MEXICO CITY (CN) - Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum vowed Tuesday to continue her investigation into the CIA's role in an operation that dismantled a clandestine drug laboratory in Chihuahua on April 19, before multiple U.S. agents and Mexican security personnel died in a car accident.
The incident has sparked a diplomatic firestorm in U.S.-Mexico relations as the true identity of the agents has come into question. While Chihuahua State Attorney General Cesar Gustavo Jauregui Moreno originally announced two dead Americans as U.S. embassy staffers, subsequent news reports have confirmed they were undercover CIA agents.
"In this case, what matters to us is the defense of sovereignty, the constitution and the National Security Law. And that is why the clarification of this case is very important," said Sheinbaum during her Tuesday press conference, following Jauregui Moreno's resignation during a press conference on Monday.
"The investigation must continue. It doesn't stop with a resignation," she said.
Wendy Paola Chavez Villanueva, the head of the investigation unit tasked with looking into the events surrounding the drug raid, said before Jauregui Moreno's resignation during the same press conference on Monday that there were, in fact, four undercover agents during the operation, not just the two that died.
She added that the only individual in the operation who knew of their presence was Pedro Roman Oseguera Cervantes, director of Chihuahua's State Investigation Agency, or AEI, who also died that night.
"Based on the information collected so far, it is established in a specific way that: people not belonging to the AEI, were not a formal part of the institutional operational deployment; the inclusion of foreign people in the convoy was not reported to the superior command; their participation remained limited, reserved and without direct operational interaction, except with the director and his immediate circle of personal security," Chavez Villanueva said.
Jauregui Moreno acknowledged institutional omissions with the foreign agents carrying out security operations on Mexican soil and announced his resignation following Chavez Villanueva's statements.
"This omission violated the control and communication mechanisms that, as head of the State Attorney General's Office, he had the obligation to ensure in their effective functioning. I recognize this political responsibility in the field of institutional leadership and the need to correct them," he said.
Since the revelation surrounding their deaths, Sheinbaum has vowed to seek answers on how the CIA agents were able to carry out their operations despite a lack of authorization.
The Mexican government announced on Saturday that one agent entered Mexico on a tourist visa without clearance to engage in paid activities, and the other, with a diplomatic passport.
"Neither had formal accreditation to participate in operational activities in national territory," reads the government's statement.
Jauregui Moreno was the first to announce a clandestine operation between the Secretary of National Defense and the Chihuahua State Investigation Agency on April 19, which he called perhaps one of the biggest discoveries ever made by the authorities in the country's history.
Courthouse News reporter William Savinar is based in Mexico City.
Source: Courthouse News Service
