Danny Jones Podcast - #436 - "Sinaloa Warlords" Cartel Cannibals & Trump's Secret Narco Deal | Ioan Grillo

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Ioan Grillo is a journalist from the UK who has been living in Mexico since 2000, writing stories, books and making documentaries about Mexican drug cartels and organized crime. SPONSORS https://shopify.com/dannyjones - Start your free trial today. https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/zralgyl0 - Download Cash App today. https://hexclad.com/dannyjones - Get 10% off your forever cookware. https://undrdog.com - Our listeners get 30% off their entire order. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off. EPISODE LINKS https://www.crashoutmedia.com https://x.com/ioangrillo *NEW* DJP MERCH https://dannyjonespodcast.com Get paid to make clips from the show: https://discord.com/invite/dannyjones FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Mexico Journalism & Cartel Turf Wars 07:47 - Los Zetas, Military Defectors & Mexico's Cartel War 11:18 - How Cartels Control Mexican Police & Government 20:44 - Sinaloa's Governor & Alleged Chapitos Ties 22:26 - El Mencho's Killing, CIA Drones & Drug Boat Strikes 29:31 - Colombian Pro Bono Drug Smuggling Case 32:42 - Trump's Cartel Deals, Honduras Pardons & Maduro 39:41 - Maduro's Capture, Cuban Guards & Sonic Weapons 44:17 - Venezuela's Collapse, Mass Migration & Voting Machines 48:17 - Venezuelan Police, Airport Detention & Fear 53:08 - Kidnapped At Gunpoint: A Cartel Reporter's PTSD 57:08 - Cartel Cannibalism & Training Camps 01:06:07 - Mexican Marines & A Family Massacre 01:08:21 - Mexico's Mass Graves & Families Searching For The Missing 01:15:52 - Sinaloa Turf Wars, Forced Recruitment & State Police 01:21:11 - Lucky Luciano, The CIA & America's Drug War 01:26:16 - El Mayo's Kidnapping & The Sinaloa Cartel Families 01:30:39 - Meeting El Chapo's Mother In Sinaloa 01:39:28 - How El Mayo Was Tricked & His Plane's Museum Plaque 01:47:21 - Mexico's Indigenous Militia & Cartel Resistance 01:50:28 - El Mencho's Death & Alleged Military Execution 01:56:17 - Pegasus Spyware, Cartel Phone Hacks & Weaponized Drones 02:05:05 - Could Cartels Acquire Nuclear Weapons? 02:05:10 - Cartel Terror Tactics & The Siege Of Culiacán 02:13:30 - Stolen Ancient Artifacts & Cartel Contraband 02:14:53 - Would Drug Legalization Weaken Mexico's Cartels? 02:20:34 - Chinese Meth Superlabs, A $205 Million Bust & Vegas 02:30:16 - Chinese Fentanyl, Mexican Opium & The Heroin Boom 02:40:18 - Cocaine's Boom Years & The Economics Of Trafficking 02:46:06 - Cartel Wealth, Billionaires & The Pursuit Of Power 02:49:12 - El Salvador's Gang War & Bukele's Mass Arrests 02:53:00 - MS-13 Origins, Black Sabbath & Los Angeles 03:00:11 - Nayib Bukele's Background & El Salvador's Crackdown 03:02:54 - The Bukele Wallet Story 03:06:50 - Javier Valdez, El Chapo's Family & Murdered Journalists 03:15:31 - How Mexicans View Americans & US Intervention 03:17:21 - CIA Officers, A Cartel Lab Raid & Car Bomb Allegations 03:28:17 - Interviewing Cartel Hitmen & What They Get Paid 03:32:54 - Seized Cartel Phones & Government Corruption 03:37:28 - Police Leaking Witness Statements To Cartels 03:39:52 - Cartel Punishments, Informants & Fear 03:43:19 - Jamaica's Dudus Coke & Gang-Controlled Communities 03:46:50 - Brazil's Comando Vermelho & Favela Parties 03:52:14 - Lee Harvey Oswald's Mexico Trip, The CIA & DFS Files 03:59:10 - Oswald, The Cuban Embassy & Competing JFK Theories 04:04:26 - Fidel Castro, JFK & Cold War Assassination Theories 04:07:27 - The CIA & The Term Conspiracy Theory 04:08:39 - Adam Curtis, Media Narratives & British Documentaries 04:11:05 - Ioan Grillo's New Book & Reporting From Mexico Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, Yowen, thanks for coming, dude. I'm really excited to talk to you. I've been really excited to talk to you specifically because you're one of the few reporters like we were talking about earlier that's reporting on all the stuff that's happening in Mexico, who actually lives in Mexico full-time. And you've been living there for like 25 years, is that right? Yeah, that's right, yeah, 25 years. So what made you want to move to Mexico City?

So I'm from the UK originally from near a city called Brighton. which is a seaside town. I say it's the Acapulco of England. The Acapulco of England. The Miami of England. I say it's a joke, it has stones and cold water. But yeah, I fancied traveling the world being a journalist. And one of my inspirations going back was the movie Salvador by Oliver Stone.

You've ever seen that? Oliver Stone's first movie. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So in that movie, I was James Woods playing this crazy photographer who's covering the Civil War in El Salvador in the 80s. And he's a kind of crazy, wide kind of guy. And I was like, I want to be that guy.

So, yeah. So anyway, so I came to Mexico City. And my original plan was to be like two years and maybe move on. And then one thing to another and I ended up upset. staying there. My first job was for a newspaper in Mexico City called the news, original name, the news, which was an English language paper run by a Mexican owner called Don Romolo Farrell, a Mexican with an Irish name, who had a Mexican newspaper called Noviades and he had an English language newspaper called The News. So I started working there for like $600 a month when I first

arrived and yeah that was my really my first jump into journalism and it was fun i mean i was because i was paid a little money i'll be taking the the mexican micro buses to the press conferences and then going to a press conference with like coffee arnaan and that kind of thing one of my early stories there was like i started getting into doing the drug thing right away and you know one of my early stories was covering the court march live some generals for drug trafficking, I started covering crack sellers. Crack was a big thing back then in Mexico, which is kind of becoming a big thing. Now it's more crystal meth in terms of use in Mexico. And yeah, one thing literally, I started working for the Houston Chronicle out of Texas,

Associated Press, and then Time magazine, New York Times, and then just doing independent stuff, writing a trio of books. And how old were you when you first moved down there? I was 27. 27. Yeah, I was 27 when I arrived in Mexico in 2000. And yeah, it was kind of, you know, I've been messing around for a bit in the UK and it was just like, yeah, you know, get out there and do some journalism. It's kind of a shame that back in the day, back in those days,

these English language newspapers existed around the world, and it was a good way to start journalism in different countries. You know, you arrive with a backpack and you can start working for one of these papers. Nowadays, I get a lot of emails from, emails from young people wanting to start in journalism, foreign journalism. And it's like very difficult, where do you start? You know, where's that first base you can go to? And that's kind of taken away now because those English language newspapers hardly exist anymore because, you know, you've got the internet. Right.

And so, yeah, that's interesting. If those don't exist as much anymore and, like, you know, the way that we're in this world we're living at in with independent media dominating everything, like, how does one tackle that in a place like Mexico? I mean, you've got people coming through still, you know, people who are determined and they're going out there and finding ways, I mean, finding ways of freelancing for mainstream media or also doing independent stuff, you know, there's a merger of that things. But it's funny how things have changed. I mean, when I was working for the Houston Chronicle, so I worked for the Houston Chronicle

from 2004 to 2006, 2003 to 5,6. and back then there was much less care about security issues because there hadn't been the level of violence there's been since. So they'd send me, for example, to cover Nueva Laredo, over the border from Laredo, Texas, where there was a turf war beginning in that place between the Sinolaoac cartel and the Cetas Gulf Cartel. And in a way, this was the beginning of the war

that was spread across Mexico. There was some fundamental changes happening there to the way people were fighting. But when they sent me there, they just say, get up there. You know, get yourself, just get up there. We need stories right now. Get on a plane to Monterey, rent a car,

drive there. There was no security protocol. There was no like anything like nowadays, journalists are a lot more, for mainstream outlets are more restricted about where they can go or where they can move because of the violence there's been. But then it was just get up there. So I was, you know, just get up there and they just say,

give us stories. So I just try and figure out, okay, how do I get stories in this place on the drug cartel stuff? And first of all, I was like, okay, I'm going to go and hang around with drug addicts. Because I grew up in a small town in, you know, I said near Brighton in the UK, the Acapulco of England. The small town I grew up in particularly was a lot of heroin use back in the late 80s, early 90s. So I knew a lot of people who ended up taking heroin there. So I was like, I've hung around with drug addicts before.

It's not so hard to hang around with drug addicts and see what they know. What can the drug addicts tell me? How can they tell me who sells drugs? How do things work in the city? And that was one of my first ways in was just hang around at like drug rehab centers. Yeah. Hang around a place where they take drugs and trying to find. That was one of my first ways to try and understand.

Now, I started there covering some quite crazy stuff, like a lot of people who were like massacres that were happening there. and since then I've talked to some of the people on the cartel side, the big guys who were moving the forces around that time and understood more what was happening. But basically that was a kind of change of violence and instead of being the old school, like guys with shaved heads and tattoos shooting people with pistols,

it was paramilitary organized crime. So it was guys with metal helmets, AK-47s, you know, radios, bulletproof jackets, doing proper paramilitary kind of killings, and then that spread across Mexico. And these are cartel, like paramilitary cartel operations? Yeah, so what happened right around that area? So when you go back to the 1990s,

you had these cartels coming to prominence in Mexico. So you had in Tijuana, the Tijuana Cartel, or the Arianna Felix brothers. Mm-hmm. Right. In Juarez, you had the Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Lord of the Skies. And over on the Texas border, on that part of the Texas border, by the Gulf of Mexico, you had the Gulf cartel. And so originally they were using violence,

but they were using, say, more like they'd bring in, you know, like the Tequana cartel were bringing gang members from the United States. They get these guys from the Logan Heights gang, you know, in the United States. So these are guys who get tattooed, shaved heads, gangbangers. And they bring them in to do like hits in Mexico, do crimes in Mexico. And what happened in the, around the Gulf area, was Ossel Kavanaugh, the head of the Gulf cartel, recruited members of the Mexican military. So from a special forces group in the Mexican military

and these became the Setus. So he recruited these guys because, you know, they could make more money working for the drug cartel than working for the government. Right. And the first guy he recruited from the Setters was called Atoro Guzman de Sena, who was known as Z1, Seto I.

and the initial ones had Zed numbers, Z1, Z2, Z3, Z4, right through. The third one he recruited, who was Z3 and became a very, very pronoun, was called Roberto Lascano from Idlego, Mexico. And these guys, because they came from the military, they immediately changed the game. So we're going to bring a military techniques to this gang violence. Right. So, right, you know, like, you know, your gangbangers messing around.

We're going to go in there. Now, in the city of Nuevo Laredo, you had a fight there. So the main golf cartel territory was over in Matamoros, like down the road. And Norelloo for a long time was kind of everybody could use it for trafficking drugs. It wasn't specifically a territory that one cartel could use. But there started to be a conflict there between. groups related to the Sinaloans and groups related to Osel Kadanas and the Gulf Cartel.

They started having a conflict, having a fight, and people were being killed. So Osel Kadaanah sent the Setters to the city and the setters went in there and they were like, we're going to wipe out the Sina Loire cartel people. And they came in there and started using their military-style tactics. So I was covering this as a young journalist

and I didn't really understand that suddenly like a lot of, of bodies are turning up. And one of the early scenes, there was a bunch of gang members, gangbangers, who had been sent there by the Sinolaqatel, who were actually Central American guys with tattoos, that MS-13 tattoos. And they were sent there and the setters killed them, killed them all, and piled up their bodies. And they put a sign saying, send more bendecos like these. You know, bendezos meaning, you know, send more idiots like them. masses, yeah, damasses like these, so we can kill them.

And it was like, we're changing the game here. So immediately the Sinaloa cartel was like, okay, we're also going to have to recruit military guys. We're also going to have to step up our operations. And that's why you had this big change in Mexico. You know, you go back to the 90s, the 80s, it wasn't like this. Then a big change where you start creating paramilitary organized crime, you know, cartels, but, you know, guys in, you start seeing the photos now, the images you've seen.

of guys with metal helmets, AK-47s, you know, 50 of them, 100 of them, you know, crazy scenes. But this was the escalation that began there and then spread across Mexico. What do you think the biggest difference has been since the time when you first got down to Mexico and now? Like what has been the biggest, what is the biggest difference in your opinion in the way that, like, the whole cartel landscape has changed? So it's night and day. If I compare those early days, you know, those early days, you know, 2001, two, three when I was first covering this compared to now. But what you had is now, now you have, then you had people who were interested in trafficking drugs.

You know, back then it was the big cocaine smuggling. Right. From Colombia to the United States. people buying, you know, buying the cocaine from Colombia. You know, it would ship off since the 90s the main route had moved. It used to be here in Florida. They'd bring all the cocaine to the United States.

Then they shifted to Mexico. So it was all about moving the bricks of cocaine and the organizations, you know, buy my cocaine in Colombia for $2,000 for a kilo brick. Sell it, you know, on the Mexican, you know, U.S. border for 20, you know, inside the United States on the border for $20,000 a brick or different prices vary around,

then people start selling it inside or $17,000 a brick. And then people start selling it inside. And that was the big business. People just cared about moving cocaine to the United States. That was a big business. Marijuana was a big deal back then as well. You know, huge amounts of, you know,

before any legalization of marijuana in the United States. Caro Cantero, all those guys. Yeah, Caro Canterra big into marijuana. Yeah, huge marijuana plantations all over Mexico, bring them to Mexico. bring them to the United States and then sell that, make a markup. And then nowadays, and, you know, back then they had, they said they had hit man, they had guys, they had police and their payroll.

But also then it was, you know, in the 90s, it was more the police were a bit the ones on top. The police guys were the ones who kind of controlled the business more. And the gangsters, the drug traffickers were a bit more underneath them. Oh, okay. And I can give a funny story to illustrate this world. But so a story about this, to illustrate this world is that go back to the 1980s. And you had a trafficker called Pablo Acosta, who was known as the Desert Fox. And he was a guy who was moving drugs over a lot of it into the Big Bend Park.

and there was a story that he gave which a journalist who interviewed him told American journalists interviewed him when he was going to the Chihuahua State Police to negotiate the terms where he would traffic drugs and pay them some money

he would take over the plaza like the turf to traffic drugs into the United States this small little turf of this area called Ojianaga in the small town in Mexico So he went to the Chihuahua State Police Department in the city of Chihuahua to negotiate terms and he arrived and like, you know, knocked on the door, you know, it's the Chihuahua State Police.

And they're like, you know, who are you? I'm here to negotiate terms. Oh, really? Come with us. Electric shocks on his nuts. Like inside the like water with, you know, chili, they could put water, put chili in the water, stuck his head in there.

so he's like, his head is stinging, you know, really, you know, beating him down two days of torture. And after they said, well done. You got the job. Oh my God. So that shows back in the day how the police were the ones running the show. Right. And the cartels underneath. The holiday deals don't wait for you to get organized, which is why we run our merch store through Shopify.

So if you're thinking about launching something, the time is now. Do it before Black Friday when people are online and ready to buy. Shopify helps you launch a store and start selling in a few simple steps without being an expert in e-commerce. Once you're up and running, the Shopify mobile app lets you handle inventory, customer support, and payments from anywhere. That matters when I'm juggling the podcast and everything else behind the scenes. And if I ever hit a wall, Shopify has sidekick. It's their AI tool that helps you troubleshoot, build, and keep moving instead of wasting hours figuring out of problem. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com

slash Danny Jones to start your free trial. Shopify.com slash Danny Jones. That's S-H-O-P-I-F-Y.com slash D-A-N-N-N-Y-J-O-N-E-S. Visit Shopify.com slash Danny Jones today to hear your first. I'll give you a story from more recently, which shows a change in the roles. Okay. So I was filming a documentary and this is up in Sonora area and we had to negotiate we had to film, we wanted to film in the city of Aguaprieta

even know that small town on the border Aguplietta near Douglas Arizona Okay So we're going We're looking at a massacre that had been in this town a big gunfight between two section two cartel factions that's in la cartel faction people lord the chapitos and the juarez cartel linear faction okay they had a big gunfight in this town and uh we were we were wanted to go up and film there so we went up uh to uh and first of all i was went to a neighborhood

people in the neighbourhood, you know, would they appear on camera? Right. Describing where they were when the massacre took place. Right. And, you know, we were talking to them and finding people, you know, maybe would they, you know, maybe they kind of talk to me off camera, but would they appear on camera? Maybe it's kind of dangerous for them. Right. And by being in this neighbourhood and asking people, we'd triggered off the cartel guys in the city.

like not being happy we were there. So we've been in contact with some local journalists and one of them reached out to us and said, you've got to leave. They said, you know, you should leave now. You should leave the city right now. You've got to get out of here. You know, these are not happy, you're here.

You know, who they want you to go right now. We're in a at this small hotel with a journalist and we said, you know, you know, you know the guys, get on the phone to them. So we'd like to talk to them. We'll meet them here in the hotel and come to the hotel. And we'll talk to them, trying to negotiate this. Right.

So we're sitting there and car drives up. And the guy kind of pulls up in the car and he's got, you can see like AK-47, sitting on the bat, the guy comes out, big, big guy. And he comes out, and it's like, you guys have got to get out of it. And it's me and another guy who's a very experienced guy as well, who's very good at dealing with these kind of people. And we both said, oh, you know, how are you doing? You know, we're not coming, you know, with disrespect here.

We just, you know, we wanted to look at this. And he looks at us, this guy for a second, and he says, okay, you can't film anything right now. Maybe you can come back and we can talk about, you have permission to film here. Look, okay, you don't have to leave right away. You know, you could stay here. Let me know, maybe, you know, there's a bar around a corner.

Yeah, maybe you get lucky. There's a few girls in the bar around. At the end, he says, okay, you can stay here, leave tomorrow. No, no rush. You have any problems with the police? Give me a call. So it shows who is on top? Who is the guy leading the show?

Right. In that situation. Right. particularly the local cops are there. Uh-huh. And the cartels often... They work for the cartels now. Exactly, exactly.

Right. So the cartels are the top layer of society. They're the ones running the show. It's even more complicated than that. So you got like, you know, with Mexico, I guess like the United States as well, but Mexico's very keen on saying it has three levels of government. Municipal, state, and federal.

Uh-huh. So often the municipal level, they're going to be below the cartel. Right. Because the cartels are just so powerful. Now, the state level, that can vary. Sometimes you have cartels which are very, very powerful in certain states. Like you look at the accusations right now from the indictment of the United States

against the governor of Sinaloa. I already know about that. Yeah, so basically Ruben Rocha Moya was the governor of Sinaloa. Now he's on leave. And he is accused by U.S. prosecutors of working for the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa cartel. Now, they lay out in this indictment like, okay, this is how it works. The cops are on the payroll.

The Sinaloa cops on the payroll. Various, you know, they have 10 people in the indictment, as well as the governor. You have various people, politicians in this state, and they're working for the cartel. Now, it's a negotiation, but in that you could say as well, the cartel, is maybe the senior partner in that negotiation, in that particular place, because the Sinai al-Cartel is very powerful. But then you have the federal level.

So then you have, you know, things like the Mexican Marines, Mexican military, and then they can outgun the cartel. Mm-hmm. You know, generally when it comes to a gunfight between the Mexican Marines, the army, and the cartels. right the mexican government is going to win that gunfight and that's like what happened with elmenschia right yeah well that's because we've also got the the u.s comes in this equation as well oh okay yeah well the u.s they've been a part of the equation for a while yeah yeah so so how do the

us a little bit more behind the scenes though yeah but overall i would say you have this is a you know a big fight of power with the u.s involved mex different levels of mexican government involved cartels involved yeah and all kinds of compromises and pact being made also by the united states as well as by by Mexican forces. But yeah, Mencho, that was a crazy one. The killing of Mencho. That was just earlier this year, right? Yeah, yeah. So February 22nd. February 22nd, right. And after they allegedly, did they kill him or did they kidnap him? I don't remember. Well, so the story, the official story they gave was that they went into these cabins in a town

Uncle Tapalpa, Mexico. And there was a gunfight, and they said they got El Mentiono and his two bodyguards. Who said this? The Mexican military. They said they took them all injured, and they all happened to die in transit to Mexico City. Or in transit, it was going to go first to the city,

of Morelia and then Mexico City. How did they transport them on helicopters? Yeah, now, if you say like, you know, I went to the cabin, a lot of journalists, we went to the cabins, which were a very strange environment where the shootout happened. And it was quite hard to piece together really how things had gone down. They say there was a CIA drone involved. And the CIA, since Trump came back into power, in January, 2025,

January 2025, Trump put the CIA much more into the fight against cartels. He said to the CIA, I want you more involved in this. And he declared them as being foreign terrorist organizations. Right, right, right, right. The Hellisken Degeneration cartel, the Sinolaa cartel,

and a big list of cartels, as well as a list of various gangs in America. So he said, okay, I'm going to declare you foreign terrorist organizations. And among things, you know, as well as we're going to do military missile strikes on some of your resources. Missile strikes. Yeah, like in the Caribbean. Have you seen this? They've shot down.

They've... Like the shit they were doing in Venezuela where they're shooting the boats? Exactly. But they've done it in the Caribbean and in the Pacific. So they've said, we now have a right to shoot alleged drug traffickers with missile strikes. So they fight, you know, send hellfire missiles at these. They've killed a million dollar missile at a $12,000 wooden canoe or a wooden boat trafficking, a single engine outboard. Well, actually, a lot of those boats, the smuggling boats tend to have, often they'll have four motors, you know, for, but they'll be like this kind of go fast boats.

Yeah. So they'd be pretty speedy boats. But yeah, even so. I was skeptical when they were releasing those videos. Remember when they initially did that operation, or were they when they were gearing up to do that operation? to kidnap Maduro. Yeah. And Fox News was showing all the videos of those little outboard boats,

you know, I don't know where the videos were, but they were shooting them out of the sky, shooting them out of the water with rockets. And they were saying that, oh, this is how they're trafficking drugs. They're sending them from Venezuela to the United States. But like, how the fuck does that little boat with one engine get all the way to the, like, how does that work? Yeah, yeah.

Is that real? They're, it's misleading. I think it's misleading. So basically, they've been here. hitting these boats in the Caribbean and in the Pacific. Now, they don't tell you how they have intelligence that these boats are smuggling drugs. They don't give you exact locations or details. They just normally say, yeah, yeah, this kind of stuff.

Yeah. They say, you know, this is in the Caribbean. Eight people killed after U.S. military strikes, three more alleged drug boats. So that was in the Pacific. Look at that little boat. Yeah. So that's in the Pacific. So now.

Oh, that's the Pacific. Yeah, that one's the Pacific ones. but some of them are, some of them are Pacific, some of them are Caribbean. It seems like absurd to be able to use a missile to shoot that little boat. Now, it could well be that they've got eyes in the sky. You know, they've got these weeper drones.

They're constantly looking and they see one of those boats moving real fast over and they say, okay, let's go for it. Let's hit it. Right. Often those boats are the one smuggling drugs. So I'd say probably it's true that most of them are smuggling. drugs. We can't be sure, but that we could presume that many of them are, even so, to say

we're going to kill you for smuggling drugs. There's a death sentence. So it's just like a show of force. Yeah. I mean, like a threat. So, well, so their idea like, you know, they'll hit these boats. Now, say a lot of them are smuggling drugs. Let's say, this is, this is safe, you know, given the benefit of the doubt they're smuggling drugs. What are you achieving by this? Now, when the ones in the Caribbean, they go from Venezuela. A lot of drugs wore and still are smuggled out of Venezuela. It's a big cocaine smuggling hub. That is true. Okay. And they're smuggled from Venezuela through Mexico? Through, so Venezuela, the reason Venezuela became a big smuggling hub is because Colombia, you had a government, which was, for a long time, became much harder about fighting cocaine

trafficking in Colombia. So beforehand, they just, you know, they'd like, you know, you get boats, out of Colombia and take you know for years back you know getting boats you know out of the over the Caribbean from Colombia or jumping planes from Colombia it became harder so they move a lot of the cocaine from Colombia to Venezuela then sometimes they move it Venezuela on planes Venezuela Honduras Honduras Mexico Mexico to the United States some of these boats they'll move it to the Caribbean so they'll move it to like Trinidad for example and then to the United States or some of it can also be going to Europe. I mean, Europe has got a huge cocaine market. Europe right now is a bigger cocaine market than

the United States. I've heard that. However, even so, hitting these boats, what's the actual strategy there when it comes to the fighting drugs? These are moving cocaine, not fentanyl. The fentanyl is not moving, moved in small boats to the ground. Caribbean on the part of the Pacific. The fentanyl is generally made in Mexico, manufactured in Mexico, cooked in Mexico and taken over the border. Now it's also cooked in Canada. It's also cooked here in the United States. So what's the biggest strategy there? You know, a lot of it is about showing US force. I think there's a people... Make a spectacle on the news, justify some sort of kidnapping in another country or whatever, like a pretext, like a buildup of a buildup. A build

up of theatrics just to show the public like, look, what we're doing. This is, this is, you know, we have to take out these drug traffickers. The best education I got on this early on was from a lawyer friend of mine who was working pro bono when he was starting out his law career. And he got his first case that he got was a Colombian ship captain who was bringing a huge cargo ship from Columbia to the port of Tampa right here. On the way here, he got boarded by cartel pirates and they basically put a gun to his head and said, you're going to take these, I think it was 80 tons of cocaine into the port of Tampa.

If you don't agree, we're just going to kill you in your whole family. So of course he did it. This guy was just, you know, a probably poor boat captain who didn't make much money. And so he brought the boat in or whatever and they got caught. And they were trying to send him to prison for like life, I think, for that much cocaine. And my buddy took the job pro bono and defended him. And he ended up getting him off completely scot free just to like, because they told the whole story of how that happened. Like this guy was just a pawn being used by these people who are way above him that are above any sort of law.

they're able to hire the best lawyers and they're sitting in a Ritz Carlton in Mexico City right now. But you want to spend all these resources and, you know, all this, you know, this prosecute this thing in the United States, which at the end of the day, if you end up sending this guy to jail, it's going to do nothing in the big picture scheme of things. So, you know, that really kind of illuminated to me how the whole sort of like prosecution of the war on drugs is so backwards because it only seems like, they focus on these pawns of the operation who are just transporting. The guys who are driving the boats full of drugs from country A to country B are, they're not in charge of anything, most likely. They're just probably getting paid pennies on the dollar to what the head honcho, the people like Guzman and El Mio were doing.

A year ago, I got a text message about an unpaid toll, and then I paid it without even thinking about it. And then eventually it ended up being a scam. And ever since then, I pay a lot more attention to how I spend and move my money. And that's just one reason I love using Cash App. Keeping your money safe from fraud deserves to be a priority, and Cash App treats it that way. With security lock, Cash App requires a successful face ID

or biometric authentication to access your account. It's like your money is protected by your own personal bodyguard, even if your phone is lost or stolen. Plus, if you're about to send money to someone new and Cash App notices something looks a bit off, or that you might be falling for a scam, it'll send you a warning before the money is sent to confirm everything looks right.

Download Cash App and spend it. with peace of mind today. New Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use the code Secure 10 in their profile at sign up and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Download Cash App today and make your money work for you. Visit our link in the description below. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank.

Banking services provided by Cash App, Bank Partners. Visit cash.com slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. What I will say, I guess, to look at the issue of cartels and what the Trump administration has done with this is on one side, you know, what some of the Republicans have said about this for a while, these cartels are very serious organizations and we should care about what they're doing is correct.

I mean, the amount of bloodshed they've unleashed in Mexico is, you know, off the charts. You know, we're talking about half a million murders in the last quarter of a century, you know, like horrific stuff that's happened, horrific stuff to Mexican civilians and to US civilians who've gone over. And, you know, it is a worry that this stuff is happening south the border. Saying that, that's coming with a lot of US money is funding that, people who buy drugs and various things. You know, US accounts were made, US guns are involved in different things.

But on one side, the idea they're going to take this seriously, you know, the idea we really want to step up against cartels. that's legitimate. I also think the issue of fentanyl deaths, you know, that was absolutely off the chart, the level of fentanyl deaths there's been, and that was really something. You know, this is one of the reasons I think people,

you know, one of the reasons people were concerned about the border was the amount of fentanyl coming in and the amount of deaths and, you know, people feeling this is not treated seriously enough. I mean, so many people out there listening to this will know people who have died of fentanyl. So this stuff was very legitimate. On the other side, like you say, killing smugglers moving cocaine, if they indeed are, you know,

and other things are happening at the same time with this. Like you see the president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who I interviewed back in 2014. I interviewed this guy. And, you know, the time when I interviewed him, he was like, yeah, America needs to. to give us more money to help us fight drug traffickers because, you know, you know, you, in America, it's the people who are taking drugs, give us some more money to fight these guys.

It turned out he was involved in smuggling drugs. So he was accused of this. He was taken of the United States. He was found guilty. He was convicted and found guilty. And then Trump pardoned him. I heard about that. This was recently, wasn't it?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it was, yeah, late last year. So Trump. Wasn't there, I remember there being some sort of strategic reason he pardoned him. So there's different theories behind this. Okay, so you had Roger Stone involved in this. He's like lobbying on behalf of.

Roger Stone, yeah. Yeah. So, okay. The argument they used was, oh, this was a Biden conviction. You know, Biden did it. And, you know, this was like a Biden thing to convict a right. Because he's a right-wing guy, Orlando Hernandez. But I don't think it was a Biden thing.

If you look at the case against him, this was done by US agents and by a prosecutor. It wasn't a political persecution. It was a case built up by law enforcement agents and prosecutors over a bunch of years going after this guy. And so, you know, was it really the idea that they're making, you know, they're doing, giving this guy justice because he was politically persecuted?

I don't think, I don't really buy that argument, but that's their argument. One thing was this a straight up bribe? You know, is there a system where basically people are able to give money for pardons, a kind of cash for pardons scheme going on? Now that's convincing. Or was this political? So you have strategic objectives in Latin America right now.

And in Honduras, you had the left wing party in power. And they support the right wing and he's part of the right wing. So we'll let him off to kind of help that cause and then to help international business with interests in Honduras. That might be the case. So like you're using the war on drugs selectively. So Nicolas Maduro, again, I think the guy, Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela. Yes.

So they took him out on January the 3rd. Right. You know, a race down there after that happened to the Venezuela-Columbia border. I've reported in Venezuela for a few times. Now, Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro was a horrible president. I mean, you know, he was a horrible president. I've got no sympathy for Nicolas Maduro. You know, the conditions in Venezuela were terrible

for the Venezuelan people under him. It was a disaster. And also, I believe, I think it's convincing that there was a lot of drugs being smuggled, a lot of cocaine being smuggled, under Maduro. Now, was he personally involved? And I can get some of the details about that, but I've talked to a cocaine smuggler who moved cocaine out of Venezuela under Nicolas under Nicolas Maduro. And he gave me some interesting details about this, a pilot called Fernando

Fernando Blengio, who owned airplanes and moved him, you know, I interviewed him when he was in prison here in North Carolina and the United States. But like, was cocaine moved under him? Yes. Was he a horrific president? Yes. But did the Trump administration take him out for political strategic objectives? Also yes. And then what's happening right now in Venezuela,

they put his vice president, Delci Rodriguez, they put her in power. They still allow this authoritarian apparatus in the country. There's probably still cocaine being smuggled out of there, but they're making deals to get Venezuelan oil. So, you know, are some of these things legitimate? Yes, you know, like fentanyl is horrible.

These traffickers are evil. You know, some of these cartels are evil organizations who are committing mass murder. All of that stuff is true. But also are they using this for strategic objectives with a certain agenda? Yeah, also true. The politicians are.

Yeah, people like Trump. The Trump administration, yes. Yeah, it's like layers. It's like nesting dolls of cartels, right? Like the whole political organization of the United States is a cartel in its own way because they're all using corporations to make money and they're doing slick under underhanded deals with other countries for oil or for whatever or using drug money to, you know, have slush funds to buy weapons or to traffic weapons. It's like the more you learn about this stuff, the more you realize like the whole world is just stacked layers of organized crime and nothing is about the people. Yeah, in some ways. I mean, like when when they took out Maduro and that was, you know, it was. It was an audacious operation.

It was a higher risk operation. What is the story? Is it true about all those super sonic weapons they were using or sound like crazy DARPA weapons? I mean, they talked about the decovalator. There's what's strange names of things. So they, I mean, it was a risky operation. So it was, for some Trump supporters, they might say, well, yes, that stuff is true. Trump is the bigger gangster.

You know, like you have my daughter. is a gangster who runs Venezuela and who takes resources for himself and allows drugs to be smuggled. And Trump's a bigger gangster who comes in or, well, take that guy out. But then some Trump supports will say, well, we prefer to have the bigger gangster on our side. There's different arguments about this. But like, so with the operation, you had the Delta Force guys going in there. You had a CIA team who went into Venezuela beforehand and was, you know, keeping an eye knowing where would Nicholas Maduro, where would Maduro be?

They allegedly had someone that was really close to Maduro, right? Like they recruited somebody inside his very inner circle. Yeah. And, you know, there's accusations floating around. And now you see his vice president is now, you know, is now the president. And then there's photos with her and Trump. And, you know, so, you know, so, but what's the story there? So like, but they got the information and this team went in.

And they had the various planes went off from aircraft carriers and from locations in the Caribbean. They'd be a big build up of force. And they took out Venezuela and air defenses. And then they got the Delta Force team went in there. Now, most of the Venezuelan military didn't fight. They were like, why die in this? And the people who really fought was an elite squad of Cuban. Like, Nicholas Maduro was very close to Cuba.

He'd done training within Cuba. He was very close to the government in Cuba. in Havana. And the Cubans would stand in fight and the Delta Force went in there. Now, there was one testimony that came from a Venezuelan officer who was watching this.

And he said it was like, these guys were like, you know, he described it was a lot of that aliens. They come in there, they're like, they seem to be firing like, you know, 100 bullets a second. and we just don't know what they're doing, they're coming left, right and center, you know,

and we just, you know, everyone's just dropping down. You know, there was talk about one, Trump mentioned a weapon that they used, which was some kind of weapon, which might have been something to disable their weapons. Right. Some kind of sonic thing to disable weapons. But I think there was some kind of tech used exactly

or, I don't know how much, you know, these testimonies are really true or in no seconds, what are you seeing? Right. But, you know, but they went in there without taking a casualty. And they took out, you know, they killed a hundred or so people in Venezuela. And took out Maduro.

So it was a high risk operation, a high stakes operation. From the administration point, if they think it was a big success. They took out, they cut off the head of the snake and took out this guy without going to war in Venezuela. Did they really take out the head of the snake, though, if the vice president's now in power, has anything changed? For a lot of the Venezuelan people, it hasn't. And it was interesting, you know, right after, you know, it was a clearly authoritarian regime in Venezuela. And, you know, I went back there.

I went in there in 2016. I went there three times 2012, 2015, 2016. When I initially went there, I was actually sympathetic. Okay, maybe, you know, these people who are like, and this is Hugo Chavez, and they want to, you know, bring some equality to this country. You know, maybe they're trying to make, you know, things fairer, give a shake to their people to their country.

But I saw on the trips how bad things got. And by my last trip, I saw that people were malnourished and starving. You had seven million people leave Venezuela between 2015 and like 2022, 23. More than Syria, even, leaving. Wow. People were just hungry. Where were they going? A lot of them head of the United States.

A lot of them ended up Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Spain, anywhere they could. One of the scenes I saw there, you had a collapse of the country, a collapse of the economy, and a collapse of the whole system. And one of the scenes I saw was I went into a holding cell in a police station to look at some of the prisoners who were being held there. And it was meant to be a holding cell where they were in for 36. hours and have a maximum of 36 people. And I went in there and it was crammed bodies upon body, like completely rammed up, like 140 people or so in there. And I was like, wow, this, you know, these are pretty bad conditions. Like, how long have you been like, this four? And then

one of them was like seven months. One of them was like two years. Jesus Christ And I was like Is anybody here sick Then one of was like Tuberculosis And then one of them was like HIV

And then I was like How do you guys Use the toilet Right It's like we're just pissing bags Shitting bags Hattem up here We

And I was like How do you stay same I mean like You're round like that For like months And end You can't even move and it was like,

now your mind just goes, in this condition, your mind, you know, your mind just goes. I was like, in shock, seeing these guys

in, oh my God. In the prison there. And then, um, the reason is because it was kind of a collapse and the whole system just was not moving, the whole kind of,

and, uh, so, so, so things were terrible there in, in Venezuela. I don't know. There's many,

many stories about how bad, things were in Venezuela and just sort of just generally this system was not working. Now that was 2016 and I was also there'd be like everyone would be lining up for food, these kind of food packages and then you go there with a lining up and then there'd be a big, you know, some food would drive in a truck and everyone would have gone to riot to try and get it. And I thought well, they're not going to last the summer. This government's not going to last the summer. And yet, you know, they were still there in, you know, eight years later because my daughter was clever about staying in power.

Right. What do you know, if anything, about that whole voting machine scandal tied to Venezuela? Yeah. I don't know. Honestly, I don't, I don't know. Like the accusation that that was used in the 2020 election. In the U.S., right. I haven't seen the evidence.

I think, from my understanding, I think that was thrown out. I think the court didn't find the evidence that was, you know, but I don't know enough about it. I did hear that there was some legitimacy. I believe I either read this an article. Somebody might even told me on the podcast. Oh, yeah, that was Ralph Pizzula who told us this, that those voting machines are used, but primarily in South American countries for elections and stuff like that. Not necessarily to steal the votes, but to make it easier for people to vote and to centralize the whole voting thing, which by design makes fraud way easier.

I mean, I know it's a very corrupt, a corrupt, violent government in Venezuela, and it continues to be now. Right. When I was leaving from that trip, so I had, you know, seen all these kind of crazy stuff, you know, all of these, you know, all of these, you know, I've been around, had all these tapes and photographs. And I'm getting into the airport and I line up to check in. And these military guys come, they say, can we talk, you, give me your passport. The guy grabs my passport and then they go come with us.

And I'm like, he's wandering off of my passport and I have to follow them to this place. So the first thing, I go, here's the political. police and they're going to find out all the stuff I've got and you know I could be in trouble here and not leave Venezuela with this material my god and I walk into a room and they're anti-drug people that's I have a relief and I'm flying into Columbia so like I think okay well no no one no smuggled drugs smuggles drugs in the Columbia and they're looking through my stuff and they don't really fuck they look at that they're looking for drugs but they're kind of half-heartedly looking and they don't really seem to care that much and then

they say, okay, there's two male soldiers and a female soldier. And they say, are you, what do you think about this girl here? She's cute, yeah. So I say she's very beautiful. You want to take her to your country, take her back to your country. Your country meaning what? Yeah, I'm in England, we've got a British passport, yeah. So I said, I just said, I think.

I think in my country they'd say she's very beautiful. I kind of think I'm being kind of clever. And then she says to me, what flight are you on? So I'm on the 420 to Mexico v. Colombia. And she says, if you want to get your flight, shut the fuck up. And I said, look, sorry, I wasn't mean to disrespect you. I just am looking at any kind of weird situation here. And so they let me go and I check and think, oh, that's relief.

I'm getting out of here. And I'm about to get on my flight and I hear over the, over the town, over the speaker, Yo Angriyo, has to be able to talk to the Venezuelan police, the Bolivia are in police. And they pull me out again, just about to get my flight. Oh my God. And they take me downstairs. And they say, we're going to bring out my bag, which I've already checked in. And they said, we're going to check.

We're going to search this in front of you. I think, well, you could have, you know, you could have stuck a kilo of cocaine or whatever in it now, between that, like now. And they just shake it in front of me. And they say, we don't find anything you can get on your plane and go. And they just, it's just messing with me. Ben, I leave, I leave Venezuela. And when my story finally comes out for Time Magazine, and it makes a front page on Time Magazine, the story has a headline, Venezuela is dying. And we have, what was the title of it?

Venezuela is dying. And you can say the time cover, Venezuela is dying. And when it came out, and we had photographs from inside the prison and photographs about all the situation. And then when that came out, they then, the Venezuelan government then put me, they had a TV show attacking me and attacking the story.

And they said, who does he work for? Does he work for the DEA or the drug cartels? and had kind of photographs of me and had the whole machinery attacking me. But I was out of Venezuela at that time, so I didn't really care too much. Football Sunday means Sunday hosting and game day meals. And there's no being gentle on those pans when you're trying to get those football snacks out before kickoff, which is why I love Hex Club. I've used these pans enough to know that they're no gimmick.

It's like cooking on easy mode. They give me the perfect sear, and they wipe clean easy. They're metal utensil safe, dishwasher safe, oven safe up to 900 degrees, and they're built to actually be used and not babied. They have stainless steel ridges for searing and durability with nonstick valleys that help food release. And with over 1 million customers and 50,000 reviews, it's no wonder Gordon Ramsey uses them in his kitchen. Don't go into football season with cookware that makes game day meals harder than they need to be.

Upgrade your kitchen today with hex-clad and make cooking, hosting, and cleanup easier all season long. And for a limited time only, our listeners are getting 10% off their order when they use our exclusive link. head to hexclad.com slash danny jones support our show and check them out at h-ex c l-a-d dot com forward slash danny jones and make sure to let them know we sent you i got to imagine that really takes a toll on you dealing with that kind of shit 24-7 or reporting on that kind of stuff and putting yourself in these kind of situations for this long does it give you like any kind of PTSD or has it changed your sort of of like outlook on life at all or what does that like for you? Yeah, yeah, sure.

And I've had worse situations. And I've had situations of people point guns at me and different situations. Have you been kidnapped? I've been taken, yeah. Some of these, some of these, yeah. I've been taking a gunpoint and moved around in vehicles and that kind of thing.

Where was this? Some of this happened in Mexico. somebody is still quite sensitive to talk about. I've had various situations in Mexico with things happening there. You can't talk too much about stuff because you still live in Mexico, obviously. So yeah, right. Some of the stuff, because there's this threats involved and there's certain people involved who are still out there.

Okay. To give a lot of details about, I can tell a lot of stories, but some, they'll be a bit careful about some of these stories. But like, in terms of you, what you asked about, the toilet has a lot of, on me. Yeah, look, it does. Both, you know, when you're in situations and you're like pump full of adrenaline and when you're, you know, fearing for your life or just fearing for a moment, then afterwards you have, I guess that's what trauma is, some of that post-traumatic stress is, where you have, you've had like heavy kind of adrenaline build up. And then sometimes you kind of find it hard to deal with that so you maybe get anxious about dumb stuff because you've been in situations.

Or also just dealing with being with people who are carrying very heavy things. So it might not be me, but there's people who tell me about how they've decapitate people or how they've eaten people like cannibalistic rituals. or if, you know, they've, you know, the murders they've done and this kind of thing, decaptain people that's still alive. I'm happy to tell those stories about some of those cases. So like you're carrying what they're carrying as well. And then also it's seeing how people have suffered as well, seeing people who have like an immense suffering.

People have had their kids disappeared. Right. people who have had, you know, people who have watched their people, they're, you know, their family members be taken away from them. So all of these things, yeah, all of it affects you and affects kind of. Do you have any, like, special ways of dealing with it? Like, what the fuck do you do? Do you have to go on, like, do like crazy, hardcore, like, long runs?

Or do you like, what do you do to sort of, like, mitigate, that kind of stress. Meditation now. Yeah, I try meditation, prayer. I kind of become more religious, I think, or more spiritual. Is that recent? Yeah, over the years.

Like I say, with some of these situations, when you're in a situation, you know, when, if you really think you could be gone, then you, you know, you turn to God. I think a lot of people, you know, when it really comes to it, even if you might be atheists, in that moment, you know, things change.

But other things as well, it's like if you talk about like trying to understand, like how, if you look at some of these cartel guys, when they do what they do, if we talk about the cannibalism, that was a ritual. Now, this is very documented. There was a case in the United States of Henra Garcia-Luna. and Henro Garcia Luna was the former Mexican head of public security. And he was charged in the United States on drug trafficking.

This is the guys like federal level? Yeah, he was like a security minister. He was like one of the top guys in Mexican government. He was his trial was in 2003 in New York. He served as a minister. He served as first of head of the AFI, and then he was head of the Mexican Public Security Secretary from 2016, 2012. I interviewed him in 2005.

He was on trial, and they had various witnesses. Now, one of the things the defense tries to do is trash the witnesses. You know, you have cartel guys who become witnesses. So in this case, it was a guy called El Grande. They also talked about a guy called La Barbi as well. we're going to have him who's a Texan, a guy from Loretta, Texas, kind of a light-skinned Hispanic guy with blonde hair. He didn't end up witnessing, but he was on the roster, maybe to witness.

And El Grande. And they, the judge ruled that the prosecution, the defense cannot ask them about acts of cannibalism because it didn't want to prejudice the jury. by showing these guys as being cannibals. Now, the reason is, because there was a drug trafficker who was a major drug trafficker in Mexico, who was eventually shot dead by the Mexican Marines in 2009.

And he had cannibalistic rituals where he'd get people to eat human flesh with him. Now, part of that is like, you know, why do you do that? Why do you get someone to eat human flesh? It's like, well, you know, he was into a lot of santaria, kind of weird spiritual stuff. But it's about, I think someone's crossing a line, it's going to a dark side. And it's like, what is, you know, how do you get people to be, you know, to decapitate people and they're still alive.

How do you train someone to do that? And, you know, get people to become, bring out the most evil you can in these people. You know, in some ways it's kind of metaphorically making a pack with the devil, but sometimes these guys are literally making a pack with a devil. So the defense, the judge ruled on their request to not talk about the cannibalistic stuff.

Was this guy, who were this guy's, was his lawyer's Americans? Or are they Mexican? His defense lawyer was American. Was, and so the defense lawyer would like to, obviously, when you bring out a witness, if you bring a witness and the witness is telling a story to say, this guy, I paid this guy money, I paid this guy, I paid this guy, I went to this guy and we had a meeting, and I paid him $10 million to protect the cartel. And the defence lawyer could say,

have you ever eaten human flesh? Are you a cannibal? And if the guy says yes, what should the jury think about this witness the government has brought out? Who's a cannibal? And if he says no, and he's, you know, he's lying, he gets into a lie.

But then the prosecutors, said like how should we trust a guy who eats humans so the prosecutor said to the judge don't allow them to use this line of questioning because it will prejudice so the the government is using these are guys who are working with the u.s government right so if you look at this um snitch system like all of these guys who are major cartel guys and then make deal with the with the u.s government you know, you look right now, so the Chapitos, who are the sons of El Chapel.

You've got Joaquin, Guzman Jr., Hogan Guzman Lopez. You've got Obedo Guzman. And these guys are working with the U.S. government. They're giving them deals, giving them, like, you know,

certain deals where they're going to work with us to cooperate. And, you know, it's a, controversial thing. It's a questionable thing. The US is making deals with very dangerous guys

with guys who are murderers with guys who are major fentanyl traffickers and using them to testify against others. Right. Back to this cannibal guy. Did anyone ever do any investigations into why he was practicing this shit

and what kind of like weird cult this was a part of? Did he ever explain it? So the like he was into Santaria. What is Santaria? So Santaria is a,

often a lot of it's in Cuba, like a certain spiritual practice. Can you look this up, Steve? You remember the song, the Sublime song. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a spiritual practice, I believe, bought by, like very Afro-Cuban. If you go to Cuba,

you see a lot of people who are into Santaria. there's certain places which kind of centres of that. And you have these different spirits. And there's, I think, within Santeria, there's kind of dark sides and light sites. But some of this was this idea of like eating flesh in ceremonies. You have other like within Mexico kind of dark practices. Some connected more to people being.

Satanists, some dark sides of Santaria, and you have, you know, where there's like human sacrifices, these kind of things. And one of the reasons as well is, it's like you give people human flesh to eat, sometimes without even telling them, they like you serve up food and they'll eat human flesh, you're binding them to you. You're kind of binding them to kind of your power. One interesting... This is what they believe.

I think some of the belief around this. You're making people like part of a... You know, these people have eaten flesh with you. And like, you know, it's part of a ritual of... They live very strange lives. These are guys who are living a very high level of power at the top of these organizations. So interesting stories about Arturo Beltran Lever.

The DEA... out the location of where he was given to them likely by this guy Labarabi who was a drug trafficker bought up in Laredo, Texas. He then went over and became a trafficker in Mexico, worked for this guy Beltran Lever and was likely was the guy who gave the final address of Beltran Lever. Babi was being held here in Florida. It might still be there in a penitentiary in Florida, gave the address of where he was in city of Coenabaca in the Mexico City. First of all, the US, the DEA,

were trying to work with the Mexican military to get this guy, but the Mexican military were like on this guy's payroll. Oh my God. This is that, this is in, you can see this actually in some of the WikiLeaks documents about the US ambassador. I remember the WikiLeaks?

Oh yeah. Yeah, all of that. Some of this stuff has a US communication on this. Going back to 2009. So the US was trying to, you know, trying to work with the Mexican military. The Mexican military, they believe we're on this guy's payroll. So they work with the Mexican Marines.

And the Mexican Marines were an elite unit of Mexican military who had a lot of US training. And this is an old US tactic of like, we'll try and work closely. with military units in different countries, and they kind of become, in some ways, our unit. They're kind of trying this with the Mexican Marines, who are now in a bunch of issues.

But the Mexican Marines are very, very strong force. The Mexican Marines go in there to where Adora Beltrai and Lever is, and they go in, there's a big shootout, and they shoot the guy dead. Now they also, the Mexican Marines themselves, get the body of Beltran Lever, put his pants around his ankles, like decorate it with dollar bills and kind of take photographs, almost like a humiliation ritual of his dead body.

After that dead. Now, one of the people who dies in that is a Mexican Marine, who dies in that gunfight. And the president of the time, Felipe Caderon, honors this guy. It says this is a great hero of the country. who died and after that incident there was at his wake in Tabasco a crew of hitman went to the wake and murdered a bunch of his family members his mother his aunt his sister of the dead marine oh my god like revenge so after that now they don't give they don't give names now of mexican

military who die in these confrontations jesus christ man it's like a horror movie down there. One of the weird things and is that like I'm telling some of these horrific stories and that also goes alongside the fact that Mexico is this wonderful country.

I mean it sounds funny to say that after what I'm saying but Mexico is a beautiful country which I love and you can go to Mexico City and have a wonderful time and you can go some of these beach resorts and have a wonderful time.

and Mexico lives this weird paradox of this extreme violence alongside you know this growing country and this kind of really, really good country in so many ways. And, you know, for a lot of people you have in Mexico who are living a life completely outside this. I mean, you look at Mexico City right now

and you're going to see, you know, Mexico City feel a lot, parts of it feel like New York right now in terms of like beautiful restaurants, beautiful restaurants. Really? Yeah. I mean, Mexico City right now is buzzing. Particularly certain neighbors,

the Condessa, the Roma, Nabarte, Napolis, all these neighbors you see these incredible restaurants. Loads of Americans went down there during the pandemic and stayed down there. So you see these kind of amazing things happening.

And also like, you know, like, you know, loads of young people studying, loads of talented young people in Mexico, a lot of things being created there at the same time. And then this very, violence and how this kind of this kind of live, these things live alongside each other. Another crazy story you had in Veracruz, the biggest mass grave so far they found. Like there's been a lot of mass graves found around Mexico of bodies, you know,

they're burying bodies of these people they're murdering. And they were the biggest mass grave in Mexico was near the city of Veracruz and the um they found this there was mothers whose children had disappeared um you know in this one case uh this woman i talked to her her son had been taken by gunmen he worked in customs and she was just searching for his searching searching searching for his body I spent years. You know, you get these groups of mothers and fathers as well. Digging through the mass graves.

Yeah, just digging around trying to find out. It was a mother's day. So particularly, you know, one of these times it really hurts. On Mother's Day, when you're a mother, but your son has gone. And they were having a march on Mother's Day. And this car rolls up. And this car rolls up. And this guy said to them, check out this place here.

And it gives them like a small map. like a hand-drawn map. Check out this place. And they went there. It was a cowfield. They went to this cow field and started digging. And started finding bones in this cow field. And eventually the government took over.

And they started digging up. And they found the last count was like 298 people buried in this place. Now I went down to this place where it happened. And right next to it, you see family homes. kind of middle class low middle class family homes you know and it's you know this building up so kind of in a places with children's bikes and hoops and that kind of stuff and the family because they were digging up there was a stench a smell of all of the rotting corpses and the family said can we do something about this because this smell is drifting into our homes and we're still living here

so you have this side by side on one side people hard working, trying to build lives on themselves. Other side, this kind of horror movie, as you said, a horror movie. And you see that across the country, but you know, things like, you know, you'll just find, you know, like all these great things in Mexico, at the same time, this real dark side, this violence.

And so people are just sort of numb to it. It's just one of those things that's kind of like, lives there in your subconscious and your psyche. You're aware this is something that happens, but it's not something that's like, you have to stay vigilant about all the time, because you're sort of living your life. There's also this great country here.

It's a metropolitan area in Mexico City. So it's like not something that like really stresses you out day to day. So you have to, you know, Mexico's a country of 130 million people. And you'll have people like in Mexico City, like in many of the cities. And their lives are not directly touched by this. So they're living, their life, they're worried about, you know, studying or working, you know,

family. Now they'll see some of this stuff on the news. This will be on the news pretty much every day. There's some kind of cartel thing on the news every day. But they're not living directly. It's not affecting them directly. So something they see on the news like you can see it on the news in the United States. And then you have people who are living in areas that are affected by this, but are not directly involved. But it is affecting. If you look at Sinola right now you have a civil war between two factions of the cartel so the chapitos and the uh mayos and they're fighting these groups are fighting so for a long time you're people not taking their kids to school because of gunfights happening so they're not directly involved you know but

they they're very concerned about okay they could be gun fights now you've got like these you know what's up groups and they'll be might be suddenly a lot, there's gun fights happening in this area. There's, we can see convoys moving around this area. Oh, Jesus Christ. In sometimes, you know, I covered these different turf wars in Sinaloa. And the turf war in 2008 to 2011 and then the more recent turf war. And in some ways, being more aware of all these things actually makes the psychological impact of it worse.

meaning that back in 2008-9, you know, you didn't have like WhatsApp groups of all the, you know, every immediate things of there's a convoy moving around this area, there's gunfight in this area. And yet all this violence happening and people were a bit more like carrying on their lives a bit less concerned about the impact.

And now people are much more aware of wherever, you know, there's movements, there's like, you know, there is this kind of real moment when I first, when I flew up there, right, as this cartel civil war broke out in September 2024 and uh there's one woman and she was saying oh my my stomach's all messed up I'm hearing all these gun fights and my stomach's all messed up and and I'm just really concerned about things and I was just thinking oh well you know she can't handle it a couple

of days later I was the same I was like my stomach was all messed up and I was just like you know a bag of nerves going around um and and you know you kind of feel this kind of psychological stress of the city living under this kind of violence. Right. But then there's a whole bunch of stuff in between there as that as well. You've got cities like, I mean, Halisco right now, Guadalajara right now. So you've got a kind of city which is still functioning. But then you've got a lot of people who've got bad stories about people who have disappeared there.

And you've got forced recruitment of cartels, which is horrific. I mean, if you think about some of these turf wars, if you look at Sinolawa, There's been thousands of murders, thousands of disappearances, are not found, so presumed dead, in the last two years. With these two cartel factions fighting each other. So that's happening. It's like how do you get people to fight? You know, there's a lot of people who want to be gangsters. There's a lot of people who want to be drug traffickers and have money and have nice cars and have beautiful girlfriends and all of these things.

but how do you get people to go into gun fights or to attack the military or some of these things where there's a very, very high chance of dying? So you recruit people and you you kidnap people and you force them to become hitmen.

Who's their target? Who's like their prime candidate to kidnap to recruit to the cartel? Young men like 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, this kind of age. You see, there's a lot of Hellisco. So, and there's one father, you know, very brave guy, this guy whose son was kidnapped.

And the last information he had was that he had been in a house where they were doing force recruitment. And he said, state police were involved in the kidnapping as well. Oh my God. And this guy, you know, you talk to this guy and I was, you know, but again talking about the, you, you feel their pain of these people, I was, you know, I was holding back tears talking to him. I don't want to be crying in front of people.

I mean, did you in? But I was holding back tears talking to him describing how his only son had been taken. And he had this, this, this, this, this, um, bad skin condition. And I said, no, what's, what's up with the, the, the skin thing? He said, that happened after my son was kidnapped. Just the, the, the stress and the pain, um, you know, comes out physically. Um, you know, and it had, I thought, I thought he had like, burns. I thought he had like physical burns on his face, but it was just the stress of your son

having being kidnapped and taken away and you're living with that. You know, and there's any kind of parent, and you just, how can you go through that and imagine that? And the last thing in you is, and he hasn't, it's still like, like in the case of that mother in Verro-Cruz I was saying about, that mass grave they discovered, she eventually found her son identified in that mass grave. It took another like two years after finding the mass grave. But it's very important having that closure because one of the worst things is not having closure. If your son is being kidnapped and you don't know where they are, you've got no closure. And you're constantly thinking, are they there?

Worried about them. Where could they be? You don't know the answer. But if you can think like, okay, at least I know for a fact my son is gone. I can kind of put this out of my mind now. And yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. That's fucking terrible.

Yeah. Oh my God, man. What do you think, like, high level could be the answer to this thing? Like, it doesn't seem like the United States has any incentive to stop it. This just seems like, from what I have heard, that they're using the cartels to their advantage in whatever way they can. and obviously we've all heard stories of how the CIA has been embedded down there forever since at least the 80s and corruption happening with them working together with the cartels to achieve whatever objectives they're aiming towards. But like you hear people float around the idea of legalizing drugs in the United States.

Maybe that would have a huge effect on the cartels. But then you know, you hear about the human trafficking side of things and then how they're getting their hands into. to legitimate industries like security, running security for, you know, car manufacturing factories down there or like Chinese mineral mining down there, like the lithium mines and stuff like that. It seems like they've gotten their hands into like the legitimate industries that exist that are doing business with like big governments and stuff like that. And not only that, just like looking beyond the scope of just the United States, how. I've learned recently how China has been getting, basically using the cartels to buy up land in the United States because the law in China is that you can invest more than $50,000 a year outside of China or into the United States. So what they're doing is they're paying the Mexican cartels all this money as and using the Mexican cartels sort of as like a money launderer to get the cartels to buy them land in the U.S. And they'll do business with the cartels in exchange for that.

it's just like their tentacles spread so far. It's almost like it's so deep rooted. I can't fathom any way to fix the problem. So what you mentioned before, I think is very true about the, some of the CIA links going back. And I think beyond the CIA, you had a situation with the United States war on drugs, going all the way back,

all the way back to the 1940s, you go back to World War II, when the US Navy intelligence started making a deal with the American mob and Lucky Luciano. And initially, you know, it was called Operation Underworld. And the initial thing was to find out who are the, you know, where are the German spies

infiltrating the New York waterfront. And they couldn't get to the waterfront because it was mostly Italians on the waterfront and the Italians didn't want to speak to the US Navy intelligence. And so they went through Lucky Luciano and Lucky Luciano started giving them intelligence. Then they used Lucky Luciano to help with the invasion of Sicily in World War II.

and get mafia contacts in Sicily to help US forces with the invasion. Now, Lucky Lucia, we think about the American mob, okay, well, these are gangsters, but they're not drug traffickers. And, you know, they're seen in The Godfather where they says, like, you know, I don't want to sell drugs. That's all bullshit. You know, these guys are, you know, massively involved in drug trafficking.

A lot of the Lucky Luciano afterwards really helped create the whole heroin networks. Then you start seeing here, like the attempts to kill Fidel Castro. Operation Mungoos, talking about cutting the head off the snake. Operation Mungoos started working with the mob. You had Myelanski, little man, all the casinos. Right. In Cuba.

He gets run out of there by Fidel Castro, so he wants to try and kill him as well. So you start, you know, seeing them, you know, and you see these guys getting immunity with, you know, They say, well, okay, we'll just ask them for some help, but they won't want anything in return. But these gangsters, these narcos are smart. They can say, okay, fine. If a US government comes to me for help,

I'll give them some help. And of course, I'm going to get something in return. You know, you can see, you know, then you can start helping me with some cases and so forth. They even, you know, they started using them in World War II where you started having trade union agitators. It was like, well, we don't want trade union agitators right now. We've got the war effort so we can get the mob guys to also help us with that.

Then these guys, so you see this alliance is old. It goes into then the Vietnam War. And, you know, right through. So you see the US government compromising, you know, or in Afghanistan. And how does Afghanistan become the biggest heroin producer in the world under allied occupation? under under NATO occupation and then who do we work with to take out you know and again some of these things are tough decisions you know they're like you want to take out al-Qaeda now al-Qaeda horrific people they've they attacked the united states they're murdering americans

but then if the guys you work with to take them out also have to be heroin traffickers but it's like in that moment was like well we want to take out al-qaeda out of afghanistan who will work with these guys but you see all the way going back this compromise happening. And then we talked about the deals, you know, like more recently, okay, you're going to make a deal with the chapitos. Ever since I learned about all the harm that microplastics do to the body, I've been doing everything I possibly can to eliminate all my exposure to plastics. Tupperware when it comes to microwaves, especially water bottles, kids cups, you name it, all gone. But what most people don't even think about is your clothes. Most t-shirts

use polyester, which is plastic fiber. And that's what got me interested in underdogs, hemp blank They use their Duraflow fabric, 51% hemp, 31% bamboo, and 18% organic cotton. Zero polyester, zero PFAs, just the way I like it. Honestly, I don't know what I like more, the fit or the comfort. They're honestly the perfect fit for me. They're not too snug, they're not too baggy, and they're not too short around my torso. It leaves plenty room around the midsection and is also kind of snug around the chest and arm area. It looks incredible and it feels like soft, broken in linen.

And these shirts have a lifetime warranty. If one rips or wears out, Underdog says they'll replace it. More than 450,000 men have already switched, and they've sold out eight times. For a limited time only, our listeners are getting up to 30% off at underdog.com. That's spelled, un-d-R-D-O-G.com. Underdog.com for 30% off. And after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you.

Another very interesting case, if you followed it at all, is the kidnapping of El Mayo. Oh, yeah, that is very interesting. Yeah, so it's okay, so that case. So then... So Amayo started the Sinaloa cartel. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. So basically, like a lot of these cartels, they're organizations or drug trafficking networks that come about organically. I interviewed Carlos Leda, who was one of the main...

Fatt considered a founder of the Medellian cartel, one of the main people that I interviewed him in Colombia. And he described how the cartel was established, the Medellin cartel. It was a bunch of different traffickers who each created their own office, they called them, where they'd moved drugs from Colombia to the United States, and they'd charge people $5,000 to $7,000 a kilo. And there was a bunch of these offices, something like 28 offices they had. And it was the DEA and the American government said, we're going to call them the Medellian cartel.

So there's basically 28, you know, you've got different traffickers. You know, let's say you have the Danny Jones trafficking organization and the Joe Rogan traffic organization. And we're going to call them the podcast mafia. We're going to call them a cartel. Okay. So often sometimes these are networks of drug. They're real, they're real net.

networks of drug traffickers, but often they're baptized by prosecutors wanting to build cases. Right. Now, El Mio, Ismail El Mio Zambada. So he, in Sinaloa, you have a history of one century, more than one century of drug trafficking from the state of Sinaloa. So Sinaloa is a bit like to the Mexican cartels like Sicily is to the Italian mafia. It's like this is considered the kind of the cradle of the narcos like Sicily is to the mafia.

Got it. So you have in Sinaloa these people moving, you know, in fact, all the way back, you had Chinese migrants who came to Sinaloa to work in mines and in railroads and they were planting opium. So you had opium grown in Sinaloa going, you know, right back to the late 19th century,

the early 20th century, and then you had a bunch of people growing opium there. There's credible accusation that in World War II, the United States military, went to Sinaloa to buy opium to use for morphine for troops in World War II. Oh, wow. Going again to these links you have. Then El Mayo emerges there, so he's older than El Chapo. And El Mayo emerges there in Sinola. And one of his very early connections, in fact,

was a curious Cuban guy who was accused of being CIA or Cuban intelligence. One of the early connections he had who was moving the drugs of Marsambada, like right back in the 1970s into the United States. that are myo manages to go for 50 years without being arrested. So incredible for any, you know, most drug traffickers, you know, the last five years. The hell of a streak. Yeah. So right from, I mean, even more, he begins around like 68 or something and he's finally arrested in like 2024.

So what's like, 56 years. He begins in cocaine around 1980, before it was marijuana. marijuana. It begins in like cocaine in a big way in like 1980 and then moves huge amounts of cocaine, overseas moving huge amounts of cocaine. So a lot of people, because Mayo was the big kingpin, and so the Sinolaura cartel was El Mayo, El Chapo, people started using the words in the lower cartel, the phrase around 2006. Before that they used to call it the Federation, but the Federation of Drug Traffickers. but like the Sinolaa cartel he was you know him and El Chapo with the two most senior partners

the most powerful people but you had various people didn't Chapo start out as like a super low level like hit man type guy he he began like cutting opium you know I went to his village called Latuna which is village in the mountains talked to his mother sat through an evangelical Christian service

before I interviewed his mother. Wow. When was this? But right before his trial, like 2018. Holy shit. Yeah. So I went up. He's died now.

His mother's died. But like, it's like a long way up into the mountains. So you have, in Sinaiiolao, you have Kulia Khan is the state capital. Right. Then you go to a town called Badriwatto, which is the municipal head of where Chapo is from. But then you go up a couple of hours into the mountains. to a little village called Latuna. And you see guys, you know, there's a lot of gunmen around those mountains.

You know, you see guys and they'll, you know, they'll let you through. They'll someone you just wave at them, they let you through. The guys with, you know, rifles and radios. We arrive at, we'll go there and we stay with a cousin of our chapel. I mean, basically, it's a small village and everyone's related. And he's an evangelical Christian. They're evangelical Christians. So when we went up there, I said, like, let's bring like, you know, bring some steak up,

offer them some steak for a cookout and bring, you know, a good bottle of whiskey or rum, a bottle of liquor. So we arrived there and said, you know, with a colleague who had already had contact up there and said, oh, can we stay at your house? Oh, yeah, should you stay here with us? Oh, here's some meat to cook up. Oh, great. And I brought out the bottle of booze and he said, no thanks.

We're a Christian family. Oh, wow. So anyway, but we, we do enough butchering of people. We don't need to add any booze onto our conscious. So it was like, I knew I needed for the story to have, you know, at least some kind of interview with Chapo's mom. It was like, how do you, you know, we could just, you know, knock on the door. It's difficult.

You know, you know, she's got a bunch of gunmen protecting her. So we went to the service on the Sunday and sat through a three-hour service. And during the service, the, so then the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, we got some guests here, you know,

where are you from, England? And there's a photographer here from the United States. And thanks for being here. And like, you know, and after the service, you know,

I could approach a Chapo's mother and, and talk to her, and obviously be too aggressive in the questioning. She's a bunch of gumming around. But like, you know, get,

get some, quotes that I could use for the story and, you know, and I was asking her how, but yeah, but he began, she was talking about how when he was 11 years old, he would, you know, walk around the mountains with, he was a very hardworking guy always and walk around the mountains with a, with a sack of oranges selling them to the farmers. And she said, like, you know, he's always put some of brave face. But he, he said, he said himself, he was, he was, began when he was like 15, like in, in the fields, um, cutting, uh, opium, you know, like, So I've been to some of these fields where they have opium in Mexico,

in a very beautiful poppy. And they have a certain, like, blade, like a knife with two blades, which they use to scrape the bulbs of the poppies. And they get into, again, they scrape those. And they put them into, like, a tin. And you smell the tin, so the opium gum. and you smell the tin. It's actually kind of fruity smell.

It smells kind of nice. And that's so they make the gum, which they then convert to heroin. But going back to El Mio, so you haven't seen a lot of these various powerful trafficking families. So you have El Chapo, you know, his sons, and also his brother, El Huano, and his different, you know, people in the Guzman family,

and there's Zambarra family. They're the two most powerful families, but also you have a bunch of other families. You have a guy called El Chapo Isidro. You have a guy, Cabrera Serabia, Los Padres, Carra Quintero,

the Caro-Cintero's families, they're still around. So you have a bunch of other families as well. And this is like the Sinolaa Cartel, we call the Sinolaa Cartel, is a kind of network of all these different trafficking families. Now, El Mayo,

on July 24, So he's been a trafficker for some 56 years. And suddenly this guy appears in airport in New Mexico, close to El Paso. And this plane lands, and suddenly the news is El Mayo has been arrested. It's like how? And how has he landed in a plane in the United States? the story was he turned himself in

so initially people are immediately saying well this guy must have turned himself in a lot of people who have you know serious journalists who have covered this for a long time initially I thought well yeah maybe this guy has turned himself in because

you know how could this guy who seems to be protected for years he wants to be arrested but then the story comes out leaked he was fooled onto a plane like all

on the same plane as him is one of El Chapo's sons, Joaquin Guzman Lopez or Hawking Guzman Jr. Right. It's on the same plane. And a pilot who we think is a guy called El Jando. And there's a lot of very interesting things about the whole operation to take. Yes. Who's that?

That's a Guzman's son. Okay. Gusman Lopez. Okay. A beachcraft. Yeah, yeah. Not even like a nice jet. No, no.

That's El Mayo. Come off the plane. Wow. There's a lot of interesting story about this plane and I can get into some of the intelligence around this plane. You would think you would have a nicer plane. Yeah, yeah.

For a billionaire. There's a big backstory around this. Okay. So then the stories comes out, first of all, being leaked by American agents to big media saying, oh, actually this guy was tricked onto the plane to go and see some air,

some air, Scandinavian air, air strips. Okay. And flown against his world to the United States, it was like suddenly trick, trick to be handed to the United States. Now, this immediately didn't make any sense to me. Right. Like this guy is above a level of having to go and check out air strips. You know, his godfather level, he oversees deals, but he doesn't need to go and check out air strips. Right, right. And also he's not dumb and like, where's his security? Right. I'm sure he has his own personal pilot, armed security. He has like specific planes he'll only travel on, like. So then, I got a call from a guy I work with who had a testimony from a head of security,

one of his former head of security of El Mayo who was in prison, who talked to the guy in prison and said like this guy's been, he was kidnapped. He was tricked into going to a meeting. And all of his bodyguards were murdered. And they got a bunch of details about the meeting. and it was taken against his, beaten and taken against his world to the United States.

I was like, well, that's a crazy story. If we publish this now, it's going to be kind of crazy. And then his lawyer, Frank Perez, his lawyer gave a very, very short statement where he confirmed, also said it'd been kidnapped without giving details.

And then I also talked to a Sinaloa cartel a Chapitos guy in Sonoras and everyone there was talking that it was a trick by the Chapitos to kidnap this guy. So I went ahead and published, it on the Monday this first kind of a big a bigger account of this and basically pretty much everything that he told us turned out to be true in this this initial thing which

again a lot of people first of all you know it's not true you know you know this is all like you're doing this is like Netflix drama you're saying no it turned out basically was true and it's since then been proven Huyiqin Guzman lobby admitted to this confess to this confessed to be involved in the kidnapping Now, how did the kidnapping take place? So they fooled El Mayo to come to this meeting by saying, you're going to meet with the governor of Sinaloa, this guy who's now been indicted.

So Ruben Rocha Moya and other players from the Chapitos, you're going to come to a meeting to oversee disputes that are happening in the state. So as a godfather level, you go to a meeting. to like I can you know he's very known for being able to calm disputes you have two people fighting that's how he survived so long in the game is like um you have two people warring this guy will calm and you know you know you know you let's calm this you know let's squash the beef so he goes to this meeting and he goes in there with now he moves around with quite a small team but most of the time the cartel guys even though they can command

hundreds or thousands of guys with guns. They move around with fairly small teams. Because if you move around with a convoy of 50 people, people know. But they'll move around in small, you know, often like two vehicles. But they have to be covert. Try to be covert.

But also they have enormous amounts of police on their payroll. So they're also, you know, be able to control this situation. He goes to this meeting. As soon as he goes in, he's beaten. He's forced onto this airport. plane and flown to the United States.

Now, more recently, it's kind of crazy. So the United States claimed, now this was mostly, it seems, an FBI operation to work with Joaquin Guzman Lopez and the Chapitos to take El Mayo and bring him into U.S. custody. Now, they said, oh, basically, you know, they just phoned us up and said can we can we land in the united states in an airplane and hand in this guy

and we said yes now that seems so unlikely what they're trying to do is say well we're not involved in a kidnapping in Mexico and in working with one part of a drug cartel to kidnap another and bring to the united states however they're there in put on display in a museum next to the airfield that aircraft with a plaque saying this was a daring operation by American federal agents to kidnap this guy. They put the airplane on display? Yeah, it's on display in New Mexico. You can go and see it now.

It's kind of crazy. Now, obviously, they don't care that much. It's a big deal because within Mexico, it's like U.S. agents can't operate in Mexico. U.S. agents are in Mexico. The CIA agents are there. There's controversy about what they can do. If you saw the story, two CIA agents died in Mexico in April, April 22nd, two CIA agents died in Chihuahua.

Yes. This is the display. It's the plane. Inside, oh my God. They even like polished up the plane. Yeah, yes. They put it there. And you can see that the plaque there, they have a,

a plaque where they talk about this. 15 million dollar reward. Yeah, so they talk about this. So they talk about this operation. That's crazy. There's an interesting guy who, a former New Jersey police captain who I talked to recently,

Joe Hefferson, who did a good investigation into looking at how this plane he said basically it had the tail number which is all to do with how planes can move around you have you have information

through radar and stuff had been doubly cloned what does that mean so basically it was there was three planes with that same tail number one registered to a company in New Mexico

one moving around Brazil and this one. What he believes there had to be deeper federal involvement, U.S. federal involvement, to have that operation as well. Now one of the things that the source told us in the first story that I published, and I was careful about publishing this initially and throwing this accusation around, but the guy said, the former head of security, Feil Mayo. He said, he was talking about this kidnapping, and he said,

Nostos Besinos were involved. It means our neighbors were involved, which is the term they use for Americans. He said they were there on the ground. The American agents were there on the ground. Where they loaded him on the plane. Now, I was, first of, I published this, but I was like, said,

this is coming from a cartel, guys, an anonymous source. So I don't have evidence. This is just what the guy said. I didn't want to not publish this stuff, the information to come. But so this is what is. It's information.

Take it or leave it. Looking there, you know, you had the guys. The Mexican cartels don't need Americans and say, maybe there's confusion. You see guys in like camo gear. You think they're Americans making the arrest, but they can be Mexicans in camouflage gear. They have all kinds of guys on their payroll.

They even have also U.S., former U.S. veterans who are in Mexico fighting in the cartels on their payroll. or, you know, you have that. Wow. But then I'm wondering, I think that was unlikely. I'm wondering now if it was more, if there were US agents on the ground, if it was more just not in,

they don't need the US agents to actually, for strength, for power, for force, right. It's what cartels murder people, that's what they do. However, they have the US, you know, agents. Could there be, with the radio saying the plane is leaving at this time. Imagine the scenario, you're kidnapping a guy

and you're flying him into the United States. You're not on a plane. You're not worried about being shot down. You're flying a plane into the United States. Right. Kind of, you know, blind. You know, the other thing is that, you know, again, this guy, Joe Hefton came out.

You need tight oversight, so you want to make sure you have eyes everywhere. Well, the information he had was that shortly before, the plane landed with Elmayo, some US federal plane landed, maybe military or something, landed in that same airfield shortly before. I mean, maybe it had been like, you know, when they came in, they were like, you know, they're following them with US military from the border coming in or something. But I think a deeper US involvement. So what you were saying before about the, again, what you actually do about this?

It's like, you know, one thing we do know is that there's this kind of all this involvement. What should the kind of US policy be? I mean, on the Mexican side, you know, Mexican law enforcement has to be dealt with by Mexicans. Now, one of the things, you know, there can be different levels of this happening. But just a few, you know, a month and a half ago, I was up in the mountains in the state of Guerrero.

And it's an interesting thing of how community security can work in some places. And this was an indigenous group of people who created their own, they called their own militia, basically take their own security. And so they were a bunch of guys with firearms. You can see a photograph if you like. If you check out, if you go to www. www. crashoutmedia.com. That's your blog for your sub tag? Yeah.

If I may. See that very first of you, it lies that main... The central one. Central photo, Steve. Wow. So who are all those folks? Yeah, so these are basically a group of guys,

and this is going to go one of the solutions. Again, I mean, this doesn't work for everything, but works for someplace in Mexico. It's like saying, well, they're going to take care of their own security. And they, they, like, created their own. militia and to say that the cartels are not going to enter their territory. And these are guys, now these are mostly from, well, these people are pretty much exclusively from indigenous groups.

So they're like, they call like Misteca. They're going to need bigger guns. Yeah, yeah. Well, they might have bigger guns. Okay. They're not showing in that photograph. Okay. Because legally, these guys are allowed to,

in their farms to have hunting rifles. Got it. But they're not allowed to have, you know, AR-15s. Automatic. AK-47s. Right. So for what I'm photographing and putting out there, if I was photographing them with AR-15s AK-47s,

then they can't show that stuff. But they set up, they basically, they're allowed volunteers, these guys who, like, serve like, a couple of years. And they'll look out for the board. and try and stop any cartel infringement on their territories. Wow. Now that can't work all over Mexico and sometimes these same groups, they call them outer defences or self-defense groups,

sometimes these same groups will be, you know, then end up working for a cartel, end up kind of being the cartels' forces on the street. But these guys, you know, it's one of the solutions in Mexico is like communities taking care of their own defense, defense. Right. And trying to,

now you know, it doesn't work, that can be maybe one part, you know, at some local level, some communities. But you also need a federal government. You need police.

Now, some of the things that the current federal government is doing is hitting, generally hitting some of the cartels hard right now in Mexico under pressure from the United States, under pressure from Trump. But we saw,

again, the taking down of El Mention Mm-hmm. So, again, that was a CIA drone. They followed a girlfriend. This is according to their story. They followed the girlfriend to where El Mentiona was. Like, I went to this place and you had one set of cabins where he was,

but the shooting didn't happen in those cabins, apparently. It happened in a different set of cabins. So then you had the Mexican military go in there. and they chased Elmenschor so there's other set of cabins they say and there's a big shoot out there one of the weird things I went to the cabins where the shooting happened

and witnesses told me there was generally a lot of shooting there however most of the buildings were not damaged there wasn't like bullet holes in most of the buildings there was a bunch of shells of like 50 cal shells

you know that that kind of size Yeah. In one particular cabin, but also they were kind of weird, like they've been like even like picked up and scattered or something because some of them were like inside the room. But then the police left the scene wide open

so a lot of people were wandering around there so it was very contaminated and you couldn't really tell. But anyway, they took him from there, supposedly. And supposedly he died of his injuries in transit. Right. Now, somebody told me inside Mexican law enforcement that they'd made the decision inside Mexico to execute him.

There's a couple of reasons why they'd want to execute him. One is that they wanted revenge. I mean, this guy had killed Mexican generals. He'd attempted to kill the current Mexican public security director. you know, he killed a lot of soldiers. Even that day, when he was killed, there was 25 national guard soldiers at least murdered on that day by his people. So they wanted revenge.

And the second thing is, did this guy, was he threatening them with saying that I'm going to bring out, you know, the story of this corruption and this corruption, you know. But one of the weird things is they never showed photograph of the body. That is weird. It could be, is my speculation,

it could be if they shot him in the face, you know, point blank range in the face and the face will messed up or something, it's kind of point out. It would be obvious. But it leaves that weird suspicion.

Why didn't they show, you know, there's photographs of his grave and it was a really, really big grave with all these kind of flowers in Guadalajara. Mm-hmm.

But yeah, so on that side, you've got the, you know, you have got Mexican law enforcement cracking down. They've been taking, they've been sending some of these top guys to prison in the United States, transferring them into U.S. custody. Even over. Didn't Carl Cantaro get transferred here? Yeah, exactly, yeah.

And they're overriding their extradition appeals, which means basically what they're doing is they're saying, we don't care if you're fighting extradition, we don't care about your legal process, we're going to just take you to the United States. And they're claiming what they're, because they're a threat to national security, we should give them to US custody.

It's kind of controversial, but again, it's this idea of like, we're dealing with them as terrorist organizations, and we're taking the gloves off. It's a bit like what Paul Kelly is doing down Nels Salvador, you know, just saying, I'm just going to, you know, we're not going to give these people regular rights anymore as prisoners.

we're going to just simply, you know, fly you into U.S. custody or lock you up without, you know, without trial or all kinds of things. They're basically taking the gloves off. But who in Mexico, I mean, you know, some people, you know, some lawyer said, you know, one of their lawyers said, oh, they're breaking the, they're not, they're not caring about their rights. But then how many people in Mexico care about the rights of these guys when you've got these mass graves? Right. You know, among them, the Seta 40, Seta 42, Kau Rekin. They are, the head of the Juarez, all these big guys were handed into U.S. custody.

So they're, you know, they're doing some, you know, fighting. And then the U.S., you know, what should the U.S. do about its own drug problem, its own drug market, which, according to the Rand Institute, they have a survey, they say, what Americans spend on illegal drugs. You can see they have all the kind of, you know, methodology. It's an estimate. a methodology of how much Americans spend on illegal drugs and it's estimated to be $150 billion a year

that Americans spend on illegal drugs. How much does Europe spend on illegal drugs? Similar numbers these days. You know, similar numbers. Well, well, the cocaine now, I mean, you know, Europe's actually bigger in certain numbers. Yeah. And some of the cocaine per capita now in Europe

is above the United States. Wow. But it doesn't, Europe does, it's less because, you know, Europe doesn't have the same market in terms of crystal meth of fentanyl but like cocaine numbers are similar itself so

what should America do about that and my honest answer is I really don't know I mean it's a weird situation you can go to you know Baltimore Maryland and see people openly selling heroin in all these places at the same time they're bombing boats

but I don't know what the answer is I don't know what the answer is. Hold that thought. I got to take a leak real quick. Yeah, yeah. We'll be right back. Another thing that I wanted to ask you about was, like, the advanced technology that they'd been able to get their hands on. I think a couple of years ago when I had Lewis Shapiro on the show.

Are we recording now? Yeah, yeah, we're back. He was explaining to me how some, one of his sources told him they got their hands on. on this software called the Titan software, which allowed them to basically, all they had to do was type in a phone number, and it would give them the tracking location of where that phone was and allow them to get into the phone

and like zero-day hack it or something like that. And allegedly they got this software from Israel or something crazy. Have you heard of this? Yeah, sure, look. I mean, one thing in Mexico, basically when you're covering the stuff in Mexico, your phone is compromised, massively compromised.

And that goes for anybody really covering this stuff. I mean, we know that the Mexican government had Pegasus contracts with the Israeli company Pegasus, which was for a lot of the phone infiltration, phone wire. It's one of those zero-day hacks. Yeah. but like and the Mexican government and I know for a fact

a lot of the people you when you're talking to other journalists or people that have been identified as being targeted by those hacks and the Mexican government itself is very compromised working with cartels as we discussed

but as well as the main Mexican federal government you know so the Mexican federal government itself is different agencies so you have the military who are doing phone hacks and then you have the Mexican intelligence service.

Mexico has its own intelligence service, internal intelligence service, and then the Attorney General's Office. But also you have different state governments who have their own intelligence services. Right. And they're also working with cartels. And you have independent cartel people doing stuff. So in terms of, I mean, Pegas's stuff,

which initially was going back, a couple of years was like, you know, you got some, you know, email. something and you pressed it and then that allowed you to have a hack, you know, you got you hacked. But nowadays they're more sophisticated. Nowadays they can hack people's phones without them doing anything. I think there's a very sophisticated ways of hacking phones now. I mean, they have more money than most, not most, but lots of countries. Yeah, sure thing. But also, I've been, you know, they have a lot of use of weaponized drones.

Yeah. And I went to a place in the state of Guerrero, where there was attacks on a on various villages with weaponized drones by a cartel. What kind of drones are we talking? Are we talking like like Ukrainian? The ones in this case, so in this particular case, I went in with one local cartel who was being attacked with drones by another bigger cartel. And the local cartel, or quite a small local group with an alliance to one of the bigger national cartels. It's an area called Techpan de Galliana, is the municipality, but it has a lot of mountains in the area,

and they have a lot of different villages. And they were being hit by these drones, and they shot down one of the drones. And they shot it down, and they re-piece together. So we took photographs of the drone they'd shot down. and they also gave us the information they took the phone the stuff the cars out of the drone so we even had videos of showing how they were using drone they could see some of the drone bombs they were using and this was these kind of drones this kind of sized drones so these are like the dTI kind of more like industrial ones right agricultural ones that kind of thing they have all different drones they use them These weren't like Reaper drones. No, no, no. Okay.

Yeah, this kind of stuff. And then the bombs they were dropping. So in this case, they had these, they were using like fire extinguishes and these canisters. And they dropped these down. They had two types. They had one type which was more like creating fire. So more like burning buildings. And one more like shrapnel.

exploding with shrapnel now they were using these to hit these different locations including cartel houses some of you have these small villages in the mountains and you have the cartel house in the town

that's being hit and you're kind of obvious sometimes you see these this small village in the one you know a bunch of like small poor houses and there's one like a big fortified compound in the village which is the cartel house so they'd hit that

but also they'd be hitting like regular villages and people were fleeing their villages. Civilians. Yeah, regular civilians. And people were fleeing, yeah, this kind of stuff. Well, you have this damage happening. And people were fleeing their homes because of this happening. Jesus.

Now, the actual casualties so far are fairly low from the drones in Mexico, they're armored drones. But psychologically, it's terrified for people. If you're in some village in the mountains and then you hear the same. sounds of like drones above and then they're kit you know these bombs come down so the people were fleeing their areas and i talked to one guy who was in a pickup truck and he was fleeing and said like now why are they doing it and he said well they want to he believed they want to take over these areas take over like we will basically force a village to flee

and then we can put our own people give that those houses that land to other people and, you know, who are taking the resources from the area. So it's not only, it becomes, again, not only about drugs, it's about a weird kind of feudal control of territory. You know, we're a military group or paramilitary group, and we're going to take, you know, we're like warlords. I'm going to take over this territory. Now, in this area, so the cartel who was attacking the area

was the Familia Michoacana, it's called La Familia, was the cartel attacking. And the cartel who gave us access to this had a prisoner at the time who was from the other cartel, from La Familia Cartel. And we were allowed to interview the prisoner. He was a young guy about 21 years old.

And he'd been with this other cartel attacking, using the drones. He wasn't a drone guy himself, he was just like a guy who was in the convoy, And he lost, they're like a guerrilla group trekking in the mountains. He'd been up with them for two years in the mountains with his group. And he lost track of the convoy. Like there's a convoy of guys.

And there's a guy in front. He lost track with the guy in front. And then he was like wandering around by himself. And, you know, without any food or water. And he's like, you know, then he just turned up to some local villages in the mountains. like, give me some water, you know. And they took him and they handed him into the local cartel. When we interviewed him and he gave us this interview

and we didn't know what they're going to do with him. They're going to hand him into the authorities. They're going to kill him. We didn't know. I went back there again later and apparently they had released him. They said they released him. He just let him go. And he was just like a young kid basically.

Wow. Recruited, you know, one of these recruits. He said he'd kind of been, you know, he was on a fairly low salary. He was on a salary. living up in the mountains. He kind of said he'd been forced into being recruited, which I wasn't totally sure about. I think he maybe made the, you know,

sometimes somebody makes a bad choice. And they say they're being forced to do it. I wasn't totally convinced that in his case, if he'd been forced, that there are forced recruitments. And he was being paid. But he was a kind of innocent kid in some ways who, you know, was involved in this stuff. And he discussed, you know,

who were the drone operators and gave us quite a lot of details about that stuff. Do you think it's possible that the cartels could ever get a nuke or maybe have already got a nuke? So I don't think that's probably likely. However,

you know, because of the way they operate, they're thinking about like, you know, how do we control this territory? Now, sometimes they do use violence against the Mexican government or against civilians to try and make, you know, terror tactics to try and make for a tactical reason. An example of some of the open terror tactics they use.

Right. One time there were celebrations in Mexico on the 15th of September, which is Independence Day, 15th to 16th. And a bustle just threw grenades into a plaza, people celebrating. Suddenly got grenades thrown. He just like throwing grenades.

Another thing was burning down a casino. You know, Sometimes, you know, the another thing was when they, I went to this scene actually, the worst single incident I went to. They dumped 49 bodies on a road in northeast Mexico. Their rule had their hands cut off, their feet cut off, on their heads cut off. They were dumped on a road in a place called Kadareta. I went and turned up at the morgue when the bodies were taken to the morgue.

It was by the Setters Cartel. like a cartel I talked about. And they were likely innocent victims who were kidnapped and taken. So they have these kind of terroristic things of just killing civilians. But a lot of this is more about very localized tactical pressure.

Right. They want the government to back out of a certain area so we're going to like punish you, hurt you. Right. We're going to like, you know, they took over the city, Kulia Khan one time, in Sinai Laced capital of Kulikhan. When Obadiouzman, the guy we talked about now in the United States making a deal,

but this guy was arrested by a special group of military with federal police backing. When the cartel had him, this is 2019, the cartel had him, sorry, the military and police had him in a house, but they couldn't get him out of the city. And the cartel rose up. with 700 to 800 gunmen who took over the city. They started attacking military barracks where the families were. They closed up, they closed down the whole city until the Mexican government released him. So they're... Yes, this is using violence now. There's a guy called Ben Lessing. He's an academic at Chicago and he has a good term for this. He says, violent lobbying. What they're using is violence to lobby.

Like here you have, you know, a business lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby here, who, you know, lobbies with money to try and get the government to do what it wants. The cartels will use violence to lobby the government in their favor. Like we're lobbying the government to release our guy. Right. So from that point of view, the violence they're using is more locally based and a nuke is a big thing there. But I will give a couple of caveats to that. One is that they are buying all kinds of weapons from all kinds of places.

I mean, there's recently been arrests of people in Eastern Europe, one of the cartels was buying a bunch of weaponry from Eastern Europe. They do have bigger weapons, RPG-7s, which they were getting from the Honduran military. You know, these various militaries armies around Latin America with stockpiles of grenades, with RPG-7s, these kind of things. and they'll buy bigger weapons from them and use them now and again, although some, you know, the main killers in the fighting are AK-47s, they are 15s, but they will have bigger weapons.

They don't want to do things that are going to devastate there because all the fighting is so close and condensed within Mexico. It's not like you're sending an ICBM somewhere across the world, right? They're ultimately affecting their own population. It's a very intra-fighting dispute. So, like, even if you want to say, oh, like, if they got biological weapons, they wouldn't want to deploy biological weapons because that would eventually get them too.

Yeah, exactly. They're quite localized. But they are involved in these international arms trafficking networks, without a doubt, and getting things where they can, including from governments, including actually the U.S. military. You see stuff which should be in, you know, which is being stolen from the US military

and ends up in the hands of cartels. But also even more so you have weapons floating around being taken from armies. You have armies like Suriname, the government of Suriname. So that army can buy a bunch of stuff, you know, go to gun fairs and buy, you know, weapons fairs, international weapons fairs, buy things. And then like you have people, you know, setting them to cartels, Honduras. You know, there was a piece of moon rock.

which the United States gave to Honduras some years ago and it got sold into the black market. Wow. So some of these... Yeah, I heard the cartels are really into like archaeological stuff too. I had a friend who was doing some exploring

in like somewhere in South Mexico looking at some pyramids or whatever. And he said these like ancient pyramids in Mexico were being protected by armed cartels because they were there trying to excavate and sell shit on the black market. I'll get just a finish thing about the nukes and then I'll get onto that.

So one thing you do know that they are involved in this, the black market of weapons. The second thing, I mean, sometimes you get these stores that do happen, there's something like trucks with nuclear material are jacked in Mexico. There is a nuclear reactor in Mexico in Veracruz. like a nuclear power plant in Mexico. Is this the only one in Mexico?

Yeah, only one in Mexico, yeah. So suddenly you get staff now, sometimes they could be, you know, the problem is there's so much truck robbery in Mexico. It can be like by accident, you know, like, you know, or not intentionally going for that target, but that is a concern when you see this style, like something like a, you know, a truck with nuclear material has been hijacked.

You know, there's vast amounts of hijacking there of trucks. And you can see, you can see, why, if you look up to this terrorist designation and the fact you have the CIA now fighting cartels, you do see this thing going over the years where, you know, the U.S. military were watching this stuff for years, seeing these groups emerge and grow on the southern border. You had in Texas the boats engaging, you know, boats on the Rio Grande, engaging in firefights with set-outs and with armed groups on the Mexican side, going back a year.

So for a long time, they're like, you know, this is what a military does. The military sees this, says, like, this is a problem. We shouldn't allow these kind of armed groups to be growing in the country, even independently of just the drug trafficking issue itself, the fact you've got these armed cartels. But you mentioned about the trade in like, pre-Hispanic objects. Right.

So, you know, you've got a bunch of contraband happening as well. You've got, you know, trade in exotic animals. One of the things that a lot of cartel guys who are into like, you know, lions and tigers and panthers and stuff, yeah. Hippos. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously, Pablo was big into that. But as well as that you have, this is goes back to before the cartels.

In fact, a lot of what the cartels have done is, take over illegal businesses that were happening anyway. So there was a trade going back decades and decades of somebody finds some, you know, it could be a 10th century, 11th century pre-Hispanic item. Now, legally that cannot leave Mexico because Mexico wants to keep its heritage inside Mexico. But there's collectors around the world. It could be in the United States, could be in Europe, could be, you know, in Japan or whatever,

who are like, oh, I want that. I'll give you a million dollars for it. Right. So you have a trade, a legal trade in pre-Hispanic artifacts. In Mexico, you can have a private collector, has them. People like Diego Rivera, the muralist. You had a big collection of pre-Hispanic artifacts in his home. But you register them with, you know, say, like, you know,

registered them with the E now, with the National Institute for, you know, archaeology and history to say you've got this stuff. Right. So they're kept within Mexico. Right. Yeah. It's like I was saying earlier, they have their hands in so much. It's like if hypothetically the U.S. was to like do some sort of like blanket

policy where it made drugs legal, right? We're like we regulated it and taxed it. And if you want to do some cocaine, you just go get a prescription or whatever. I don't know how you would do it, but you would get like some murk cocaine. And you could do it legally. And we had like a robust enough and a non-corrupt medical system here that actually could help people with addiction and stuff like that. And like in a perfect world. How much of a dent would that?

actually making the cartels if they're already doing business in all these other ways? Well, there's a few things to say about that. So first of all, when going back 14 years now, 15 years, and when I was covering this situation 15 years ago, and I was seeing the cartels massively involved in marijuana, I was going with a Mexican army when they were going and burning marijuana fields and seeing that the cartels were making billions of dollars from marijuana, from weed. And that money was funding these organizations, which were growing and murdering people, and paying for hitmen, paying for guns, paying for bullets, paying for corruption.

So at the time I was like writing editorials, okay, we legalized marijuana to hit the cartels. This will help. I was optimistic then, hopeful then, you know, you take away marijuana from the cartels, And that will be a big cash crop being away from them. Now, marijuana was legalized in, you know, now in, you know, recreationally, medically, all different things. But the market of Mexican marijuana has collapsed. Now there's very, very little marijuana smuggled from Mexico to the United States. Basically, now, you know, the US produces their own marijuana.

The cartels are also growing it inside. the United States, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's also an issue with cartels involved in growing weed and inside U.S. territory. But the market of trafficking marijuana from Mexico to the United States is basically dead. It's gone down like over 90%. Wow. 95%.

However, this didn't destroy cartels or reduce the power of cartels and the cartels. Now, they might have done this anyway, but they got more involved in fentanyl. And it's an interesting story about how they got involved in fentanyl. but they got more involved in that time in fentanyl and other things. So that in itself didn't, and they're involved in extortion, kidnapping, illegal mining and all these other businesses. Now, still, you know, if there was no drug trade at all in the United States, no illegal drug trade, that would affect cartels.

It would. Yeah, I think it would. I mean, you still have to, you still need law enforcement in Mexico. I mean, you still need Mexico to, you know, these, these are still powerful criminal organizations that Mexico has to defeat or has to reduce in power. I mean, every country has crime, but you've got to reduce it to a level that's not, you know, the level it is right now, the level it has been for the last 25 years. But however, I don't see, like, I don't know the answers to this.

I used to be very enthusiastic about legalization and now I find myself disillusioned and not sure what the answer is. I don't, you know, then we should go back on legalizing marijuana. It's happened now. But I must admit it didn't. There was a lot of things

that people hoped about legalization of marijuana that didn't happen. And in terms of other drugs, So an interesting thing about how fentanyl happened and how the cartels got involved in fentanyl. Yes. So was it what was a lot of things happened. Some ways it was quite revolutionary

how this affected the drug trade. So you had this move from plant-based drugs. So like marijuana, obviously, a weed, but also heroin. It comes from like just a poppy, as we looked at earlier. Cocaine. Cocaine. coca leaf. So basically they come, start from a plant.

What's crazy too, sorry to interrupt you, the cocoa leaf, was it Dennis McKenna who was telling us about this? Yeah. The cocoa leaf has like a tremendous amount of like beneficial positive effects on people for things like altitude sickness and other things and people drink it as tea and it's like this nice mild stimulant, but it's totally illegal in the United States. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. And obviously in the and in the and Andes in South America, people have been chewing on coca leaves for a long time. Apparently, I've heard it's very pleasant. I'd like to try it.

You also have use, like in South America, use of coca in certain rituals as well. And they have certain psychedelic properties. I think it can release in certain ways. The same way that obviously you have ayahuasca ceremonies and all kind of stuff in, you know, long traditions of that back in, you know. And then some of that, I think, you know, some of the psychedelics, I think, have a beneficial, a clear beneficial effect. But anyway, going, so you had the move from this plant-based drugs to synthetic drugs. Right. So particularly crystal meth and fentanyl.

And in Mexico, now, you had this, one of these early guys doing this was called Shenli Yigung. You had in the United States, this first explosion of crystal meth use. It got really big in the early 2000s, you know, the time kind of breaking bad, came. out and everyone was talking about like there's a book called meth land a really great book from the 2000s everyone was talking about the kind of big meth kind of scare or big meth concern back in the 2000s and in the United States they they clamped down in the United States on crystal meth with the combat methamphetamine act i believe of 2005 where they made it harder to buy the precursors for meth.

So precursors being you go to the shops and the pharmacies and you buy certain pills, which you then use and convert into crystal meth. So after that, they started creating the super labs in Mexico. And this guy called Shenli Yagung was a Chinese, a guy born in China who moved to Mexico and became naturalized Mexican citizen.

And what the key thing that he did with this guy was he links up the Chinese pharmaceutical companies with the Mexican cartels. This is a big alliance which we still see to this day which has been a big powerful had a big powerful impact in this.

Wow. So this guy, Shenli Yirangung, he was buying, he was a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and he was buying precursorses, taking them to Mexico and selling them to Mexican cartels to make crystal meth. He had so much money.

Now, he was not an experienced money launderer. And cartels, you know, they've got a century doing this stuff. They're very experienced money launders. He wasn't experienced money launderers. So he had in his house $205 million in cash in a mansion in Mexico City. It was actually a total was $205 million plus a couple of million dollars in pesos and all that, you know, they had like different currencies and stuff there. God, where do you hide all that?

Yeah, I mean, you can see a photograph of that money. If you look at the cash seizure in Mexico City, you can see the site. There's this big pile of, pile of cash there. What would you type in to search for this? But cash seizure, Mexico City, $205 million. Holy fuck. Look at that. It's just a giant block of money.

Oh, my God. It's like, okay, look at this. That's $205 million. You see the other currencies? See that the main things were dollars. Yeah. And then the other stuff is like other currency there. Let's see if I can get a better.

It's just a blurry-ass photo. That is fucking crazy. It's like that shot in Breaking Bad with that big fat black dudes laying on top of the bed of money in the side of the storage container. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Oh my God. That's not real.

That's got to be fake. Okay. So check out this. Is that real? Yeah. yeah, it's just a risk. So check out. Yeah, that's it.

Look at that. Yeah. Wow. So when this guy, when they made the seizure, they were like, this guy is, you know, we want to get this guy and he was hiding out in Las Vegas. Now this guy was going to Las Vegas. Chinese guy. Chinese guy.

Shennihiga. He was going to Las Vegas with suitcases of Mexico with suitcases of Mexico. money and just spending them in the casino in the casinos in Las Vegas he spent over a hundred million he lost over a hundred million in Las Vegas casinos lost a hundred million over a hundred million he was just going there what he had a girlfriend who was a who was a Crupier Chinese girl who was a Crupier he bought her a million dollar house but what was he doing he was losing a hundred million but what was actually doing laundering the money because the casinos were

pay him back percentages of his losses. So he struck a deal with the casinos. It's just the way it works. I love Las Vegas. So you're just doing the math on basically like how much you win versus how much you lose. It's not only that, it's not only that.

Like what basically like, in Las Vegas, right, you can go, if you've lost a bunch of money at casino, you can say, you know what, I lost, I lost $100,000 and I lost a million dollars. Oh, for taxes. You don't know that. Okay. You can help me out. Give me some money back. It's kind of crazy. But like, if a casino just took you for a million dollars and they give you a hundred thousand back so you're happy as to come to repeat customer. Right. Maybe they'll give you a couple. They'll give you a whole

week stay in like the penthouse week. Keep coming back. Here's more free food. So they pay that. Now actually the casinos and you can you can see that ended up paying back, paying the US government loads of money out of money they took off. And then you're going. No way. So this is, it's kind of a crazy system because you're going there and... That's just a really shitty way of laundering money. If you're like a...

If you've got hundreds of millions of dollars, you suddenly make hundreds of millions of dollars, what's your big, what's your big passion, what you're into, gambling. If you've got $207 million sitting in your house in Mexico City, maybe you don't care. You're losing that. And if you can just like buy, you know, if you can have a girlfriend, you know, a cute croupier you like, and you can say, I can buy you a million dollar house

and you're my girlfriend. You know, this is the crazy stuff people with money do. Anyway, when he was, he was on the run, and I was working for the Associated Press News Agency at the time in Mexico City, in the Bureau in Mexico City, and we got a call from a reporter,

an Associated Press, AP reporter, in like Pittsburgh. Who was doing, dealing with a different Chinese client, who had been approached by a lawyer in Pittsburgh, dealing with a different Chinese client over some asylum claim. So they have another Chinese client who would like to talk to the press. Are you interested? Shenli Yigung. But this is a Mexican affair. As the Mexican bureau have some questions? I wasn't personally involved in the story at times. when I was pretty young junior reporters, going back to 2006.

And another guy in the office got the story. So Mexico, of course, Mexico City was like, yeah, yeah, sure thing, you know, we're interested. We'll talk to this guy. So we arranged a meeting with the guy in New York, Associate Press, and we sent, the agency sent Spanish language reporter, English language, and Chinese language, and Chinese and the guy spoke all languages with like an accent

his native language, his kind of weird regional dialect and he said, he came out with his kind of crazy story and said the money wasn't mine whose was it and Mexican politicians he told me

look after look up for $105 million of my money or I'll kill you It was kind of a crazy story. Wow. But like, anyway, so this kind of crazy story came out which the agency tried to deal with like, how do you publish this kind of crazy accusation? The video got released and it was, it became a famous thing in Mexico.

He actually said, he said the guy told him, he said it in Spanish, he said, he said, copero or quillo? He said like, corporate with me or I'm going to, you know, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you or your neck. It was kind of a crazy story. I think the guy was using it as a play to try and avoid extradition to Mexico. Now, the United States was going to prosecute him.

It ended up just giving him to Mexico. And one of the reasons was it said that the Chinese government was uncooperative. And some of the pharmacy companies that Shenigung was buying from, were Chinese government owned. Right. And the Chinese government was uncooperative.

And the US government, the US prosecutor said, will give him to Mexico. And he got, he said, don't get somebody to Mexico. They'll kill me in Mexico. They haven't.

He's still in Mexico prison right now. He was still trying to get his money back and his house back from Mexican prison, getting lawyers to try and make a play, but he's still currently incarcerated. Oh my God. What he did was establish this link between the Chinese pharmaceutical companies and the Mexican cartels.

Right. So he's the kind of... Is the link still there? The link is still there. Now, fast forward, 2013. So then you get in the United States the whole opioid epidemic in the United States, which you have the Sackler family and the Oxycontin and all of this situation where loads of Americans get addicted to opioids

through legal prescriptions and loads of people dying because of overdoses and getting very seriously hooked. And then you get the United States government under this pressure, say we're going to make it harder to prescribe opioids to these people. So suddenly they stop, you know,

gradually get people. stopping writing them scripts so they turn to the street and they're buying Mexican heroin. You get a big boom of heroin from Mexico. I talk to some of these guys in the mountains of Guerrero where they're producing, you know, producing the opium gum. Some of the prices for them are getting really high. These are farmers who produce the opium gum to make the heroin they sell to the cartel. Suddenly it goes up to at that time like 33,000 pesos for a kilo of gum for them. It's like big money, they'll buy a new truck, buy a new quad bike, buy, you'd have a party, selling heroin. Now around 2013, the Mexican cartel working with the Chinese companies starts buying fendt.

They've already got the links there. They're already buying the precursors from China for Crystal Me. they start buying fentanyl from China and mixing the fentanyl in the heroin and they call it chiba synthetica like chiba is like a word they use for like chival like goat for heroin and they call like synthetic goat and they mix in so they get the heroin and they mix in fentanyl so people are taking heroin Why? Now, why, though? To create a stronger product and also a stronger product means creating more.

If you're mixing... Was it cheaper? Well, yeah, you're making more money because if you've got a kilo heroin and then you mix in fentanyl, you can make that into like... You spread it out more. Yeah, five kilos. Got it. It's like cutting cocaine with baking powder or something.

Yeah. So suddenly you've got like, you're increasing your profits. Sure. And then users are getting used to a stronger product. So this begins around 2013. They start making a lot of money from synthetic heroin or heroin mixed with fentanyl. And then they just think, well, we don't need the heroin anymore. We can just make, we can just sell, you know, sell the fentanyl straight.

And then initially then you start getting pressure from the United States under Trump 1.0. for China not to sell fentanyl, but then China switches to setting precursors, and they cook the fentanyl in Mexico. And then now you really see the switch. It happens kind of gradually and then suddenly, and you really see the switch around like... Wait, Trump was able to stop the fentanyl from coming into Mexico?

So basically, going back to before the 2010s, China would sell fentanyl. Straight up. straight up, sell fentanyl. There's actually a whole, there's like something like more than a thousand different formulas for fentanyl. But like, you know,

fentanyl is a, is a drug that's used in hospitals right of the world. Right. So there's commercial production. It's hard, it's more hardcore than morphine, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So basically, companies, you know, you set up a fake pharmaceutical company in Mexico or use a real pharmaceutical company which the cartel gets involved with, and you go, I'm going to order, you know, phone you up and order some fentanyl.

Under Trump, they said we're going to stop doing that. We're going to clamp down very heavily on fentanyl sales. But then they just switched up and bought the precursors. So Trump convinced the Mexican government to stop that? The Chinese government. The Chinese government? Yeah, to stop the clamp under the first Trump administration. Okay.

And then they switched to precursors. Okay. and cook it in in uh in mexico now when you get the sudden like you know incredible rise of u.s overdose deaths so you get suddenly skyrocketing skyrocketing 2017 18 1920 yeah now i was talking to one guy who was a um a hard drug user and investigator uh up in like north carolina i don't like to you i just like to investigate them sometimes sometimes use just you know goes hand in hand. And he was describing how on the street,

people who were using this stuff didn't really ever, you know, this move from heroin to heroin mixed with fentanyl to fentanyl. They didn't really, they weren't really conscious of what they're taking on the street. They're simply buying dope. Or they'd say they call it like,

yeah, yes, it says that the doses are so much more. lethal with fentanyl. What's car fentanyl? Yeah, it's an even stronger version. It hasn't, I mean, fentanyl itself has proved the perfectly lethal product because car fentanyl is so strong. It's actually like... That's a lethal dose right there? Yeah. Whoa. So, pieces of people on the street were like, say, I'm buying dope or sometimes they call it like boy or they call it like dog food or different, different like words they use in different places. but it was buying the dope on the street but it was actually

it was so strong at the lower levels like so the Mexican cartel would buy fentanyl and then sell fentanyl into the United States then they have their own distributors selling drugs in the United States at a wholesale

the Mexican cartels are wholesalers in the United States and then they go back down a level and you get to the kind of mid-level mid to low level people who were cutting it up. Right. And then you get the people on the street just selling this product.

And it was these mid to low level people didn't know how to cut the stuff. Right. Because they got this and it was just too strong. They were used to cutting heroin. And as you said, the fentanyl is so much stronger.

They didn't know how to cut it. So they were selling stuff that was too strong. And everyone, you know, started dying. Now, some people even died by having fentanyl mixed into cocaine. Yes, and I got very skeptical about that. Like when you started hearing stories about this a couple years ago about this happening,

like, you know, you hear stories on Joe Rogan's podcast where he would talk about, like, comedians that he knows that did some cocaine in Los Angeles and they died the next day or that same night because there was fentanyl laced in it. And like, it didn't compute for me. I was like, so if the cartels are selling cocaine mixed with fentanyl. like you would imagine that wouldn't be good for business because people would stop buying your fucking cocaine if it's killing everybody. Like you don't want to kill your customer base, right? Because those two don't go hand in hand. That's like a lethal combo, right? Fentanyl and cocaine. One's going up. One's going down. So and I read this long article. I can't remember where I read this, but I remember reading this very long article about some guy who did a deep investigation into this. And he was investigating cocaine in different cities around America. And essentially what he was saying was like,

The wealthier folks, like the Wall Street type people who are buying cocaine, you know, they're getting it from somebody who just sells it to white collar folks. Like Wall Street people are wealthy people. They're getting their cocaine from the same guy. So he's not dabbling in other drugs. But the low-level people who are selling weed, they're selling pills, oxies, heroin, and some cocaine, you know, it's possible that when they were cutting up the heroin, they didn't clean the table before they started cutting up the, cocaine and some a little bit of fentanyl accidentally got into the cocaine. And that's why some of the people that were dying were just was, they were dealing with dealers like that. Exactly. I think that's exactly what happened. Yeah. Uh, 100%. I mean, basically it was like they, they, the fentanyl that

they were moving was so strong and they didn't know, they wouldn't know how to be careful with this. And like, you know, like, you know, people who sell drugs at low level, they're not the most hygienic right. Right. You know, people. It's like, are they? Like, so they can like, you know, you're cutting up staff using, you know, you might use a coffee machine or a blender or whatever to mix drugs up and you don't clean it. And then they ended up killing people. Now, after there was people charged with murder over some of these cases and some famous people died of some of these overdoses. Yeah. And people who were like musicians and like, you know, like wealthy people, not just street guys, but wealthy people who take cocaine died. Then they started being more

careful. So one of the things that's helped between various things, now you've seen a reduction now in overdose deaths. Now one of the things is that the mid to low level dealers have understood now how to mix this stuff. And that's helped reduce the number of deaths. So by other things as well, like there's more, there's more of the emergency things around, you know, to try and stop the deaths. I was reading this article about a year ago. I think I saw, in the Rolling Stone article about, I think it was like Bob Dylan and some other like big 80s rock stars who they were just getting their cocaine straight from Merck, the pharmaceutical manufacturer out of Germany. And these guys were just getting somehow loads of pharmaceutical grade cocaine and chipped to their concerts. And that was like the golden days of, you know, the 70s and 80s and like the, you know, like the counterculture movement in the United States and all that seemed that seemed to be a better time.

Yeah, yeah, for these. It's funny when people say about when they use like some of the people who are moving cocaine and have access to the brick and they're taking. like serious, serious amounts. Yeah. And they get to the point where they do kind of hallucinate and kind of, you know, they kind of, you know, it's not just about getting high. Yeah. It's about actually like really kind of going off there when you've access to very high amounts

of pure cocaine. Right. I've heard stories. I mean, I know people. I have friends who are, you know, a lot older than me, obviously, but like we're in Miami in the heydays, like trafficking bricks of cocaine all the time. Guys, one guy, I know it's specific, he missed the 90s because he was in prison. He went to prison in the 90s from, from, he was telling me a story about he's like, he's like,

when you're going to the keys, because he delivered a lot of cocaine to the keys, like big bricks of coke, like tons of cocaine. He said, uh, going south, if you want to deliver Coke south, it's like, no problem. Never come back north with it. He's like, you'll always get busted because he was telling me one story about how he, he was selling like a kilo to somebody or whatever. And it was like some sort of a sting operation where he was. is out of Dairy Queen meeting him.

And, you know, long story short, he ended up getting busted and going to prison for 10 years. But like, you can, if you hang out around this area long enough, you'll meet, you'll meet a dozen people that have been to prison for trafficking cocaine because it was just everywhere in Florida in the 80s. So Carlos Leather, who I interviewed in Colombia, was, say, he was one of the founders,

considered the founder of the Medellín cartel, very close to Pablo Escobar. Pablo tried to kill him. he ended up being imprisoned in the United States for 33 years. So he was trafficking the stuff there and he was the guy who took over Norman's K in the Bahamas. And he, you know, the private island, they created that as an island, Norman's K in the Bahamas

and used that to traffic cocaine. Now he, you know, he's changed a lot. He did 33 years in prison. He would have done, you know, he got... Is he still alive? Yeah, he's still alive. He's in Colombia. So he would have done like 150 years.

You know, they gave him like life plus 150 or something. You know, it was a huge case. So Carlos Leda is famous. In Netflix, he's shown with a swastika tattoo. Oh, really? There's the whole story that he's this kind of neo-Nazi drug trafficker, which he totally denies. It was funny.

When I asked him about that, I said, you know, people say you're a Nazi and online. He said, like, he said, like, Netflix did a comedy about drug traffickers, they called narcos and they showed me with a swastika and that should never have happened because i never had i don't even have any tattoos and he said it's illegal even in germany to have a he his dad was german he was brought up in columbia uh-huh so anyway he he described he was kind of humbled a lot by 33 years in prison he did four years solitary four years in a supermax solitary which he said was so hardcore that he had to really kind of tell himself, he had to say to himself, you know, it's very hard mentally to survive.

Fennon's been in incarceration, even in a cell for 12 hours, you know, it's like, it's pretty hardcore, let alone being four years in solitary. One of the reasons where El Chappo right now is in Supermax in Solitaire and he's just writing letters all the time saying, you know, this is driving me mad, I want to get out of here. So the Supermax thing is just this thing hanging over saying we can put you in supermax and make you do solitary. This is what we have. It's not death penalty, but in some ways, you know, it's, some ways it can be worse than death. And Carlos Leda was saying that he was telling himself, saying, you know, when he's in a,

in a cell doing solitary, he was telling himself, this is a good place. The guards are your friends. they are other prisoners but they sleep outside your prison uniform are your clothes the food is nice you know he was trying to tell himself these things doing some mental gymnastics to mentally survive but he's so humbled by this time in prison

and so when you know other stories about when he had the Norman's K island there's other people who said about it was just kind of crazy sex and drugs parties and all these kind of stuff and asked him about that and he just said well a lot of people their dream is having a private island i did it but i did it illegally he didn't really want to go into all of the kind of sex and sex and drug stories but yeah he said it when they were they were moving was working with all the all the

traffickers here along you know coast in florida a lot of the the american florida smugglers were you know you have the island in norman's k they go over there on boats and pick up the drugs and They know the waters and better. But it used to be, you know, wide open. It seems to be a thing with people who just have ungodly amounts of wealth where, like, they get bored with the fact they can buy anything. So now they want to have, like, their own little world to themselves on their own island where they can do things that are like above the law, illegal things.

It's just like they want to push the boundaries of human limits and what they can get away with. And the more and more I hear stories like this and like all the Epstein stuff and like how all these like super wealthy billionaires and political people are entwangled in all this stuff. And the human trafficking aspect of it. It's just like something happens to the human psyche when you, when you attain that level of unlimited wealth and power where it just does something weird. It unlocks some weird thing in your brain. I mean, even if you know guys who they're not super rich, just make a bit of money. Yeah. And it changes their personality.

Right. Yeah. I mean, it does stuff to your brain. Well, they say there's that quote, the famous quote, where it says money is the ultimate magnifying glass, where it magnifies your true inner self. Like, the more money you have, the more that core of who you are really comes out. But I guess it magnifies maybe bad things sometimes. Yeah.

But one of the, another thing that, the, uh, one trafficker was telling me about, about the. Some people get a lot of money and do good, you know, we just don't hear those stories. You only hear the fucking dark ones. Well, they like, they like to try to amplify their altruism, but sometimes their altruism can be, you know, taking advantage of or misdirected or you wonder. But like, another thing, uh, trafficker told me was, as well as the money, he said, one time he was, he was, he was, this one traffic was, it was in, uh, Mexico City, a US-based trafficker with it, with a, with a, uh, a, a, uh, a cousin and he they were having eating an expensive restaurant and he got out the money to pay and the cousin said put that money away don't embarrass me we don't pay for stuff here and he said what's better than having enough money to buy you know buy a million dollar watch is not paying for it

because you have power and one thing that these cartel guys get is just this power this buzz of having power because of through violence you achieve power and i've even been hanging around sometimes with lower level guys like one time in in el salvador just uh just was with one gang member going into like nightclubs with him it's before bull kelly came in and and put him all in prison and you just you just feel the buzz of power being with this guy walking to a club with this guy and it was an ms 13 club they own the club as well whoa you went in this place yeah yeah i go with this guy and they're like and and I'm immediately like, you know, like, get a table for these guys. You just, you know, you're suddenly, you know, you're right, you know, you're not waiting in line.

You've got power. You've got status. And that's one of the things that these guys. It's intoxicated. Yeah. I have some funny Buckelly stories about, actually, one funny Buckelly story. Oh, yeah? I interviewed, yeah.

So Buckelly, obviously, you're familiar with the whole Buckelly story. Yeah. Yeah. For people who don't know, he's the, he's the leader of El Salvador, right? What's his bad? How did that whole thing happen? He was an interesting character for a bunch of reasons, but basically Buckely.

Big Bitcoin guy. Yeah. So Buckelly came into power. First he was mayor, and then he became president, and he incarcerated, did mass incarceration of gang members. Now, like all of these things, a lot of angles to this story. he became very, very popular.

It's still very popular in El Salvador. Right. The murder rate went from being one of the, you know, gradually actually from being one of the worst in the world to being one of the safest or lowest level of murders in the Americas. He incarcerated about 1% of the population of El Salvador over a year to add to the people already in prison. So if you imagine on the US scale,

it'd be like if you look up three million people in the United States as well as everyone who's in prison already and then you know you say there's no more gang crime we stopped it you know you'd be put one in prison now one of the things that

that that happened in El Salvador was that the gangs were very violent and antisocial psychotically or psychopathically anti-social. And I give some examples of the way the gangs behaved, which led to this. So, you know, they, you know, you have these gangs who control neighborhoods,

but also they start telling, you know, you can't come in the neighborhood, if you're from a different, you know, you have MS-13 neighborhoods and 18th Street, Barre de Siocho neighborhoods. And if we control an MS-13 neighborhood and you live in the 18th Street neighborhood, you can't come into our neighborhood. And one woman I interviewed there, who I was introduced to by the Doctors Without Borders, who'd been a case. Doctors Without Borders? Yeah, which is like, you know, medical. Okay.

It's French MSF, Medesans, San Fran, so. Medi, Medioc San Frontera, they call it in Spanish. This one woman, she has suffered a gang rape by one of the first. the gangs. And the reason was that she was living with her boyfriend in an 18th Street controlled neighbourhood. And she went to a house party with her mother's birthday party in her old neighborhood, which was MS-13. And they came into the party with guns and they took her. And her boyfriend was there and they put a gun to his head and they gang raped her. said you're not allowed in this neighborhood

and the punishment we know and she suffered a gang rape Jesus so when the gangs behave in this kind of way and you get a guy who comes in and just says I'm going to lock everybody up and like so many people in El Salvador

have their story of something like that you know some you know some guy who's forced to pay money you know and the the gangs beat him up and hit him with a brick on his head and somebody else who lost a

family member. I mean, they behaved in a very, very brutal way for many years. The origins of this gang, have you familiar with the origins of the gang? MS-13? Yeah, MS-13. So here's an interesting story. So the MS-13 were formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s. As all the best things are. Now, they were formed by Salvadoran refugees or Salvadoran kids who were coming over to escape the civil war in El Salvador back in the 1980s, which was a US-backed military dictatorship against the left-wing griller movement in El Salvador in the 1980s. So men of them went over the United States and they'd be in these schools of the United States and they get bullied, often get bullied by Mexican or Mexican-American gangs.

Some of them joined up the 18th Street, which allowed non-Mexicans in, the Battle of Ciocho. And some of them formed their own gang, the MS-13. Talked to one of the early members. He said that basically they were hanging around outside the 7-Eleven. They're basically teenage kids. And they became the MS. They initially were a costona gang. They had like long hair.

They were into heavy metal. Now they have a symbol which is this kind of you know the MS-13 symbol or like that sorry they have the MS-13 symbol Okay that's what they that's their gang sign

Yeah and initially initially it came because they'd come out the guy said they'd go to these black Sabbath concerts at the time it was for the brief period

when Ozzy Osbourne was not the black Sabbath singer and it was Italian-American guy. Stee will find it. Ronnie, Ronnie, and he created the metal symbol like that. Oh, Dio? Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Ronnie James Dio. Rodney James Dio.

Yeah. So Ronnie James Dio, they got a Black Sabbath concerts, and they were kind of symbol, and that became... No way. It's kind of... That's wacky. Crazy stories, yeah.

But then MS-13, sort of formed in Los Angeles. They start there. Initially, they were friends with the 18th Street, the Barrio de Cioccio, the Barrio 18. They were friends and then they became, you know, they start this big fight. That's him? Yeah, there he is. Find somebody throwing up the MS-13 gang signs. Yeah, look at the MS-13 gang signs.

No way, dude. Hey, hey, dude. It's so hardcore. And they stole that from Black Sabbath. I mean, like, you know, they said they come back and they do this and it changed. This is what this is this. This is the story as these guys say. I mean, sometimes it's like it can be hard.

Look at that guy down there. Look at all those tattoos on his face. That guy below him. Fuck. So, so, so yes. I mean, there were some of the initial guys who really got into hardcore facial tattoos. Uh-huh. They became a very feared gang in the United States.

States. Now, they're eating the dogs and the cats, remember? Oh, yeah, yeah. Trump got, yeah, he got, he, they're eating the dogs. So they became quite a feared gang in the United States. Now, there was a big, there was a fighter, and according to some stories, it began with one fight at a party.

Mm-hmm. Which, between some battled 18 and MS-13 guys had a fight at a party in L.A., and this led to this gang and war happening between the two gangs, which carries on until this day. And then there's these really high numbers of deaths in Los Angeles from gang murder, like early 1990s. So I remember those times, you know, really high, really hardcore. So you started getting this clamp down and loads of these kids were deported to El Salvador. And they were kids who'd gone, they'd gone to the United States often when they were like really young,

really didn't know about their homeland. They went back to El Salvador. And they had like tattoos on their face. and they were like, you know, buff from being in prison. And they go there and all of the local street kids who just finished this civil war, like last onto them. And they became a power back home in El Salvador. And then the war carried on between the Barre de Joseocho

and MS-13 back in El Salvador and in Honduras and Guatemala. And I think one of the reasons that they, They kept on. In fact, I talked to one very interesting Salvadoran writer about this who pointed this out to me.

One of the reasons that they kept on this war is they actually they need the war to prove themselves. So if you're in the gang, your status is achieved by killing people.

So a lot of them, you talk to them and they're like, I've killed 25 people, I've killed 30 people. I've killed 30 people. Oh, I've killed 30 people. I've killed 17. They'll give you their number.

It's different with some of the cartel guys a bit different. They don't remember how many people they've killed. They don't have it in the same way. But these gang members, it was very much a thing they'd tell you. It was their scorecard. And that gives them status in the gang. But you need an enemy. But both gangs need that.

So they fight each other. And if you look at these, the way the gangs, so that they form these cliques, and the cliques often have like 50 people, kind of classic number. So it's kind of like the human band. It's like the basic core clique, 50 people, 70 people. You have a leader, top leader, number two. And then when they get big, they kind of break off and form another clique. So it becomes like a scheme.

And then you create power, you have camaraderie. So some of these kids, if they've, now, one of the issues is some of them would be their parents would emigrate to the United States to work and send money home and leave the kid back home, you know, with the grandparents, whatever, but then the kid doesn't have parents there. Right. So then you look to the gang, you have camaraderie, you have protection. I mean, one guy knew, actually, he was, you know, he was quite a brutal murderer, but he was abandoned by his parents. I mean, they were just very, very poor in Honduras, very, very poor, and just left him, and he just felt a lot of hate.

His parents, you know, his mom abandoned him, went to the United States. You know, you can't, you know, somebody's really poor, can't afford to eat, just like, I'm going. He was left on the street, and he just had that kind of hate in his heart. God. And he committed some horrific crimes. So, so then you had these kind of gangs form. Now, Buckeli, so Buckeli comes in and he says, I'm going to lock all these people up.

Now, he didn't do it right away. This is a gradual thing. So first of all, he was actually in the left wing party of former guerrillas, the FMLN. And then he became independent. But anyway, a funny story, when I interviewed him, I interviewed him in 2017 when he was mayor of San Salvador. And at the time, he was, he wasn't, I'm going to lock all these guys up. He was kind of peace and love. He was like, we need to help them.

We need to build soccer pitch. and the barriers and we need to kind of bring kind of love to these communities. And I interviewed him for a Time magazine thing. It was 35 interesting under 35 year olds. He was 35 at a time. It's kind of a lightweight piece. And as we were, we were talking to him. And he's a marketing guy and he's a very smart, he studied marketing. Another interesting thing, he's, okay, he's background. He is Palestinian Christian. Interesting.

His family, because he's an interesting one. His family were Palestinian Christian. They moved to El Salvador. In El Salvador, his family, I think, is, his father or grandfather converted to Islam in El Salvador, which is... Wow, what kind of a fucking backwards trajectory is that? One of the weird things is you're like a minority of being a Christian in Palestine to being...

You're a Christian in the Middle East to being a South American Islamist. Yeah, yeah. Now, Buckeli himself... Or Muslim. Buckeli himself is a bit... It's not completely clear about his religion, but I know he's brought... One of his brothers is Muslim and I went to a mosque, his brother founded in San Salvador, and talked to the imam of the mosque. But he was an interesting guy, he's a marketing guy.

I'm not sure what his religion is. He could be, I don't think he's been very public about his own personal spiritual beliefs. He might have become Christian or be Christian, I don't know. He's not totally clear about this. But he's a very clear marketing guy. But when we were talking to him, he was, when we were interviewing him, he was talking to the photographer, who we were filming as well and said, change the angle.

I don't want this side of my face. I want this side of my face. And so there's a little bit of tension You know, when you had the interviewer barking orders at the camera guy That can create some tension Your camera guy Yeah

So a bit of tension there But it was fine It was quite a, you know, soft interview And then he left And I saw the camera guy Looking a bit You know, looking a bit troubled So you go

So he said But Keni just took my wallet I said, What do you mean? He said he had his wallet On a table I mean, it was kind of slacker the guy to do this. I mean, this is like a hardcore camera guy

who's been, you know, round the world and he was filming and left his wallet on his table. I don't know why I didn't say anything at the moment, but like, Buckelly grabbed his wallet and took it. I said, what was anything in your wallet? So my ID, my money, my cards. It's a bit strange. He didn't want to say nothing?

Yes, it's like, yo, wrong wallet, buddy. So we asked the secretary, I said, I think, maybe he accidentally took the wallet and then it was sent back to us. And I think I think he just did it just to fuck with us, just to fuck with a guy because there's a bit of tension with the camera guy and he saw it. I imagine, I mean, he could have seen it. Was that my wallet?

But I don't know. But anyway, like, you know, so, yeah, it's a funny Bukeli story. That's hilarious. But, you know, Bucheli, he came in. After that, he went independent. He created his own political party. He basically completely the entire political system

in El Salvador caved under him and then he decided I'm going to lock up all of the gang members and this was exceptionally popular now he does I mean it's hard call

you talk to mothers whose kids are in prison the majority are likely gang members but there could be some innocence there as well The photos are insane of that prison. Yeah. Now, also, you have people who can be gang, you know, like basically just being a gang member, you can get like long, I mean, decades in prison for simply being a gang member. I mean, this is like saying we're going to use, you know, hardcore incarceration.

And as well as that, you have cases like some journalist friends from El Salvador, colleagues, good journalists who have had to flee the country because they're concerned about once you have somebody with that kind of power a journalist would be afraid. Yeah, journalists. But why?

They could be incarcerated. I mean, they're saying they're getting accused of, you know, you can start like, you know, if you have a very powerful, a president who's very, very popular and very powerful, will start harassing journalists. and various ones have left the country. I mean, also you go across Central America, Nicaragua.

It's actually a worse situation for journalists there. Loads of journalists have had to flee Nicaragua because of the Otega government there. Right. But various people have fled. So on the flip side, people are concerned about, you know, it's become authoritarian. But, you know, these things are complicated. And like people, some people,

suffered massively under the gangs. And this guy provided a solution. And most people still like the guy for that. It's wild. It's crazy down there. There's so many, is the crazy thing about it. It's like there's so many different countries packed into such a little tight area.

You know? And all the crime that crosses the borders and, you know, who knows how much they work together or they don't. And like which ones are in favor with the United States and which ones aren't. And like you said earlier, the guy who just got the Honduran leader

who just got pardoned. Like, man, it's a freaking hornet nest of shit going on down there. What is it like? So where you're at in Mexico, I imagine that you work with a lot of other journalists similar to yourself. Like, what is it like for you guys down there?

Do you guys foresee a situation where you guys would have to leave Mexico? Or do you feel like it's a pretty safe long-term bet that you can stay down there and keep pursuing what you're doing. So in Mexico, you have issues with the cartels and with the government or with different government, political figures. So if you look in Mexico, you've had more than 150, quite a lot more than 150 journalists murdered since 2000. among the journalists who have been murdered for different situations,

but I'll give one story of a guy who knew quite well, which was Habi about this. And Habi about this was a journalist in Kulia Kan Sinaloa, who covered the drug cartels, was a fantastic writer, you know, really amazing pen, you know, really amazing writer, almost like a Norman Mailer kind of, you know, real, real, kind of real voice, real literary voice and really prolific.

He wrote like eight books about this stuff. Wow. The first time I met him, I was in Sinaloa and somebody gave me his phone number. And I never met him before, I just phoned him up and said, oh, I mean, Sinolawa doing some reporting, can I meet you? And he said, sure, yeah, meet me in this canteena called El Guayabo, the canteena. And I went in there in the evening and he was by himself at a table. just by himself with a bottle of whiskey and a glass

just like downing you got seen some shit huh so I sat down with him and we talked and got drunk and we calmed onto like two in the morning and then on the way back we were like singing I remember at the time it was a Amy Winehouse yeah we were singing along in his car

but but a great guy prolific journalist and then in 2000 He was reporting on the turf war at a time between the Chapitos and a guy called El Esenciado, El Damaso Lopez. Oh, I've heard of him. Yeah, he has a son. I think Luis told me about him. Yeah, he has a son called El Minnique, who...

El Minnique was his son. He was the security guy for the Chapitos, right? He was a trafficker in his white guy. He was like the security guy was El Nini. El Nini. Yeah, he's a security guy. Big, big social media guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But anyway, so the, so El Sinciado, this turf war was happening. And then El Sincideo contacted Javier Baldes at his newspaper. And how about this went to a car and had an interview with him, like his lieutenant, his, his, his, his guy, the Licensiatto's guy, gave the phone to Javier, and he gave him an interview and gave him some statements about the Chapitos, including stuff where he was saying, look, the Chapitos, you know, some of the most cutting quotes he gave, were like, these guys don't have, like, real friends, they're, like, sick with power.

So they were getting ready to publish, and it's a print, it's a weekly printed newspaper called Rio Dose. They were getting ready to publish. And as they were getting ready to publish, Javier was reached out to by the Chapitos. And he said, I want to meet you. And he said, I'll meet you in the canteen, El Guabo, same canteen where I went to.

Great canteen. And the Chapitos guy came to him and said, look, you know, you can't publish this story. You know, that can't go out. You can't publish a guy attacking our leaders. And Habier said, it's too late. It's been printed. You know, partly he was like, it has been printed.

It is too late. But also he was like, I don't want to just give in to what these guys say. What we can print, what we can't print. So he says it's too late. It's going out tomorrow. So the guy, the next day, the delivery trucks were going out. And there was cartel guys following the delivery trucks. And when they arrived, the cartel guys would borrow the newspapers.

So they'd stop the newspaper going out to the public. No way. So they weren't reading this. So that happened. And afterwards, Habier was under, you know, under, you know, he was shocked, but he was like, okay, it seems to have passed now. And then El Censio was arrested in Mexico. Mexico City. Part of the interview which Habier had done was reprinted in a big Mexican national newspaper called La Hornada. And then he was murdered on lunch break coming out of his office

to go and buy lunch. And assassins came and shot him, 12 bullets. And now the Mexican federal prosecutor said that the guy who did this was the was the, was the, was the the son of Licensialo, El Mini Leak. He was the, it was his son? He was Mini Leak who ordered the murder. Ah, okay. But Mini Leak in the interview with Chaparro, with Louis Chaparro, denied that and said,

no, it was the Chapitos who ordered that murder and they paid a million dollars to the federal prosecutor to make it him be accused. You know, I don't know. You know, I can have my suspicions, but yeah it was it was uh you know and he was perhaps the most prolific of of the mexican journey to be murdered but there's been many many stories um very sad his murder um I met his wife his son his son write a very touching piece um after his dad's murder his son

who was like 18 19 and was saying like You know, I look for you dad. You know, I can't find you. So, you know, every time that's a life. And I mean, there's been a lot of cases. And a lot of journalists who have fled the country. What are you, what is your plan? Do you plan on staying there for the foreseeable future?

Or do you want to stay there for the rest of your life? I don't know. I don't know. You know, I have to take some of those take things, you know, a day at a time or a month at a time or a year at a time. Yeah. Mexico's a beautiful country. and I do think in the long term it can have a good future. I think in the long term, I feel this level of violence is a stage

and it won't last forever. But that's a feeling. There was a guy who was head of the Mexican intelligence agency who said, maybe there's not a scientific reason. for this. But he said, I think this violence would be like a 30 year war. And for some reason that chimes as being something that could be true, like a 30 year war. I don't know, maybe that's just just because of phrase is the historical war, the 30 year war. But you feel like a generation, a generation of violence. And this stuff ends. I don't know if I want to go back to England.

not looking great in England right now. No. A bunch of reasons. Right. What about the US? To live here. Yeah. What do you think about?

Not only what is your view, but what is your colleagues and the people you live around? Like, what is their view of the US? You mean more like the Mexican colleagues or like? Yeah, Mexican colleagues, anyone. What is the, what is like the general vibe or sentiment from people that you run into every day about the United States. I mean, my own view about the United States, I'm and I love the United States. I've been coming here for 30 years and it's a beautiful country. I think it's an amazing country. It's got bad sides and some very bad

sides, some very dark sides, like any country. And it's the kind of power of the world. It's also a great country and I always love to come here. Within Mexico, I would say there's a mix of views within Mexico. You know, you have people who, you know, obviously many, many people who have been in the United States from Mexico and who love many aspects of the United States. But you also have a certain anti-gringoism as well. There's been a big increase in the number of Americans living in Mexico.

in certain neighborhoods in Mexico City. Some of these really nice neighbors, I was talking about, Condessa, Roma, digital nomads. So there's been like an anti-Gringo movement. There's even marches saying like gringoes out. No way. And people coming out with some stuff, like, you know, send them out all these kind of stuff.

You have like, you can, you hear quite xenophobic stuff sometimes. But then you get that in every country. I mean, you can find people here. Sure. You know, or in England, people with like really xenophobic opinions and humans are complicated. Yeah, for sure. There's, in the political sense, with this pressure of Trump or people in the Trump administration

saying they want to do missile strikes in Mexico, and then with the case of the CIA agents. So, you know, when the CIA agents died in April. this starts sparking out this idea of there's going to be foreign intervention. There's going to be a CIA coup in Mexico. And so this idea like, you know, especially after Venezuela, you know, they took out Maduro, they're going to take out President Claudia Shimbam, who's the president in Mexico. And these kind of things are said.

The CIA agents, so they were on an operation to raid a crystal meth lab, in the mountains of Chihuahua state. So a few hundred miles south of the Texas border. They were, yeah, this is the lab they raided. Wow. And they... It's like an outdoor factory. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Huge lab. So, I'm likely spotted with CIA drone, CIA in-sell. Mm-hmm. And when they got there, now the CIA Asians, or operatives, because in CIA term itself, you know, CIA, you know, you're not like an FBI agent with an FBI, in CIA terminology, an agent is somebody recruited. The agency is using and somebody who works directly for the CIA as a CIA officer or operative. Now, these were not a card carrying employee, just but somebody who was recruited.

That's what agent is, but in these case, these guys were officers. Direct operatives because there's also within the CIA You have CIA Officers who are I've gone through Langley Full-time payroll We have a lot of CIA people who are Contracted they're contractors including US military guys Right there can be US special forces

Mm-hmm they can then be taken by the CIA. Like ground branch type people. Exactly. That's what these guys were like. But sometimes those people can be direct full-time employees. Sometimes for different reasons they can be on contract with the CIA.

Right. Like what we saw during Iran-Contra. Yeah. Although some people who were like more direct. It's not totally clear if these guys were direct full-time payroll officers or if they were on contract. But they were CIA out of working

out of an office in Monterey, but they were dressed in US, so in Mexican Chihuahua state officer uniforms. There's an agency in Chihuahua called the Agency of State Investigations, the AEI, in the Spanish acronym. They were wearing their uniforms. So they were wearing their uniforms and there was four of these guys on the operation. Now when they got to the lab which is very far out in the mountains in Mexico and they got there and there was nobody there no drug traffickers there and no meth there was the lab was there with a main product and the guys have gone probably from information being leaked by somebody in the Mexican law enforcement.

Although they also have guys on the roads who are seeing convoy coming and setting off, but you know, they may be had a bit of time, maybe both, both things. So they go in there, they spend a long time, in a long time, it's a huge lab. If it's a mega super lab, that photo you saw is only one part of it,

it's like very, very, it's a real huge super lab making crystal meth. Find more pictures of that, things do? And one of the things that this, you know, one guy who was a former ICE member and was telling me about he used to go on on raids dressed as like Mexican law enforcement this is a practice going back years

one of the reasons that the United States officers want to go on these raids dressed up now also when Chappo was arrested for the second time and it's a huge complex area well that's a tiny that's a very small area yeah this thing was sprawling over an area It was actually kind of like almost like a whole series of linked labs.

Wow. In the forest. So one of the reasons they said that the US agents said they want to go on these raids, they want to make sure it's actually busted. That's their justification for this stuff. And when El Chapo was arrested for the second of three times, because El Chapo was arrested, then escaped from prison, then he was arrested again, then he escaped again,

then he was arrested a third time and sent us. The second time he was arrested, which was in Mazatlan, Sinola. There was two DEA agents on that operation, one who waited outside, and one who went in with him, dressed in Mexican Marine uniform in carrying a gun. So this stuff has been going on for some time. Right.

But these CIA operatives won this raid in in Chihuahua and driving back there were divided in two, there was four of them divided in two vehicles and two of them were in a vehicle with the head of the AEI agency, the Mexican agency and a driver.

And they were in a big convoy at like one in the morning heading back to the city of Parral with the city in southern Chihuahua driving fast on these mountain roads and they went along near a place known as Polanco. There's also a Palanco in Mexico City, but this is a Polanco, a village in Chihuahua,

settlement, you know, really small bit. Going there round a corner, tough corner, in the second, believe on the second vehicle in the convoy. And the first vehicle might have broken a bit too hard, and they had to sunny break, and they went over the edge of a ravine. and went down. It was about a half hour to climb down the ravine

to where the vehicle went and exploded. Oh shit. And the two CIA operatives and the others died. Now initially, this according to people familiar with this, you hear a lot of stories circling around about this. They said that they were deciding, what should we do about this? Should we just bury the bodies and pretend this never happened?

And then that was like, no. Who was thinking about this? Discussion among the American and Mexican people there. The people who were aware of these guys being... Yeah, some of the Mexicans there, I mean, people didn't... The senior AI people knew about this, but some of those are also soldiers. They might not even know exactly who the Americans were.

They could tell they were Americans, but they weren't really sure who these guy, you know, they think they're DA or they're not really sure I always think they're Americans coming on this. Eventually they said, okay, we've got to take it back. And that afternoon, the US ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, who's a former CIA operative officer himself, and former Special Forces guy or former military guy,

announced that two US embassy personnel had died and it very quickly came out there with CIA. Now, when that came out, that caused a big splash. Like, what are the CIA doing in Mexico? What are they up to? At the same time, that's happening. You've got like, you know, that was April 22nd. On January the 3rd, you'd had the United States take out Nicolas Maduro.

Now, at the same time, you've got the U.S. charging Mexican governors working with drug traffickers. At the same time, we've got the history of. the CIA working with drug traffickers in like, you know, in the Contra, Iran-Contra. Felix Rodriguez. You've got various things happening. Now, I don't think the CIA is right now looking for a coup in Mexico. I think what they are doing, I think Trump, on January 20th, when he came back, 20th, 2020, 2005, very quickly said, well, I want the CIA involved in this fight against drug traffickers.

the CIA are more deeply involved. But for a lot of people out there, this just all looks extremely suspicious. What is CIA guys doing down in Mexico? Then you have some guys died in an explosion in a car, some drug traffickers as opposed to in a car near Mexico City. And then this story came out, that was a CIA op, or it was a CIA op teaching Mexican eight officers to do a car bomb, which is difficult to know if that's true.

Right. Or are they leaking that as being them to try and, you know, there's a lot of weird stuff happening. Right. The CILs are doing a bunch of, there are other other things they are doing around in, like, they're like grabbing like Ecuador end fishermen. There's like weird boats of like CIA guys, you know,

grabbing fishermen that have come out of Ecuador, which they think could be drug traffickers. So they're doing a bunch of crazy ops around the place. Wow. That's, it's, it's crazy. It's crazy that you're, you've been able to do, to keep track of all this stuff and to manage like all the sources and wrangle all these stories for so long, man.

Does it ever like, I assume that you have a bunch of sources that you, that you keep anonymous, right? That are like tied to a lot of the cartels that you can never talk about, right? Yeah, look, I mean, for a long time, time when I first began doing cartel stuff and I'd be interviewing things like hitmen, guys in prison and and runs an anonymous stories about that. Now, I'd often being in Mexico but not working for Mexican media, working more for international media and then writing books.

Be looking at trying to look at stuff that's not going to get me kicked out of the country or chased out of the country. You know, initially when I did stories like hitmen describing what goes on in their own mind when they carry out hits, how they got into this, what their lifestyles like and this kind of thing. Yeah, and people tell you crazy stories.

You know, one guy, one hitman was telling me when he did his first hit, actually was a Colombian hitman, but still active when I interviewed him in Medellin. he did his first hit and he had a mentor who was like teaching him how to do hits

and did his first hit on the back of a motorbike and they went past the guy and he you know he shot the guy and he got too close and the guy's kind of body and brains kind of splattered over him

and he had nightmares about it you know you go back and have nightmares about this this hit he did you know and felt bad about it but they said afterwards he kind of got used to it. You just become numb to it after a while. And he said like he'd go out and do hits.

And he said when he went out, he want to, you know, be straight and have his five senses. But after he'd come back, smoke some weed, play computer games. You know, he's just gone and, you know, killed someone and done this stuff. God, dude. So initially I did a lot of that stuff. And then I, over the years, you know, now, often I try to try to. do a lot of stuff with people on record if I'm doing you know big stuff yeah uh because I feel there's a limit to anonymous sources yeah so like you know with the with the drug traffickers you know

you want to see soft solid on records a lot of there's a lot of now ex drug traffickers who talk on record okay so you know again with like MS 13 guys um I interviewed quite high ranking guys on on record who didn't got into different processes and interviewed you know one of the founders of of the commander in Brazil on record. I interviewed, you know, some of these big Mexican traffickers, some of the US-based ones, people like Margarito Flores, and various people who will talk on record about this stuff. I just imagine it's a very blurry line that you have to dance, you know,

when you're dealing with these sources and, you know, trying to make sure you don't put yourself in danger or put them in danger, which could in turn put you in danger, right? Like it's got to be... Often them, often like... Often it's... So a lot of cartel sources. Now, I don't like to keep a lot of these sources too close

in that... Like a lot of this thing, you know, you can... For a story, you go out and be friendly with people, but you don't really want to maintain friendships all the time. Right. I'm walking around and I'm going for breakfast, and I get a phone call. Some of these guys in prison.

And I can... Some of these guys I can generally get on well with. you know but like you gotta try and keep a distance something like I can go have a breakfast some guy from prison is calling me up and sometimes some of those guys have in prison with a cell phone and they're bored and they can sit and talk all day you know like right but yeah some of these guys you know they're these interesting guys who who have a lot of stuff to say um like Fernando Fernando Blengeo somebody I talked to a lot in prison he was finally released he was an interesting a very interesting case he like he had aeroplanes and again somebody on I made to quote on record

After El Mentiono died, I did a story for The New Yorker about the case, so I might as have two guys on a record who'd met personally El Meno could describe what it was like, two traffickers who'd worked with him personally. And again, I want to try and put this stuff to have, to show that this stuff is, you know, you can check this stuff out with the sources.

But as well at the time, there's a huge amount of anonymous sources and difficult stuff to deal with. There's cases, hot stuff to deal with. I was given the phone records of a plaza, which is a territory boss, of the Hellisca New Generation Cartel. And when I'm in the phone records, somebody in the Mexican Federal Agency had arrested this guy and taken two of his cell phones and taken all of the messages and videos and

photos and done an analysis of all of that. And with that, he done a very, very good report of the internal workings of a plaza boss, a territory boss. However, this guy did this very, very good report. They never did anything with it. They repressed it because it showed corruption inside the Mexican government. And this guy was eventually then, you know, he leaked it to me, but he was also looking at, you know, running from Mexico

or claiming asylum, the guy, the federal agent who had this stuff. I published a story on this and had the records. Now, these are hot records to have. Yeah. Also because they've got names of corrupt officials. Cops, corrupt officials. But also the guy himself who it's about, you know, what's his status now, get out of prison,

he's going to be pissed off that you publish his phone records. records. So I was very carefully, like, how can I publish this, but try not to give too many names. Now, sometimes people are actually who leak stuff is because they want to get their revenge on somebody else. Right. Like somebody is annoyed because their boss was corrupt and they want to leak stuff to get their boss. And they just want to use you. Yeah. And they're like annoyed, why didn't you publish the guy's name? You know, I gave you this stuff. You didn't publish the guy's name you were like but like it's like well look I want to live yeah he doesn't give a fuck about you yeah yeah whatever you know they got their own but they're offering you information yeah and there

are again some of the some of the Mexican journalists are very aggressive very very very aggressive about they're really getting to the kind of in you know fighting inside Mexico and and publishing names and yeah accusations some of them have fled the country because of that but you know they're they're very bullsie about this stuff a lot of the Mexican press really like this kind of this infighting between stuff and accusations. But I was more like, did it more than analysis of understanding. Okay, this is what goes on in a placer boss's phone and it gives you a real window into their life.

And you see this placer boss. Now plaza boss is, so a boss of a territory. So in the cartels, you have control of a certain turf, control of a territory. This was a couple of towns. So, you know, still there's a guy who, commands, you know, like, you know, and it had his, in it, he had payrolls. Payrolls of hitmen, perils of officials.

Now some, uh, where did the hitman get paid? Low, it was like low amounts. I mean, we're talking about, I have to remember exactly, but things like, if I remember correctly, things like $400 a month. Oh my God. 100 dollars a week. These are like small country towns in Mexico like 100 bucks a week. you know these guys by that standards they're okay

but again a lot of narcos that's one of the problems with the glamorous side of we see like in narco series which is a good series but the glamorous side we see of that of the top level guys with beautiful girlfriends and mansions oh wow I'd love to live like that

but that's not how most of them live it's like anything the narco world has a world of all kinds of different social classes, the same as the legitimate world. You know, you look at Coca-Cola. You know, the head of Coca-Cola, you know, is rich, but there's a bunch of guys who are working. Right.

But anyway, so this guy's a, you know, he had a bunch of hitmen, but also he had police on his payroll. He had military guys. He had federal agents. He was selling crystal meth, marijuana and cocaine, at local level.

And then he had some stuff, which is pretty nasty stuff to see, which is on his phone, witness statements. So the police on his payroll, somebody who's a witness, goes to the police with something, and the police give that witness statement straight to the cartel. Wow. So that's fucking crazy. But as well as that, you see this guy, you see he's kind of, he had two cell phones. said, one was more work and one was more family orientated. And then he had also stuff, like, so you see the stuff he's dealing with. You see messages of a phone just tells you a story.

Like if I was looking to, you know, Danny Jones's phone, you see this kind of crazy, all the messages, you know, you know, this guest's coming on, this guest can't make it, this is happening, as well as you're like, this social life's happening, this part is happening to all these things you're dealing with in your life. Or you're the head of a company. And this guy's dealing with like, so he's dealing with like, this point, has got no cocaine and we need a re-up. That's like one thing he's dealing with.

But also he's dealing with, oh, here's a bunch of photographs from this crime scene that we were sent by our police guy who's on our payroll, who's got photographs of the bodies done by our rivals, okay? And then he's got stuff he's dealing with where he's getting a gun plated in gold and he's talking to a guy who does that

who's sending him photographs, of like options so he can hire a guy to like plate his gun in gold. Then he's got somebody saying, we've got a problem with thieves at the marketplace. Like a regular guy, but who's involved in territory, like send, and he's like, yeah, we'll deal with that. Like basically what the cartel is offering there is, we will kill anti-soum.

social criminals on our territory. So one of the things that cartels end up doing in these territories is becoming like, well, we're with the warlords, with the ones who control this territory. You want to commit crime that doesn't benefit us, your dead meat. Yeah. Now, I mean, you want to get into some really brutal stuff. There was one video around. So nothing that, often the two particular crimes, they will execute people.

for or will punish them. Sometimes it can be like making people walk around the street naked with a sign saying, I'm a thief. You know, so right thereo, Spanish. Another one they will sometimes punish people for is for allegedly. And there was one video circulating in, probably from a place in Mexico State. by a cartel group where they got a guy, a little accused of, and they set a dog to devour his genitals.

Jesus. And that was there. It's like some Game of Thrones level shit. Yeah. And they had it on video? Yeah, they had a video. Oh my God. That is fucking brutal, dude.

How did they get the dog to eat his genitals? genitals. They rub it like in peanut butter or something. Yeah. Footage taken by one of the attacker shows how the alleged race was castrated by the ravenous dog leaving nothing but a gaping raw

wound. It was reported by local media in 2019 that a criminal gang caught the man after he allegedly R-worded a woman. Wow. God. Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's rough.

Yeah. That's very rough justice. What's, we had Hector Borrellas on the show a couple months back. And he was showing us this footage of a guy who they, they cut his heart out while he was alive. And they had it all on video. And like, they had his heart, like, beating in their hand. And they watched him die. Like, terrifying stuff.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the things you could say is that, like, they both, they both cause, a lot of violence, but they react to this lack of law enforcement. So you see in these places, and this goes beyond Mexico to various places in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the cartels, they've got different names, cartels, gangs, commandos in Brazil, posis in Jamaica. And they basically fill these gaps in areas of society that have been abandoned or like marginal. Right. And they fulfill a role there.

So they start saying, okay, we're going to provide justice. Now it's, you know, it's justice. Yeah, law of the jungle, you could say. But like, you know, if you're, if you've got this functional justice system and, you know, you can't go to the police with this stuff, they're not protecting your community. Then the organized crime groups will say, well, we're, we will like. So in another story about a.

Again, with the, using the example of our word. Yeah, so I swear for saying that earlier. No, that's all right. In Jamaica, I did some study in Jamaica, some reporting in Jamaica as well where you have a different structure, but it's very interesting. And I was talking to guys there who worked for a big boss called, known as Dadoskoak. And his nickname was the president.

Presidente? The Presi. The Presi. Yeah, the president. I mean, it's Jamaica. So the very interesting thing in Jamaica, they have, you had no president. You have a prime minister. The head of state is the king of England.

Uh-huh. Right, right, right, right. So he was above the prime minister, the president, it's kind of nickname. And one of his hitmen, or he became a head of hitman. He was describing to me how one time, some guy was accused of our word and they allowed that they grabbed the guy and they allowed the guys to go in there with sticks and the family members and go and beat the guy. So it's like we're allowing you, you're not quite as brutal as that one from Mexico State. And they had things like they had people accused of theft in the neighbor.

and they had like they put them in like chicken coops and have them there it's like displaying people accused of of theft but also they have um as well as the stick they have the carrots so these groups also will put on parties in jamaica uh dudas coke he would have um these big concerts he'd have it he'd call him an event events every couple of weeks he'd call them passa pasa and then they'd have these big christmas and um and summer jams we'd have big artists playing there big reggae artists one of the guys who sung a song about him was bunny whaler and i i quoted the song in a book and i asked bunny whaler if i could quote it he said you can as long as you say very clearly i don't know the

guy, I'm not friends with him, but I'm just saying that a lot of people, you know, the song was like, you know, he gives away a lot of things, he's a benefactor. And you have all of these, you know, things to give away. In Mexico, you have these times where the cartel will give away goodie bags. Now it can be after a natural disaster So during COVID as well Or it can be particularly on Three Kings Day Los Reyes Which is the traditional day for giving out presents

After Christmas in Mexico Where they go to areas and give out presents Oh wow And I went to one village It was during COVID Where they gave out presents And it was in the state of Mexico, which is the state next to Mexico City.

It would be like New Jersey or whatever is to New York or New York State or whatever. It's called Mexico State. Yeah, Mexico State. So it's a big state. And it was a village. I saw that it was one of the closest ones to Mexico City. It was all over the country.

These cartels were giving out goodie bags. But the closest place I could find was close to Mexico City. city. So I went there and we were first of all we were like I knew it was just the name of the municipality but I didn't know the name of the you know the village so we went there we're asking and everyone had heard about no longer. We've been all day to eventually we found out the village where it happened and got up there and knocked on some doors and found some people who had received the goodie bags. Oh wow. And it was these neighbors, a couple of families living next door and they said they sent off the the young girls that found out of 13 and 14 year old girl who

gone there to receive the bags and they were saying yeah it was it was good stuff it was sugar and eggs and flour and it was good oh wow no cocaine yeah and it was good makes it wasn't only cheap makes it was good these are good stuff but by doing this they were like saying we're like we're you know benevolent right benefactors we're giving out to the communities interesting and in Brazil I went to one of these parties which the so so in there they're they call them the favelas in Brazil the the kind of ghetto areas around Rio and the drug traffickers are called commandos the biggest one was called commando Vermelo the original one which is

very interesting story about how it was formed but in the part they had the the the commander puts on parties which we went to one of these parties and we went in there And we didn't have any cameras. Now, there's a Brazilian journalist went to one of these parties with a hidden camera one time. And they caught him. Mm.

And they put him on trial and then they executed him. With like swords and stuff. Oh, Jesus. So like they cut it. They cut him here. A very sad case. So we went there.

No cameras, obviously. After that, no cameras. No hidden cameras. We went there and the guys came to us and said, oh, you know, we're from England. I said I'm from England. I couldn't take any photo bus. We were fine there.

And there was just like a kind of part of big speaker stacks in this music, which is Fabella Funk, kind of music playing. They call it Fabella Funk, which is kind of a weird, kind of mix of electro kind of stuff. It's got links to Miami going back to this music cast because apparently back to the 70s, Brazilians, a lot of Brazilians came to Miami, and they were buying funk records.

So they went back to Brazil And they play these funk records And that's what became funk parties But then they started bringing back More like Miami bass records Or other styles And so the music changed They had a Brazilian touch

And then we were there Like in the party And then there was a bunch of them With their guns there And they were dancing with their guns and stuff All the Commando guys And then We left

like six, we basically waited there for the whole night until daybreak, left in the morning. And when we left, the cops were waiting outside the Fabella and the cops just followed us and then just like searched us. Oh shit. Very heavily, yeah, for drugs, particularly because like a lot of kids, a lot of people will go into these Fabellas to buy drugs. That's where they sell all the drugs.

And they're very openly selling it. It's openly at tables. They're openly selling cocaine. So they're there, but yeah, but it's an interesting story of that commando Vamello, so I interviewed one of the founders there of the organization, who, and they began going right back to the 1970s, where in Brazil you had these guys who were like bank robbers back in those days who were in prison, the guys who were like serious criminals,

kind of gang, kind of gangsters, back in those days, when bank robber was a big deal and they had these political prisoners from a guerrilla group like left-wing grillers who were more like students who joined this griller group and the government thought we're going to lock up

the grillers, the left-wing students we're going to lock them up with the bank robbers and that will teach them a lesson they're obviously going to fuck them over and beat the crap out of them but the opposite happened they began organising together so suddenly they're

started becoming like the bankrupt was like oh yeah yeah sure we're political prisoners but you're just a bankrupt but i'm a political prisoner and they became known as the commando vamelo the red commando like red like kind of common and then eventually there was a it was a political deal and all the political prisoners were released but the bank robbers and stuff just they were still like you're staying in prison but then they they started something escaped or got let out gradually and they started forming in the in the areas and they became the commando vamelo so they became like we're You know, we're drug traffickers, but we're like, you know, we're revolutionary. Right.

But like that's the way they're- Wow, that's freaking nuts, man. What was that story? I saw that you had a story in there about some sort of like secret police investigation into the Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald going to Mexico City and visiting the embassy or something? Yeah, yeah. What was that story?

Lee Harvey Oswald went to Mexico. In September, right? Yeah. shortly before, exactly September, shortly before the murder of JFK. Now this, there was a record of this which was sitting, you know, it is sitting, it's been sitting for a long time from the Mexican secret police files, which are being held now in a former prison in Mexico called La Cumberi. And I went in there to look and get some of the documents,

which I hadn't seen published before from the Mexican secret police at the time, the DFS, back in the 1960s. The DFS was formed in 1947, so the same year as the CIA. Interesting. with, I think, with certain inspiration and certain help from the CIA. I don't think it was directly controlled by the CIA because Mexico is, you know, is an independent country. But they do have a very close relationship with the CIA.

Now, some of the stuff was, had already come out in some of the CIA files released in one of the releases on the JFK, the CIA files connected to the Lee Harvey Oswald trip to Mexico City. Right. There were some sort of release, there was cables that they were able to track from the... So basically you got the US side or the certain CIA side, certain documents about this trip to Mexico City. Right. But I looked more deeply at what the Mexican DFS was saying about this. And it had most of the original interviews were, well, a lot of original interviews were DFS. Now, the DFS did give some of their suspects,

in the way they described it was lent some of their suspects to unite to U.S. agents. So the Mexican DFS would arrest people and then lend them to the United States, and the United States would then look at these people. Now the story was it's a very strange story, but Lee Harvey Oswald went down to Mexico, went to the Cuban embassy and said he wanted a visa to go to Cuba and then go on from there to the Soviet Union. This is what the DFS story says. Yeah, from interviews with the people in the Cuban embassy. So particularly one particular person who worked in the Cuban embassy, who was the one who attended Lee Harvey Ordo.

And he came into the Cuban embassy. Okay. Now, she says that afterwards she went to the Soviets to ask, or does he, can we give this guy a visa in the service? No. And she turned him down. Then he went in and made a scene. and made a big scene in the Cuban embassy about this.

One of the weird things as well is there's been a British guy, a British, a British doctor who had met Lee Harvey Oswald on the bus going down from the United States to Mexico. And Oswald had even told this British guy on the bus, yeah, I'm going to go get a visa from the Cuban embassy to fly to. So, you know, why would you tell some random guy on the bus, that kind of stuff? Right, right. Now, this other guy came forward who was interviewed by the DFS and by the Mexicans,

sorry, and by the DFS in Mexico and by the Americans, who was, who'd been this kind of weird, being a communist from Central America. And he then flipped, and I think he was Nicaraguan, who then flipped and said he'd been He was infiltrating communist groups in Mexico and reporting for the Nicaraguan embassy. The Nicaragua was at that time run by a right-wing government. And he came forward and said he'd been in the Cuban embassy and witnessed some guys, including a mysterious red-haired black guy, give Lee Javier Oswald some money, thousands of dollars, and talk about using it for a hit.

Inside the embassy. Inside the embassy. And he said he saw it from a patio and saw some of this stuff. And again, what you're saying are from documents that you read from the D.F. Yeah, the DFS interviewed this guy, but also they're both in DFC. There's both DFS versions of the DFS interrogations of this. And there are the U.S. Actually, both FBI also got involved in this.

Now, when the US interviewed this guy, they concluded this guy was making stuff up. The Nicaraguan guy. Yeah. And he had the dates wrong. And a lot of this stuff was sat on or stayed in these files. Now, there was also rumors that came afterwards that the Cuban embassy woman was having an affair with Lee Harvey Oswald.

It was like a rumor that floated around. You know, it came, suddenly kind of appeared a couple of years later. You know, when it came actually with the one I attended him, somebody said, oh, they saw her to party with him, and they were having an affair. They were like lovers and stuff. In Mexico City? In Mexico City, yeah. Now, my conclusions about this case, I think there's two possibilities here.

So, well, I says there's three possibilities. So one is, you know, just Lee Harvey Oswald was a bit of a loon, a bit of a lunatic, a bit of a madman, and he's kind of going down there, wanted to go. The Cubans at this point in the Soviets don't want him to go. Somehow the other guy made up the story for whatever reason. This Nicaragua guy made up the story, but the black-skinned, red-headed guy giving him thousands of dollars

to carry out a hit. Yeah. I made that up. So one thing is just like, basically, these are crazy things happening. Second idea is this was really part of a, some kind of Cuban plot to pay Lee Harvey Oswald. And for some reason, they've kind of suppressed this.

The third was this was a deliberate ruse created by elements of the CIA who were in a conspiracy to take out JFK to create this look a diversion a diversion to look like the Cubans revolved so you get Lee Harvey Oswald

goes down you know announces to some random going on the bus or I'm going to Cuban embassy goes to the Cuban embassy makes a scene at the Cuban embassy publicly right And this Nicolaiguangu guy was somehow like put up by some

Now if you have different elements within The CIA So whoever were elements who were behind this They put up this Nicaraguan guy to go and go and say this stuff Mm-hmm But then some other FBI agents interview the guy and say No, this guy's got it all wrong Right

He's making stuff up So yeah that's that's a possibility It's an interesting part of the puzzle I know very interesting I don't know what the, obviously, the JFK story is a whole big one, but... It's a can of worms. Yeah, it's a crazy kind of worms. Well, there's also a theory that JFK, or I'm sorry, been a long day, four hours in.

There's also a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was going down to Mexico City to go to Cuba to try to kill Castro. There's a whole book about this. Oh, is that okay. Yeah, there's a whole book about what Lee Harvey Oswald was doing in New Orleans with this lady named Mary Sherman. who was a doctor who worked underneath Alton Oshner, who they were developing essentially like viral, like virus weapons essentially to kill people. And one of the things that they were doing

was trying to engineer some sort of a special monkey virus to use it for assassinations. And Lee Harvey Oswald was very closely tied to some of these people in New Orleans who were working on this stuff. I think that's a verified fact. What's not verified, is that did he take one of these things down to Mexico

to try to get to Cuba to assassinate Castro? Just another theory that's been floating around. Yeah, it seems like, I mean, they look all these different attempts to assassinate Castro, and they had all of these weird, hairbrained attempts. Yeah. I think some of the gangsters who were going along with this, you had certain people from the Chicago outfit

who were going along with these Operation Mollinger. Mungoose staff. And then you also had fun enough, the guy who ran MK Ultra. Gottlieb? Yeah. Sidney Gottlieb? Yeah. He was also, they're like involved in these like weird.

And they had these, one of the, one of the schemes they put forward was we want to give Castro LSD so that he like, he'll like, he'll like, talk a bunch of gibberish. And then he'll like lose, you know, everyone would think he's crazy and he'll lose his power. Yeah. One would you do something to make him lose his beard? So like he loses the power of his beard. All these kind of weird hairbrain schemes. But another interesting guy I talked to on the Castro case was the son of a Cuban guy who was also worked for the CIA as an operative.

Monkey Morales, the name of a guy, and was also involved in drug trafficking. Miami-based. And he has some interesting stories about, So he said, this guy's still around around the place, but Ricardo Morales, Jr. And his father, known as the Monke Morales, talked about he was called, went to New Orleans, so he went to Dallas as part of some team on the day of the, JFK assassination, but they were not called into action, but they went there as some kind of backup

team or cleanups. But yeah, in that case, I mean, it's a hornet's nest, there's so many moving parts. Who knows what happened? There's a great documentary I watched a while ago on Netflix. It was a, it's like a documentary series about Cuba, like the rise and fall of Castro's regime and, um, and Che Guevara and all that. And there was an interview with the journalists who was telling a story about how he went into wherever Castro, the building that Castro was into interview Castro, they were on the top floor of some hotel, some big hotel or whatever. He sat down, they were like serving hors d'oeuvres or whatever.

And he was sitting down with Castro, taking notes, talking to him, and then somebody walks in and whispers or tells Castro, Kennedy has just been shot. And this reporter said, as he was sitting there, Castro looked back at the officer that told him this and said, they're going to blame me for this. As if he knew that they were immediately going to try to make him the fall guy, which is interesting that he said that right in front of that reporter.

Because that's one of the excuses that people, one of the stupid theories, in my opinion, that they say that why Kennedy died was because of Castro, which I don't know if there's enough evidence to support that. You think the kind of broadly the Oliver Stone picture that he paints has some truth? Yeah, I think generally. I think there's a guy named John Newman who I've had in the show before who's he was actually the like one of the consultants hired by Stone for that first JFK film. And this guy's probably wrote more books on JFK than anyone in the world.

Any new JFC book That comes out All the research that those people do Is they read this guy's books To do the research for their new books It's one of the interesting things about like history books Is people are writing books based off previous history books You know it's so rare that people can go back to like the original sources of stuff

Like the actual files But this guy John Newman has read all of the over a million Released JFK files and documents and he has this his this overarching theory and all these different connecting pieces but like to sum it up his view is that it was a military coup um because he wanted to pull everyone out of Vietnam and uh he he stopped this big nuclear plan that the united states had to nuke the soviet union and china in one fell swoop because that was the moment in time in history that the united states had the most nuclear weapons and the soviet union had the least amount of nuclear weapons and um

he thinks it was a coup by the military and the CIA's involvement was just strictly to cover it up. Okay. But I don't know, there's a million different flavors of the J.K. There's a UFO angle to it. There's an Israel angle to it. I mean, the list goes on.

It's the ultimate thing. Yeah. It's interesting, one of the, how I was looking at different terms of the use conspiracy theory. And before the word itself, the phrase itself dated right back to the 19th century. I mean, looking at like New York Times references to the phrase conspiracy theory. But it was very seldom used.

Right. Until after the JFK thing. Right. And then there's memos, CIA memos, giving CIA chiefs and officers in of how to combat accusations of the CIA involvement. And they'll often, you know, they push the whole conspiracy theory term. Term. So it became a lot bigger afterwards.

Yeah. There's a great Adam Curtis documentary about that. That's the first time I heard that. I love that director. Yeah, he's, yeah, brilliant. Hell, man. His movies are the best. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Great stuff. Yeah, man. I love it. His series, The Century of the Self. Oh, yeah. That one's good. The hyper-normalization one is another really good one. He's spot on. The way he does documentaries is so unique,

where he takes footage, like historical footage, and narrates it and tells us this crazy story. Yeah. Brilliant. He did a couple more recently, I saw it over back in the UK, where he had no narration. Just like, he just got this footage.

I mean, he has access to the best archive, you know, this BBC archive. Right. It's incredible archer. But also he has access to all of the, I think he looks through all of the kind of, not just the main stuff from the interviews, but all of the off takes.

You go through all of the, in the back catalog, you know, where they, you know, they made two hours, a film two hours of footage for a three minute newspiece, and they looked through the two hours of footage.

I just find all the kind of funny moments. No way. Yeah, I think it's a lot of that stuff there. So he did one, really interesting one on like the 1980s, goes from the kind of late 70s up to the 90s, really focusing on the 80s.

And just with no, no narration, just pure like footage, footage, you think it might get boring, but it really works. It's still such a good storyteller. Do you remember what that one's called? I forget the name right now. I'll look it up. Is it can't get you out of my head or something? Oh, yes, Kiki out of my head.

Or is that one that one afterwards? Okay. I forget there's a couple of the, and yeah, yeah, It's really good. It's very, it's very, in Britain in the 1980s, and it's very historical. Right.

So it kind of really makes you think about, oh wow, that time. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, it's amazing storytelling, you know. And just is like, you know, he'll just take something and like make the, oh, it's Shifty, that's it, Shifty. Is that it? Shifty. Shifty and then trauma.

Living in Britain at the end of the 20th century. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I really recommend that. I mean, you know, just, just, It's amazing how interesting is to watch. It's just threading a bunch of, and he just tells the story with the footage without any narration. And it's almost like he's so good,

he's done the narration for so long. You can almost like hear his voice there even though he's not saying. Yeah, right. It's such a trippy way of making films, man. Yeah, yeah. Very, very, very powerful stuff. Yeah. Well, yo, and thank you, man, for doing this.

This has been fucking mind-bending conversation. So many crazy stories. Yeah, yeah. So like what's next for you? What are you working on in the future? What can people look forward to? Yeah. I've got a new book which it's going to be a very interesting topic, I think, for people who like this show.

A lot of some of those things we talked about, I don't want to give too much away yet, but it's going to come out next year. Okay. And it's a bit different from some of the other books. It's got some interesting and very kind of U.S. angles and some very kind of interesting stuff behind the scenes. So I've got a new book that's going to come out next year. And I'm still at it all the time. I get stories out from the scene and from the field. And I write stories every week.

And yeah, just keep doing it. And yeah, there's a lot of other subjects matters I want to get into as well. Awesome, brother. Well, thank you for making the trip. I really enjoyed it. And we'll link your substack, your website, anything else that we should link below. That's great.

Yeah. It's called Crash Out Media. Crashout media. Yeah, crash out media. My subject, that's a fantastic place to check out. Yeah. Perfect, man. All right. Thanks again, man.

Good night, world.