Did CIA Organize A Car Bomb Hit On A Narco?

The claims of CIA in assassinations on narcos raise painful questions; but are they true?

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UPDATES throughout at 9:10 am on May 13

In late March, a pick up truck leaving the AIFA airport on the outskirts of Mexico City exploded on the highway, rolled across multiple lanes of traffic and crashed, leaving the two occupants dead. The driver and passenger were both from Sinaloa, the latter being identified as Francisco Beltrán, alias ‘El Payín,’ alleged to be a powerful member of the Sinaloa Cartel and lieutenant of a kingpin called El Meño.

While the Mexican press originally reported that a car bomb caused the explosion, prosecutors from Mexico State, where the deaths took place, gave limited information and threw out suggestions that it could have been a mechanical failure. The story was left with loose ends.

This Tuesday, however, CNN reported the explosive charge that the CIA was involved in the attack in a covert war against narco targets south of the border. “The Beltran operation was part of an expanded, and previously unreported, CIA campaign inside Mexico — spearheaded by the agency’s elite and secretive Ground Branch — to dismantle the entrenched cartel networks,” it says.

Furthermore, later Tuesday the New York Times reported that CIA agents were not on the ground for the car bomb attack but they were involved in it. “The C.I.A. provided intelligence and planning support for a recent operation against a cartel operative inside Mexico,” it said.

Mexico’s security secretary Omar García Harfuch and the CIA quickly denied it, with a CIA X account calling the CNN story, “false and salacious reporting that serves as nothing more than a PR campaign for the cartels and puts American lives at risk.”

But the claims ratcheted up pressure on the already fragile Trump-Sheinbaum security partnership. The fact the charges were leaked to reporters in the United States undermines García Harfuch’s position in Mexico.

They also raised more questions about the CIA role in Mexican operations, which has been under the spotlight since two CIA agents died in Chihuahua in April. If the CIA provided information for the car bomb attack then who did they give that to? Are CIA operatives working with Mexican federal agents or the Mexican military in assassinations? Have they been involved in other deliberate killings and could that could include that of El Mencho?

However, there is a central question of whether the claims are true. The stories have certain holes that raise questions. The first is…

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