Archive Staff Nominated for Gabriel García Márquez Award

We’re pleased to announce that National Security Archive investigators Michael Evans and Jesse Franzblau have been officially nominated for the Gabriel García Márquez Award for news coverage (“Cobertura”). The nomination was based on a joint investigation between the Archive’s Mexico project staff and MVS Noticias revealing newly-declassified evidence of a secret U.S. espionage facility in Mexico City. Nine … Continue reading →

Mexico Fusion Center: NSA Refuses to Acknowledge “Existence or Non-existence” of Documents on U.S. Intelligence Facility

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) refuses to acknowledge its involvement in a Top Secret U.S. intelligence facility in Mexico City, despite previously declassified information describing its role. The NSA issued the “Glomar” denial in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we filed last year. The agency did so even after we … Continue reading →

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

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 … Continue reading →

NSA Staffed U.S.-Only Intelligence “Fusion Center” in Mexico City

Top Secret Facility Barred Mexicans, Focused on “High Value Targeting” National Security Agency (NSA) personnel rotated in and out of a U.S.-operated “Mexico Fusion Center” located inside the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and provided additional analytic support to the secret intelligence facility’s “high value targeting” mission, according to a 2010 Defense Department (DOD) memorandum obtained … Continue reading →

Carmen Aristegui Tweets Story on Napolitano/Snowden Briefing Papers

This morning, Carmen Aristegui of Noticias MVS in Mexico essentially live-tweeted a story about the Napolitano briefing papers we published yesterday. These documents included a bullet point indicating that Mexico wanted to “put to bed” issues stemming from leaked documents on U.S. spy operations in Mexico. You can read the documents in our original post … Continue reading →

Mexico Privately Hoped to “Put to Bed” Tensions Raised by Snowden Leaks

This post was co-authored by Michael Evans and Jesse Franzblau. Just three months ago, Mexico wanted to “put to bed” bilateral tensions arising from the leak of sensitive intelligence information indicating that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) spied on Mexican citizens. The new information was discovered by the non-governmental National Security Archive among a set of … Continue reading →