MEXICO: THE U.S. PRESS TAKES A SIESTA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100590033-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 15, 2011
• Sequence Number: 33
• Publication Date: February 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/03/15: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100590033-3
ARTIf'1F U HARED
Dill
COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW
January-February 1985
icakp%n. U.S. the press
es sues
The foreign press often scoops our best papers
in covering our big neighbor's big problems
by.ROGER MORRIS
9 n 1965. as the story goes, an Argentine leftist named
H 15 Adolfo Gill), came to Mexico after making a name for
himself as a revolutionary organizer and writer all over
Latin America, from Chile to Cuba to Bolivia. Reportedly
on a secret mission to support Guatemalan guerrillas, Gilly
was arrested by the Mexican federates and sentenced to
seven years in prison. While in prison, however, he wrote
a Marxist interpretation of the 1910 Mexican Revolution
which celebrated the event, especially its nationalist, anti-
U.S. impulse, and which was widely read and acclaimed
in Mexico. After his release, the authorities voided Gilly's
conviction, absolved him of all charges, and eventually
appointed him professor of political science at the National
University in Mexico City. Thus was a onetime subversive
transformed into a respected scholar.
Foreign affairs - and an intimate liaison
There is at.least one Mexican subject that has enjoyed sub-
stantially more U.S. coverage in the past two years: Mexico
City's warmth toward the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua
and its peace overtures in El Salvador. both of which fre-
quently put it at odds with the Reagan administration. Yet
if the Central American crisis has sometimes made Mexican
diplomacy a wire-service staple, it has done little to put the
policy behind it in a historical context. that would enable
readers to see Mexico's actions as something other than the
simple anti-American impulse visible in isolated episodes.
In April and again in August 1983, The Economist analyzed
Mexican policy - straddled between its own paternalism
toward Central America and its domestic and historical
desire to achieve greater independence from the U.S. -
with a sophistication- rarely seen in the American press.
Meanwhile, . one aspect of Mexican foreign relations
seems to remain forbidden ground for American journalism.
despite recent events in Central America: Mexico City's
intimate liaison with coven U.S. agencies. The largest U.S.
mission in the world. literally 'swarming with attaches from
the Drug Enforcement Agency and (according to some
sources) the FBI, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City has not
been explored by reporters.
Among the most numerous of the Embassy's nondiplo-
matic denizens are the members of a large CIA station in
Mexico City, long linked to the federates, with sometimes
embarrassing but quickly concealed consequences. Begin-
ning in January 1981, The San Diego Union ran a major
investigative series on police corruption in Mexico. In the
wake of the series. the local U.S. Attorney indicted, among
other members of a far-flung car-smuggling ring, a high-
ranking Tiajuana police official named Naser Haro. Hato
was also alleged to be a key colleague, if not an employee,
of the CIA. It was a promising story, to say the least, but
the full facts were never to be printed or brought to light
in court. The U.S. Attorney, albeit a Republican, was sum-
marily removed by the Reagan administration, the indict-
ment was dropped, and the Union's stories on the subject
abruptly ceased.
On September 27, 1984. The New York Times briefly
lifted a similar veil when Philip Taubman reported that
former CIA Latin America analyst John R. Horton had been
pressured by Director William J. Casey to revise an intel-
ligence estimate on Mexico. Casey wanted the report to
portray conditions in Mexico as a threat to the country's
stability and U.S. security, the Times revealed. and Horton's
"data did not support such an alarmist conclusion." Intrigu-
ing and perhaps sensational bristling with Questions about
Mexico as well as the forces that shape intelligence reports,
was another story destined for a dead end.
Approved For Release 2011/03/15: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100590033-3