Two Central Intelligence Agency officials were killed in a crash over the weekend after they reportedly helped destroy a hidden drug laboratory in northern Mexico.
One American official and two other people familiar with the matter confirmed their identities,accordingto The Associated Press, but only after “days of contradictions from Mexican and U.S. authorities about the role that American officials played.”
As the news coverage of the incident makes clear, the incident puts a spotlight on U.S. anti-drug operations and raises the question of how far Mexico is willing to help without appearing to compromise its own sovereignty.
Two Mexican investigators were also killed in the vehicle crash. Mexican authorities said it happened while a convoy was returning from a special operation to destroy drug labs controlled by criminal organizations.
The Washington Post alsoreportedon the incident, writing that the deadly car crash triggered the promise of an investigation by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
She said she didn’t know about any joint operation with the U.S. and wanted to see if any Mexican national security laws were violated by it.
During a Tuesday press briefing, the AP reported, Sheinbaum said she wasn’t aware of any American officials being linked to the CIA, but did acknowledge that Mexican officials and the U.S. “were working together.”
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico, the State Department, and the CIA declined to comment when contacted by the news outlet.
The four individuals who died were returning from a meeting with Mexican authorities after the drug lab mission.
“Chihuahua’s attorney general, César Jáuregui Moreno, told Mexico’s El Universal newspaper that the Americans did not directly participate in the Mexican raid on the lab, which he called ‘perhaps one of the largest ever located,'” The Washington Post article explained. “Mexican officials said the car skidded off the road, fell down a ravine and exploded.”
Source: VidNews » Feed
