Mexico charges 14 cops for ambush of CIA agents' SUV

Michael Winter, USA TODAY | USATODAY

The Mexican government on Friday charged 14 federal police officers with trying to kill two CIA agents and a Mexican marine during an August ambush of an armored U.S. Embassy vehicle.

The off-duty officers, in private vehicles, attacked the agents' marked SUV with AK-47 assault rifles as they drove with a Mexican navy captain to a military training camp south of the capital, the Associated Press says. The Toyota Land Cruiser, bearing diplomatic license plates, was riddled with 152 bullets, wounding the two Americans.

The Attorney General's announcement did not state a motive for the attack. Although the two Americans were identified only as Embassy "functionaries," U.S. and Mexican sources have said the pair were CIA operatives.

Here's an account from the Mexican daily La Jornada.

Mexican security sources have blamed corrupt police working for drug gangs, Reuters notes. But an attorney general spokesman "left open the possibility that the attack could have been the result of a mixup, and not something more sinister," the Los Angeles Times reports.

Jose Luis Manjarrez told the paper, "At this moment there are various lines of investigation," including the officers' "alleged relationship with organized crime," but also the possibility that their attack was the result of "confusion."

The Christian Science Monitor writes that the Mexican Navy is "active deep inside the country's interior, eclipsing the army as the go-to security force in the country's war on organized crime."