumlee a frequent, unreliable crank who pestered them needlessly" and "FBI records indicating Plumlee had fabricated crime-related information in the past"?

2) Harrison "denied in court that he ever worked for any U.S. government agency." Other excerpts from the WaPo report: Harrison was "[o]ne of the most controversial witnesses" in the trial. "Harrison said he had no direct knowledge of CIA involvement with the traffickers but believed that contras had been trained in Mexico. He said the DEA had misquoted him in a February report as having said that the CIA, using the DFS as cover, had trained leftist Guatemalan guerrillas on a Mexican drug lord's ranch." The judge "criticized Harrison's testimony [without the jury present] as 'based on hearsay, gossip and speculation.' The judge did not allow the jury to hear that testimony."

3) No, what I think is peculiar is that Harrison did not claim an affiliation with the CIA at the trial in order to boost credibility to his charges... which implicated the CIA! - Location (talk) 02:52, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

No, the SPLC article never mentions Camarena once, and we should not use it here. -Darouet (talk) 15:03, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Harrison denied in his testimony that he had either a formal or informal relationship with any American intelligence agency in Mexico. The transcript of this testimony is given in Eclipse on pages 234-235. The Bartleys discuss this testimony on p. 399: "While Harrison has never stated explicitly that he was a CIA agent, in the same way that he knew Dale Stinson was CIA he let us know that he, too, had been with the agency. 'You’re going to ask, and I’m not going to tell you,' was the way he acknowledged as true what he had denied on the witness stand." In other words, Bartley acknowledges that Harrison never told Bartley he was a CIA agent. Bartley believes that Harrison was a CIA agent based on what Bartley thinks Harrison implied in their conversations. Bartley also believes that Harrison committed perjury on the witness stand, describing Harrison's perjury as prevarication. He bases this, too, on what he thinks Harrison implied in their conversations, not on an actual admission of perjury from Harrison. Rgr09 (talk) 03:42, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Since journalists and historians conclude that Harrison was in the CIA, we should write the same. And he explicitly tells the Bartley that his 1990 testimony, where he denied knowledge of the CIA, was both scripted and false.

Harrison's 1990 testimony that you reference is helpful, so I'll just cite it here:

Q: You indicated that it was learned by certain colleagues that Mr. Buendía had obtained information on certain members of the PRI who were assisting the CIA with arms smuggling and knew of the CIA link to narcotics traffickers. That is what is reported here.
A: Yes, Sir.
Q: Is that an accurate statement of what you told the agents?
A: Yes, that is an accurate statement of what I described to the agent.
Q: Could you tell us where you learned that information?
A: Also as part of the investigation that I told you I had made. I was relating to the agent the facts that I had uncovered, or the suppositions or the rumors that I uncovered, in support of this hypothesis only.
Q: Did you speak to any members of the American intelligence community in connection with your investigation?
A: I don’t know if I did or not.
Q: So you may have?
A: Anything is possible, Sir.
Q: Have you ever had any formal relationship with any American intelligence agency in Mexico?
A: Formal relationship? No, I haven’t.
Q: How about an informal relationship?
A: I don’t think so.
Q: Do you know where the CIA office was in Guadalajara, for example?
A: I have no idea. I don’t know if there was an office there.

However, Harrison also told the Bartleys in a 2005 phone conversation that the testimony you're referring to is false. According to Harrison,

"I was instructed to sit up there [on the witness stand] and act like a clown! They laid a mine field for me and I didn’t want to step on any mines. They told me to lie!"

The Bartleys go on to describe newspaper reports from 1990 that elaborated upon CIA-cartel connections, and their relevance to Iran Contra. They write, for instance:

Of more serious concern to executive branch spin strategists was a front-page, four column, 2,600-word illustrated feature article that appeared in the Washington Post the day Judge Rafeedie turned the trial over to the jury for deliberation. Written by Post foreign service reporter William Branigin and datelined Mexico City, the article focused on friction between the DEA and CIA around the Camarena case and, in effect, lent credence to Harrison’s testimony about CIA collusion with Mexican narcotics traffickers. “The trial in Los Angeles of four men accused of involvement in the 1985 murder of a U.S. narcotics agent,” read Branigin’s lead paragraph, “has brought to the surface years of resentment by Drug Enforcement Administration officials of the Central Intelligence Agency’s long collaboration with a former Mexican secret police unit [DFS] that was heavily involved in drug trafficking.”

-Darouet (talk) 15:31, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Another response

I have caught up with comments from Darouet and Location on the talk page. My response follows, sorry for the delay. Anything else from me will take at least a week, sorry about that too. I will abide by any consensus reached in my absence, no problemo.

• The primary source for the claim of CIA involvement is Berrellez, Jordan, and Plumlee (BJP), as discussed above. Almost all of the news stories, and books too, are based on interviews with them and, to a lesser extent, the witnesses they are touting. Just because El Pais and Fox and Oct 12 Proceso and LA Weekly all covered BJP claims does not give us multiple sources. Most of these stories are regurgitations of BJP interviews without any independent verification. None of these stories cite interviews with other DEA agents or officials for example. Almost all of them simply give a bald restatement of the basic claim (claim 1 cited above), but no coherent story that explains who said what.

Let me give two examples of what I mean. Basic claim 1 includes the sub-statement that Camarena was killed with the complicity of the CIA after he uncovered its drug trafficking operations in Mexico. Who said Camarena uncovered CIA drug trafficking operations in Mexico? What evidence is offered that this is true? None of the news stories discuss this. There was nothing about this in any of the trials. If you feel the lack of testimony about this in the trials is "CIA coverup", congratulations, you are now in conspiracy theory land.

Another substatement is that the CIA had "drug trafficking operations in Mexico, which were used to fund the Contras in Nicaragua." Again, who said this? What evidence is offered that this is true?

This is a big problem. I have looked hard at the "CIA used drug trafficking operations to fund Contras" claim, and I have seen many many people maintain that this is true, with virtually no evidence to back it up. The Kerry report says no such thing. Do not cite Peter Dale Scott, Gary Webb, Bill Conroy, Martha Honey. Do not, for heaven's sake, cite Daniel Sheehan's absurd affidavit, I don't care if Bartley does (he does, by the way).

There are a few sources that give more than just basic claim 1. Bowden cited above, the B book epilogue, a couple of El Proceso stories in addition to the one cited above. I have not read Esquivel's book, La CIA, Camarena y Caro Quintero: La historia secreta. Perhaps more is available there.

The problem is that putting these bits together into even a basic story is a heavy duty task. I think it is fair to argue that if there is no readily available basic story, anything other than one or two sentences stating the basic claim should not go in the article.

The witnesses proferred by BJP, all of whom date back to the 1988-1992 LA trials, do not give a story. (Witness here excludes Harrison and Plumlee). They say I saw so and so at the house, I saw so and so interrogate Camarena, take money from Caro, etc. They are still a vital part of the story. If there is yet another trial, it will be because of them. I think the odds of another trial are low, because of the severe credibility problems all of the witnesses mentioned in the B book and the most recent USA Today stories. This is a topic which I will put in the article regardless of whether the BJP claims go in or not.

• P (Plumlee) of BJP is not optional in citing or summarizing, and cannot be replaced by other "witnesses" who say they witnessed other things. Witnesses don't work like this. Witnesses cover specific facts, not generalizations. In addition, with witnesses, you have to have people who don't change their story every time they talk to a different person. Moreover, to tell a story, there has to be some common agreement between some people if not all. I am not sure this is so in the case of BJP.

Example: B book p. 413 cites a Bill Conroy article which discusses "a late 1984 meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, ostensibly attended by Plumlee and Camarena, where, according to Plumlee, Camarena revealed what he had learned about CIA collusion with the Guadalajara cartel and Nicaraguan contras." This answers one of my questions above. but is this really Plumlee's story? Does Berrellez really buy this BS? Does Bartley? If not, why does B mention it? Just because B cites the non-RS Conroy blog, does that me we should stick it in too?

• Location commented on the problem of saying Plumlee and/or Harrison are "CIA agents". If the only basis offered for saying this is that Plumlee and/or Harrison claimed it is true, that is what I mean by unsourced.

Plumlee is called ex-CIA by most of the sources cited in the article. I don't care how many sources for BJP say this. Plumlee is a well-known figure and no unilateral statements can change the unbelievable character of his claims, only some form of proof. Nor can BJP be separated, as far as I can tell. Give reasons if you know of any. Otherwise, if B and J go in the article, P goes. If P goes in, he claims to be an ex-CIA contract pilot and claims to be involved in the JFK assassination. His CIA affiliation cannot be stated as established fact.

Harrison has said he was a CIA contract agent and then again has said he was not affiliated with the CIA. There is no evidence outside his word that he was. Unless there is actually evidence that he was, it should not be stated as a fact. If, on the other hand, he denied he was affiliated with the CIA in court, then later told Bartley he was with the CIA, that should go in the article. I have not found any statements by B, or by news reports, that Harrison stated in court that he was with the CIA. I believe that it is also reasonable to put that in the article.

• If the BJP claims go in, the InCrime doubts on Proceso and Esquivel go in. The DEA rejection of B and J's claims goes in. The DEA rejection is in the transcript of the DEA museum panel that Location has linked to. A good find. This is mentioned in the B. book, p. 413. B. doesn't like it and calls the panel "a transparent exercise in damage control ... which only serves to increase Berréllez and Jordan’s credibility." B's opinion canno be presented as fact, it is inherently opinion.

• I understand now that Darouet takes a more expansive view of journalists and witnesses than I ascribed to him. Thanks for the correction.

• Regarding the two reviews of the B book, Freije says " The evidence for US involvement is compelling but, as Bartley and Bartley acknowledge, circumstantial." This means she does not yet view U.S. involvement as established fact. Pansters's review refers to the book's "core argument", leaving me wondering whether he is totally convinced. Probably he is, add a plus, in contrast to Freije's null. He also finds much to criticize in the B book, if you read the review to the end. I still feel the book is under reviewed; its failure to give a basic story, which I tried to explain above, also makes it a less than ideal material for an article.

• Finally, if I have understood, D. regards the Bs as "historians who have spent their lives studying the cartels and drug violence in Mexico and the region." I think this is an overstatement. Nor do I agree with the comment that "Relying upon the summaries provided by historians is what we should do", if this means we should ignore obvious issues in selecting and citing sources, such as the B book's failures in regard to Plumlee and various conspiracist works. Rgr09 (talk) 12:19, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Even after all of this, Darouet is still cherry-picking sources to insert the "Harrison is a CIA agent" bit into articles (see Amiram Nir). - Location (talk) 21:58, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

You should probably report him, I think he's going to keep adding this material until he's blocked or banned.Jaydoggmarco (talk) 22:05, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

If it is necessary to form a consensus, I believe that any mention of Harrison should also reference his testimony in 1990 in which he denied working for any government agency, and that the CIA, the Mexican government, and the judge on the case thought his story was bullshit (e.g. [50][51][52]). - Location (talk) 00:30, 18 August 2020 (UTC) [edited 16:56, 18 August 2020 (UTC) )]]

I think it is worth mentioning in the article that there are allegations made about Félix Rodríguez and CIA involvement in Camarena's death. It should not be the primary focus of the article, but those allegations are worth mentioning with at least a sentence or two and a wikilink to the Rodriguez article.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 20:21, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Um no, Mentioning it at all alleged or not would violate WP:BLP.Jaydoggmarco (talk) 21:10, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree that we need to tread carefully because of the WP:BLP and WP:REDFLAG concerns. If the allegations are included, we would also need to include material from something like the aforementioned 2013 InsightCrime article. Regarding Rodriguez, that article states:

The Proceso stories argue the CIA had a direct relationship to the Guadalajara Cartel via corrupt Mexican police, which appears, by all accounts, to be true. But it also reconstructs the Matta Ballesteros story to fit its narrative. Specifically, it says a CIA asset named Felix Rodriguez — who famously claims to have presided over the capture and murder of Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia in 1967 — brought Matta Ballesteros to Mexico and introduced him to the Guadalajara Cartel for the express purpose of moving cocaine to the United States to fund the Contras. However, this is inconsistent with what’s known about Felix Rodriguez’s and Matta Ballesteros’ histories. Rodriguez, according to the independent counsel Lawrence Walsh’s report on the Iran Contra affair, did not become a clandestine coordinator for Contra aid until 1985, well after Matta Ballesteros had begun working with the Guadalajara Cartel.

- Location (talk) 21:57, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

And if you're reading this Darouet no this doesn't mean you can add the information back.Jaydoggmarco (talk) 23:51, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Now another account is trying to insert the claims, This time using The Last Narc as a source. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=F%C3%A9lix_Rodr%C3%ADguez_%28soldier%29&type=revision&diff=974317066&oldid=974308504 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kiki_Camarena&type=revision&diff=974316929&oldid=974307469Jaydoggmarco (talk) 08:48, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi All - sorry for the delay, the semester has begun and this is time consuming. I've spent a long time going through these sources earlier and while there are a few discrepancies, this is common in historical research, and the sources generally paint the same picture. I think it's time to launch an RfC and be done with this debate: enough sources have been presented to allow other editors to make up their own minds. -Darouet (talk) 20:44, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

A list of references used in the article as well as discussed here would be helpful, with commentary on the quality of each. An easier alternative would be to identify the very highest quality references only. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 22:05, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

At this point I have to agree with Darouet. It's clear we aren't going to reach a consensus so we should launch an RfC to get outside opinions. Classified20 (talk) 06:19, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

@Rgr09: in response to your comments above, you state that all of the information connecting the Camarena case to the CIA and the contras comes from three people, "BJP." However, there are in fact three former DEA agents who have testified to this connection, two former CIA agents, multiple witnesses to Camarena's death who state that they worked for the cartels. Then we have five academics who are experts on Latin American drugs and politics who based on this testimony and their own expertise and research takes these claims seriously, and conclude they're almost certainly correct. Then in addition to this we have a host of newspaper reporters from outlets in the US and Mexico who report on this, some of whom describe years of work on the topic, and also take the allegations very seriously. And last but not least, the Justice Department has reopened their case on the matter. I'm not sure how we're supposed to weight academia and journalism versus your speculations here. -Darouet (talk) 22:22, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Rgr09 wrote: "The primary source [emphasis mine] for the claim of CIA involvement is Berrellez, Jordan, and Plumlee (BJP)...". As far as the two people to whom you continue to insist upon as being "former CIA agents", Harrison and Plumlee, one said he never worked for the government and other is an attention hound who has a history of claiming all sorts of things. If Bartley and Bartley cite them, as well as other dubious sources such as Brenneke, Hopsicker, Reed, Webb, and Simkin/Spartacus, then their status as "experts" should be reconsidered. - Location (talk) 22:50, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Why are you insisting on using only a 1990 AP report for the argument that Harrison was not an agent, but are not even commenting on newer sources and interviews with him? That report came out 30 years ago, and we have articles from the last 10 where Harrison identifies himself as an agent. Why do you trust his 1990 declaration, but distrust his subsequent declarations, and those of secondary, reliable sources? -Darouet (talk) 23:21, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

I have answered this above under the discussion of "CIA agents", but I will answer here too. Harrison's 1990 declaration was made in court under oath. His other statements were not. As to secondary, reliable sources, whom do you refer to? Bartley acknowledges on p. 399 of his book that Harrison never told him he was a CIA agent, only implied it. Rgr09 (talk) 03:35, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

According to Berrellez, Harrison told him he was a CIA agent. The Bartleys definitively describe him as an agent. Other historians do too. It appears that Harrison told Bowden he was a CIA agent as well, though it's somewhat unclear to me in part 3 of the Bowden piece if the Harrison story about the motorbike photograph was told to Berrellez, or Bowden. Nevertheless here's what reliable sources actually write:

Russell and Sylvia Bartley's book [53] contains a glossary, summarizing who is who in the Buendia and Camarena murders. There's an entry for Harrison:

Harrison, Lawrence Victor—cover name assumed by George Marshall Davis (q.v.) when he was given a new identity by the CIA in the mid-1960s; served as a CIA “illegal” (deep-cover agent) in Mexico; has personal knowledge of the Manuel Buendía assassination, as well as agency collusion with Mexican drug traffickers and government officials in support of the Nicaraguan contras.

Here's what historian Wil Pansters writes in his review of the Bartley book [54]:

A crucial step in getting to this conclusion was the authors’ engagement with a former CIA agent, Lawrence Victor Harrison, who for a long time had worked under deep cover in the Mexican netherworld of the DFS, drug trafficking and political repression. He later became disenchanted with the agency and in conversations with the authors eventually spilled the beans about the relationships between organized crime, security agencies, law enforcement, and political interests in Washington, Mexico, and beyond. In his mind Buendía was murdered on the orders of the architect of the Iran-contra network, Oliver North (p. 331)!

Here's what historian Vanessa Freije writes in her review of the Bartleys [55]:

The authors unearth new evidence of US intelligence assistance in Mexico’s dirty war. According to their interviews with disaffected ex-CIA agent Lawrence Victor Harrison, CIA operatives helped identify leftist “dissidents” and reported directly to Mexican intelligence officers such as Miguel Nazar Haro, notorious for ordering tortures and disappearances (p. 314).

Here's what journalists Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy write about Harrison [56]:

Lawrence Harrison comes up to the U.S. in September 1989. In his initial debriefing, he explains that he holds a rank in DFS. He had handled all the communications for the drug leaders in Guadalajara — Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel Félix Gallardo, and El Cochiloco. He says he attended classes at the University of California at Berkeley but was not officially enrolled and he also attended some classes in the law school there. Then, in 1968, he is recruited by the CIA, trained, and sent to Mexico... It is a simple arrangement: He is a CIA operative embedded in DFS and assigned by DFS to assist and guard major drug people in Guadalajara.

This is what journalist Jason McGahan writes about Harrison [57]:

Once in the safety of Berrellez's office in L.A., Harrison told his story. He said he was a CIA agent who was trained in Virginia and assigned to pose as an English instructor at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara.

This is what reliable sources are writing about Harrison's relationship with the CIA. -Darouet (talk) 14:54, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Edit war relating to CIA allegations under discussion

I wish people would stop adding AND deleting material under discussion. It is driving me nuts. Rgr09 (talk) 06:41, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Would partial protection be agreeable to the editors here? The dynamic ip's are definitely edit-warring. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 00:40, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

ToBeFree blocked the IP range that was edit-warring, so I think the page should be fine without protection for now. If another IP shows up with the same m.o., then semi-protection is definitely the next step. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:03, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

@Rgr09: I understand this, but the added content is quite restrained compared to what's available, and presents an executive summary of the viewpoints of historians on this topic. It's extremely well referenced. I don't feel obliged to indulge a single-purpose IP who is not meaningfully engaged in discussion. I should also note it's much easier to remove material than it is to carefully research and publish it on an encyclopedia. @Hipal: I sought protection since the IP's behavior is clearly disruptive, and since Nomoskedasticity had previously responded to my noticeboard requests by affirming that this content is well supported by academic sources. Wugapodes declined my protection request, correctly noting that there is a content dispute on this page, but incorrectly asserting that single-purpose drive-by editing by IPs (and, occasionally, otherwise mostly inactive accounts) is not disruptive. -Darouet (talk) 15:31, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

I've asked Wugapodes to reassess the situation. There's almost certainly sock/meatpuppetry going on here. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 18:20, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Darouet, it's not germane to argue that "your" view is the correct one. We are trying to follow NPOV as well as BLP with respect to US Government officials who would be implicated and to establish consensus regarding the disputed content. Start an RfC or go to one of the noticeboards and get some experienced feedback on your arguments here if you wish. Your view has not been supported in previous discussions. The IP has been blocked, but the fact that it's an IP or even a sock does not per se invalidate its editorial views. SPECIFICO talk 20:15, 9 August 2020 (UTC) Update to clarify.13:24, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

That's not what I argued, and RfCs have already recommended that this content be included, something you would have known if you looked into the history of this discussion. -Darouet (talk) 23:18, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

List of references for the article

Responding to Hipal's request, here is a list of references for the article with a dissatisfied note at the beginning. Unless stated, I have read the material cited.

The article is putatively about Enrique Camarena. It is radically truncated, with a few details of Camarena's life, a couple of sentences about his work, a confused account of his kidnap/murder, and omits most of the murder investigation in Mexico and America. It also omits most of the lengthy judicial process in both Mexico and the U.S. I regret that so much time has been spent on the talk page over what I think are marginal claims which have been poorly documented and presented, while central events and issues in Camarena's life and murder case are ignored.

Much of what I think is key content for the article can be supplied from two books I recently added to the article's reference section: Elaine Shannon's Desperados and James Kuykendall's O Plato O Plomo. I will not discuss them here. Other sources for key content include newspaper articles from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. I would not dispute the inclusion of articles from these sources as long as they are relevant, properly sourced and accurately cited.

The dispute in the article is whether to include claims made by various people since 2013. Here are sources for some of these claims.

• Bartley, Russell H.; Bartley, Sylvia Erickson (2015). Eclipse of the assassins : the CIA, imperial politics, and the slaying of Mexican journalist Manuel Buendia. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. The authors of Eclipse are a retired professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his wife. Eclipse is published by the UW Press, a well-known academic press.

There are two reviews of Eclipse in academic journals:

• Pansters, Wil G. (2017). "Spies, Assassins, and Statesmen in Mexico's Cold War". European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe (103): 143–156. ISSN 0924-0608. JSTOR 90012018.
• Freije, Vanessa (2016-11-01). "Review of Eclipse of the Assassins". Hispanic American Historical Review. 96 (4): 766–768. doi:10.1215/00182168-3678117. ISSN 0018-2168.

There are also journalistic sources for some of the claims. These include:

• La Jeunesse, William; Ross, Lee (2013-10-10). "Us Intelligence Assets In Mexico Reportedly Tied To Murdered Dea Agent" (Text.Article). FoxNews.com. This was the first article to appear on the new claims in 2013. It cites Berrellez, Jordan, and Plumlee (BJP) as making the claims (see above for who they were).

• "A look at DEA agent 'Kiki' Camarena's murder" (MovingImage). Fox News. 2013-10-10.This was the TV coverage that went with the article. I have not been able to get the link to work.

• Chaparro, Luis; Esquivel, J. Jesús (2013-10-13). "A Camarena lo ejecutó la CIA, no Caro Quintero". This is the first story on the BJP claims to appear in Proceso. Proceso published a number of stories on their claims in October/November 2013. The link is to a truncated version of the story, if you are interested in reading the Proceso material, the relevant issues (Proceso 1928-1932) are available on issuu.com; I will not list all of the articles.

• Quesada, Juan Diego (2013-10-15). ""The CIA helped kill DEA agent Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena," say witnesses". El País. This is one of the few articles in English that mentions some of the Proceso writing. It is NOT a summary of Proceso's story; the first half is based on Fox news, the second on half on Proceso, as cited in the article.

• Valdez, Diana Washington (2013-10-19). "Ex DEA Officials: CIA Operatives involved in 'Kiki' Camarena Murder". El Paso Times. This is not available on line, and I have not read it.

• Lawn, Jack; Taylor, Jack; Shannon, Elaine (2013-10-29). "DEA Lecture Series, Operation Leyenda" (PDF). This is a transcript of a presentation at the DEA museum on the Camarena case; see comments above.

• Dudley, Steven; Lohmuller, Michael (2013-11-13). "Docs Reveal CIA-Guadalajara Link, Not Conspiracy". Insight Crime: Investigation and Analysis of Organized Crime. This is one of the few responses to the Fox/Proceso coverage of BJP. See comments above.

• Esquivel, J. Jesús (2014). La CIA, Camarena y Caro Quintero: la historia secreta. México, D.F: Grijalbo. ISBN 978-607-31-2569-7. The only book devoted to the 2013 claims. I have not read it. Eclipse discusses it.

• Bowden, Charles (2014-11-18). "Blood on the Corn: A DEA Agent is Tortured and Killed in Mexico". Medium. This is an unfinished book by Bowden as discussed above. Matter.com is an online magazine. This was not done as an article for the Tucson Sentinel. If anyone thinks it makes a difference where it appeared, I'm ready to dispute that claim.

• Molloy, Molly (2014-11-18). "Chuck Bowden's Final Story Took 16 Years to Write". Medium. This article by Molloy, also published by Matter.com, gives the background of the Bowden's planned book.

• McGahan, Jason (2015-07-01). "How a Dogged L.A. DEA Agent Unraveled the CIA's Alleged Role in the Murder of Kiki Camarena". L.A. Weekly. This is a delayed follow up to BJP claims by Los Angeles's 'alternative' newspaper.

• Heath, Brad (2020-02-29). "Killed by a cartel. Betrayed by his own? US reexamines murder of federal agent featured in 'Narcos'". USA Today. This is the most recent article I have read on this whole subject.

I think these are the main references in the discussion on the talk page.

For those who have not yet seen Darouet's disputed addition to the article, I think the most recent version of it was here Rgr09 (talk) 07:18, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

The Medium pieces were republished under the title "Bowden: How the CIA may have tortured one of America's own" by the Tucson Sentinel with the explanation,

In 1985, a murky alliance of Mexican drug lords and government officials tortured and killed a DEA agent named Enrique Camarena. In a three-part series, Blood on the Corn, legendary journalist Charles Bowden finally digs into the terrible mystery behind a hero’s murder — his final story.

The links can be found here:

• Bowden: How the CIA may have tortured one of America's own [58]
• Mexico murder of DEA agent becomes int'l obsession [59]
• Into the killing room: Murder of a DEA agent [60]
• Why Chuck Bowden's final story took 16 years to write [61]

@Rgr09: Kuykendall's book should be considered important, but he's also a primary source, and that needs to be considered when using him in this article, both for better and worse. He's cited several times in the Bartlett book, where his insights are appreciated and also evaluated critically, as one would expect from a book published by a university press and written by a historian. Without seeking to diminish Kuykendall's importance, there really should be no debate about keeping a primary source as a main source for this article, and excluding a more recent, scholarly secondary source published by a university.

What is the rationale for treating Elaine Shannon's book as a main source here, while excluding scholarly secondary sources? We should use her work, but not while excluding academic sources written decades later, with the benefit of more sources, that also cite Shannon. -Darouet (talk) 13:53, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Reasons for using Shannon and Kuykendall can be seen in the material I've recently added to the article. None of this material appears in Eclipse. In fact, there is very little information on Camarena in Eclipse at all. I urge you to read and compare these three books. Kuykendall and Shannon are central to an article on Camarena. Eclipse is not. Rgr09 (talk) 07:08, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

The Bartley book prints Camarena's name 540 times, and includes long sections evaluating the circumstances of his killing. You're not going to be able to understand this event if you only consult documents written before 2013. -Darouet (talk) 14:49, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Academic historians

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

In this long discussion, editors consider whether to include a section on the alleged CIA participation in Camarena's interrogation. The debate includes several participants who adopt complex and nuanced positions, and offer detailed and persuasive arguments in favour of them, but even after all these words, editors don't seem to be changing their minds in any very substantive way. The job of a closer is to summarize the debate's conclusions, after weighing them in the light of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. In weighing this one, I have understood the phrase "oppose as written" to mean that the respondent agrees to a change in the article without agreeing to this specific change in the article. If anyone who wrote "oppose as written" meant that they oppose the principle of including the CIA involvement allegations, then I have badly misunderstood this debate, and I would appreciate being pinged or contacted on my talk page so I can revise my close.

With that said, I would summarize this debate's conclusions after weighing them in light of policies and guidelines, as follows:-

Q: Should we include a section on the alleged CIA participation in Camarena's interrogation?
A: Yes. There is a rough consensus that there are sufficient sources to include a section about it.

Q: Should the section we include read like Darouet's proposed edit?
A: No. The claim that the CIA was somehow involved or connected with Camarena's murder is of course an extraordinary one, and it requires in-text attribution to a specific source as well as an inline citation that directly supports the claim. The proposed addition is also long enough to raise concerns that it might give undue prominence to what may well be no more than a conspiracy theory. The kind of addition that could gain consensus would need to be succinct as well as specific in order to circumvent this concern.

Q: Should the proposed new material appear in the lead?
A: I don't think there's sufficient consensus to include it in the lead at this time.

Q: How should we draft this proposed addition?
A: Editors have objected to drafting the new material by directly editing the article. These objections are legitimate because we're in the "discuss" phase of the WP:BRD cycle. Therefore, please draft the proposed additions in an unindexed space (such as a user sandbox) first, then discuss them here and reach consensus before inserting it into the article. I trust that it will be possible to do this without resorting to a second RfC.

I hope this helps—S Marshall T/C 00:35, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

@S Marshall: 6 editors responding to the RfC supported inclusion of the text, including in the lead, while 3 editors opposed it. That means editors supported the text by a 2:1 margin. Among outside editors coming here for comment — that's the point of an RfC — 5 editors supported inclusion, and one opposed: that's a 5:1 margin. Editors supporting inclusion point out that WP:SECONDARY and tertiary WP:RS treat the allegations "extremely seriously", and also point out that arguments opposing inclusion are based almost wholly on WP:OR. Because your close so wholly disregards both the policy-based arguments and the overwhelming majority of editors here, I'm going to challenge your close at WP:AN, per policy. I'm informing you here first, as you've requested. -Darouet (talk) 16:32, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

---

Should we include a section on possible CIA participation in Camarena's interrogation, and his case more broadly, using this text at least, [62] and based on these sources? -Darouet (talk) 22:40, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Academic

• Bartley, Russell H., and Sylvia Erickson Bartley. Eclipse of the Assassins: The CIA, Imperial Politics, and the Slaying of Mexican Journalist Manuel Buendía. University of Wisconsin Pres, 2015 [63].
• Pansters, Wil G. "Drug trafficking, the informal order, and caciques. Reflections on the crime-governance nexus in Mexico." Global Crime 19.3-4 (2018): 315-338 [64].
• Marshall J. CIA Assets and the Rise of the Guadalajara Connection. Crime, Law and Social Change. 1991 Jul 1;16(1):85-96 [65].
• Freije, Vanessa. "Eclipse of the Assassins: The CIA, Imperial Politics, and the Slaying of Mexican Journalist Manuel Buendía." (2016): 766-768 [66].
• Pansters, Wil G. "Spies, Assassins, and Statesmen in Mexico’s Cold War." (2017): 143-156 [67].

Newspaper articles

• Tucson Sentinel, "Blood on the Corn. Bowden: How the CIA may have tortured one of America's own," by Charles Bowden & Molly Molloy, April 7th 2015.
• Processo, "A Camarena lo ejecutó la CIA, no Caro Quintero, by Luis Chaparro and Jesus Esquivel, 12 October 2013.
• LA Weekly, "How a dogged L.A. DEA agent unraveled the CIA'S alleged role in the murder of Kiki Camarena," by Jason McGahan, 1 July 2020.
• El Pais, "“The CIA helped kill DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena,” say witnesses," by Juan Diego Quesada, 15 October 2013.
• Fox News, "US intelligence assets in Mexico reportedly tied to murdered DEA agent," by William La Jeunesse and Lee Ross, 10 October 2013.

Reopened Justice Department Investigation

• Fox News, "US probing claims that CIA operative, DEA official betrayal led to murder of agent: report", by Greg Norman, 28 February 2020.
• USA Today, "Killed by a cartel. Betrayed by his own? US reexamines murder of federal agent featured in ‘Narcos,' by Brad Heath, 28 February, 2020.

-Darouet (talk) 22:40, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Survey

• Include the section in the main text [68] and include in the lead as well [69]. At least five academics have described CIA involvement as likely in this case, and I can't find a single academic source disputing that. Many newspapers have also covered these allegations, with the investigative report by Bowden and Molloy reporting that the allegations are likely true. Lastly after the Mexican government released the putative killer Caro Quintero in 2013, three former DEA agents including the man who led the DEA investigation into Camarena's death, two people who describe themselves as former CIA assets, and multiple witnesses who describe themselves as former employees of the cartels, all describe CIA involvement in Camarena's torture. Whether readers side with historians and agree the CIA was involved — that's for them to decide. But we can't just exclude all academic and journalistic reliable, secondary sources published after 2012. -Darouet (talk) 22:40, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
• Include prominently, including in the lead. This is more than enough sourcing to include prominently. Furthermore, the arguments against inclusion seem weak or WP:OR-ish (mostly boiling down to "I think this can't be true because XYZ, therefore any historian that says otherwise is a bad source and any source that relies on those historians is also unusable", which strikes me as a red-alarm bad argument in that it indicates that the editor is relying on their own WP:OR to the extent that they will aggressively disregard any sources that say otherwise.) For the better or worse, we go by what the sources say, and this not just has significant coverage among historians but substantial WP:SECONDARY and tertiary coverage that treats the allegations extremely seriously. "But but but I think Tosh Plumlee is a liar and choose to believe Victor Harrison was not a CIA agent!" are not serious arguments - obviously a CIA agent is going to, at certain times, say they are not a CIA agent; and the veracity of accounts told by primary sources (both in a case like that and when there's other reasons for skepticism) are for secondary sources to assess, not us. If you think that those things invalidate the story you should write to the numerous high-quality secondary and tertiary sources that have covered it asking them for retractions or corrections, or produce comparable sources disagreeing with them (and making the argument you're trying to make here) so we can present that disagreement in text. Until then it's meaningless to bring such arguments up - the strong secondary and tertiary sourcing is sufficient to indicate that more reliable sources than "some rando Wikipedia editors attempting original research" have looked at such concerns and determined that the overarching story is credible regardless. --Aquillion (talk) 01:39, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
• Include, obviously, on the basis of the multiple sources (mainly academic works) provided. This is standard Wikipedia practice and we have a prohibition on WP:OR. The "analysis" below should and will be set aside. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 08:04, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
• Include There are more than enough sources that warrants inclusion. Idealigic (talk) 14:13, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose as written. This RfC is not neutrally phrased and seems to grossly exaggerate the quality of Darouet's cited sources. Having read through the exhaustive discussions preceding this RfC as well as the continued discussion below, it seems that Darouet's repeated assertions that "At least five academics have described CIA involvement as likely in this case" cannot be taken at face value. In fact, Darouet has just one academic source for this claim (Bartley & Bartley 2015), along with two book reviews that merely summarize it, noting that Bartley & Bartley rely on "circumstantial" evidence to connect the CIA to Camarena's murder. Darouet argues that since the reviewers (Pansters and Freije) are mostly favorable, and do not expressly set out to disprove any of the content in Bartley & Bartley, that means they are additional sources independently corroborating Bartley & Bartley's findings. However, as Rgr09 has noted ([70], [71], [72]), that is not entirely clear from the text of the reviews and the vast majority of the content in Bartley & Bartley is about the life of Mexican journalist Manuel Buendía, with much of the contentious material about the CIA and Camarena being relegated to a brief ~30 page epilogue in a book that Darouet himself states ([73]) is "around 500 pages long" and difficult to read in its entirety. I was very curious about Darouet's reference to Marshall 1991 as a "fifth" academic source that has "described CIA involvement as likely in [Camarena's murder]," especially because it never seems to have come up in the preceding discussions (unless I'm missing something), yet now Darouet has conceded ([74]) that "Marshall does not write that Camarena was killed with CIA complicity." I do not think that anyone should support Darouet's proposed addition on the pretense that he has marshaled an array of academic historians representing a broad scholarly consensus in the field of contemporary Latin American history when he really just has a single academic source from a few years ago, that is under-reviewed and contains controversial findings that have not been proven or independently confirmed either by other academics or any of the legal trials involving this incident. None of this is to say that Bartley & Bartley 2015 is not a reliable source with attribution (despite its undisputed shortcomings) or not DUE for at least a short paragraph in this article, but if Darouet wants an RfC to effectively "vote" on his preferred version rather than drafting a consensus version in collaboration with Rgr09, then my inclination is to say no—primarily because of Darouet's tendency to overstatement.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 02:29, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Historians Russell and Sylvia Bartley, historian Wil Pansters, journalists Molly Molloy and Chuck Bowden, the newspaper Proceso, the lead DEA investigator into Camarena's killing Hector Berrellez, and additional US government agents and cartel witnesses, all assert a CIA link to Camarena's death, through the Contra affair. Historian Freije views this hypothesis as plausible, historian Marshall wrote way back in 1990 that the CIA was protecting some of the drug kingpins, and there are over a dozen newspaper articles covering this topic in major international papers. But you admit that you have not read these works — you don't quote from them — and because you write that I am an unreliable source, editors should ignore all the historians, journalists, agents and witnesses prominently commenting on this case. That's a very weak argument. -Darouet (talk) 16:02, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Include There are reliable sources available to support this. ~ HAL333 22:45, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
• Include Certainly this information sourced to the Bartley/Bartley book and some of the commentaries in journals should be included in the body and in the lead. Particularly the favourable review by Vanessa Freije, which specifically endorses the evidence on Camarena and interpretation presented by the Bartleys, that was published in The Hispanic American Historical Review. Alongside the Journal of Latin American Studies and the LAP it is the preeminent English-language journal in the field, and cannot simply be disregarded. It is important that the information is presented, as the Bartleys do, as circumstantial but nevertheless compelling. To those others arguing at great (!!) length against inclusion: if you wish to dispute the articles supporting the Bartleys' findings you are welcome to submit an article for publication to either of the aforementioned journals or any of several other excellent scholarly publications. But WP Talk pages are not the place for your research and rambling cant on a subject in which you evidently have little expertise. See here. My only caveat would be that Freije's support for Bartley should also be cited. Cambial Yellowing❧ 21:17, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure who you are talking about with the comment "little expertise", but AGF. We are not talking "little expertise" with some of the people making these comments. They are about as knowledgeable as I have come across. And secondly, I think a great deal of caution is called for in this circumstance. That is why your are seeing comments bordering on OR and I think it says much positive about the editors saying it. Based on a handful of DEA agents (albeit being quoted in academic publications) we are adding to the article the implication that a government agency fostered the drug trade that devastated the USA's inner cities. If that wasn't fantastic enough, we are also talking a story that has been chased by a whole bunch of journalists (to a dead end; not to mention the numerous Federal investigations).....oh and add on the fact the CIA supposedly sanctioned the torture and murder of a DEA agent. Sorry but it's more like something you would read in the checkout stand in the supermarket than a "academic" publication. So that is why you are seeing some (justifiable) hesitation here. As the saying goes "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". There is nothing extraordinary about these types of stories in the drug underworld. (Or them getting re-printed/shown in a variety of sources.) I am not (by the way) arguing for exclusion....just caution and being careful about WEIGHT.Rja13ww33 (talk) 22:42, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Don't try to falsely imply that I did not AGF. My comment was directed not at their motive, but at their competence to comment, the measure of which for WP purposes is the venue and manner in which their conclusions are published, not whether one anonymous WP account thinks them "about as knowledgeable as I have come across". Multiple referees for the journal articles in question, who unlike you or I, have recognized expertise, considered the articles endorsing the Bartleys' findings to be worthy of serious publication. Everything "published" here – including your characterisation of the assertions as "fantastic" – are by the measure of WP sourcing policy scrawlings on a toilet wall, good faith or no. Cambial Yellowing❧ 23:35, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Putting aside your further lack of good faith and insults....how exactly did these "referees for the journal articles in question" establish these sources are legit? For starters, what do you know about Plumlee? Do you know that this University of Wisconsin Press publication (that you claim was peer reviewed) doesn't even explore some of the obvious issues with his credibility? And are you saying the assertion that the CIA brokered a deal with a Cartel to import drugs and kill a DEA agent isn't "fantastic"? (Speaking of lack of judgement.)Rja13ww33 (talk) 00:20, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Before making any further false accusations about good faith or insults (which I will take seriously), I suggest trying to understand what AGF means, and why making repeated false accusations of bad faith is not appropriate because of this policy.

What you or I think we know about Plumlee, or about Donald Duck, is irrelevant. In WP we only follow what appears in reliable secondary sources. If you want to argue the point about what I claimed (correctly) is peer reviewed you should at least get your facts straight: I referred to the journal articles, which are published by Routledge, Springer, Duke University Press, and the University of Amsterdam respectively. We know they are peer reviewed because a. all other scholarship confirms this fact and b. the publishers explain their peer-review process in detail. Your personal opinion about the merits of WP:SCHOLARSHIP is not relevant to the discussion. Cambial Yellowing❧ 01:18, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

I know exactly what AGF is. You need to observe it in the future. The Journal articles cited here (at least the ones I could access) really don't explore this issue (on Plumlee) either. If you know better: fire away. I never said my "personal opinion" was a substitute for scholarship or RS. I also said I was not arguing for exclusion.....I advised "caution and being careful about WEIGHT". And I think some good RS about Plumlee's credibility issues are in order as well.Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:54, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Feel free to introduce to the discussion any scholarly articles you think are directly relevant to the author's conclusions. Cambial Yellowing❧ 02:05, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Doesn't necessarily have to be scholarly.....just has to be RS.Rja13ww33 (talk) 02:14, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose as written. I have put in two more comments in the discussion section, one on how to bring the article current and the other summarizing three points of dispute with the proposed addition. I will also add that Jack Lawn and Jack Taylor's public rejection of Berrellez and Jordan's 2013 claims should go in the article. At this point, I’m done with the article. It’s too bad that a long discussion has not resulted in any substantive improvements to the article, which still has numerous inaccuracies and massive omissions that I am no longer interested in fixing. Rgr09 (talk) 08:14, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

See also a long article on the Berrellez documentary The last narc by Elaine Shannon. Rgr09 (talk) 10:41, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Shannon's response to the recent Amazon documentary is interesting and might deserve a reference, but "https://spytalk.substack.com/" is not a reliable source. -Darouet (talk) 14:48, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose as written. At issue is the dissemination of a conspiracy theory by Russel H. Bartley and Sylvia Erickson Bartley that has gained traction among Qanon and other supporters of the "deep state". To be clear, it was only Mr. Bartley who held an academic position and it is not unusual for university publishers to print conspiracy theory works by academics (e.g. see Peter Dale Scott and his promulgation of the deep state). The claims of the Bartleys could possible be used with attribution, but reliable sources refuting the conspiracy theory would also need to be included. - Location (talk) 20:53, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

There are so many sources on this topic, and yet none are in the article: this issue needs wider input from across the encyclopedia. I'll admit, I had never even read on Camarena until the last year. But I'm shocked that literally every reliable source from academia, and from recent newspaper reports on this topic, is being systematically removed from the article. Why is that happening? When I asked for comment previously at WP:RSN, the only uninvolved editors who commented [75], Horse Eye Jack and Nomoskedasticity, said that it should be fine to use this material with attribution. That advice has had no impact on this page however. -Darouet (talk) 22:40, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

I object to the use of any source that states Tosh Plumlee (the SPLC said he makes shit up) and Victor Harrison (who testified under oath that he did not work for the government) were CIA agents. Working in academia does not mean one puts out reliable information. Bartley and Bartley, for example, cite dubious sources such as Plumlee, Harrison, others who have falsely claimed to be CIA agents such as Richard Brenneke and Terry Kent Reed, and conspiracists Daniel Hopsicker, Gary Webb, and John Simkin/Spartacus Educational. I would like some discussion on how to reconcile this. - Location (talk) 23:12, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Harrison said that he didn't work for the CIA in 1990 [76], five years after Camarena was killed. Since 2013, he's been telling journalists and historians that he did, in fact, work for the CIA [77][78][79][80]. The evaluation of historians and journalists is worth more than the speculations of editors here. As to Plumlee, I don't know, but his story lines up with all the other witnesses. -Darouet (talk) 23:17, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Harrison did not tell Pansters he worked for the CIA, Harrison did not tell LAWeekly he worked for the CIA, Harrison did not tell Esquivel he worked for the CIA. I do not know if Harrison told Bowden he worked for the CIA. The source cited should say that if its true, but I can't find such a statement. Help me out. Finally, as noted above, Bartley says Harrison didn't tell him he worked for the CIA, only implied it. Damn, forgot sig again! Rgr09 (talk) 04:49, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Russell and Sylvia Bartley's book [81] contains a glossary, summarizing who is who in the Buendia and Camarena murders. There's an entry for Harrison:

Harrison, Lawrence Victor—cover name assumed by George Marshall Davis (q.v.) when he was given a new identity by the CIA in the mid-1960s; served as a CIA “illegal” (deep-cover agent) in Mexico; has personal knowledge of the Manuel Buendía assassination, as well as agency collusion with Mexican drug traffickers and government officials in support of the Nicaraguan contras.

Here's what historian Wil Pansters writes in his review of the Bartley book [82]:

A crucial step in getting to this conclusion was the authors’ engagement with a former CIA agent, Lawrence Victor Harrison, who for a long time had worked under deep cover in the Mexican netherworld of the DFS, drug trafficking and political repression. He later became disenchanted with the agency and in conversations with the authors eventually spilled the beans about the relationships between organized crime, security agencies, law enforcement, and political interests in Washington, Mexico, and beyond. In his mind Buendía was murdered on the orders of the architect of the Iran-contra network, Oliver North (p. 331)!

Here's what historian Vanessa Freije writes in her review of the Bartleys [83]:

The authors unearth new evidence of US intelligence assistance in Mexico’s dirty war. According to their interviews with disaffected ex-CIA agent Lawrence Victor Harrison, CIA operatives helped identify leftist “dissidents” and reported directly to Mexican intelligence officers such as Miguel Nazar Haro, notorious for ordering tortures and disappearances (p. 314).

Here's what journalists Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy write about Harrison [84]:

Lawrence Harrison comes up to the U.S. in September 1989. In his initial debriefing, he explains that he holds a rank in DFS. He had handled all the communications for the drug leaders in Guadalajara — Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel Félix Gallardo, and El Cochiloco. He says he attended classes at the University of California at Berkeley but was not officially enrolled and he also attended some classes in the law school there. Then, in 1968, he is recruited by the CIA, trained, and sent to Mexico... It is a simple arrangement: He is a CIA operative embedded in DFS and assigned by DFS to assist and guard major drug people in Guadalajara.

This is what journalist Jason McGahan writes about Harrison [85]:

Once in the safety of Berrellez's office in L.A., Harrison told his story. He said he was a CIA agent who was trained in Virginia and assigned to pose as an English instructor at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara.

This is what reliable sources are writing about Harrison's relationship with the CIA. -Darouet (talk) 14:00, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• Please refrain from inserting lengthy, redundant quotes into the discussion! It makes an already bloated section even more difficult to read. Rgr09 (talk) 14:53, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

I am shocked that Darouet is shocked that his additions to article have not been generally accepted. I wrote earlier that I did not have time to discuss the article in detail, but that I had doubts about his sources. I was not in his rsn discussion because I had no time. Now I do. Wikipedia is full of this sort of back and forth, I have felt frustrated over it myself, but that is the way WP has evolved.

I first have some comments on the book by Bartley and Bartley. The full title is Eclipse of the assassins : the CIA, imperial politics, and the slaying of Mexican journalist Manuel Buendia. The subject of this book is the murder of Buendia. Its focus is Buendia's life and career, including his early biography, his later career, the political and historical background, Buendia's political views and roles, and, in detail, the investigation of his murder and the prosecution of the men accused of killing him. For Camarena, on the other hand, the book has no personal details, no discussion of his career, no discussion of DEA either in general or in Mexico, no discussion of drug traffickers or trafficking in general or in Mexico, no discussion of the circumstances of Camarena's murder, no discussion of the investigation of Camarena's murder in Mexico or in America, except as it relates to Lawrence Harrison, no discussion of the legal proceedings over the murder in Mexico or America except as it relates to Harrison. Harrison provides B & B with grounds to claim that CIA was involved in Buendia's murder. In fact, Harrison says Buendia was killed at the behest of Oliver North (p. 394). B & B are not interested in Camarena. The sole exception to this lack of matters relevant to Camarenais in the "Epilogue" section of the book, about 30 pages where the Bartleys discuss the 2013 claims of BJP. The main focus of this discussion is on whether the accusations fit in with their views of Lawrence Harrison. In other words, the book is barely relevant to Camarena at all, except for the 2013 BJP claims, which should not, at this stage, have a central or even peripheral position in the article. Rgr09 (talk) 01:13, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Enrique Camarena is referenced 410 times by Russell and Sylvia Bartley in the main text of their book [86], and an additional 100+ times in their glossary, endnotes and index. That a lot of references for two historians who, in your words, are "not interested in Camarena," and for a book that is "barely relevant to Camarena at all." The book situates both the Camarena and Buendia murders in the context of international politics, which is what you'd expect from historians, and hope for in a Wikipedia article.

Here's what the Barleys conclude about Camarena, for the record (pp. 402-403):

The preponderance of evidence now available in the public record, confirmed and further nuanced by our own cited sources and most especially by Lawrence Victor Harrison, persuades us beyond a reasonable doubt that Manuel Buendía was slain on behalf of the United States because of what he had learned about U.S.-Mexico collusion with narcotics traffickers, international arms dealers, and other governments in support of Reagan administration efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The evidence we have developed also leads us to conclude that DEA S/A Enrique Camarena Salazar was abducted, interrogated, and killed for the same reason and that the two cases are therefore related. The import of this latter conclusion is that, contrary to the hero status accorded Camarena as an ostensible casualty of the "war on drugs," he was sacrificed by his own government in order to prevent exposure of a covert operation against the legitimate authorities of another country.

Note that this reference to Camarena is #258 and #259 out of 543 in the book altogether. -Darouet (talk) 13:39, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

The lengthy quote above is irrelevant padding and has nothing to do with my comment. As for the 410 instances of Camarena in the main text of B & B, counting words is no substitute for reading a book. Darouet's comments frequently show that D. has not carefully read all, or even most of B & B. Read it. I have read it, I discuss it. I repeat, it is not WP:OR to read all of the books one cites, or to check the book's citations. That is nonsense.

If you must use the crutch of numbers to discuss books, please note that without knowing total text tokens, total instances of a particular token is meaningless. Relative counts, however, can show us something. Compare the relative frequency in B & B for Buendia (B), Harrison (H), and Camarena (C). Using the pdfs I have, main text, no front or back matter, B=1502, H=848, and C=407. (D's count for C a little bit different from mine). What does this mean? The main subject of the book is Buendia, the secondary subject is Harrison, Camarena is tertiary.

Another funny textual result: “Russell” and “Sylvia”, the authors’ names, and their collective pronoun “we” appear over 1300 times. The reviewers were all struck by this self reference: Freije calls it a “new journalism” style, an irritated Pansters describes it as “too personal”. Good or bad, the Bartleys are almost as important in this book as Buendia. Camarena is far down the list.

4-500 instances of Camarena does not reassure us that this is a useful book for the article. 410 instances of C in the main text doesn't show how many of these are "Camarena trial", "Camarena case" (80x) being used to discuss the testimony of Victory Harrison. 150 instances of C appear in the Epilogue to discuss the claims of BJP; this indicates how skewed the discussion of Camarena is throughout B & B. But BJP is what D. is really interested in.

A further indication that Camarena is peripheral to B & B's writing: Look at the list of people B&B interviewed. Most are relatives or colleagues of Buendia. Harrison’s relatives were also tracked down and interviewed; some of these discussed in the book were omitted from the list of interviewees. B & B interviewed no one who knew Camarena, unless you count Phil Jordan, who apparently met Camarena once in April 1984. B & B interviewed none of the prosecutors at the LA trials, who spoke for Camarena at the trial. Camarena is peripheral to B & B’s book. Much of Camarena's story is omitted from it. It would expand this comment to massive lengths to detail them all.

In fine, the more B & B is used in the article, the less of Camarena is in the article. The article is about Camarena; it is not about Buendia or Harrison. It is not about the multitudinous, turbid, conspiracist claims that float through B & B’s book. The article is better off without the book. Rgr09 (talk) 14:53, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

I also have some comments on the reception of “Eclipse” Who are the five academics? Russel and Sylvia Bartley, Pansters, Freije, and who else? Darouet writes “at least five academics have described CIA involvement as likely in this case.” Freije mentions Camarena only once in her review. “Using [testimonies] which come from the trial for the 1985 murder of undercover DEA agent Enrique Camarena, the authors hypothesize that the United States played a role in the Buendia and Camarena murders to prevent the so-called “Veracruz link” from surfacing (p. 195). The evidence for US involvement is compelling but, as Bartley and Bartley acknowledge, Circumstantial (p. 394).” The use of hypothesize and circumstantial contradicts Darouet’s claim that Freije described CIA involvement as likely. The description of Camarena as an undercover agent shows that Freije was not familiar with the Camarena case. Rgr09 (talk) 02:57, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Really, this could be described as either four or five. The historians are:

• no. 1 Russell and no. 2 Sylvia Bartley, Eclipse of the Assassins: The CIA, Imperial Politics, and the Slaying of Mexican Journalist Manuel Buendía. University of Wisconsin Press, 2015 [87]. They conclude:

The preponderance of evidence... persuades us beyond a reasonable doubt that Manuel Buendía was slain on behalf of the United States because of what he had learned about U.S.-Mexico collusion with narcotics traffickers, international arms dealers, and other governments in support of Reagan administration efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The evidence we have developed also leads us to conclude that DEA S/A Enrique Camarena Salazar was abducted, interrogated, and killed for the same reason.

• no. 3 Wil Pansters, "Spies, Assassins, and Statesmen in Mexico’s Cold War." (2017): 143-156 [88]. He writes:

Since the overriding concern of the CIA was the anti-Sandinista project, it trumped the DEA's task of combating drug trafficking, and covertly incorporated (or pressured) parts of the Mexican state into subservience. Buendía had found out about the CIA-contra-drugs-DFS connection, which seriously questioned Mexican sovereignty, while Camarena learned that the CIA had infiltrated the DEA and sabotaged its work so as to interfere with the clandestine contra-DFS-traffickers network. They knew too much and were eliminated on the orders of the U.S. with Mexican complicity. Later official investigations attempted to limit criminal responsibility to the dirty connections between drug traffickers, secret agents and corrupt police, leaving out the (geo)political ramifications.

• Note that Pansters also describes this in his own work, "Drug trafficking, the informal order, and caciques. Reflections on the crime-governance nexus in Mexico." Global Crime 19.3-4 (2018): 315-338 [89]. He summarizes:

The Camarena affair constituted a turning point in the recent history of state-crime governance in Mexico, as it brought to light the complicity between drug traffickers and the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), which enjoyed the support of or worked on behalf of the CIA.

• no. 4 Vanessa Freije. "Review: Eclipse of the Assassins: The CIA, Imperial Politics, and the Slaying of Mexican Journalist Manuel Buendía." (2016): 766-768 [90]. She writes:

The product of [The Bartleys'] research, Eclipse of the Assassins, suggests that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the DFS, and high-ranking Mexican politicians collaborated to murder Buendía... The second half of the book uncovers the authors’ proposed motive for the Buendía assassination: his knowledge of Mexico’s connection to the Iran-Contra affair. According to the authors, Buendía learned that the Mexican government was aiding the CIA in its proxy war against Nicaragua’s leftist government. Specifically, the CIA used a Veracruz airfield to transport weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras, and at the same time the agency trained Contras on the ranch of Guadalajara Cartel kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero. Bartley and Bartley find confirmation for these claims in US court case files, which include statements by ex-CIA and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents asserting that such operations involved the knowing collaboration of Mexican politicians, the DFS, drug traffickers, and the CIA, among others. Using these testimonies, which come from the trial for the 1985 murder of undercover DEA agent Enrique Camarena, the authors hypothesize that the United States played a role in the Buendía and Camarena murders to prevent the so-called “Veracruz link” from surfacing (p. 195). The evidence for US involvement is compelling but, as Bartley and Bartley acknowledge, circumstantial (p. 394).... Eclipse of the Assassins offers important insights into Mexico’s dirty war and the US-Mexican relationship during the late Cold War... Bartley and Bartley have uncovered a chilling transborder history of government collusion to silence criticism and subvert dissidents.

• no. 5 Jonathan Marshall, CIA Assets and the Rise of the Guadalajara Connection. Crime, Law and Social Change. 1991 Jul 1;16(1):85-96 [91]. Marshall does not write that Camarena was killed with CIA complicity, but does write that the CIA supported and protected some drug kingpins in Mexico, including those affiliated with Camarena's murder, and that this CIA-cartel relationship was pursued in part to support Contra and contra-related projects. Of course Marshall could not have made the connections of other journalists and historians prior to 2013. We could cite this as an example of early work on this topic but it's not as strong as recent sources.

So overall, three historians support a direct CIA connection with Camarena's death, and a fourth reviews this historical research favorably. Pansters endorses the findings of Bartley and Bartley, and while Freije is more critical, she still reviews the book favorably, and does not dispute the CIA claims. -Darouet (talk) 14:46, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

One more comment. First, in defense of my doubts on Plumlee. This is not unique to me; as noted above, doubt is shared by Vincent Bugliosi who writes in Reclaiming History that Plumlee is "a fraud so pathetic that he is an insult to those who make their living by fraudulent means." I have defended my views on Harrison and Bartley's evaluation of him above, read it if you want. Finally, I disagree that I have put anything into the article remotely resembling original research. I have read three books: Shannon, Kuykendall, and Bartley-Bartley. I have read all of the content of these books and looked at the notes and checked some, though not all, quotes. I have looked at some legal documents on the Camarena case, but I have not put these in the article. This may be research, but I believe its the kind of research that WP requires, not proscribes. Rgr09 (talk) 03:59, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• Comment while I have no opinion on this discussion, Daruet left a message on WP:RSN which was not neutral, in violation of WP:CANVASSING. (t · c) buidhe 05:09, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks @Buidhe: I was not aware that at WP:RSN, I was not allowed to take a position in my notification post, particularly since my last post there on this issue garnered only support for inclusion of this material. I've edited the post per your recommendations, removing my own view. I hope it looks right now? Cheers, -Darouet (talk) 12:31, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Just a brief note on this sentence: The use of hypothesize and circumstantial contradicts Darouet’s claim that Freije described CIA involvement as likely. This is absurd and wildly confused sophistry: the words do nothing of the sort, and any competent reader can recognize that. "Hypothesize" means they draw by inductive reasoning the conclusion mentioned, it is a statement of fact about the content of the book and implies no value judgement about the merits of the(ir) reasoning. The word circumstantial means that the evidence requires a logical step of reasoning; again it makes no value judgement about the merits of the reasoning. The Bartleys state that the evidence is of this type. The word in the relevant section of the review which does make a value judgement is "compelling", meaning "Not able to be refuted; inspiring conviction" (OED), or "convincing" (M-W). Cambial Yellowing❧ 00:40, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Hm. It seems to me I have seen the phrase "compelling but circumstantial evidence" used to describe evidence that is strong but not conclusive. I will get back to you on this. Rgr09 (talk) 21:41, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

I added the official denials on this to the Felix Rodriguez article....it might be a good idea to use them here as well. Not sure how to address the problem of Plumlee's (obvious) credibility issues. He doesn't have a wiki article and inserting those issues might be awkward (since they are tangential to this particular one).Rja13ww33 (talk) 22:43, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

• Bringing the article current: The USAToday article cited above is a source for the current state of the 2013 BJP accusations. It introduces the BJP claim of U.S. government involvement in Camarena’s murder, but does not purport to explain why he was involved. It gives the names of informants who have gone on record with accusations about the CIA paramilitary officer, and a DEA "official" (unnamed) who they say were present at discussions of Camarena's kidnapping and/or his interrogation. This description is accurate, without bringing in problematic claims via the Bartley book. Note the article does not mention Lawrence Harrison at all. It does not mention Plumlee at all. There is no reason to suppose the DOJ is interested in talking to either of these men (see section below).

The USAToday article also mentions the reexamination of the Camarena case by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and some of the doubts about the new claims. The reexamination and doubts should be mentioned in the article as well, but doubts are NOT included in the proposed addition, an omission which gives a false impression of the current status of the accusations. The USAToday article is unfortunately not completely accurate on details of the previous U.S. Camarena trials. These details should be checked against Shannon and Kuykendall before using.

Another important element to bring the article up to date is the DOJ decision to drop the Camarena charges against Juan Matta. I have added an update on this to the Matta article which gives sources. Charges have been dropped against other people in the 88-92 Camarena trials as well. This information is needed to bring the article up to date. It is one reason the AUSA is questioning witnesses again. The DOJ would like to keep the people convicted in the earlier trials in prison if they could. Rgr09 (talk) 07:05, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• Areas of dispute in the proposed addition: The two men who are described as CIA "assets" in the proposed addition are an issue for me. The word "asset" is not used to describe these men in any of the sources ((B&B actually call Harrison a "deep cover agent"). What is their affiliation with CIA? There should be a cited reliable source for whatever they say they were called. One of these men, Plumlee, claims his CIA career included involvement in the JFK assassination. Vincent Bugliosi, in his book Reclaiming History, calls this man a fraud. Bugliosi’s book was published by Norton and reviewed favorably in major papers. This is not my personal opinion or research. If Plumlee is mentioned as proposed, his name, his JFK claim, and Bugliosi’s evaluation should be mentioned too.

The other “asset”, Harrison, denied under oath in court any association with American intelligence agencies in Mexico. If he is mentioned in the text this should be mentioned as well. Bartley’s book states that this man did NOT tell Bartley he was a CIA agent, only implied it. The citation for this is given above. If this man is mentioned as proposed, this fact should go in as well. The addition does not clearly state what these “assets” contributed to the 2013 accusations. This should be corrected.

The motivation for killing Camarena is described in the proposed addition as follows: "Camarena was killed with the complicity of the CIA after he uncovered its drug trafficking operations in Mexico, which were used to fund the Contras in Nicaragua". As cited above, however, B&B says: "Manuel Buendía was slain on behalf of the United States because of what he had learned about U.S.-Mexico collusion with narcotics traffickers, international arms dealers, and other governments in support of Reagan administration efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua" and "DEA S/A Enrique Camarena Salazar was abducted, interrogated, and killed for the same reason." Whatever the motive is alleged to for Camarena's murder, it should be cited to a specific passage, and accurately stated. The proposed addition does not do so.

Instead, the addition waffles about CIA "complicity", meaning CIA helped others do it, or failed to stop it. B&B do not waffle: "Buendia was slain on behalf of the United States." Ditto Camarena. Rgr09 (talk) 08:04, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The Last Narc (documentary)

I've not looked for better references yet, but the content being edit-warred over looks grossly undue at best. [92]. Maybe if we can find some high-quality, independent sources about it, but that New York Post article is not. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 23:33, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

As noted above, there are high quality sources for this content. The last source we should ever turn to is the NY Post. Also, today I learned about the Last Narc documentary, and made an article about it. But I haven't watched it yet. I think we should prioritize academic sources and newspaper articles, since we have them. -Darouet (talk) 00:22, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

I think we should pay attention also to the sources of the documentary itself, first of all the former DEA Héctor Berellez that led the investigation of Camarena's murder in operation Leyenda:

Hector Berrellez: Former D.E.A. Supervisor and Special Agent, thirty years experience in counter terrorism and narcotics enforcement. One of the most highest decorated Drug Enforcement Agent in the history of the bureau. He was recognized by the U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese for heroism. He received the Federal Bar Association Medal of Valor, the Federal Executive Board Chairman's Special Award. And is credited for his handling and solving of the kidnap, torture and murder of undercover DEA Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena by drug traffickers in Guadalajara, Mexico in which Hector received the prestigious DEA Administrator's Award. He has a BS and BA from the University of Phoenix, AZ and a Doctorate degree in International Law from the University of Michoacan. He is considered an expert by the U.S. Government in terrorism, security protection and threat assessment. He has implemented anti-terrorist security measures for U.S. Embassies in Central and South America.

Phil Jordan: Former DEA Intelligence Director.

Mike Holm: DEA resident agent in charge in Guadalajara with Camarena.

Manny Medrano: Former Assistant US Attorney, Lead Prosecutor, Camarena Case.

It's obvious that the testimony of these guys in the documentary needs to be in the articles of Camarena and Félix Rodríguez.--Cocedi (talk) 08:56, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Where did you get this information? Sources please. One place you are dead wrong: Mike Holm was Berrellez's supervisor in the DEA Los Angeles office. James Kuykendall was Camarena's supervisor in Guadalajara from 1982 un until Camarena's murder. Rgr09 (talk) 10:14, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

There's currently a lawsuit going on now over the documentary. Jaydoggmarco (talk) 06:41, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I saw that James Kuykendall released a statement through his lawyer last month suggesting that he was considering legal action. - Location (talk) 15:59, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@Location: And now we have another user adding back conspiracy theories. Jaydoggmarco (talk) 01:51, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

The Last Narc has already been heavily analyzed here. There is a clear evidence that Berrellez and his people are liars. According to that info, I made changes at wiki The Last Narc page. Feel free to edit my amateur's contribution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SaintSanti (talk • contribs) 01:02, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I just read that thread, Interesting. Jaydoggmarco (talk) 05:39, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

References

Transcript of testimonies - credibility of Berrellez

Hi, I see past discussion about murder of Camarena. This is transcript of proceedings from late '80s/90s (Camarena case, court in Los Angeles): http://www.reneverdugo.org/pdf/ Maybe it will help you.

There are official testimonies of men like Harrison, Berrellez, Godoy, Lopez and many, many other people. If you compare their testimonies with their words from The Last Narc (and other interviews), you will see the huge differences. Not only in big cases like 'corrupt Kuykendall', but also in small things like 'how Berrellez found Harrison':

In november 2020, Berrellez told at one interview that he talked with Harrison in Mexico. Harrison agreed with cooperation, but then he disappeared, so Berrellez was looking for him for one year and he finally found him in Mexico's mountains. In reality, as you can see in those transcripts, Harrison talked with Berrellez for the first time in California, when he was already recruited by Mexicans working for DEA.

At these transcripts, you can also find there that one of the witnesses told that he was imprisoned because he didn't lie, how Berrellez wants. Berrellez visited him in jail and told him that if he doesn't tell the court what he wants, he will never see his family again.

There were many doubts about credibility of all Berrellez's witnesses. Except one. There was only one Berrellez's witness, who was seen as trustworthy - Hector Cervantes Santos. And this is what Cerventes told few years later: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jan-17-mn-9150-story.html

If you have time, you can read those transcripts. You will see that nobody ever said any single word about Kuykendall's or CIA involvement in murder of Camarena. Moreover, except Berrellez's witnesses, nobody ever said anything about alleged meetings prior kidnap of Camarena (between Mexico's politicians and Guadalajara Cartel). And even those Berrellez's witnesses sometimes denied themselves. Btw, as a bodyguards of drug traffickers, they used to made less than $50/mo. But when Berrellez recruited them, they were all paid $3,000/mo by DEA.

I was able to read maybe 10% of all material, so I don't know everyhing from that. Anyway, good start for you can be "Related Cases" > "Zuno Arce" > "Trail Transcripts". By the way, there are also details about burned field in Zacatecas (1984). You can add them to this article about Camarena since it was mainly his job. SaintSanti (talk) 00:05, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

CIA allegations section

In his RfC close, S Marshall stated that we should "include a section on the alleged CIA participation in Camarena's interrogation," but that the section should not "read like Darouet's proposed edit." That proposed edit can be seen here [93]. S Marshall added that text linking the CIA to Camarena's killing "requires in-text attribution to a specific source as well as an inline citation that directly supports the claim," and wrote that this issue should not be given "undue prominence."

Aquillion suggested holding another RfC, but whether we do or don't hold an RfC, we need to decide what text is being considered for addition to this article.

Academic sources with meaningful discussion of possible CIA involvement in Camarena's death include:

• Bartley, Russell H., and Sylvia Erickson Bartley. Eclipse of the Assassins: The CIA, Imperial Politics, and the Slaying of Mexican Journalist Manuel Buendía. University of Wisconsin Pres, 2015 [94].
• Pansters, Wil G. "Drug trafficking, the informal order, and caciques. Reflections on the crime-governance nexus in Mexico." Global Crime 19.3-4 (2018): 315-338 [95].
• Freije, Vanessa. "Eclipse of the Assassins: The CIA, Imperial Politics, and the Slaying of Mexican Journalist Manuel Buendía." (2016): 766-768 [96].
• Pansters, Wil G. "Spies, Assassins, and Statesmen in Mexico’s Cold War." (2017): 143-156 [97].

Newspaper articles include:

• Tucson Sentinel, "Blood on the Corn. Bowden: How the CIA may have tortured one of America's own," by Charles Bowden & Molly Molloy, April 7th 2015.
• Processo, "A Camarena lo ejecutó la CIA, no Caro Quintero, by Luis Chaparro and Jesus Esquivel, 12 October 2013.
• LA Weekly, "How a dogged L.A. DEA agent unraveled the CIA'S alleged role in the murder of Kiki Camarena," by Jason McGahan, 1 July 2020.
• El Pais, "“The CIA helped kill DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena,” say witnesses," by Juan Diego Quesada, 15 October 2013.
• Fox News, "US intelligence assets in Mexico reportedly tied to murdered DEA agent," by William La Jeunesse and Lee Ross, 10 October 2013.
• Fox News, "US probing claims that CIA operative, DEA official betrayal led to murder of agent: report", by Greg Norman, 28 February 2020.
• USA Today, "Killed by a cartel. Betrayed by his own? US reexamines murder of federal agent featured in ‘Narcos,' by Brad Heath, 28 February, 2020.

A relatively high-quality blog post has been offered as capable of providing a counternarrative:

• [98] "TV Spies: Amazon’s Wacky CIA Drug War Conspiracy Flick Draws Qanon Raves," on Spy Talk, by Elaine Shannon, Sep 27, 2020.

Lastly, there's this book by journalist Jesús Esquivel, that's referenced by some of the academics:

• [99] "La CIA, Camarena y Caro Quintero: La historia secreta," Penguin Random House Mexico, 2014.

If you think there's another source we really must mention, please post it here. Since nobody has done so, I'll draft a text proposal shortly. -Darouet (talk) 20:57, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if this helps....but this is how I wrote this whole thing up on the Felix Rodríguez page:[100]. I think it's pretty fair but it may not capture all the skepticism that some may want (or was available when I wrote it up).Rja13ww33 (talk) 21:27, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Rja13ww33: your text is a good start. It also includes some sources I haven't mentioned, above. While many (not all) of the sources mention Rodríguez, I'm hesitant to argue that we should do so here, and I'm not sure it's necessary. I'll try to copy some of your text as a template. -Darouet (talk) 22:24, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

@Rja13ww33 and Aquillion: here's my effort at a draft:

Allegations of CIA involvement

A number of former DEA agents, CIA agents, Mexican police officers, and historians contend that the CIA was complicit in Camarena's death.[1-7] DEA agent Hector Berréllez writes after he was named director of the DEA's investigation into Camarena's death Operation Leyenda in 1989, Mexican police informants and CIA agent Victor Harrison told him that Camarena had been killed with CIA complicity.[1,2] According to Berrellez, in response to his discovery he was told by senior DEA officials not to investigate possible CIA involvement, was threatened by the CIA, and removed from the investigation.[1,2]

Since the Mexican government released Rafael Caro Quintero from prison in 2013, Harrison and the police informants have been joined by several former DEA agents who similarly argue that the CIA had participated in Camarena's killing.[1-6] Between 2013–2015, the Mexican newspaper Proceso,[3] journalist Jesús Esquivel,[4] journalists Chuck Bowden and Molly Malloy,[5] and historians Russell and Silvia Bartley[6] published investigative reports and books making the same allegation. They write that Camarena, like Mexican journalist Manuel Buendía, discovered that the CIA helped organize drug trafficking from Mexico into the United States in order to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua as a part of the Cold War. Historian Wil Pansters explains that US victory in the Cold War was more important to the CIA than the DEA's War on Drugs:[7]

"Since the overriding concern of the CIA was the anti-Sandinista project, it trumped the DEA's task of combating drug trafficking, and covertly incorporated (or pressured) parts of the Mexican state into subservience. Buendía had found out about the CIA-contra-drugs-DFS connection, which seriously questioned Mexican sovereignty, while Camarena learned that the CIA had infiltrated the DEA and sabotaged its work so as to interfere with the clandestine contra-DFS-traffickers network. They knew too much and were eliminated on the orders of the U.S. with Mexican complicity. Later official investigations attempted to limit criminal responsibility to the dirty connections between drug traffickers, secret agents and corrupt police, leaving out the (geo)political ramifications."[7]

In 2019 the United States Department of Justice began reinvestigating Camarena's murder,[8] and in 2020 Amazon Studies released a documentary, The Last Narc,[1,9] supporting the allegations. The CIA has said the allegations are untrue.[8] Camarena biographer Elaine Shannon describes the allegations as "another Deep State conspiracy theory," and interviews other former DEA agents including Jack Lawn, who agree with her.[10]

Full details are given for references above, but listed briefly for clarity here, they are [1] 2020 Amazon documentary, [2] 2020 Berrellez book, [3] 2013 Proceso investigative report, [4] 2014 Esquivel book, [5] 2015 Bowden and Malloy investigative report, [6] 2015 Bartley book, [7] 2017 Pansters review, [8] 2018 USA Today article, [9] 2020 Variety article, [10] 2020 Shannon blog post.

This text doesn't mention more minor people involved by name, and instead places an emphasis on the secondary sources: journalists and historians. It also attempts to avoid duplicated references. Let me know what you think. -Darouet (talk) 17:09, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

@Darouet: Hi, I have got few questions (on anybody): 1) Did Proceso, Esquivel, Bowden, Malloy, Russell and Bartley investigate Camarena's murder, or they "only" investigated CIA and drugs in global? In case of Camarena, they only cited people around Berrellez and his five sources? Or did they find another people, who supports these allegations? I think this is a big difference. 2) And if there are is only one group of people, which make these allegations, they should be cited in an article only once, shouldn't they? I mean - in 2013, Berrellez' and his 5 witnesses made these allegations. And after that, they repeated it many times. If you write 5 books with same allegation, is correct to write that these 5 books supports this allegation? You for example write that Amazon's documentary supports the allegations. But people who originally made the allegations are the same, as those talking in the Amazon's documentary. So they supports their own allegation. 3) Is correct to "cite" Harrison since there is not any article which shows that he really made these allegations (or at least I have never seen it)? I only found that he said: "I don't know who killed Camarena [...] And if CIA would want to kill him, they are not so stupid to do it personally, so they would ask Mexicans." Same in case of second Berrellez' source Calderoni (but he is not cited here). All rest three sources (Lira, Godoy, Lopez) at least gave some testimonies for some newspapers (despite they change them every few years). 4) Wouldn't be better to call Berrellez "one of the Leyenda supervisors" instead of "Leyenda supervisor"? Leyenda / Camarena's investigation runs since 1985 until these days, and there were many supervisors. If he is "supervisor", it sounds like nobody else was investigating Camarena's case, so Berrellez' version is the only one (and it could also sound that it is an official DEA's finding). But in fact, no other Leyenda investigator made same allegations, moreover two former DEA's directors opposed his findings (despite one of them calls CIA the drug traffickers) 5) I respect that you said that wikipedians can't make own research or something like that. But to make this kind of an article, use simply must do some own research, or to have an own opinion, right? For example source A says: CIA killed Camarena; B says KGB killed Camarena; C says DFS killed Camarena. So wikipedian must decide, which source is credible, or not? So if we can see that CIA's involvement was openly discussed at Camarena's trial in '90s, how credible is a statement from 2013 that nobody was allowed to investigate CIA in '90s? Harrison openly talked about CIA, DFS, Contras and that Guadalajara cartel had agreement with CIA. Godoy, Lopez and Lira didn't. Harrison personally never said that CIA killed Camarena. Godoy, Lopez and Lira did, but 26 years later. None of them said that El Chapo was involved in murders of all Americans in 1985 (Camarena, La Langosta, Jehovists). Until 2018, when Godoy saw El Chapo torturing / killing all of them. Same Godoy said at trial that he didn't work for cartel in those days. Godoy even repeated it in 2013 in interview for The Blood in the Corn. Lopez always said that Jose Luis Gallardo 'consulate guy' identified Camarena, but in The Last Narc he said it was Rene Verdugo. Lira said in 2013 in interview that he didn't participate in Camarena's abducation (he 'only' was at Lope de Vega during the torture), but in 2020 for The Last Narc he said that Jaime Kuykendall identified Camarena. You can say that they change testimonies because fear of CIA. But you can't say that they didn't name El Chapo or Kuykendall because any fear. They always could, but they didn't. Until years, when both of them became more famous. SaintSanti (talk) 19:41, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

@SaintSanti: since the cited sources answer these questions, I think it's best if we don't elaborate in the text, and instead allow readers to follow the sources if they're interested. That's the appropriate role of an encyclopedia. -Darouet (talk) 04:31, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Second draft

I've shortened the text in this second draft. Per the RfC, there was consensus to include this in the article, but S Marshall did insist that the text be changed to accommodate objections. If there's no feedback here — S Marshall requested discussion before inclusion — I'll launch another RfC to see what the community thinks.

Allegations of CIA involvement

A number of former DEA agents, CIA agents, Mexican police officers, and historians contend that the CIA was complicit in Camarena's death.[1-7] Between 2013–2015, the Mexican newspaper Proceso,[3] journalist Jesús Esquivel,[4] journalists Chuck Bowden and Molly Malloy,[5] and historians Russell and Silvia Bartley[6] published investigative reports and books making the same allegation. They write that Camarena, like Mexican journalist Manuel Buendía, discovered that the CIA helped organize drug trafficking from Mexico into the United States in order to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua as a part of the Cold War. Historian Wil Pansters explains that US victory in the Cold War was more important to the CIA than the DEA's War on Drugs:[7]

"Since the overriding concern of the CIA was the anti-Sandinista project, it trumped the DEA's task of combating drug trafficking, and covertly incorporated (or pressured) parts of the Mexican state into subservience. Buendía had found out about the CIA-contra-drugs-DFS connection, which seriously questioned Mexican sovereignty, while Camarena learned that the CIA had infiltrated the DEA and sabotaged its work so as to interfere with the clandestine contra-DFS-traffickers network. They knew too much and were eliminated on the orders of the U.S. with Mexican complicity. Later official investigations attempted to limit criminal responsibility to the dirty connections between drug traffickers, secret agents and corrupt police, leaving out the (geo)political ramifications."[7]

In 2019 the United States Department of Justice began reinvestigating Camarena's murder,[8] and in 2020 Amazon Studies released a documentary, The Last Narc,[1,9] supporting the allegations. The CIA has said the allegations are untrue.[8] Camarena biographer Elaine Shannon describes the allegations as "another Deep State conspiracy theory," and interviews other former DEA agents including Jack Lawn, who agree with her.[10]

The references (see above) are [1] 2020 Amazon documentary, [2] 2020 Berrellez book, [3] 2013 Proceso investigative report, [4] 2014 Esquivel book, [5] 2015 Bowden and Malloy investigative report, [6] 2015 Bartley book, [7] 2017 Pansters review, [8] 2018 USA Today article, [9] 2020 Variety article, [10] 2020 Shannon blog post. -Darouet (talk) 00:11, 16 February 2021 (UTC)