Mexico Investigates CIA Agents' Deaths in Drug Lab Operation

In other world news, the Mexican president says her government hadn't been informed of the presence of US officials in an anti-drug operation in the northern state of Chihuahua, where they died in a car crash. They'd reportedly been working for the CIA. There have been conflicting accounts about the role the Americans played in dismantling the clandestine drug lab, underscoring heightened US involvement in security operations in Mexico and across the region. As Eliza Herbert reports, days after two US officials died in a car crash returning from this Clanderstein drug lab in Chihuahua, the Mexican president has made clear her government was not informed of their presence in the operation. So far, the information we have is that

they were indeed working together with the Chihuahua government. Let's put it that way. So, the attorney's office needs to conduct a full investigation to determine if the constitution or the national security law was violated. After the incident first occurred, the Chihuahua prosecutor announced the two US officials died alongside two local investigators when the car they were traveling in as part of a convoy swerved off the road and exploded. He said they were there for advisory support and training as part of a regular exchange, but the state's version quickly conflicted with the federal. When first asked, Shine Bomb said there were no joint operations underway with Washington. Then US media identified the

two personnel as members of the CIA. I like I think she's a terrific person. I would say every single time I talked to her, I offered to send troops. During Donald Trump's second term, the US president has been demanding that Mexico step up the fight against drug trafficking and has threatened to impose new tariffs or launch a military operation if the country does not produce results quickly. But Shine has consistently rejected his pressure to deploy US forces in the fight. and Mexican law forbids US military and law enforcement from operating in the country without government authorization.

Well, for more, let's cross live now to France 24's Yoan Guerrero who's joining us from Mexico City. Yo, good to have you with us on the program. There have been days really of conflicting reports about this incident at the weekend. It all seems still rather murky in terms of the detail. Are we any closer to knowing why exactly these CIA operatives as they're being described were in Mexico? Well, certainly Murky and when you get into the CIA and spies is often a qu a question of smoke and mirrors. So, there's basically two versions. There's what the uh attorney general of Chihuahua said and currently actually

the Mexico City federal government are kind of going along with this saying they were in Mexico on a training role that they didn't actively take part in this raid on this super meth lab or a network of super meth labs maybe the biggest meth lab network ever discovered in Mexico and that the uh Chihuahua while state police happened to pick them up on the way back from the lab and then this was on a mountain road at 2:00 in the morning. It went off the road and crashed and burned. Now that's quite a difficult version to believe and there's been various people including sources I've spoken to who say no these were CIA agents who it was their technology which helped track the lab using CIA drones

which are uh it's now completely confirmed that they're operating around Mexico but also possibly with human intelligence and they took part in the raid maybe to make sure the Mexican officials really dismantled it. Now that's very controversial because there's a Mexican national security law which was approved in 2020 which says very clearly that or foreign agents especially American agents cannot physically take part in these raids. Now as was mentioned in the report uh President Trump has been pushing for more US involvement and this could be some kind of compromise. So you see a lot of people kind of skirting around what could have really happened. I think the government of Claudia Shinbam doesn't really want to confront the

United States over this even if laws were broken though it could have more conflict with the Chili Wuhawa state government which is uh run by the opposition national action party and is there any way of knowing exactly how much role the CIA currently plays in fighting drug cartels in Mexico? It's really reignited quite a sensitive debate there, hasn't it? Yeah, I mean absolutely uh the CIA definitely involved. I mean when you look at the fight against drug cartels, people first of all think of the drug enforcement administration, the DEA, but actually many US agencies are involved in this fight uh including ICE, including the FBI, including uh the Treasury, Homeland Security, and the CIA. and they've been involved in

various operations we know about uh this year and last year such as the takedown of El Meno, perhaps the most powerful drug trafficker in Mexico. Again, it was meant to be a CIA drone which helped locate him at these uh cabins in Halisco and it is very credible they were involved in this. So they're kind of deeply involved in the role and it's controversial because the idea particularly in Mexico with a very nationalist tradition. The idea of the CIA kind of running covert operations in Mexico territory is very controversial.

Sparks a lot of sentiments. What are they doing here? Why are they messing around in our country? Some defenders will say, well, they're working with the Mexicans to fight uh drug traffickers, to fight cartels, and that's a good thing. Uh but it does appear if they were involved in that raid, it would be breaking Mexican law. Yoan, for now, thank you. That is Yoan Gilo, our correspondent in Mexico City.