Columnist gains documents showing CIA spied on Mexicans in 1963
El Semanario
The journalist Dolia Estevez revealed in her El Semanario column on Thursday what has an been open secret in Mexico: that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency spied on Mexican political figures, painters and writers.
According to documents Estevez obtained, the CIA in the wake of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy probed the February 1963 phone records of as many as 31 individuals or institutions, most notably that of former President Lázaro Cárdenas, the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros and writer Enrique Gonzalez Pedrero.
Also among the spying subjects were governmental institutions such as the Confederation of Latin American Workers (CTAL), the National Liberation Movement created by Cardenas in 1961, and the embassies of Cuba, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.
It is suspected that the operation was undertaken in conjunction with the CIA's probe of Lee Harvey Oswald's activities and possible dealings with the embassies of Cuba and the Soviet Union before the assassination of Kennedy.
