Judging Freedom - [SPECIAL GUEST] - Sheriff David Hathaway : Breaks Silence on Government-Sanctioned Killings

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

[SPECIAL GUEST] - Sheriff David Hathaway : Breaks Silence on Government-Sanctioned KillingsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesdays on November 18th, 2025. Sheriff David Hathaway of Santa Cruz, Arizona joins us now. Sheriff Hathaway, welcome here, my dear friend. Sheriff, you were kind enough to write me a letter, an old-fashioned handwritten letter after Hathaway. having seen some of the work that we're doing covering the president's targeted killings in the Caribbean.

And in that letter you indicated to me that though you are now the popularly elected sheriff of a border county in Arizona, the bulk of your career was spent in the Drug Enforcement Administration, and you were a supervisory agent and spent many years living and working in Latin America. So Sheriff, with that background, and before we get to your views, your understanding of the law and the procedures, both federal law and international law, on these targeted killings, can you give us some basic information about drugs and Latin America? How do they get into the United States? Yeah, typically we're talking about cocaine historically. you have producing countries like primarily Bolivia and Peru. Some parts of Colombia produce coca leaves as well.

And then there are transshipment routes out of, it goes north from Peru and Bolivia to Colombia, and transshipment routes across the Caribbean to Europe and to the United States. Also, Ecuador is involved in this. It's kind of historical. Now in the modern age, we do have a lot of, discussion of fentanyl, but that doesn't really involve South America. There are precursor chemicals that are shipped to Mexico, just south of me, and they do come up into laboratories

in Mexico where there are pill presses and the fentanyl is produced. A little bit goes to South America, mainly for consumption, but most of it comes to the U.S. with precursors coming from China to Mexico, laboratories in Mexico, and then the pills are sent up here. But in South America, you're primarily talking about cocaine paste produced in Peru and Bolivia and then turned into cocaine hydrochloride in Colombia and Ecuador, and then shipped to the U.S. I share if you have referred to chemicals as precursor chemicals. I assume that means chemicals, which themselves are harmless until they're mixed and combined

in these laboratories. The chemicals themselves are not the drugs. That's correct. So this is not a, these are not controlled substances that come from China to, like I said, typically Mexico. And then in Mexico, they're made into fentanyl. There's very little fentanyl actual manufacturing in the U.S. There used to be, if you're talking 20 or 30 years ago, but now most of it's in Mexico. So there's not typically shipments of fentanyl coming from Asia to Latin America. It's just the precursor chemicals that are not controlled in and of themselves when the president says that fentanyl is shipped here from china is he is he outdated is he incorrect or is it correct no that's totally incorrect that's that's not what happens a lot of things are produced in china just because we don't have a

manufacturing economy in the u.s anymore so that would be precursor chemicals for other things to like cocaine labs use different kind of chemicals, methamphetamine labs. They used, you know, red phosphorus, acetone, you know, potassium permagnate, other chemicals that are produced in Asia, but they have a lot of legitimate industrial uses as well, not only producing drugs. Are those chemicals, the precursor chemicals that have legitimate as well as illegitimate uses? Are they shipped from China directly to the United States or only to these Latin American countries for the illegitimate usages? There may be a tiny, tiny little bit that comes to the U.S. for that purpose, but there is very little drug manufacturing in the U.S.

If we go back to the 90s, there was a lot of methamphetamine being produced in the U.S. that has almost entirely gone away. So there was some shipment of chemicals to the U.S. for that. But now they're entirely going to Latin America because that's where the labs are. We used to have different methods of producing methamphetamine in the U.S. used by outlaw bikers. There was a method called the red phosphorus method. There was the anhydrous ammonia method that was popular in the Midwest where there's anhydrous ammonia in farm fields. But that is basically gone by the wayside, and now all the production is being done in Latin America for these things that are then sold to the U.S. I don't want to blame Latin America for this because

it is a consumer issue. I've talked to the Attorney General of different foreign countries, including Mexico, and he thinks it's unfair that they get blamed for the consumption problem in the U.S. because the demand is here. So there's kind of two sides to that coin. And just by the way, if you can't tell from what I'm saying here, I have seen the failures of the drug war. I'm basically a voluntarist. And I have seen, just like we should have learned our lesson during alcohol prohibition from 1920 to 1933, the same applies to the Drug War, the Harrison Tax Act, Title 21 of the U.S. Code, the Controlled Substances Act. It just kind of replicated those same issues, you know, that we should have known would have been a problem, including drug concentration.

Like an alcohol prohibition, the drink of choice for Americans before prohibition was beer and wine, low alcohol percentage products. After alcohol prohibition, the taste of Americans shifted to hard liquor like whiskey, gin, vodka, tequila. And that's because the smugglers were smart. If they smuggle a small amount of the substance that's higher potency, they're less likely to get caught. And then they're sentenced on the smaller amount. The same thing happened in the drug war. You used to have the drug of choice for Americans was ditch weed marijuana, low THC, and for the Asian community, some of them smoked raw opium.

But after the Harrison Tax Act and Title 21, the Controlled Substances Act in the 1970s, the smugglers were once again smart, and they wouldn't import just ditch weed, low THC, marijuana. They imported hash oil and cinemia. And it was no longer, it was too risky to import raw opium. It takes 200 kilos of raw opium to make a kilo of heroin. So they imported the heroin. So the same thing happened with alcohol prohibition happened in drug prohibition where the traffickers are smart. They don't want to endure as much risk. So they start importing the concentrated products where they'll get sentenced on a smaller amount of a more higher potency product. So the taste of Americans has changed, too, just like it did with alcohol prohibition to hard liquor.

Now Americans prefer the kind of more potent substances like fentanyl. And that's directly due to prohibition. Sheriff, you have quite an extensive knowledge of the drug trade. How long were you in the DEA? And is what you are telling us generally accepted and understood by DEA agents today? Yeah, you know, I was in federal law enforcement for 28 years. And, yeah, it is generally known. You know, this idea that you're going to chop off the head of the snake, it doesn't work. There's always people to continue the process. Like my first assignment with DEA in the 1980s was in an office that was the hometown of Kiki Kamenana.

He was a DEA agent that was tortured to death in Mexico. So my first assignment was to do what was known as Operation Leenda with other DEA agents where we interviewed a bunch of people in Mexico, including this might be a story for another day, CIA pilots that were doing drug shipments through Rancho Veracruz, which is a property owned by Rafael Caro Quintero. And also we discovered the CIA involvement in the torture and killing of Kiki Kamerena. Actually, we obtained a tape of the torture session, and on that tape, there's a CIA agent that's actually questioning Kiki Khammedana, as he's being tortured to death, asking him what he knows about the CIA activity in Nicaragua with the Contras. So, you know, I know this contradicts what's another guest you have, but I have experienced on more than one occasion, a CIA involvement in drug trafficking. So the CIA has been or still is involved in drug trafficking from Mexico or other parts of Latin America. Andrew telling us the CIA actively participated in this torture. The torture case, I realize he suffered horrifically and died, became a very, very famous legal case

because the federal agents kidnapped a physician present at the torture. And the issue was, could he be tried in the United States, even though he wasn't brought here, pursuant to an extradition treaty, he was kidnapped? We needn't get into that. But you are telling us there's no question from your 23, four or five years as a federal, in federal law enforcement, much of it with the DIA, DEA. That's right. I actually lived in, for many years, in South America.

Okay. in South America doing investigations, and there was other opportunities where we tracked major cocaine traffickers, and it turned out that it was a CIA operation. There's no question in your mind that the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America, which works not for the Secretary of State or Treasury or the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense, but directly for the White House, was involved in torture and in drug distribution. That's correct. They have a direct line to the White House. Every other agency working in the foreign environment has to report to the ambassador.

The ambassador acts as the president of the United States in that country. He has the authority of the president. But the CIA has a direct line to the White House. And they will do things like regime change or raising money. For example, the Boland amendment. prevented the Contras in Nicaragua from receiving any U.S. taxpayer money. So the CIA found other ways of obtaining money. One of them was cocaine trafficking. Another was the whole Oliver North affair, where he used an Israeli arms merchant to obtain weapons to bypass the Export Control Act of the U.S.

to also fund the Contras in South America. So that's all confirmed. really interesting three-part series on Amazon called The Last NARC, and it actually has the Mexican officers that were in the room while Kiki Komenano was being tortured to death that have also identified the CIA agent, which has also been identified by voice from the recording. So it's confirmed 12 ways from Sunday. Is the country of Venezuela a significant supplier of drugs to the United States of America? No, not at all. And the U.S. has been trying to provoke a war with Venezuela for years. They're being very insidious, very disingenuous on trying to define what are the territorial waters of Venezuela. There's an interesting document by the staff judge advocate for South Com for Southern Command. It's entitled Excessive Maritime Claims of Venezuela. So there's a United Nations treaty called the Treaty.

the Convention for the Law of the Sea. And Venezuela has not signed it, but neither has US signed it, neither has Israel signed it. But Palestine, as an observer state, has signed this with United Nations. So the US selectively decides how to treat the law of the sea. And they routinely go up internal waterways

in Venezuela because Venezuela is not afforded by the US, the same things that are contained in that treaty. For example, the treaty says that you can make a straight line territorial boundary across a delta or a bay. So the delta of the Orinoco River in Venezuela, Venezuela defines that as a straight line territorial boundary across the mouth, just like we do with the Mississippi River or the San Francisco Bay or the Chesapeake Bay. But this disingenuous document produced by Southern Command says, no, no, no, no. They didn't sign on to the Law of the Sea Treaty, so we get to do regular incursions, and they do every year. U.S. military vessels go up into internal waterways of Venezuela every year, and they say they're doing it to preserve their ability to navigate international waters.

But back to the whole extrajudicial killing, yes, DEA, along with the military, typically the Coast Guard, does do maritime drug interdiction operations. These will happen off on the territorial waters in South Florida and also in a cooperative operation called Operation BAT, BAT, which stands for Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. So off the coast of southern Florida and in the territorial waters of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, DEA cooperatively works with those foreign governments to prosecute individuals that are in the territorial waters of either the Bahamas or the U.S. typically what will happen. There's a U.S. Coast Guard cutter and DEA agents involved. And if a vessel is seen coming to the United States, they don't just stop everybody willy-neely. There has to be probable cause either a human source or overhead imaging showing the vessel being loaded or other electronic devices like a tracker where they're fairly certain that these vessels are holding drugs. Now, what they'll do, they'll go on a Coast Guard cutter and sometimes in a helicopter and order these vessels to stop and prepare to be boarded.

They typically will stop. If they don't, there have been occasions where they will fire one round or a short burst from either a 50 caliber belt-fed heavy machine gun, an M-2 machine gun, or a 20-millimeter cannon from a Coast Guard cutter into the water. That will typically stop them. There have been a few incidences where the vessel, vessels would not stop, and then the Coast Guard cutter, you know, with working with DEA, who has the authority to enforce the Controlled Substances Act, would fire one round into the

engine, sometimes a short burst of 50 caliber machine gun fire or 20 millimeter cannon fire into the engine, only for the purpose of disabling the vessel. Now, I don't think that's ever been adjudicated by the courts, whether that's proper, proper, because you are using lethal force, but you're not trying to hurt anybody. But this is directly the opposite of what Trump is doing in international waters. This is not in Venezuelan waters. They're

directly using lethal force with the intent to kill people and the attempt in the intent to destroy property to destroy the vessel. Sheriff, this must be against federal law, as my understanding of federal law, and it must be against international law, and it must be a violation

of the treaties to which the United States is a party. Yeah, and it's surprises me. I was thinking the same thing when all the generals met in Quantico with, you know, with Pete Hegseth, just thinking, when are some of these people going to stand up, you know, like they should, according to the results of the Nuremberg hearings. If there's illegal orders, you know, you shouldn't just be thinking, how do I finish out my 20-year careers, 25-year career, I'm a captain, I'm a lieutenant, you know, I'm a major. I don't want, to cut my career short.

So I know if I disobey this, I'm gonna be fired immediately like Trump has a tendency to do, but I'm just amazed at how the people are lined up, ready to go to war with Venezuela, and how some major flag level officers aren't just saying, hey, this is wrong, you know, and hand in their commission.

So no, it's definitely under the laws of war, we're not at war with Venezuela, or under basic criminal justice. He says he's doing drug interdiction operations, you know, that these are narco-terrorists. But, you know, for drug interdictions, it's not a capital crime to smuggle drugs to directly kill these people and blow up their boats

and not have any evidence. Let's say these people were drug dealers. Wouldn't it make more sense to arrest them, confiscate their drugs, and negotiate with them to find out who the higher-ups are rather than obliterating them and destroying the evidence? Yeah, exactly. But still you have to honor the high seas.

Right. the high seas, that this is not in any territory that the U.S. controls. We don't have any criminal justice presence or authority in those kind of situations. So, yeah, it would make, let's just say that somebody in the U.S. government wanted to just track this plane, attract that boat, and just follow it for miles and miles. And first of all, there are no way they're going to the U.S., like a go-fast boat that has multiple outboard motors. When they're going high speed, they can only go 60 miles up to 100 miles.

If they're going on more moderate speed, they can go up to 200 miles. So you're talking boats that would have to refuel 12 or 15 times to get from the U.S. They're obviously not going to the U.S. But we're not at war with Venezuela. You know, there's no authority to use military action here. And it's definitely not a criminal justice drug interdiction event either. Sheriff, is Nicholas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, the head of a drug cartel? No, no.

As a matter of fact, he prides himself on being the anchor country for what is known as the Bolivarian Revolution. You know, all of Latin America or most of Latin America threw off the shackles of colonialism of empire many years ago. And it used to be Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia, along with the regime in Cuba that kind of had this claim to fame of being the ones that are preserving the spirit of the Bolivarian revolution and that's what he that's his claim to fame he just doesn't want yankee intervention he doesn't want the foreign intervention in south america and this has happened also in my lifetime in the 60s and the 70s there was operation condor where the u.s was through the CIA financing anti-leftist operations where they would disappear people like vocal students and dissident professors leftist professors. So this was kind of a forgotten part of the Cold War. A lot of people don't know about

as Operation Condor in South America that was attempting to intervene, having the U.S. government intervene in local politics and do regime change, as I'm sure you're familiar with it, with Pinochet in- Right, right, right. Sheriff, was anybody in the CIA ever prosecuted for participating in the torture of an American Drug Enforcement Administration agent or for participating in the delivery of drugs prohibited by federal law into the United States? No. And in DEA, we did communicate this all the way to our top of our chain of command in Washington. And since we have to go through State Department and the CIA is allowed to see anything that goes through

State Department that's communications out of the country. A lot of that is curtailed at that level, but we would travel to Washington and directly communicate this. It became a big point of contention between Langley and DEA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. These things were these clashes. And there's more than one. That's one that I told you there. Why was the CIA involved in drug dealing?

Was it just to make money? Was it to entice people via stings? Was it to finance revolutions? Well, in the case of Rancho Veracruz, which was owned by Rafael Caro Quintero, where the CIA financed that operation, it was because of the Boland Amendment. I'm sure, Judge, you remember, that's how funding for the Contras in Nicaragua was shut down, where no U.S. funding could be used to support them. But it continued anyway. And that's why Kiki, when he was tortured, was asked, what do you know about the CIA? and Nicaragua because he had discovered this transshipment point where drugs were going south

and cocaine was going north. You know, the same thing is that Gary Webb talked about in his book. So, no, when it gets to that level, it would be too much embarrassment for the U.S. government to talk about this class of agencies. But what is the function of the CIA in the realm of drug interdiction? They like drugs. They think, ooh, this is exciting to say that we're working with drugs. But with DEA, DEA has the end game of prosecuting, seizing drugs and prosecuting, either in the foreign

element, like when I worked in South America for many years, I worked with foreign officers, foreign law enforcement officers. So we'd be in an advisory role. If we seize drugs, it would be usually prosecuted in a foreign court. If there's a U.S. nexus, there may be an indictment. And if that country has an extradition treaty, the person would be extradited to the U.S. But with the CIA, they have no endgame. They're never going to testify in court.

They will refuse to testify in court. They don't seize drugs. They don't arrest people. They claim to their chain of command that we're identifying smuggling networks, that we are letting the drugs walk as the terminology goes, letting it go to the U.S. And claiming, you know, besides making money off of it for regime change operations, they're claiming we're identifying these networks.

We're letting the drugs walk so we can see where. they go. But then they don't do anything with it. And they don't work with the DEA to bust people either. They're just kind of doing it because it sounds glamorous and they make money for their own. Sheriff, you spoke a little while ago. You alluded to Nuremberg, which is, of course, the famous trial of war criminals after World War II, at which the defense I was following orders was utterly rejected on moral, natural law, and now international law grounds. However, and you mentioned this rather clownish performance of Secretary Hegeseth before 800 generals and admirals.

And Admiral did resign. The Admiral in charge of the Navy for everything from my, correct me if I'm wrong, North Carolina South. Do you know why he resign? I know that admirals and generals, when they resign, they're still not allowed to criticize the government, so they go away quietly. But did he resign over President Trump's murdering of fishermen in the Caribbean?

I can only guess that at that level, he would have heard about Marco Rubio's and Donald Trump's plans to attack Venezuela in one form or another, to provoke an attack like these incursions into the internal. waterways of Venezuela, trying to, you know, poke the beast, see if they can get a reaction. But I'm guessing at that level, he had heard the plans unveiled to attack or do take hostile actions off the coast of Venezuela. And I'm thinking at that point that Admiral, this is a guess, may have resigned because they heard of what the intentions were because Marco Rubio

for years has wanted to attack Venezuela. And, you know, um, Pete Hegseth and Trump are just ready to do that. Get more glory, kill more people. Why do you think the president of the United States and the Secretary of Defense who calls himself the Secretary of War want to kill these people? I mean, theoretically, theoretically, 10 years from now, Pete Hegseth could be prosecuted in the international criminal court, whether the United States has signed that treaty or not if he was unfortunate enough to get arrested.

That's how blatantly criminal this behavior is. Why do you think they're doing it? I think Trump, speaking about Trump, he does everything just to make the headlines. Like he had a former associate called Cohen that says every day Trump would get up and think, what can I do? What can I say to get on the front page of the New York Times today? So I don't think he cares. I don't think he cares about the genocide in Gaza.

I don't think he cares about whatever war he's trying to gin up between Taiwan and China or North Korea or Venezuela. I think it's just sensationalism for him. And I think he's trying to cover the Epstein thing that's really exploded with 1,300 Epstein emails that mentioned Trump. And that's why I'm really afraid the timing right now could cause him to do something

very hostile with Venezuela, just to get the spotlight off of himself. Now, I think that's... From all your years in Latin America and from your knowledge of the drug trade and the relations between these Latin American countries and the United States. Does the country of Venezuela pose any national security threat to the United States of America? No, absolutely not.

If we could go back to the 90s where they had Venezuela and gas stations in the U.S., the Citgo gas stations, we could go back to that. We could go back to having positive diplomatic relations with them. There's no reason for this that Venezuela is not doing anything to us. They're just putting up a defense. They have a very well-armed populace, and they're ready for what's coming. But they don't pose any threat to us. And we could go back to the era where they would actually sell the Venezuelan oil on the U.S. market.

So there's just no purpose for this, except Rubio's has this dream of overthrowing Venezuela. And like I said, everyone else falls in line for. Trump. It's a distraction from Epstein, Hegstaff, you know, one war is as good as another, so he can keep talking tough. But no, Venezuela poses no threat to the U.S. Sheriff David Hathaway, boy, I can't thank you enough. You're a solid, terrific, patriotic American, and I'm deeply grateful that you came on the show to reveal all of this. I hope you can come back and join us again soon, Sheriff. I would love to. Thank you, Judge. Well, thank you. All the best to you, my friend.

Wow. The sheriff literally sent me a letter, an old-fashioned letter in the mail, and we called him up and spoke with them. And is he ever the real deal? And I'm deeply grateful for his time with us and for all of you that have been watching and spending time on this. I think this clip will go viral. And hopefully it'll make it to our friends in D.C. coming up at 2 o'clock this afternoon on much of this, Matt Ho. And at 3 o'clock, this afternoon on much of this. Colonel Karen Koukowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.