Mexico president slams US 'spying' after information leak

Mexico City, Mexico: As new diplomatic tensions between the neighbours erupted as a result of an information leak, Mexico’s president said on Monday that his nation would not stand for the United States eavesdropping on its security agencies.

“Acts of spying cannot be used to find out what our security institutions are doing and, furthermore, with the arrogance of leaking the information to The Washington Post,” Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said at his daily news conference.

He was making reference to an article that appeared in the newspaper over the weekend and cited a secret US dossier that warned of the possibility of rising tensions between the various components of the Mexican military forces.

According to a top-secret US military assessment, Lopez Obrador was likely to give the army greater duties, such as command over all of the country’s airspace, which irritated Mexico’s navy, the newspaper reported.

According to the Post, there was no evidence that the intelligence, which was exposed as part of a significant recent leak of highly classified US data, was based on US wiretaps or intercepts of Mexican officials.

Additionally, Lopez Obrador reiterated that Mexico would not tolerate US anti-drug forces operating on its country when they subsequently met with US Ambassador Ken Salazar.

“There cannot be foreign agents in our country. No. We can share information, but it’s members of the Mexican Army, Navy and National Guard who can intervene,” he said.

The remarks came after the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said on Friday that it had infiltrated the infamous Sinaloa Cartel over the last year and a half, obtaining “unprecedented access to the organization’s highest levels.”

The US Justice Department announced charges against four sons of imprisoned Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and their Chinese chemical suppliers in a crackdown on fentanyl trafficking networks.

Mexico reformed its national security law in 2021 to limit the operations of foreign agents.

The move came amid a row over the United States’ arrest of a former Mexican defence minister.

Lopez Obrador accused the DEA of fabricating drug trafficking crimes against Salvador Cienfuegos — a key figure in ex-president Enrique Pena Nieto’s 2012-2018 government — and the charges were later dropped.

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