US Agent in Mexico Believed Kidnapped

WASHINGTON -- An agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Guadalajara, Mexico has been missing since Thursday and is believed to have been kidnapped by drug traffickers, a DEA spokesman said late last night.

Spokesman Robert Feldkamp said the agent, Enrique Salazar Camarena, "left the DEA office shortly after noon Thursday for a luncheon date with his wife and has not been seen since However, the DEA learned from an eyewitness Sunday that four armed men were seen abducting him and throwing him into a car in Guadalajara," Feldkamp added. "There has been no contact or ransom demand from the suspect kidnappers, as of now.

The kidnappers were believed to be drug traffickers, he noted.

Feldkamp said that "this is the first suspected kidnapping of a DEA agent in Mexico."

He added, however, that "last October in Guadalajara, the U.S. government vehicle of another DEA agent assigned to Guadalajara was machine-gunned by unknown in dividuals outside of the agent's house. There were no injuries or arrest in that incident."

Feldkamp said that since Camarena's reported abduction additional DEA agents have been rushed to Guadalajara, located about 280 miles west Mexico City, from the Mexican capital and Texas in to assist local police in searching for the missing agent.

He said the investigation into the incident was been coordinated through the office of the attorney general of Mexico.

Camarene, 37 has been been with the DEA since June 1974. Beginning in June 1980 he was assigned to the agency's office in Guadalajara where he lived with his wife. Genexo and three children Feldkamp said.

The spokesman said Camare a Mexican-born, naturalized U. S. citizen, was a Marine Corps veteran and graduate of Imperial Valley College in Imperial Calif.