On September 10th, Reuters published a special report explaining that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has been working closely with elite “narco-hunting” units within the Mexican military with the full knowledge and authorization of the Mexican government.
One high profile detention that resulted from this collaboration was the arrest in January of 2023 of Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán who is currently serving a life sentence in a federal supermax prison in Colorado.
As noted in the report, an elite element of the Mexican Army that had been “trained, equipped and vetted by the CIA” was deployed to actually execute this particular arrest.
In fact, according to Reuters, these special units “have played key roles in planning or executing the majority of captures of high-profile [cartel figures] in recent years.”
The report further noted that, at this point, there are at least two such CIA-vetted military units consisting of “hundreds of CIA-trained special forces” soldiers operating within Mexico’s larger military infrastructure.
There is, of course, extensive documentation of the CIA’s historic involvement in Mexico ranging from Cold War intelligence operations to collaboration with various Mexican security agencies including the Mexican military.
Most recently, for example, it was widely reported that the CIA was operating a covert drone program out of Mexico with the permission of the Mexican government. These surveillance flights have even been credited with providing the Mexican government with intelligence that led to the arrests of several prominent Mexican cartel figures including Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán both in 2014 and 2016. The existence of this particular covert program has been acknowledged at the highest levels of the Mexican military by Mexico’s Secretary of Defense, Gen. Ricardo Trevilla.
The Reuters special report, however, constitutes the first news coverage to present detailed evidence and corroboration relating specifically to CIA-vetted units operating within the Mexican military.
What’s also notable about the report are the insights into the apparent configuration and dynamics of U.S. narcotics interdiction efforts within Mexico. For decades, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was perceived to be the lead agency when it came to U.S. anti-narcotics efforts inside of Mexico. It’s currently the CIA, however, according to the report, that “spearheads” the inter-agency interdiction effort within Mexico not the DEA.
The report appears to further suggest that the seating arrangement in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico reflects this new power dynamic. While agencies like the DEA and Homeland Security Investigations have been relegated to the lower floors of the embassy, CIA analysts have been positioned on the same floor as Ronald Johnson, the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, himself a former CIA officer.
Reuters based its reporting on conversations with “current and former U.S. and Mexican security sources, including former CIA officers, diplomats from both countries, U.S. anti-narcotics agents, and Mexican military leaders who worked closely with the U.S. spy agency.”
During a morning news conference last Friday, however, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum disputed the accuracy of the report. While acknowledging cooperation between the CIA and elements of the Mexican military, Sheinbaum took issue with the report’s central claim that CIA agents are working alongside the Mexican military in operational roles as ‘false.’
Despite the Mexican president’s repudiation, however, Reuters is standing by its reporting issuing a statement asserting that the report has been ‘mischaracterized’ by the Mexican government.
