A SRE document obtained by Proceso reveals that for 10 years the DEA took advantage of the concessions given to them by the Calderón and Peña Nieto governments to carry out espionage work against two members of the presidential cabinet.
WASHINGTON.– The interference, espionage, constitutional violations and violations of Mexico’s sovereignty by the DEA are the result of the increase in its agents and technical administrative personnel authorized by Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto.
Drug corruption during the Calderón and Peña Nieto administrations was taken advantage of by Washington, which managed during those periods to get the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) to authorize the DEA to increase the number of its agents from 54 to 70 and administrative technicians from 32 to 41.
A SRE document obtained by Proceso exposes what the Calderón and Peña Nieto governments hid regarding the concessions they made to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which took advantage of this to stab them in the back.
Until the publication of this text, it was publicly known that the DEA had 54 agents and 32 administrative technicians operating in Mexico, including analysts, specialists in espionage technology and computer equipment.
In a period of 10 years, the DEA defeated the Calderón and Peña Nieto governments, who agreed to give their blessing to another 16 U.S. anti-narcotics police officers, who operated freely throughout Mexican territory and who later betrayed their friends.
In total, the DEA in Mexico has a staff of 111 officers, who now, under the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, are restricted and subject to changes in the Security Law, by which they must submit a monthly report on their activities to the Foreign Ministry.
The increase in the presence of DEA agents in Mexico reflected their interference and betrayals of Calderón and Peña Nieto, which the United States Department of Justice justified in the name of the fight against drug trafficking and drug corruption in those two administrations.
Confident that their allies in the DEA would assist in their omissions and negligence and favors for some drug cartels, Calderón and Peña Nieto never imagined that the American agents would expose their sins and failures in the war on drugs.
The DEA let seven years pass before dealing Calderón a blow that he will never be able to shake off or forget; On December 9, 2019, in Dallas, Texas, Genaro García Luna, his friend, advisor, confidant, right-hand man and Secretary of Public Security, was arrested for drug trafficking.
On the night of October 15, 2020, almost two years after the end of Peña Nieto’s six-year term, the DEA, on charges of collusion with drug trafficking, arrested General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, Secretary of National Defense of the former president, in Los Angeles, California.
García Luna will be sentenced on June 24 by Judge Brian Cogan, of the Federal Court of the Eastern District in Brooklyn, New York. This same Court, on November 18, 2020, thanks to the intervention of the López Obrador government, dismissed the charges against Cienfuegos.
These two cases are examples of how, with the increase in agents and technical and administrative personnel, the DEA was able to carry out high-level espionage and wiretapping work in Mexico.
As was demonstrated in the trial against García Luna and as promised to be shown in the judicial process that never occurred, the DEA intercepted and recorded telephone conversations of members of two presidential cabinets and, we do not know, also of the presidents.
The threat that the López Obrador government made to the Department of Justice to expel the 70 DEA agents from Mexico, as Proceso detailed in detail, explains Washington’s swift decision to dismiss the charges and repatriate Cienfuegos Zepeda.
From October 26, 1992, until April 2020, DEA personnel accredited in Mexico were governed by the “Specific Rules to Regulate the Activities of Specialized Agents and Technicians,” as dictated by the document defined by the SRE.
“The DEA agents and specialized technical personnel will be a maximum of 39 elements with agent status and 32 administrative or specialized technicians,” says the official 13-page document defined then by the Mexican Foreign Ministry.
Since October 1992, under the presidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the function and distribution of DEA agents in Mexico had interference objectives conditioned to progress in the fight against drug trafficking and drug traffickers.
Source: proceso
