Ben Rhodes

You know, there's a long history of the CIA being used against primarily criminal organizations, because remember, they don't just commit drug related crimes.

They're involved in a whole range of organized crime activity, state threatening organized crime activity in Latin America very often.

And so there is there's an intelligence community.

There's intelligence community work there.

That is carried out against these organizations that, for example, in Colombia overlap with guerrilla organizations as well, political criminal groups as well.

And what there is now is and has been extensive cooperation between law enforcement organizations.

Now, U.S.

Armed Forces at a much higher scale than what has been true in the past through Northern Command and a new GIATF, Joint Interagency Task Force, that's been put together to focus on cartels in Mexico.

And certainly the intelligence community is a part of that, providing analysis, providing information.

Sort of information that your partner on the ground, in this case, the Mexican armed forces, Mexican police wouldn't necessarily have available.

It's additive because a lot of the human intelligence comes from local law enforcement.

And that's probably the case here.

Mexican law enforcement is much better placed than any U.S.

intelligence to gather human intelligence on the ground.

On the other hand, Mexican organizations are also under a greater level of threat than U.S.

security officials are.

And so for them, it's convenient for the United States to conduct some of the surveillance.

You know, that's a good question.

Clearly, President Scheinbaum is doing everything she can to prevent a U.S.

direct attack on Mexican territory.