Claudia Sheinbaum opened her Wednesday mañanera with an unusually sharp rebuke of US media reporting, calling a CNN account that the CIA has been directly involved in lethal anti-cartel operations on Mexican soil "a fiction the size of the universe." The president said the story, which appeared overnight Tuesday and was followed by similar reporting from the New York Times, was designed to "hurt the government and the country."
The CNN report cited anonymous US officials describing what it called an "expanded and previously unreported" CIA campaign against Mexican cartels, including direct participation in targeted assassinations. The report pointed to a March car-bombing outside Mexico City that killed Francisco Beltran, a senior figure in the Sinaloa cartel's Los Chapitos faction, and his driver. CNN said US intelligence assets had played an operational role in that attack.
The CIA, which rarely comments on covert operations, issued an on-the-record denial Wednesday afternoon. CNN said it stood by its reporting and its sourcing. The New York Times, which followed CNN within hours, has so far declined to provide specifics about whether its account was independently sourced.
Sheinbaum framed the dispute as part of a coordinated effort to destabilise her administration, naming both CNN and the Times in her remarks and accusing them of "doing the work of those who want to send US forces into Mexico." She did not provide evidence for that characterisation.
The diplomatic stakes are substantial. The Sheinbaum government has resisted Trump administration pressure to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organisations, fearing the designation would create a legal pathway for US military action inside Mexico. A confirmed CIA assassination programme would create exactly the kind of fait accompli Mexico City has worked to avoid.
Mexican defence and interior ministry officials briefed local outlets that Mexican authorities had not been informed of any US operation in connection with the March bombing and had treated it from the outset as a cartel internal score-settling. The murder investigation, run by Mexico City prosecutors, is still open.