Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) said Tuesday that his country had been targeted by the Pentagon for espionage.
AMLO claimed during a press briefing that elements of the United States government, including the Pentagon and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), are spying on Mexico and attempting to gain classified information from his government. He said that Mexico must safeguard top secret information to protect its own security and sovereignty, and that some media outlets are leaking information from the DEA.
Mexico President AMLO: “We are being spied on by the Pentagon and many media outlets in Mexico are leaking information provided by the DEA.” pic.twitter.com/pnEy3xKV34
— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) April 18, 2023
“We’re going to take care of information from the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Defense because we’re the object of espionage by the Pentagon,” AMLO said during his daily press briefing Tuesday.
In a statement to the Daily Caller, a Pentagon spokesman did not deny the allegations. “The Department of Defense, and Mexico’s Secretariats of National Defense and the Navy enjoy a strong collaborative defense partnership focused on traditional defense issues and focused on addressing mutually identified defense challenges and threats, while respecting each other’s sovereignty and respective foreign policy agendas.”
AMLO stated that he will restrict information sharing regarding the Mexican military going forward. He has increasingly become a thorn in the side of Washington, claiming Monday that executive agencies in the United States, like the DEA, are disorganized and dysfunctional. He also claimed the DEA is illegally carrying out operations in Mexico without the permission of the Mexican government, according to the transcript.
The increasingly nationalist Mexican president has also recently claimed that no fentanyl is produced or synthesized in Mexico, contrary to overwhelming evidence, and said that the United States has an overdose problem because Americans aren’t receiving enough hugs as children.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s Supreme Court nullified two new military policies this week that would’ve expanded AMLO’s power even further. (RELATED: Biden Admin Collaborates With Mexico, Which Denies Role In Fentanyl Crisis, To Curb Drug Trafficking)
The leaking of classified information became a hot topic of discussion after classified Pentagon documents were leaked online via a Discord server earlier this year, before being circulated in media in the past week.