2 US Officials Who Died After Mexico Drug Lab Bust Were CIA Operatives

Two U.S. officials who died in a car crash after a reported drug lab bust in Mexico on Saturday were operatives for the Central Intelligence Agency, reports have revealed, amid the Trump administration’s expansion of paramilitary and covert operations in Latin America.

The officers died alongside two Mexican military officials on their way from a raid on a drug lab in the state of Chihuahua. Their car reportedly skidded off the road, fell into a ravine, and exploded.

In a post announcing their deaths on X on Sunday, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson said that the officers were U.S. embassy staff.

However, numerous U.S. outlets found in reporting on Tuesday that the officials were not embassy staff, but CIA operatives, raising questions about the extent of the U.S.’s involvement against drug cartels in Mexico. Independent journalist Aída Chávez reported that the officers were part of the agency’s paramilitary arm, members of a unit known as Ground Branch.

Chihuahua’s attorney general has insisted that the U.S. operatives were not involved in the bust, and were participating in training exercises nearby “such as teaching the handling of drones” when they went to the scene of the operation. However, that seemed to contradict an earlier statement by the state attorney general’s office that said that the U.S. operatives were killed after “an operation to dismantle clandestine laboratories.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was reportedly not informed of the operation, and said she would be investigating whether any laws were broken. The CIA has not commented on the incident.

The CIA has a long history of intervening and even aiding the drug trade in Latin America, including in operations in Cuba, Mexico, and Panama. As part of his authoritarian “Donroe Doctrine,” Trump has sought to expand and combine the global war on terror and the failed war on drugs, with the intention of seizing power and control over other countries, especially those with left-wing leaders like Venezuela or, as Trump has mused in recent weeks, Cuba. Johnson, whom Trump appointed as ambassador to Mexico, is a former CIA and Special Forces officer who served in El Salvador during the 1980s.

Trump has long wanted to expand the U.S.’s involvement in Mexico, and has openly opined that Mexico should let him “take out the cartels.” As part of a larger push, the State Department has declared six Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

“Trump has reportedly been pushing for U.S. direct action against drug labs and traffickers in Mexico since his first term,” said Brian Finucane, senior adviser for the U.S. Program for the International Crisis Group, to The Intercept. “In his second term, he now has some officials in his administration eager to do a Sicario — making Mexico a battlefield in the new [global war on terror] against the narcos.”

Last year, Trump covertly signed a directive to allow the Pentagon to use military force against cartels. In January, as The Intercept points out, U.S. Northern Command established a task force to coordinate intelligence networks to combat “cartel networks,” including providing intelligence to the Mexican government on the matter. The CIA has reportedly flown drones over Mexico to “help track cartel leaders and locate illicit drug labs,” The Washington Post reports.