2026-05-12T21:01:16.932Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
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今年春季早些时候，墨西哥首都郊外一条最繁忙的高速公路上，一辆载有疑似贩毒集团成员的汽车在光天化日之下遭神秘爆炸炸毁。
弗朗西斯科·贝尔特兰与司机当场身亡，集中爆炸后两人的尸体瘫倒在座椅上。3月28日的袭击现场视频和照片显示，火焰骤然爆发，车辆继续向前滑行，最终驶离高速公路。
熟悉其活动的墨西哥安全分析师和消息人士透露，绰号“帕因”的贝尔特兰被指控为锡纳罗亚贩毒集团的中层成员，该集团是墨西哥最臭名昭著的毒品走私犯罪组织之一。
墨西哥当局对此次爆炸事件严守秘密，但多名消息人士告诉CNN，此次袭击是针对性暗杀，由中情局行动人员协助实施。墨西哥州总检察长向CNN证实，爆炸装置被藏在车内。
多名消息人士及另外两名了解该行动的人士向CNN透露，贝尔特兰遇袭事件是中情局在墨西哥境内展开的、此前未被报道过的扩大化行动的一部分，该行动由中情局精英且神秘的地面分部牵头，旨在瓦解根深蒂固的贩毒集团网络。唐纳德·特朗普总统已将其中多个集团列为外国恐怖组织，并认定它们与美国处于交战状态。
消息人士称，自去年以来，在墨西哥境内的中情局特工直接参与了针对多名（多为中层）贩毒集团成员的致命袭击。“他们的行动致命性大幅提升，”一名了解该行动的人士表示，“这是中情局在墨西哥境内愿意开展的行动的重大升级。”
消息人士透露，中情局的行动参与程度各不相同，从较为被动的情报共享和提供一般性支持，到直接参与暗杀行动均有涉及。
中情局拒绝对此报道置评。墨西哥多个政府机构未回复置评请求。
即便按照墨西哥贩毒集团暴力活动的标准，此次针对贝尔特兰的袭击也堪称肆无忌惮。袭击发生后的数天里，墨西哥分析人士纷纷猜测，这是否标志着贩毒集团之间的战争出现了令人担忧的、复杂的新维度。
“数月来，锡纳罗亚州一直处于无政府状态的战争之中，”墨西哥记者何塞·卡德纳斯在袭击发生后由Grupo Fórmula播出的电视节目中表示，“但像这样的袭击，如果属实，发生在首都附近地区，嗯，我从未听说过类似事件。”
一名前中情局准军事官员告诉CNN，根据中情局的行事风格，“他们肯定希望这起事件引发所有人的疑问：‘这是谁干的？’”
中情局近期针对像内梅西奥·“门乔”·奥塞格拉·塞尔万特斯这样的知名贩毒集团头目开展的行动已有大量记录，尽管大部分公开活动被描述为情报共享。
但消息人士告诉CNN，中情局在墨西哥境内的秘密活动远不止这些吸引国际关注的少数案例，其参与程度更为直接。
消息人士称，该战略旨在彻底瓦解整个贩毒集团网络，不仅要铲除最高层头目，还要找出该组织内部的薄弱环节，系统性地打击作为走私活动关键环节的低层参与者。
这些行动通常在墨西哥境外，甚至在其发生的特定区域之外都鲜有人关注，因为目标并非知名人物。这通常使得中情局的参与得以保密。现任和前任美国国家安全官员告诉CNN，这套行动方案与旨在摧毁中东及全球其他地区恐怖组织的反恐任务大同小异。
这些行动可能还违反墨西哥法律——根据墨西哥宪法，未经联邦政府明确许可，外国特工不得参与执法行动。
“目前尚不清楚他们的所有任务是否都与（墨西哥）政府协调过，”其中一名消息人士表示。
CNN联系了墨西哥总统府和外交部，但在出版前未收到回复。
墨西哥安全部长奥马尔·加西亚·哈夫奇在周二发布后的X平台帖子中表示：“墨西哥政府坚决反对任何试图常态化、辩解或暗示外国机构在本国领土开展致命、秘密或单边行动的说法。”
据一名知情人士透露，中情局也继续在非致命行动中 quietly 发挥关键作用，提供的情报帮助墨西哥军方在近几个月逮捕了至少一名中高层贩毒集团成员。
消息人士称，在过去几个月里，在墨西哥活动的中情局特工人数时有波动，但通常规模不大。
两名消息人士告诉CNN，该机构在墨西哥的存在仍有增长空间。他们指出，中情局尚未部署“地面分部资产的完整生态系统”。
中情局在墨西哥的秘密存在首次公开曝光是在上月末，当时两名同时也是中情局特工的美国使馆官员在墨西哥奇瓦瓦州的一场车祸中丧生。消息人士告诉CNN，事发数小时前，他们与另外两名中情局特工参与了由奇瓦瓦州调查局局长牵头的甲基苯丙胺实验室突袭行动。
消息人士称，这四名身着便服、面部部分遮挡的中情局特工均属于地面分部——墨西哥联邦政府事后表示，并未授权他们在当地活动。
一名熟悉相关工作的消息人士此前告诉CNN，自特朗普第二任期伊始，政府就为中情局在墨西哥扩大存在、提升行动致命性做准备，中情局局长约翰·拉特克利夫自上任以来一直致力于扩大该机构在反贩毒任务及相关秘密行动中的作用。
特朗普就职后不久，便将包括锡纳罗亚、哈利斯科和米却肯州新家族在内的主要墨西哥贩毒集团列为外国恐怖组织，这为部分额外的美国情报权限提供了法律依据。CNN此前曾报道，中情局随后开始审查在墨西哥及其他地区对贩毒集团使用致命武力的法律选项，并开始增加在墨西哥上空飞行的监视无人机数量。
与此同时，前中情局准军事官员罗恩·约翰逊被任命为美国驻墨西哥新任大使，这位拥有丰富美国情报经验的官员得以在关键岗位上与墨西哥当局打交道。
“他是整个行动不可或缺的一部分，”这位仍与中情局前同事保持联系的前中情局官员表示。
美国国务院发言人表示：“约翰逊大使协调美国与墨西哥当局在这一联合行动中的合作。”
“美国和墨西哥将继续采取果断的双边行动，破坏并瓦解威胁两国边境两侧社区的跨国贩毒集团，”该发言人补充道。
消息人士称，去年年底，在特朗普正式更新并扩大中情局在拉丁美洲开展致命打击和秘密行动的权限后，中情局在墨西哥的地面存在和行动升级。特朗普上周在一次演讲中表示，一支“地面部队”已在墨西哥部署，以消灭走私分子，但未详细说明该部队的性质。
“通过海路进入（美国）的毒品减少了97%，”他称赞美国军方对在加勒比海和东太平洋活动的疑似毒品走私分子开展的致命行动，尽管他提供的数据来源不明。“现在我们启动了地面部队，这要容易得多。你们会听到……墨西哥和其他地区代表的一些抱怨。但如果他们不履行职责，我们就会代劳。他们明白这一点。”
在本周公开发布的反恐战略文件中，特朗普政府表示，西半球贩毒集团的“中立化”是其“首要”任务，并补充称，美国将继续针对已被列为恐怖组织的境外贩毒集团，即便这意味着采取单边行动。
“我们将在当地政府愿意且有能力与我们合作时，与其协同行动，”文件称。“如果他们无法或不愿合作，我们仍将采取一切必要措施保护国家，特别是当相关政府与贩毒集团同流合污时。”
消息人士称，中情局在墨西哥的行动风险极高，可能招致经常越境进入美国的贩毒集团成员的报复。
“肯定有人担心这很容易波及美国，”这位前中情局官员指出。
尽管多名消息人士承认，并非墨西哥政府所有人都了解每一次行动——有时这是为了保持可否认性——但他们也强调，中情局通常不会单方面开展行动。
“他们正在突破极限，”一位前美国高级官员表示。“我认为这很危险。你必须时刻提防一切。”
墨西哥总统克劳迪娅·舍因鲍姆表示，她事先并未被告知中情局参与奇瓦瓦州的甲基苯丙胺实验室突袭行动，并在事后显得极为愤怒。
“任何美国政府机构的特工都不能在墨西哥境内开展行动，”事件曝光后她在新闻发布会上表示。
根据墨西哥2020年通过的国家安全法，所有外国特工必须向联邦政府通报行踪，并每月提交活动报告。舍因鲍姆暗示，中情局在奇瓦瓦州的存在可能违反了该法律。
“让我们希望这是一个特例，”舍因鲍姆说。“希望此类情况不再发生。”
墨西哥国立自治大学北美研究中心高级研究员兼教授何塞·路易斯·巴尔德斯·乌加尔德告诉CNN，墨西哥联邦政府清楚中情局在该国的存在，但尚未决定如何积极管控该机构在当地的行动，或向公众透露多少相关信息。
总体而言，奇瓦瓦州事件“充分体现了美国对（墨西哥）联邦政府的不信任”，乌加尔德表示。
“这次行动通过奇瓦瓦州政府进行，无需涉及联邦政府，这表明墨西哥与美国在参与或不参与墨西哥反贩毒行动的情报机构方面关系极差。”
舍因鲍姆正处于微妙的政治平衡之中。特朗普威胁称，如果她的政府不加大力度遏制贩毒集团，他将部署美国军队进入墨西哥。他此前曾指责贩毒集团直接与墨西哥官员勾结。消息人士称，对中情局在墨西哥境内旨在消灭走私分子的秘密行动视而不见，可能会让特朗普满意，并阻止美国公开军事行动的可能性。
例如，在墨西哥特种部队于2月在哈利斯科州行动中杀死哈利斯科新一代贩毒集团头目“门乔”后，墨西哥政府承认中情局的情报对定位他起到了关键作用，但舍因鲍姆表示，美国军队“绝对没有参与”此次行动。
消息人士称，“参与”一词留下了回旋余地。尽管中情局行动人员并未开枪，但他们在行动期间身处现场，为墨西哥方面提供实时情报、支持和装备。
当疑似贩毒集团成员为报复“门乔”之死发动暴力浪潮——焚烧公交车和商铺，与墨西哥安全部队发生冲突——时，美国官员措手不及，不得不紧急行动以确保美国特工的安全，据一位了解情况的美国官员透露。该官员表示，行政部门工作人员试图撤离在纵火和露天枪击事件中心区域活动的联邦调查局和中情局人员。
现任和前任官员表示，在上一届政府期间，美国在墨西哥境内的行动大多由缉毒署协调，该机构花了数十年时间与墨西哥海军陆战队经审查的单位建立关系并开展培训，该单位简称SEMAR。
在一个执法部门存在严重腐败问题、且已知被贩毒集团渗透的国家，直接与经审查的墨西哥安全部队合作，不仅有助于保护反贩毒行动的敏感情报，还能保护美墨双方合作抓捕贩毒集团头目部队的生命安全。
但在过去几个月里，中情局有意比以往更紧密地与部分地区、州和地方墨西哥官员合作，主要原因是该机构担心贩毒集团已有效渗透墨西哥政府的部分部门。
美墨当局之间的不信任进一步凸显：美国司法部上月指控锡纳罗亚州现任州长（舍因鲍姆执政的莫雷纳政党成员）及其他九名现任和前任墨西哥官员，称他们积极与锡纳罗亚贩毒集团合谋。
2012年发生的一起事件至今仍是中情局的前车之鉴。当年8月，十多名身着便服的墨西哥联邦警察伏击了一辆挂外交牌照的美国使馆装甲车，车上载有两名中情局特工和一名墨西哥海军陆战队司机。美国官员当时怀疑此次袭击是受贩毒集团指使的暗杀企图。其中12名警察因企图谋杀罪名成立，被判处数十年监禁。
“地面分部非常擅长不被合作对象干掉，”这位前中情局准军事官员说。“但真正让我们担心被袭击的地方是墨西哥。墨西哥军方和警察都被贩毒集团渗透了。2012年的袭击至今仍影响着该机构对当地局势的看法。”
本报道已补充最新报道内容。
CNN的珍妮弗·汉斯勒为本报道撰稿。
Exclusive: CIA escalates secret war on cartels with deadly operations inside Mexico
2026-05-12T21:01:16.932Z / CNN
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Earlier this spring, a mysterious explosion blew up a car carrying an alleged cartel operative in broad daylight on one of Mexico’s busiest highways just outside of its capital city.
Francisco Beltran was killed instantly along with his driver, their bodies found slumped over in their seats after the concentrated blast. Video and pictures of the attack on March 28 show a quick burst of flames with the car continuing to roll forward, drifting off the highway.
Known as “El Payin,” Beltran was accused of being a mid-level member of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most notorious drug trafficking syndicates, Mexican security analysts and sources familiar with his activities said.
Mexican authorities have maintained extreme secrecy around the explosion, but multiple sources tell CNN that the attack was a targeted assassination, facilitated by CIA operations officers. An explosive device had been hidden inside the vehicle, the State of Mexico’s Attorney General told CNN.
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, those sources as well as two additional people familiar with the campaign told CNN. President Donald Trump has designated several of those groups foreign terrorist organizations and deemed them to be at war with the United States.
Since last year, CIA operatives inside Mexico have directly participated in deadly attacks on several, mostly mid-level cartel members, the sources said. “The lethality of their operations has been seriously ramped up,” said one of the people briefed on the operations. “It’s a significant expansion of the kind of thing the CIA has been willing to do inside Mexico.”
The level of CIA involvement with operations has varied, according to the sources, from more passive intelligence sharing and providing general support to direct participation in assassination operations.
The CIA declined to comment for this story. Several Mexican government agencies did not respond to requests for comment.
The attack on Beltran was brazen even by the standards of typical Mexican cartel violence, and Mexican analysts debated in the days afterward whether it could signal a worrying, sophisticated new dimension of cartel-on-cartel warfare.
“We have been living in anarchic war for many months in Sinaloa,” Mexican journalist Jose Cardenas said on his television show broadcast by Grupo Fórmula in the days after the attack. “But attacks like this, if confirmed, in an area near the country’s capital, well, I have never heard of anything similar.”
A former CIA paramilitary officer told CNN that knowing how the agency operates, ‘They definitely wanted this incident to create the question in everyone’s mind of, ‘Who did this?’”
The CIA’s involvement in recent operations targeting high-profile cartel figures, like Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, has been well-documented, though much of that activity has publicly been described as intelligence sharing.
But the agency’s covert activity inside Mexico goes far beyond those few cases that attracted international attention and involves much more direct participation, sources told CNN.
The strategy, the sources said, is to dismantle entire cartel networks, which involves not only removing those at the very top but also identifying vulnerabilities throughout the organization and systematically targeting lower-tier players who serve as key cogs in the trafficking enterprise.
Those operations often attract little attention outside of Mexico, or in some cases, beyond even the specific region where they take place because the targets are not as well known. That has typically allowed the CIA’s involvement to remain a secret. The playbook is not much different than counterterrorism missions designed to destroy groups in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world, current and former US national security officials told CNN.
The operations may also be illegal under Mexican law — without the express permission of the federal government, foreign agents are barred from participating in law enforcement operations under the Mexican Constitution.
“It’s not at all clear that all of their missions are coordinated with the [Mexican] government,” said one of the sources.
CNN contacted the office of the Presidency of Mexico and the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs but did not receive comment before publication.
Mexico’s Secretary of Security Omar Garcia Harfuch said in a post on X after publication Tuesday, “The Government of Mexico categorically rejects any version that seeks to normalize, justify, or suggest the existence of lethal, covert, or unilateral operations by foreign agencies on national territory.”
The CIA has also continued to quietly play a key role in non-lethal operations, providing intelligence that helped Mexican forces arrest at least one mid-to-high level cartel figure in recent months, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The exact number of CIA officers operating inside Mexico has fluctuated over the last several months but has typically been a small force, the sources said.
The agency’s presence in Mexico still has room to grow, two of the sources told CNN. They noted that the CIA has not yet deployed the “full ecosystem” of ground branch assets.
The first hints of a clandestine CIA presence in Mexico burst into public view late last month, when two US embassy officials who were also CIA operatives were killed in a car accident in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Hours before, they and two additional CIA operatives had taken part in a raid on a meth lab that was led by the director of Chihuahua’s State Investigation Agency, sources told CNN.
All four of the CIA operatives, who’d been dressed in plain clothes and kept their faces partially covered, were members of Ground Branch, the sources said — and Mexico’s federal government said afterward that it hadn’t authorized them to be there.
The administration has been putting the pieces in place for an expanded and more lethal CIA presence in Mexico since the earliest days of Trump’s second term, with CIA Director John Ratcliffe focused on expanding the agency’s role in counter-cartel missions and related covert operations since he was tapped for the job, a source familiar with his efforts previously told CNN.
Trump designated major Mexican cartels, including Sinaloa, Jalisco, and Nueva Familia Michoacána, as foreign terrorist organizations shortly after taking office, which provided legal cover for some additional US intelligence authorities. The CIA then began reviewing its legal options to use lethal force against cartels in Mexico and beyond, CNN has reported, and also began increasing the number of surveillance drones it was flying over Mexico.
Around the same time, Ron Johnson, a former CIA paramilitary officer, was confirmed as the US’ new ambassador to Mexico, putting an official with deep US intelligence experience in a key position to interact with Mexican authorities.
“He’s been integral to this whole effort,” said the former CIA officer, who remains in touch with ex-colleagues inside the agency.
A State Department spokesperson said, “Ambassador Johnson coordinates US collaboration with Mexican authorities in this joint effort.”
“The United States and Mexico continue to take decisive bilateral action to disrupt and dismantle the transnational cartels that threaten communities on both sides of the border,” the spokesman added.
The CIA’s ground presence and operations in Mexico then escalated late last year, after Trump formally updated and expanded the agency’s authorities to conduct lethal targeting and carry out covert action in Latin America, the sources said. Trump indicated in a speech last week that a “land force” was already in place in Mexico to eliminate traffickers but didn’t elaborate on the nature of the force.
“Drugs coming in [to the US] by sea are down 97%,” he said, praising the US military’s lethal campaign against suspected drug traffickers operating in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, although the source of the number he provided was unclear. “And now we’ve started the land force, which is much easier. And you’ll hear some complaints from …representatives from Mexico and other places. But if they’re not going to do the job, then we’re going to do the job. And they understand that.”
In a document released publicly this week outlining its counterterrorism strategy, the Trump administration said the “neutralization” of cartels in the Western Hemisphere is its “first” priority, adding that the US will continue targeting designated cartels abroad even if it means acting unilaterally.
“We will do so in concert with local governments when they are willing and able to work with us,” the document says. “If they cannot, or will not, we will still take whatever action is necessary to protect our country, especially if the government in question is complicit with the cartels.”
The CIA operations in Mexico are high risk, inviting possible retaliation from cartel members who frequently cross the US-Mexico border, the sources said.
“There is definitely concern this could easily spill over into the US,” the former CIA official noted.
While multiple sources acknowledged that not everyone in the Mexican government is briefed on every operation — sometimes by design to maintain deniability — they also stressed that the CIA tends not to conduct operations unilaterally.
“They’re going to be pushing the envelope,” a former senior US official said. “I think it’s dangerous. You have to watch your back for everything.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she was not told beforehand about the CIA’s participation in the meth lab operation in Chihuahua and appeared furious in the aftermath.
“There cannot be agents from any US government institution operating in the Mexican field,” she said at a news conference after the incident became public.
Under a national security law passed in Mexico in 2020, all foreign agents are required to disclose their whereabouts to the federal government and deliver monthly reports about their activities, and Sheinbaum suggested the CIA’s presence in Chihuahua may have violated that law.
“Let us hope this is an exceptional case,” Sheinbaum said. “And that a situation like this never happens again.”
José Luis Valdés Ugalde, a senior researcher and professor at the Center for Research on North America from National Autonomous University of Mexico, told CNN that Mexico’s federal government is acutely aware of the CIA’s presence in the country, but it hasn’t decided how aggressively to try to control what the agency is doing there, or how transparent to be about it to the public.
Broadly, the Chihuahua incident “says a lot about the distrust that the United States has of the [Mexican] federal government,” Ugalde said.
“The fact that it was done on the side, through the Chihuahua state government, without the need to involve the federal Government, speaks to the very bad relationship Mexico has with the United States in terms of the intelligence groups that participate or do not participate in Mexican operations against the cartels.”
Sheinbaum is walking a delicate political tightrope. Trump has threatened to deploy the US military to Mexico if her government doesn’t do more to rein in the cartels, which he has previously accused of working directly with Mexican officials. Turning a blind eye to covert CIA operations inside Mexico aimed at eliminating traffickers could keep Trump happy and forestall the prospect of an overt US military operation, the sources said.
For example, after Mexican special forces killed the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, “El Mencho,” in an operation in Jalisco in February, the Mexican government acknowledged that CIA intelligence had been instrumental in locating him, but Sheinbaum said there was “absolutely no involvement of US forces” in the operation.
The word “involvement” leaves some wiggle room, sources said. While CIA operations officers did not pull the trigger, they were in the area during the operation providing the Mexicans with real time intelligence, support and equipment.
When suspected cartel members unleashed a wave of violence in response to El Mencho’s death — torching buses and businesses while clashing with Mexican security forces — US officials were caught off guard and forced to scramble to try to ensure the safety of US operatives, according to a US official briefed on the matter. Administration officials worked to try to evacuate FBI and CIA personnel operating from locations that were at the center of fire-bombings and open-air shooting incidents, the official said.
In previous administration, US operations inside Mexico were mostly coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which has spent decades building relationships training with vetted units in the Mexican Naval Marines known as SEMAR, current and former officials say.
In a nation with major corruption problems in law enforcement, known to be infiltrated by cartel operatives, working directly with vetted Mexican security forces has helped not only protect sensitive intelligence for anti-cartel operations, but also protect the lives of US and Mexican forces working together to help capture cartel leaders.
But the CIA has over the last several months been purposefully working more closely with select regional, state, and local Mexican officials than they ever have in the past, primarily due to the agency’s concerns that the cartels have effectively infiltrated some elements of the Mexican government.
Further underscoring distrust between US and Mexican authorities, the US Justice Department last month accused the sitting governor of Sinaloa, who is a member of Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena political party, and nine other current and former Mexican officials of actively conspiring with the Sinaloa Cartel.
An incident that occurred in 2012 continues to serve as a warning for the CIA. In August of that year, more than a dozen Mexican federal police officers, wearing civilian clothes, ambushed a US Embassy armored vehicle with diplomatic plates that was carrying two CIA operatives and their driver, a Mexican marine. US officials suspected at the time that the attack was an assassination attempt done at the behest of a cartel. Twelve of the police officers were convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to decades in prison.
“Ground Branch is very good at not getting killed by the guys they work with,” the former CIA paramilitary officer said. “But the one place we really worry about getting whacked is Mexico. The Mexican military and police are infiltrated by the cartels. And the attack in 2012 still affects the way the agency looks at the situation there now.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed to this story.