Narco News Commentary:

Narco News Commentary:

On November 30, 1998, the above-mentioned Manuel Bartlett was an aspiring candidate for the ruling PRI party's nomination for president of Mexico. As such, he was in the way of the ambitions of Francisco Labastida. On that day, in an interview with Zeta magazine of Tijuana, US Ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow signaled -- for the first time -- Washington's bias toward Labastida.

"Bartlett Must Declare"

Always looking forward, the US State Department instructed its Mexican spokesman to make a verbal hit upon Bartlett, thus "decertifying" him and, in effect, destroying his presidential chances. Davidow boomed: "Bartlett must declare!" He said that Bartlett faces a subpoena in US federal court in California over the 1985 assassination of US DEA agent Kiki Camarena. The Bartlett campaign never recovered from that blow, and Labastida, a year later, was crowned as the PRI-Washington candidate for the presidency of Mexico.

The man who one Mexican commentator has called "Ambassador Big Mouth" has suddenly fallen silent (as he tends to do whenever the tough questions are pitched to him). Because now that Davidow's rooster in the Mexican presidential cockfight has tapped Bartlett to run his own campaign, anything more that Davidow says about Bartlett will shine poorly upon Labastida.

Last Saturday, May 24, 2000, Ambassador Davidow held a closed-door meeting with Labastida in Mexico City. It was a day after the nationally televised debate between Labastida and his two leading rivals, Vicente Fox and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas.

But what of the late DEA agent Kiki Camarena? How do current DEA agents feel about the most recent betrayal by the US ambassador to the memory of their fallen brother?
Drop-a-dime: narconews@hotmail.com

And what about US and Mexican journalists, who, like the DEA agents, have lost at least one colleague under the watch of the man who now runs the Labastida campaign?
Where is the historic memory among journalists and law enforcers of both countries?
Carlos Ramírez points out that Labastida has offered Bartlett more than total immunity and the continued cover-up of the Buendía and Camarena assassinations: he has offered Bartlett a continued important role in the governing of Mexico.

That Jeffrey Davidow is complicit in the cover-up of the assassination of a Mexican journalist is nothing new for the narco-ambassador. Davidow was the US official in charge of covering up the assassination of US journalist Charles Horman in Chile in 1973. Davidow also protects and defends another key Labastida operative, the ambassador's traveling buddy Carlos Hank González, father of Jorge Hank Rohn, presumed responsible in the 1988 narco-assassination of Tijuana journalist Félix Miranda. (Another silence that we hope will be broken soon is that of Miranda colleague Jesús Blancornelas, editor of Zeta magazine, regarding the Davidow-Hank axis. Blancornelas probably did not know, when he interviewed Davidow in 1998 about Bartlett, of Davidow's enjoyment of Hank hospitality from the family mansion in Mexico to the Central American republic of Costa Rica.)

Davidow is the protector of what Mexicans call the "dinosaur" faction of the ruling PRI party in Mexico. Like the mad scientist in the film Jurassic Park he is not only unleashing a terror upon his own colony that is Mexico, but one that cannot be controlled by the 3,000 mile US-Mexican border.

Nothing from Davidow, the corrupt narco-ambassador of the United States in Mexico, surprises us anymore. But we at Narco News are just a little bit taken aback by the reported participation, and seek a clarification from, two US political consultants in the Bartlett-managed Labastida campaign.

"Carville and Greenberg Must Declare"

The publisher of The Narco News Bulletin makes a personal request:
I like Jim Carville. Always have. Straight-talking, ethical, loyal, a great writer and orator, sharp mind at not only politics but also economics, and with a healthy distrust of the Washington establishment in which he moves. I liked Carville before I knew him. And I have always liked him since.

We have dined together on his turf: The Palms restaurant in Washington DC; and closer to mine, the hot-dog cart on the MIT campus in Massachusetts. I think I understand Carville pretty well; from his formation under LSU professor and author T. Harry Williams to his marriage with GOP consultant and TV host Mary Matalin, who also has earned my bipartisan friendship and maximum respect.

I don't know Stanley Greenberg, the White House pollster, at all. He's married to US Rep. Laura de Rosa (D-Connecticut). From a distance, he always struck me as a bit technocratic for my tastes. Nothing wrong with that: the world needs bean counters.
I do have a pretty good idea how Carville and Greenberg got messed up in the Labastida campaign. The President of the United States, Bill Clinton, acting on terrible advice from the narco-ambassador Jeffrey Davidow, once again preyed upon Carville's sense of loyalty and asked him to take on Labastida as a client.

Carville did a pretty good job for Labastida in the primary: Working closely with then-Labastida campaign manager Esteban Moctezuma, they beat back the primary challenge of Tabasco governor Roberto Madrazo Pintado last November 7th.

But Mexican politics isn't rocket science: it is more complex and difficult than mere astro-physics. And in recent weeks, the Labastida campaign has, to say the least, struggled.

After Labastida's poor performance in the first presidential debate, Moctezuma -- the key operative of the liberal wing of the PRI -- was purged. And Labastida brought back "the dinosaurs" like Bartlett, Carlos Hank and the narco-fixer Emilio Gamboa Patrón.

Thus, here they go again: The July 2nd election in Mexico promises to be fraught with Electoral Fraud. That is: vote-buying, intimidation, false voter credentials, stuffing of ballot boxes and -- Bartlett's specialty since he engineered the fall of the election computer system in 1988 to ensure Carlos Salinas would be declared victor over the people's choice Cárdenas -- computer tampering.

Now there are published rumors in Mexico that Greenberg, the pollster, and Carville, the consultant, are out of the campaign along with Moctezuma. Labastida, interestingly, has brought in the favored consultant of Davidow's Pinochet forces in Chile to finish the job.

Not knowing what goes on behind closed doors at the Oval Office, but knowing very well the personalities and the dynamics between them, my theory is that Clinton convinced Carville to take on Labastida as client with the usual ruse: That his participation would help usher in the "democratization" of Mexico.

The bloom is now off that rose. And Carville must know it. The question is (and knowing the players suggests a clear answer): Has James Carville left the Labastida campaign out of an attack of conscience after realizing just how dirty, undemocratic and stained with narco-money the 2000 Mexican presidential election has become?
The first US political reporter to get a response out of Carville will have an international story on his or her hands.

The questions:

Is Carville still a consultant to Labastida?

And if not, why did he leave?

And on a personal note to James: That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. We can all learn lessons from these experiences, no? If you want to take the iniciative to explain what happened between the Labastida campaign and you in your own words, I offer you every opportunity to speak, unedited and uncensored, here on The Narco News Bulletin.

from somewhere in a country called América, on this 16th memorial of the assassination of Manuel Buendía,