Dea: CIA Trained Guerrillas In Mexico -- Report Says Ranch Owned By Convicted Drug Lord Was Used In 1980S

LOS ANGELES - The CIA trained Guatemalan guerrillas at a Mexican ranch owned by a drug lord convicted in the murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena, a federal report says.

But the Drug Enforcement Administration report does not detail why the guerrillas were being trained, nor whether the Central Intelligence Agency knew who owned the ranch.

The CIA denied the report, details of which the Los Angeles Times published today.

``The whole story is nonsense,'' agency spokesman Mark Mansfield said today. ``We have not trained Guatemalan guerrillas on that ranch or anywhere else.''

The report, completed in February, said that the Guatemalan guerrillas were trained during the early 1980s at a ranch near Veracruz owned by Rafael Caro Quintero, and that a guerrilla clash there left 19 Mexican police dead.

Caro and two other men are serving prison terms in Mexico for their roles in the 1985 torture-murder of Camarena and his pilot in Guadalajara. Four other men are on trial in Los Angeles over their alleged involvement in the slaying.

The DEA report became available in Los Angeles on Tuesday night after U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie ordered prosecutors to turn the information over to the defense, the Times said.

It was based on an interview two DEA agents conducted in September with government informant Laurence Victor Harrison. Harrison, according to court documents, ran a communications network for drug lords and their Mexican law-enforcement allies in the early and mid-1980s, the Times said.

Harrison told the DEA agents that CIA operations personnel once stayed at the home of drug trafficker Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo - also convicted in the Camarena case.

On Feb. 9, Harrison said the CIA used as a cover the Mexican Federal Security Directorate. At the same time, he said, members of that directorate were working with ``major drug overlords'' to ship narcotics to the U.S.

Sometime between 1981 and 1984, members of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police who went to the ranch on a separate drug investigation were confronted by the guerrillas, Harrison said.

``As a result of the confrontation, 19 MFJP agents were killed. Many of the bodies showed signs of torture; the bodies had been drawn and quartered,'' he said.