Yesterday, the Pentagon confirmed that the U.S. military will be deployed on operations aimed at South American drug cartels. “The Department of Defense will undoubtedly play an important role towards meeting the President’s objective to eliminate the ability of these cartels to threaten the territory, safety, and security of the United States and its people,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in response to a question from the Daily Mail. “These cartels have engaged in historic violence and terror throughout our Hemisphere—and around the globe—that has destabilized economies and internal security of countries but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.”
The Daily Mail was specifically asking Parnell about a story that independent journalist Ken Klippenstein posted the day before, in which he reported that the Trump administration has directed the military to prepare for lethal strikes against cartel targets inside Mexico. The Top Secret planning order, issued in late Spring, directs Northern Command (NORTHCOM) to manage the attack plans, which are to be ready by mid-September.
“Not only is Donald Trump uniquely focused on TCOs [transnational criminal organizations, the official name for cartels], having designated them terrorists in one of his first Executive Orders, but he has shown himself to be willing to take unilateral action despite potentially negative political ramifications,” one senior intelligence official told Klippenstein. He and the other sources say that military action could be unilateral—that is, without the involvement or approval of the Mexican government, Klippenstein wrote.
Klippenstein further reported that the unprecedented order was discussed at a July meeting at NORTHCOM headquarters in Colorado Springs. The meeting was led by Colby Jenkins, the unconfirmed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. Within days, Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, commander of NORTHCOM, hosted the two highest-ranking Mexican military officials: Gen. Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, Secretary of National Defense, and Adm. Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, Secretary of the Navy.
Klippenstein took Parnell’s statement to the Daily Mail as confirmation of his reporting of the day before. “The phrase ‘undoubtedly play’ is the public affairs equivalent of saying what I wrote was accurate,” he wrote in a followup article. “The characterization of cartels as a grave threat also affirms the blah, blah, blah we will inevitably hear if such strikes materialize.”
