Agency — 2026-05-18

US and Mexican Authorities Deny Claims CIA Is Assassinating Cartel Members in Mexico

BLUFSynchronized denials suggest Washington and Mexico City are managing an expanded CIA operational footprint they have tacitly agreed to keep deniable, leaving Sheinbaum exposed should the Chihuahua deaths force public reckoning.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and U.S. officials denied as 'fictions' reports in The New York Times and CNN that CIA personnel, including members of the agency's paramilitary Ground Branch, directly participated in the March 28 car-bomb killing of mid-level Sinaloa cartel member Francisco 'El Playin' Beltran and his driver in a Mexico City suburb. Sheinbaum called the claims 'fictions the size of the universe' at her weekly press conference; Mexico's Secretary of Security Omar Harfuch dismissed them as 'false and salacious reporting' that serves as 'nothing more than a public relations campaign for the cartels.' American officials maintain that U.S. military and intelligence involvement in anti-cartel operations is limited to training and intelligence-sharing. The denials have not addressed the April deaths of two American embassy officials in a car crash in Chihuahua state following their alleged participation in a counter-cartel operation; The New York Times identified both officials as CIA officers.

Analysis
The synchronized denials protect a bilateral security relationship neither government can openly strain. The April deaths of two U.S. embassy officials, identified by the NYT as CIA officers during an alleged counter-cartel operation in Chihuahua, remain the evidentiary anomaly both official accounts leave unresolved. That identification, supported only by NYT and CNN reporting without independent corroboration, directly contradicts the American claim of no direct operational role. If Ground Branch is operating with tacit Mexican permission, Sheinbaum has quietly accepted a new bilateral baseline she cannot acknowledge without acute domestic political costs. The same operational details may instead originate with cartel-aligned actors seeding fabricated claims to fracture US-Mexico cooperation.

1 sources

US, Mexican authorities deny claims CIA is assassinating cartel members in Mexico - IntelNews