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In the early hours of Monday morning, César Jáuregui Moreno, the former attorney general of Chihuahua, was reported to be checked into Mexico’s top security prison, Almoloya, on charges of treason over allowing CIA operatives to take part in a drug raid. The case follows the April 19 deaths in Chihuahua of CIA operatives Richard Leiter Johnston III, 35, and John Dudley Black, 44, when a vehicle they were traveling in tumbled into a ravine, after the bust of a sprawling crystal meth lab.
After taking power last year, President Donald Trump ordered the CIA to get more deeply involved in the fight against drug cartels, which he designated as foreign terrorist organizations. But the CIA deaths in Chihuahua sparked a furor in Mexico about what the Company was up to, and if agents were breaking Mexican law and violating the country’s sovereignty.
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has been playing a difficult game of cooperating with Trump in a ramped-up war on cartels while playing to her nationalist base and defending against intervention from her powerful northern neighbor. The charges show a push back on U.S. involvement in operations south of the border. They also play into internal politics with Chihuahua ruled by the opposition National Action Party. Meanwhile, family members of Jáuregui accused the Chihuahua PAN governor Maru Campos of throwing him under the bus to save her own skin.
Treason, called in Spanish traición a la patria, is an extremely serious crime and can warrant a prison sentence of up to 40 years. Yet, as I have reported in CrashOut, U.S. agents have for years taken part in operations in Mexico under questionable legality. During the capture of El Chapo in 2014, DEA agent Víctor Vázquez stormed in dressed in camo and holding a Mexican military rifle, and he even testified in U.S. court about it. How many more Mexican officials did the same as Jáuregui in allowing such participation?
The Mexican federal case file against Jáuregui reveals many more details about the CIA role in the raid on the meth lab. According to two Mexican state agents, the CIA operatives…
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