Exclusive – U.S. Declassifies Document on Bartlett and Camarena Case

A Freedom of Information request shows FBI suspicions of the politician date back to at least 1986

By Juan Alberto Cedillo and Ieva Jusionyte

With additional reporting and writing by Ioan Grillo

Para leer en español click aqui.

After the drug traffickers kidnapped DEA Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena they tortured him for more than 30 hours, keeping him awake with injections, before a blow to the head with a crowbar finally ended his life in February 1985. Yet almost four decades later, his case continues to reverberate on both sides of the Rio Grande, with accusations of involvement by top Mexican politicians, one who is still in office, and even CIA agents.

In the latest piece of the puzzle, the U.S. government has declassified a memorandum sent from the U.S. embassy in Mexico City to the director of the FBI in March 1986 concerning the case. The message states that U.S. agents were already suspicious by that date of the politician Manuel Bartlett Díaz of working with the traffickers who kidnapped and murdered Camarena. Bartlett was Mexico’s Interior Secretary when Camarena was killed, an office sometimes compared to vice president. He is currently director of Mexico’s state electricity company, the CFE.

The document was released after two Freedom of Information requests by the authors and has a declassification date stamp of August 12 this year. Spanning six pages and heavily redacted, the memo is an update from the “Legat,” which in FBI speak refers to an international office of the bureau and also the “legal attaché,” who heads that office. It references interviews with “confidential sources abroad” or CSA’s including what appears to be another Mexican official.

As the message says:

“Legat, Mexico City strongly suspects that [redacted] narcotics protection activities…reached perhaps to the Secretary of the Interior (Gobernación) Manuel Bartlett Díaz. While this is merely strong suspicions because of indications of widespread corruption and extortion activities of [redacted] it is not difficult to conclude logically that these activities ultimately benefit top leaders in the Mexican government.”

The message has a further reference to the Mexican politician, reporting that “the CSA speculated that Bartlett...,” but the rest of that sentence has been redacted. It adds that an informant’s “life would be in certain jeopardy” for talking to U.S. agents.

Bartlett has never been prosecuted in Mexico or the United States for working with drug traffickers. However, there have been allegations of him conspiring with gangsters in the Camarena case, including in a report in Mexico’s Proceso magazine in 2021, which said he would be detained for interrogation if he traveled to the United States. A Mexican opposition federal deputy went on to claim Bartlett was the “pez gordo” or “fat fish” behind the Camarena killing.

Former police officers from Jalisco state who are in the United States as witnesses on the case have also accused Bartlett. However, while their statements went into a DEA probe run by agent Hector Berrellez, who took over the investigation in 1989, the declassified memo shows there were suspicions aired by U.S. investigators several years earlier.

Bartlett has denied any involvement in the Camarena killing. In 2021, he described the accusation as “a lie, a fallacy.”

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