Excuses

Cisen director Guillermo Valdés gave an interview to the Financial Times in which he suggested that some congressmen may be working for drug dealers. Given that Mexico's equivalent of the Justice Department just released a report naming 80 cities whose local governments are controlled by drug traffickers, it's a safe bet that Valdés is right. But if this is some sort of roundabout defense for Cisen's monitoring of congressmen, it falls flat, because it's a month removed from the discovery of the activity. If suspicion about dirty congressman was the reason for the spying, Valdés should have said it from the beginning; now, it sounds more like the excuse du jour. Also, the contract was to keep tabs on legislators' use of a research database; if the goal is to look for dirt, that's not exactly the most direct way to do so. Finally, as Ana María Salazar points out, it's not in good taste to accuse an entire branch of government of corruption in an interview with a foreign newspaper without any proof.