Mexican Legislators Call for Investigation of U.S. Intelligence Center

Gabriela Cuevas Barrón, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Mexican Senate.

Three top Mexican lawmakers have called on the country’s Attorney General to investigate disclosures about a secret, U.S.-only intelligence facility in Mexico City published last week by Migration Declassified in partnership with MVS Noticias.

On Friday, Ricardo Anaya Cortés of the National Action Party (PAN), chair of the Permanent Council of the Chamber of Deputies, said “it would be very grave if it is confirmed that an espionage center, operated by a foreign government, exists on our territory.”

Citing the document at the center of last week’s posting, Anaya said that “this is a matter that definitely should be investigated immediately by the competent authorities.” The secretary of the Foreign Relations Committee, Fernando Zarate Salgado of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), added that “Mexicans demand that in all areas our privacy and our rights be respected and that we are not the victims of espionage on the part of a foreign government.”

On Monday, Gabriela Cuevas Barrón, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also issued a call to investigate the “Mexico Fusion Center.” Cuevas, from the PAN, said the intelligence facility described in the DOD memo was in violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

“Of course we agree that strategies and actions should be adopted that would help us do away with narcotraffickers and dismantle organized crime,” she said in a press statement, “but they should be within national and international legal norms.”

Cuevas said the new information outlined in the memo “would aggravate existing allegations about a clear violation of national sovereignty and the privacy of Mexicans.” She also indicated she had asked the Secretary of Governance (SEGOB) and the Center of Investigation and National Security (CISEN), in charge of domestic and foreign intelligence investigations, for a “detailed report on accredited foreign intelligence stations in Mexico.”

This morning, Sen. Cuevas discussed the issue at length with Carmen Aristegui of MVS Noticias:

Carmen also discussed the importance of having access to declassified sources and explains how they help us understand and contextualize the material leaked through Snowden and WikiLeaks.