Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday fiercely rejected accusations from a CNN investigation alleging CIA operatives carried out a “targeted assassination” outside Mexico City in March.
Sheinbaum slammed the story as “false” and “truly sensationalist.”
Mexico’s top security official and the CIA also dismissed the article as a fabrication.
“Imagine how big the lie is if the CIA itself needs to come out and dismiss” the story, the left-leaning leader said at her daily press conference.
The investigation published Tuesday cited “multiple sources” who said the fiery March 28 explosion of a car carrying a mid-level operative with the Sinaloa Cartel on a highway outside Mexico City was a car bomb planted in a secretive CIA operation.
Both the operative, Francisco Beltran, known as “El Payin,” and his driver died.
The official CIA spokesperson, Liz Lyons, dismissed the investigation as “false and salacious.”
The story “serves as nothing more than a PR campaign for the cartels and puts American lives at risk,” she wrote on X.
Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch rejected the story on X, saying “any version that seeks to normalize, justify, or suggest the existence of lethal, undercover, or unilateral operations of foreign agencies on national territory.”
CNN cited the Mexico State attorney general as saying the car contained a hidden “explosive device.”
But the prosecutor’s office denied the accusations on Tuesday, saying in a post on X that the cause of death for the two men remains unknown.
The allegations come a month after the death of two CIA operatives as they returned from an anti-narcotics operation in the mountainous border state of Chihuahua, unleashing scandal in Mexico and diplomatic tension with the Trump administration.
Sheinbaum said the federal government wasn’t informed of the operatives’ activity.
The scandal led to the resignation of Chihuahua state’s attorney general, and the federal government said it is investigating whether national security laws were violated.
The Trump administration has placed increasing pressure on Sheinbaum to crack down on organized crime gangs.
She has rejected explicit US actions to target criminal leaders while opting to use US intelligence and leaving security tasks to Mexican military and police forces.
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