Nathan Gardels in the Huffington Post:
Sheinbaum has had a life of intrigue and exploits that would put many spies, politicians and even secretaries of state to shame. He's a bit of James Bond mixed with the civil rights champion Clarence Darrow. Indeed, I have always thought of him as a small Scandinavian state, audaciously leveraging the influence of his unique base as a wealthy “intellectual engage” to shift history at key moments.
As an economic development expert advising the Agency for International Development (AID) in South Vietnam in the 1960s, he exposed how the CIA used AID as cover to train police in brutal repression. When Andreas Papandreou, who later became prime minister of Greece, was arrested by the dictatorial colonels after their coup, Sheinbaum got President Lyndon Johnson to spring him from jail before he could be tortured or executed. He stepped into the breach to finance and organize Daniel Ellsberg's defense in the Pentagon Papers trial.
More here.