Home CIA Under Trump, CIA Plots Bigger Role In Drug Cartel Fight

Under Trump, CIA Plots Bigger Role In Drug Cartel Fight

A view of the U.S.-Mexico border aboard a Marine Corps helicopter last month near San Diego. (Jae C. Hong/AP)

The Central Intelligence Agency is poised to take a larger, more aggressive role under President Donald Trump in the battle against Mexican-based drug cartels, devising and evaluatingplans to share more intelligence with regional governments, train local counternarcotics units and possibly conduct other covert actions, according to people familiar with the matter.

The expanded focus on cartels, which smuggle fentanyl and other narcotics into the United States, represents a new and potentially risky priority for the spy agency, which in recent years has made espionage against China, counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and Africa, and support for Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion its main concerns.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe intends to shift agency resources to its counternarcotics mission and apply insights from its two decades of tracking, infiltrating and disrupting terrorist networks to fighting the cartels, said a person familiar with his plans who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the subject’s sensitivity and because the approach isn’t finalized yet.

“Lessons learned in the counterterrorism realm are applicable to the counternarcotics mission and the counter-cartel mission,” this person said. “The full weight of those has not been brought to bear on this problem.”

A CIA spokesperson said in a statement that “countering drug cartels in Mexico and regionally is a priority for CIA as a part of the Trump Administration’s broader efforts to end the grave threat from narco-trafficking. Director Ratcliffe is determined to put CIA’s unique expertise to work against this multifaceted challenge.”

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