A U.S. Embassy vehicle that was fired on by Mexican federal police on Aug. 24 may have been the target of an assassination attempt. A senior U.S. official tells the Associated Press that there is strong evidence that the officers were working for an organized-crime cartel when they shot at an armored SUV marked with diplomatic license plates near Mexico City. At the time, Mexican federal police said the shooting was a misunderstanding, as officers were at the time investigating a kidnapping in the area. The U.S. official tells the AP he doesn’t buy it: "That's not a 'We're trying to shake down a couple people for a traffic violation’ sort of operation. That's a 'We are specifically trying to kill the people in this vehicle.’”

Via:

A senior U.S. official says there is strong circumstantial evidence that Mexican federal police who fired on a U.S. Embassy vehicle, wounding two CIA officers, were working for organized crime in a targeted assassination attempt.

Meanwhile, a Mexican official with knowledge of the case confirmed on Tuesday that prosecutors are investigating whether the Beltran Leyva Cartel was behind the Aug. 24 ambush.

The Mexican official said that is among several lines of investigation into the shooting of an armored SUV that was clearly marked with diplomatic license plates on a rural road near Cuernavaca south of Mexico City. Federal police, at times battered by allegations of infiltration and corruption by drug cartels, have said the shooting was a case of mistaken identity as officers were looking into the kidnapping of a government employee in that area.

"That's not a 'We're trying to shake down a couple people for a traffic violation sort of operation. That's a 'We are specifically trying to kill the people in this vehicle'," a U.S. official familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press. "This is not a 'Whoops, we got the wrong people.'

Two CIA officers received non-life threatening injuries, and have returned to the U.S. A navy captain was uninjured, and radioed the Navy for assistance.

Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University, said that Mexican military sources have told him that "the attack was not an error," and "the objective was to annihilate the three passengers in the car."

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that yanking children out of their beds and putting guns to their heads did, in fact, constitute the “infliction of emotional distress,” and told the DEA to stop doing that.

At 7 a.m. on January 20, 2007, DEA agents battered down the door to Thomas and Rosalie Avina’s mobile home in Seeley, California, in search of suspected drug trafficker Louis Alvarez. Thomas Avina met the agents in his living room and told them they were making a mistake. Shouting “Don’t you f-cking move,” the agents forced Thomas Avina to the floor at gunpoint, and handcuffed him and his wife, who had been lying on a couch in the living room. As the officers made their way to the back of the house, where the Avina’s 11-year-old and 14-year-old daughters were sleeping, Rosalie Avina screamed, “Don’t hurt my babies. Don’t hurt my babies.”

The agents entered the 14-year-old girl’s room first, shouting “Get down on the f-cking ground.” The girl, who was lying on her bed, rolled onto the floor, where the agents handcuffed her. Next they went to the 11-year-old’s room. The girl was sleeping. Agents woke her up by shouting “Get down on the f-cking ground.” The girl’s eyes shot open, but she was, according to her own testimony, “frozen in fear.” So the agents dragged her onto the floor. While one agent handcuffed her, another held a gun to her head.

Moments later the two daughters were carried into the living room and placed next to their parents on the floor while DEA agents ransacked their home. After 30 minutes, the agents removed the children’s handcuffs. After two hours, the agents realized they had the wrong house—the product of a sloppy license plate transcription --and left.

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