Is Trump signaling possible CIA covert operations against drug cartels?

January 21, 2025 by 1 Comment

CJNGTHERE WERE REPORTS LATE on Monday that United States President Donald Trump was considering authorizing covert operations by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against drug cartels. During his inaugural address on Monday afternoon, Trump said he would be “designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations”. Later the same day, the incoming president signed an executive order to that effect.

According to US law, the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation may be applied to non-US organizations which participate in activities that fall under the US Department of State’s definition of terrorism. Historically the FTO list has included leftwing militant groups, armed nationalist or separatist organizations, as well as Islamist violent extremist groups.

In some cases, FTO organizations have actively participated in the manufacture and distribution of illicit drugs. However, they are distinguished from purely criminal organizations by the overarching political motives that guide their activities. In contrast, drug cartels are primarily motivated by financial profit and tend to engage in politics only to the extent that doing so will boost their money-making ability.

While signing his executive order on Monday evening —one of nearly a hundred he signed that day— President Trum said he would instruct his administration “to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gang criminal networks” from the US and Mexico.

According to some observers, the FTO designation is “a strong indication” that the new US president plans to issue a presidential finding —a classified directive issued by the commander-in-chief— authorizing the CIA to engage in covert action targeting the drug cartels. A number of Trump allies have reportedly compiled a list of targeted cartels, which are located mostly in Mexico. They include notorious criminal organizations, such as the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), the Sinaloa Cartel, and the Gulf Cartel.

Additionally, the FTO designation might constitute the first step toward an American military presence inside Mexico, or missile strikes directed against designated FTO strongholds, including drug production and storage facilities. In November of last year, there were reports in the American media claiming that key figures in the incoming Trump administration were contemplating launching a military invasion of northern Mexico.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 21 January 2025 | Permalink

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Mexican drug cartel uses explosives-laden drones to attack police force

April 22, 2021 by Leave a comment

CJNGONE OF MEXICO’S MOST powerful drug cartels has reportedly used drones to attack police officers with explosives, according to local media reports. If confirmed, this incident will mark the first recorded use of drones by a Mexican drug cartel to attack law enforcement.

There is little public information about the attack. It reportedly occurred in El Aguaje, a small community in the state of Michoacán, located 350 miles west of Mexico City. The region is the birthplace of drug kingpin Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes. Otherwise known as “El Mencho”, Cervantes heads the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of Mexico’s most powerful. For the past month, the CJNG has engaged in a fierce and bloody war against a rival cartel, Cárteles Unidos (United Cartels) for control of the Michoacán region. The war has forced hundreds of residents to evacuate the area, according to local reports.

On Tuesday, a police unit was deployed along the Apatzingán-Aguililla highway to clear up a number of blockades that the cartels had put in place in order to impede each other’s operations. As they were clearing and repairing the highway, members of the police unit were reportedly attacked with at least two explosives-laden drones. Two officers were injured and were sent to hospital, but recovered fully and were released later on the same day.

No cartel has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, police sources said that the design of the drones used in Tuesday’s attack was very similar to two drones that were found in August of 2020 in Tepalcatepec, another city in the state of Michoacán. The drones were found inside an armored vehicle that CJNG members had abandoned during a failed attempt to raid Tepalcatepec, according to local media reports. The drones had built-in remote detonators and were attached to plastic containers that had been filled with C4 explosive and ball bearings, according to reports.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 22 April 2021 | Permalink

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US wants to share sensitive intelligence with Honduras to combat drug traffickers

December 3, 2020 by 1 Comment

Tony HernandezA PROPOSED MEMORANDUM OF understanding could enable the sharing of extremely sensitive intelligence between the United States and Honduras, as part of an effort by Washington to stop the impoverished Central American country from becoming a drug-trafficking stronghold. However, some in the US intelligence community are concerned that the sensitive intelligence given to the Honduran government may be passed on to the drug cartels by paid informants.

According to the Reuters news agency, American and Honduran officials are currently finalizing a proposed memorandum of understanding between the two nations’ intelligence communities. The memorandum would allow the US to provide the Honduran government with information about secret flights carrying drugs, which are known to regularly enter the Honduran airspace. The drugs are then trafficked north and subsequently enter the US through Mexico. Reuters said that, although the memorandum of understanding is in the drafting stage, the Honduran government appears to be willing to accommodate its conditions. The latter include provisions allowing for planes that do not identify themselves and are believed to be carrying drugs to be shot down by military aircraft.

There are, however, concerns among some in the US intelligence community that the Honduran government and its institutions cannot be trusted with sensitive intelligence. They argue that the corruption at all levels of the Honduran government and intelligence establishments is so extensive, that the drug traffickers will be able to access the information provided by the US government. It should be noted that last year a court in New York convicted one of Central America’s most notorious cocaine traffickers, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez (pictured), who is the brother of Honduras’ current president, Juan Orlando Hernandez. During the trial, it was repeatedly alleged that President Hernandez provided protection to his brother and other drug traffickers in Honduras.

But Honduran officials, including the country’s ambassador to the US, Luis Fernando Suazo Barahona, point out that those receiving sensitive intelligence form the US would be carefully vetted —and presumably polygraphed— prior to being given access to the information. Reuters reports that the US Department of State says it is “taking steps to resume information-sharing [with the government of Honduras] for aerial interception upon the successful negotiation and conclusion” of the memorandum of understanding that is currently being drafted.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 03 December 2020 | Permalink

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Mexican drug cartels distribute COVID-19 ‘care packages’ to build community capital

May 4, 2020 by Leave a comment

Gulf Cartel MexicoDrug cartels are organizing sophisticated ‘care package’ drives throughout Mexico in an attempt to build political capital and solidify their community support. Nearly every drug cartel in Mexico is organizing its own handout distribution activities, including the Sinaloa Cartel, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), the Gulf Cartel, Los Viagras, and a host of splinter groups that came out of Los Zetas.

One of the most well-organized ‘care package’ drives is being carried out by the Sinaloa Cartel. The criminal group’s leader, Joaquín Guzmán (known as “El Chapo”), was arrested in 2016 and is currently incarcerated in a Super Max Federal Prison in the United States state of Colorado. But his family continues to run his operations, including his fashion/streetwear brand, “El Chapo 701”. The brand’s name refers to a 2009 article in Forbes magazine, which listed Guzmán as the world’s 701st richest person, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion.

The Sinaloa Cartel has published videos showing community drives carried out by young people wearing facemasks bearing a stenciled rendition of Guzmán’s portrait —reminiscent of the silhouetted portrait of the Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevarra. They are seen handing out cardboard boxes bearing Guzmán’s portrait and information about his company. The boxes reportedly contain hand sanitizer, oil, rice, sugar, salt, toilet paper, and other necessities.

Dante Sorianello, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Antonio, Texas, said these campaigns by the drug cartels are designed to build “community support”, which the cartels then use “as a buffer between them and the entities of law and order”. Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, adds that these community assistance drives by criminal organizations are not new in Latin America. In the past, drug cartels have built hospitals in Peru, soccer fields in Brazil and churches in Colombia. This is simply the latest manifestation of a time-tested practice by criminal organizations.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 04 May 2020 | Permalink

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Trial witness claims ‘El Chapo’ gave Mexico’s ex-president $100 million bribe

January 17, 2019 by Leave a comment

Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ GuzmánA high-profile witness has told the trial of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán in New York that the accused bribed the then President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, with $100 million in order to stay out of prison. Guzmán, the leader of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, was arrested in February 2014 in Mexico. In January 2017, he was extradited to the United States, where he faces a litany charges ranging from conspiracy to import and distribute drugs to money-laundering and homicide. His trial began at the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, New York, last November.

All of last Tuesday was taken up by the testimony of Alex Cifuentes Villa, a Colombian former drug lord from Medellin who, until his arrest in 2012, was one of Guzmán’s closest collaborators. Villa told the court that Peña Nieto employed mediators to reach out to the Sinaloa cartel soon after he was elected president in 2012. He alleged that the mediators offered to strike a bargain with Guzmán, according to which he would stay out of prison in return for a $250 million bribe. The bribe would be shared between Peña Nieto and his closest government aides and advisors, said Villa. In return, the Mexican president would call off a national manhunt to capture the Sinaloa cartel leader. Following prolonged negotiations, Guzmán agreed to pay Peña Nieto $100 million, said Villa, in order to secure his freedom.

This is not the first time that a witness in the trial of Guzmán has alleged that the Sinaloa cartel leader bribed senior Mexican government officials, including police and military leaders. However, it is the most sensational allegation to have emerged the trial so far, and —if true— points out that even the highest echelons of the Mexican state have succumbed to the moneyed power of the drug cartels. Last November, when Guzmán’s trial began, his lawyers hinted that claims of corruption would be aired against the highest levels of the Mexican government, including two of its recent presidents, which they called “completely corrupt”. At the time, Peña Nieto’s office issued a statement condemning the allegations and saying that the former president had never received bribes from anyone.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 17 January 2019 | Permalink

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Did US DEA forces pose as Mexican troops to capture drug kingpin?

July 24, 2015 by 3 Comments

Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ GuzmánThe notorious drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán captured the attention of the world’s media a few weeks ago, when he escaped from a maximum security prison in Mexico through a secret tunnel. But his cinematic prison breakout may have overshadowed the story of his arrest, which, according to recent reports, may be as interesting as that of his latest escape from prison.

Guzmán was arrested in a pre-dawn raid on February 22, 2014. He was reportedly captured in Mazatlán, a resort town in Mexico’s west-coast state of Sinaloa, by an elite squad of Mexican marines. The marines, we were told at the time, were receiving crucial intelligence support from a several United States government agencies. Or at least that is the official story of the drug kingpin’s arrest. On July 18, however, Mexico’s leading investigative newsmagazine, Proceso, published a lead article alleging that Guzmán was not arrested by Mexican marines, but by American operatives disguised as Mexican marines.

The article was written by J. Jesús Esquivel, a longtime reporter on intelligence and security affairs, who has authored two books on the history of operations conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other American security and intelligence agencies in Mexico. In his July 18 article, Esquivel says he was told by two American officials —who he does not name— that Mexican marines had little to do with Guzmán’s capture. The drug lord was tracked down by the US Marshals Service and the DEA through a web of informants and electronic tracking devices. Once they knew they had him, he two agencies, supported by a third American agency, which Esquivel does not identify, raided Guzmán’s hotel suite in Mazatlán, dressed in Mexican marine uniforms and driving vehicles bearing Mexican navy insignia.

The Intercept, which covered Proceso’s story on Thursday, correctly stated that, if the newsmagazine’s allegations are true, they would not mark the first time that American government agents posing as Mexican troops have conducted counternarcotics operations in Mexico. The practice has been revealed before, most recently by The Wall Street Journal. But, if true, Proceso’s allegations would seem to indicate an unprecedented degree of operational activity by US intelligence and security agencies south of the border. Additionally, it is alleged that the American agencies deliberately chose to keep their Mexican counterparts in the dark until after Guzmán had been captured, because they feared that the drug kingpin would be notified by informants inside the Mexican government. If this information is accurate, it would indicate that the line separating the Mexican drug cartels from the country’s government remains markedly blurry.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 24 July 2015 | Permalink: https://intelnews.org/2015/07/24/01-1742/

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Revealed: DEA’s massive phone tapping scheme that preceded NSA’s

April 8, 2015 by 1 Comment

Drug Enforcement AdministrationBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
For nearly a decade before 9/11 and the controversial phone tapping program enacted by the National Security Agency, another American intelligence organization, the Drug Enforcement Administration, operated a mass phone surveillance scheme. The scheme, which is no longer in effect, collected data on billions of phone exchanges involving Americans and became a blueprint for NSA’s post-9/11 monitoring efforts. The DEA surveillance program was first disclosed in a report by the Department of Justice in January of this year. But its history, as well as its full extent, were fully revealed on Tuesday by USA Today.

The paper said the DEA program was initiated in 1992, during the presidency of George Bush, Sr., and was aimed at monitoring call data to and from “designated foreign countries” that were “linked to drug trafficking”. But the program grew to monitor data on every call made to and from the US to as many as 116 nations, said the paper, including every country in the Americas. In all, billions of calls were monitored in the over two decades that the program lasted. Citing interviews with “more than a dozen current and former intelligence officials”, USA Today said the DEA surveillance program did not access the content of intercepted phone calls, but rather the pen-register data, namely which numbers were dialed and when.

The intercepted information enabled the DEA to trace transnational networks of traffickers and money handlers used by large drug cartels. Information acquired through the program was also used for non-narcotics-related investigations, said the paper. However, the two-decade-long program did not utilize court warrants, and was thus very similar to the NSA’s controversial wiretapping scheme revealed by a series of whistleblowers in the years following 9/11. USA Today said the DEA stopped the surveillance program in September of 2013. Shortly after that, said the paper, the database containing the information collected through the program was deliberately purged.

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Is US-Mexico anti-drug intelligence cooperation about to end?

April 30, 2013 by 2 Comments

Enrique Peña NietoBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Some senior American officials believe that the anti-drug intelligence cooperation between the United States and Mexico is in its closing stages, following tens of thousands of deaths in the past decade. Intelligence cooperation between the two countries reached unprecedented levels in the post-9/11 era, following the establishment of the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). In the past decade, cooperation between Mexico’s Center for Research and National Security (CISEN) and ODNI, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, resulted in what some observers call “unprecedented bilateral action” directed against Latin American narcotics cartels. This arrangement culminated under the administration of Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón, when the CIA —and to a lesser extent the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Security Agency— were given unprecedented access to Mexican territory and civilian communications networks. However, in an extensive article published Sunday, The Washington Post says the close operational connection between Mexican and US intelligence agencies is quickly winding down. Citing interviews with over “four dozen current and former US and Mexican diplomats, law enforcement agents, military offices and intelligence officials”, the paper suggests that Mexico City is wary about Washington’s involvement in the so-called ‘war on drugs’. The major change on the Mexican side, says The Post, occurred last December with the inauguration of Mexico’s new President, Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has returned to power after 13 years in opposition. Under Nieto’s administration, the Mexican security establishment, worn out by over 60,000 deaths and as many as 25,000 forced disappearances in the past few years, is intent on shifting its priorities. Instead of focusing on so-called ‘beheading operations’ —arresting or otherwise neutralizing the leadership of drug cartels— it has decided to stabilize the situation by containing —rather than eliminating— the operations of drug networks. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #449

November 5, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Damning report on CIA attack on missionary plane. US Central Intelligence Agency officers involved with a secret counternarcotics mission in the Peruvian jungle routinely violated agency procedures, tried to cover up their mistakes, and misled Congress immediately after a missionary plane was accidentally shot down in 2001, according to a blistering CIA internal report released on Monday.
  • Israeli legislators call on US to release Jewish spy. Members of the Israeli Knesset are calling on US President Barack Obama to pardon American-born spy Jonathan Pollard, having been jailed in a maximum-security facility since 1985. George Bush refused to pardon Pollard in the last days of his presidency.
  • Analysis: Britain’s MI6 operates a bit differently than CIA. “Like the CIA, MI6 has a website, but while the U.S. agency site is only in English, MI6’s is also in Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish and Chinese. Another sign of British sophistication: while the CIA site has games and quizzes for kids, the MI6 site gives short tests to allow potential recruits to assess their analytical and administrative skills”. Interesting comparative assessment by Walter Pincus.

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Congress briefing on CIA activities halted after officials refuse to take oath

October 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

Gloria Luttig

Gloria Luttig

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A US Congressional briefing on the CIA was unexpectedly halted on Wednesday, after Justice Department officials refused to take the oath. The briefing, by the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, concerned the April 20, 2001 shooting down by the CIA of a Cessna 185 floatplane, which was suspected of transporting drugs from Colombia to Peru. The plane was actually carrying an American Christian missionary family, including two children, who were on their way to Lima, Peru. The attack on the plane resulted in the death of the mother and one of the children. As intelNews reported in November of 2008, a still-classified report by the Office of the US Inspector General concluded that the murder of the two Americans resulted from routine violation of intercept procedures by CIA operatives. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0132

October 7, 2009 by 1 Comment

  • Emirates to deport Syrian ex-spy and witness in Hariri assassination probe. A Syrian former spy was on Monday sentenced to six months in jail and deportation for entering the United Arab Emirates on a forged Czech passport. Interestingly, Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq, was a prosecution witness in the inquiry into the assassination of Lebanon’s ex-premier Rafiq Hariri. In 2005, Siddiq claimed that Lebanon’s former pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, gave the order to kill anti-Syrian Hariri. It is not clear to which country Siddiq will be deported.
  • US national security advisor insists Iran cannot currently build the bomb. US National Security Advisor General James Jones has rejected claims by The New York Times that Iraq has enough information to design and build a functional nuclear bomb. Jones also stood by the conclusions of the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate, which said Iran’s nuclear arms program is inactive.
  • Book claims CIA-linked network killed anti-drugs campaigner. A new book by Australian researcher John Jiggens claims that a CIA-linked drug smuggling network was responsible for the 1977 murder of Australian anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay.

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News you may have missed #0129

October 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Romanian communist spy boss dead at 80. General Nicolae Plesita, who directed Romania’s Securitate during the country’s communist period, has died. While heading the Securitate’s foreign intelligence service, from 1980 to 1984, Plesita hired the Venezuelan-born operative Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, to assassinate Romanian dissidents in France and bomb the US-owned Radio Free Europe offices in Munich, in 1981. In 1998, Plesita revealed that he had orders from the Romanian government to find temporary shelter for Carlos in Romania after the RFE bombing.
  • Settlement reached in DEA-CIA spying dispute. A tentative settlement has been reached in a lawsuit brought 15 years ago by a former US Drug Enforcement Administration agent who accused a CIA operative of illegally bugging his home. In a court filing, lawyers for the government and the DEA agent said they “had reached an agreement in principle to settle the underlying litigation”. See here for previous intelNews coverage of this case.
  • Federal judge denies request for CIA secret documents. Hundreds of documents detailing the CIA’s defunct overseas secret detention program of suspected terrorists, including extreme interrogation methods have remained secret after U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein on Wednesday refused to release them “in order to protect intelligence methods and sources”. The ACLU argues that the CIA secret program was illegal under international and US law, that it involved the torture and deaths of some inmates, and therefore should not be shielded from public view.

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Colombian ex-spy details coup plot against Venezuela

September 8, 2009 by 2 Comments

Rafael García

Rafael García

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The former director of information technology at Colombia’s Administrative Department of Security (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, or DAS) has revealed details of what he claims was a Colombian-assisted coup against the Venezuelan government. Speaking on Colombia’s Noticias Uno television station, former DAS official Rafael García said the Colombian government of Álvaro Uribe was the main supporter of a 2004 attempt to topple the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez. García, who was fired from DAS three years ago, after being caught taking bribes from right wing paramilitaries and drug barons, said Colombia recruited 120 Colombian paramilitary members of Northern Bloc, a militia unit of the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which operates mostly along the Venezuelan-Colombian border. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0071

August 19, 2009 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #0070

August 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

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