Front Burner - Inside the hunt for alleged Mexican drug lord El Chapo

Episode Date: November 15, 2018

U.S. prosecutors say Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán is a brutal cartel kingpin that ran the largest drug trafficking organization in the world. As his criminal trial begins in Brooklyn, former DEA agent Andrew Hogan explains how El Chapo managed to evade the law for so many years.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Joaquin El Chapo Guzman is known as one of the most infamous drug lords in history.

He is the most wanted man in Mexico. It was widely believed he bought immunity by corrupting Mexico's law enforcement. A myth grew that he was untouchable. According to U.S. prosecutors, the alleged cartel kingpin ran the largest drug trafficking organization in the world. Police executed and journalists assassinated are directly connected to the wrath of a Sinaloa cartel. Prosecutors say El Chapo imported more than 200 tons of illegal drugs into the U.S. The prosecution said Guzman shipped so much cocaine into the U.S. that each citizen would have their own line of it. And now he's answering for that in an American court. El Chapo's criminal trial, it began this week in Brooklyn.

He's facing 17 charges from drug trafficking to money laundering to conspiracy to commit murder. He's pled not guilty on all counts. His defense team arguing the witnesses slated to come forward for the prosecution will be killers, thieves, drug dealers. This is a long time coming for those who spent years trying to bring El Chapo to justice. With some close calls, two unbelievable prison breaks, and a surprise Hollywood ending involving the actor Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Today, I'm speaking with a man who led the hunt for El Chapo and asking how exactly he evaded the law for so long. You know, when I was at the Drug Enforcement Administration, there was no bigger fish to catch. He was at the top.

That's coming up on FrontBurner. Hello, my name is Drew Hogan. I'm the former DEA special agent who led the investigation and capture of Chapo Guzman. I'm also the author of Hunting El Chapo. Hi, Andrew. Hello. So I know that you know this case really well as a person at the heart of it. And you led the hunt for Chapo. And I'm hoping that you can take me back. How did you get involved with that? me, I had a lot of help from my initial partner in the southwestern part of the United States that I paired up with a local task force officer who went undercover into the Sinaloa cartel, where we infiltrated them and started moving millions of dollars for the cartel, laundering it for them, all authorized through the United States government.

So you and your partner were moving money for the cartel? the United States government. So you and your partner were moving money for the cartel? Yeah, essentially, we were posing as a covert criminal organization with access to the means to launder money. And then once we laundered a certain amount, and the cartel felt, you know, that we were trustworthy, we started taking off ton loads of cocaine while at the same time, you know, identifying all the members we could within within that particular cell of the Sinaloa cartel. And as we worked our way up to the cartel hierarchy, there was only one person at the top that was that was left for us to target. And that was that was Chapo. Chapo had been on the run for, I think it was at that time, it was 11 or 12 years. Right. I understand he had been arrested previously, but had escaped around 2001, right? From a Mexican prison? Yes, he escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001, Guadalajara.

Guzman vanished from the Puente Grande Federal Prison in the state of Jalisco. You know, legend has it that he escaped in a laundry cart. I'm not exactly sure how he did it, but he had been on the run ever since and no one could catch him. He was known for, for paying off everyone basically on up to the highest levels of government. And he would receive word, he would get tipped off that, that we were coming. Um, and he would escape out the back door or, you know, um, his lieutenants would whisk him away before the door was hit. And each time, you know, that bolstered his reputation and his status as this legend and this Robin Hood type figure that he was essentially untouchable. And when you say Robin Hood type figure, you know, you mentioned

that he had connections that would warn him and that he might pay people in order to warn him. But did he also have support in Mexico among the people there? Of course. Chapo had his entire state of Sinaloa dialed in. He ruled that land. I mean, no outside military or law enforcement had ever been inside Sinaloa or Culiacan, the capital, his stronghold, to conduct an operation. And because he had everybody paid off, he knew any movements that were coming into the area. And it was extremely difficult for anybody from the outside to get close to him. So can we talk about how you eventually tracked him down and actually got him?

Yeah, really the intense hunt for him, uh, began in 2000 and 2012. Uh, that's when I, when I moved to Mexico, I was looking at, you know, not just Chapo, but everybody surrounding him. Cause if you focused on, on just the man alone, um, looking back, you could see the failures there. Um, so you had to focus on everybody surrounding him. And I was looking at two of his most trusted pilots and ran into a small group of Homeland Security Investigation special agents up in the United States that were targeting the same numbers. They just didn't know that they belonged to Chapo's most trusted pilots. And I said, hey, look, guys, we need to work together. We need to share our intelligence and put this together.

And, you know, I think we have something here. And by numbers, you mean phone numbers, right? Right. And from that point, we started targeting the phone numbers of all the people surrounding Chapo, his facilitators, his couriers, his family, lawyers, distributors, pilots, cooks, maids, everybody that touched Chapo we were trying to get into. And how did you create that network that led you to him ultimately? How did it culminate? communications to and from from Chapo. And we we learned through that that he had set up a sophisticated communication structure where he would layer his communications. So it was difficult to difficult to figure out which phone he had physically and ended up finding the device that was with him held by a secretary of his 24 hours a day, seven days a week, um, that would stand right next to him and Chapa would physically, you know, dictate the messages to, to the secretary and the

secretary would put them out and send them on, on down the line. But what that did for us was help us establish a pattern of life, um, and track his movements over the course of three or four months until we were satisfied and knew with relative certainty that he was where he was at, and that was in Culiacan, Sinaloa. Once we had his location, we essentially walked across the street to the Mexican Marines, you know, the most trustworthy group there in Mexico, and said, do you want Chapo Guzman? And they said, of course. Can you tell me about that day or night? No. So we hit the door February 17th, the early morning of February 17th, at one of his safe houses there where we knew he was at.

And there was a steel reinforced door, six inches thick. It took the Marines probably 10 to 15 minutes to get through that door. They could see people inside scurrying around. By the time they got in, the house was empty. They walked through a living room into a bedroom and then into an attached bathroom where a bathtub was propped up at a 45-degree angle. And there was a tunnel underneath the bathtub that connected with the city sewer system. And Chapo and whoever he was with in that safe house escaped. So really, you know, a lot of people don't know that story that he escaped us when we were attempting to grab him. And it took, you know, a lot of reorganization.

We reset things. Chapo is now again on the run. It took us a while to kind of get back on our feet. But we ended up locating the device, the new device, the phone that was held by his secretary. And it was pinged down to Mazatlan, Sinaloa at a hotel called or a place we dubbed Hotel Miramar. And you were able to do this because of all of the previous intelligence that you had gathered. Oh, yeah. of the previous intelligence that you had gathered?

Oh, yeah. All the work that we had done up until this point, years worth of work. We all got together, planned the raid for, I think it was 5 or 5.30 in the morning, just before sunup. And we hit the hotel. And he was located in room 401 of this hotel, sleeping at the time. He was sleeping. Were you there when the Marines busted through the door of room 401? I wasn't with them as they went through the door.

I was standing out in front of the hotel watching the lights come on. I was worried about our perimeter, that he was going to escape us again. And when I heard excited radio chatter that they had gotten the target, they had him, and they needed a vehicle. My vehicle was first in, so I jumped in it and drove it down into the underground parking garage beneath the hotel. I get the car situated, and I can see that they're just starting to stand up a shirtless man and it's still dark. Flashlights are kind of going all over the place.

And I recognize that it's him. And I run up to him, jump into his face, and we lock eyes there for a split second. And I say the first thing that comes to my head, which was, what's up, Chapo? Wow. What did he say? Did he do anything? No, he kind of jumped back a little bit. His eyes bulged out of his head. And, you know, I think he was extremely shell-shocked. How did it feel sort of in the aftermath of having arrested him? This was something that I would imagine consumed you quite a bit for many years. Oh, it certainly did. Yeah. I mean, after he was arrested, I was expecting to feel pretty

jubilant and happy and doing cartwheels down the hall, but it was the exact opposite. I was completely drained. I felt like a zombie. I felt like I didn't have any direction. You work so hard for so long at one goal and then poof, all of a sudden it's gone. That affected me. Looking back at it, I was never attached to Chapo. What drove me was the challenge that no one could capture this guy, that a lot of people had given up. And, you know, that was I wanted to prove that, hey, this could be done. And then about a year later, he escapes again from Mexican prison. You had mentioned before that the first time in 2001, he's believed to have snuck out in a laundry basket. And this time, I believe that it's through tunnels that have been dug in the jail. The tunnel had ventilation, lighting, even a kind of motorcycle on rails and was constructed, allegedly, with not a soul noticing.

How does this make you feel? You know, we had done our job the first time. We had put him away. It was the Mexican government's job to keep him locked up. And, you know, they failed to do so. Why do you think they failed to do so twice? Oh, I mean, it's pretty obvious when you look at it. Yet people paid off at every level. Eighteen prison workers have been detained and are being questioned, said Mexico's security minister, who's now one of countless Mexican authorities standing humiliated.

This was readily apparent when you watch that camera on his cell where you can hear the loud noises and the drilling up underneath of his cell and everyone is oblivious. Right. This is the sound of the drilling for the tunnels that eventually led to his escape. Of course, there would have been people around who could have heard it or would have heard it. Right. I want to fast forward a bit to 2016 and his final arrest. Can you tell me what it was that did him in in the end? The same Mexican Marines that were phenomenal and instrumental in our investigation and operation.

They picked right up where they left off, used our intelligence as a blueprint. They had taken off a lot of people, key lieutenants in and around Chapo since his arrest. And Chapo really had nowhere to turn, nowhere to run to. When we were targeting him champa was you know really infatuated with telling his rags to riches story he was meeting with producers and writers and had half of a movie script drafted once he was out here he escaped for the second time where he ended up entertaining a meeting with a Mexican actress and an American actor, Sean Penn. It's exclusive for the lady who lives in the castle and Mr. Sean Penn.

I think a lot of people will remember this story that Sean Penn wrote in Rolling Stone. It was kind of everywhere. I thought this is somebody upon whose interview could I begin a conversation about the policy of the war on drugs. He writes the two shared tacos and tequila as they spoke and says Guzman has indisputable charisma. And really, that was to that was his demise. And I mean, the Mexican government was already tracking his location and had Chapo on the run again and followed him up to Los Mochis, another coastal town in Sinaloa, where he paired up with one of his only lieutenants left. The house was hit. Chapo escaped out of another tunnel in the house, through the sewers, out of the sewer and hijacked a couple of vehicles where they were then stopped by some local police who finally detained them until the Marines could arrive. And that was it. And then he's extradited to the U.S.

Why is he extradited to the U.S.? Like, why is he standing trial in the U.S. now? You've got to remember, Chapo's been targeted for the last several decades. So there's a mountain of evidence against him. Many cases formed and built over the years against him. Do you think there might be a sense that in the U.S. he might not get out again or he might not be able to escape again? I think he's exactly where he needs to be. Do I think he could escape from a U.S. prison?

It's highly unlikely. Do I think he could escape from a U.S. prison? It's highly unlikely. But they're taking all the, as you've seen, they're taking all the proper precautions with security in and around the trial. Just to get to the courtroom, you have to go through two security screenings. The jury is completely anonymous, and they also are being escorted into and out of the courtroom by armed U.S. marshals. It may seem like overkill to some, but they're being smart,

they're being firm, and they're prepared for anything. Because with Chapo, there's one thing guaranteed about him is that he will always be one step ahead. So I do want to flesh this out a little bit. There's been a lot of coverage this week about the intense security surrounding the trial. Helicopters, snipers, armed vehicles. There are a lot of people who said they didn't want to be jurors because they feared for their lives. Is El Chapo really that dangerous, in your opinion? You know, he has the potential to be that dangerous at any time. And I think that's why, you know, we all need to be prepared because you just never know what he may have up his sleeve. Andrew, thank you so much

for chatting with us today. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. The trial of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman is just beginning. On Wednesday, the defense finished their opening arguments by painting El Chapo as a scapegoat for the criminal organization. The legal proceedings, they could last up to four months. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus.

Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone. Available now.