Julian Dorey Podcast - 😳 [VIDEO] - Pablo Escobar: Inside The 1,782 Day MANHUNT to Take Him Down • Ken Magee • #141

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Support Our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Ken Magee returns to discuss his 5-year journey to hunt down Colombian Drug Kingpin Pablo Escobar from January 1989 to December 1993. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - The CIA & Kiki Camarena’s 1985 Murder Mystery 7:37 - Corrupt Agents 12:29 - The Silk Road DEA Debacle & The Cartagena Scandal 25:35 - CIA / Intelligence & Cartel Cases 31:42 - Operation Fast & Furious 38:09 - The John Delorean Bust 41:07 - The CIA Agent In Bogota 49:26 - Ken is law enforcement’s Forrest Gump 51:36 - Pablo Escobar: The Phil Knight of Drugs 59:45 - It was never “enough” for Escobar 1:10:37 - Pablo was a good father; “Plata o Plomo” 1:15:54 - The Timeline of Pablo Escobar’s Reign; Escobar’s Night Bombs Story 1:21:24 - How Cali Cartel Took Down Escobar; DEA & Cali Cartel 1:29:28 - Los Pepes & Cali Cartel 1:32:03 - Why Escobar sent family to Germany; What Ken did on flight w/ the family 1:38:13 - Chaos landing in Germany; Ken recovers rare docs on plane 1:43:49 - Los Pepes were planning to kill family in Germany 1:47:54 - How Ken helped get family kicked out of Germany (Different than “Narcos” portrayed on Netflix) 1:53:36 - Ken’s run-in with Pablo Escobar Jr. 1:59:26 - Future Cali Cartel Info INTRO Credits: Narcos (Netflix) Skyfall (2012) ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “TRENDIFIER”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, if you're on Spotify right now, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. It's a huge, huge help. So thank you to everyone who's already done that. As always, the Patreon link is in the show description as well as in the description to this episode. Hope to see more of you over there. And that said, please enjoy this episode with the Escobar Hunter, Mr. Ken McGee. He utilized family members. If you recall, when you hear the story about me following the family to Germany, getting the family kicked out of Germany was a catalyst for Pablo going down. Because he got so angry, he started making phone calls. He called the German embassy, threatened to blow it up.

He called his son, and all those calls were being monitored because his son was placed in a hotel, and so the phone calls were being able to be triangulated. It was his temper that caused him to eventually go down. Kiki Camarena was killed by the Mexican cartels. It's one of the longest investigations DEA has ever had. The case is still open. Prior to us capturing Rene Benitez, that was the longest case ever opened until I caught that guy. But Kiki Camarena's case is still open. And what happens is the reason

people like Pablo Escobar, Cali Cartel, and Medellin Cartel are hesitant about harming a DEA agent is because they knew. Remember what I talked to you about that rule earlier? We won't kill you if you don't kill us unless it's a situation where violence occurs they realize that if they killed an agent they would undercome the wrath of the government 10 times stronger than it already was so and that's what happened with kiki camerina they have not stopped that investigation to this day well i assume you know some of the background there as far as like why that might not be getting fully solved or fully litigated. I've watched that documentary too, and there's a lot of different angles we could take off of that. And let's not go there today, but I will tell you that there are some allegations there was corruption.

I don't quite believe that with the agent, number one. Is there a way to deny that the guy who was torturing him, and for people who aren't familiar with the story of Kiki Camarena, he was a DEA agent working in Mexico in the 80s. He was abducted, tortured, and then killed by the cartels, and that's the very truncated short way of putting it but the i forget they maybe it was something rodriguez yeah jose something but yeah there was felix felix rodriguez that's it the man who tortured him i think he was doing the torturing in the

safe house which he was then killed was revealed to be a a cia asset is there anything to deny that i have watched the same thing and what i did when kiki was killed it was um i was a brand new agent and so i wasn't in mexico but obviously they used you learn the story over and over and over and over and you study it and you're educated about it, and you learn from that case. And that story came out about the CIA operative that supposedly tortured him, and that CIA operative has denied it many, many times over. I don't know. I can tell you this. Remember that senior officer, that agent that told me, I'm assigning you to the SWAT team because I want you to create the SWAT team. And

he's in that special. He's one of the people that believe that theory, that there was something wrong. And I've never talked to him about it since. I've lost touch with the gentleman. But well, what I did, I'd never heard of that CIA operative. I Googled it and I read all about the guy as well. And I hear he denies it. And I hear he's been honored by presidents and all that stuff. I don't know. But I will tell you this. Part of that allegation is that the head of the DEA office in Guadalajara was crooked and that tipped off the cartel as to where kiki was and all that the gentleman's name was the agent's name was i believe kirkendall yes i highly doubt that

i highly doubt the head of the mexican office uh guadalajara resident office tipped off the cartel as to where kiki camarena was going to be at a given time so he could be kidnapped, brutalized, tortured for several days. Two or three other people died during that as well, and his body was dumped. I highly, highly, highly doubt it. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life, but you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans,

you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile, different is calling. What about the CIA operative torturing him? That's a whole nother story. That's not saying the DEA guy operated with the CIA guy. Was that CIA guy there? I don't know. I have no idea could it have happened absolutely but do i believe i would i would bet a paycheck or two or three that kirkendall was a very honest guy i would not know him personally though kirkendall i'm might have met him sometime over the years

because keep in mind i was a young 20s and he's a senior senior he's probably well into his 80s by now i think he was also an advisory producer on narcos mexico i'll check that but yeah i'm not sure but the other part of it the cia operative if he was operating and working with a cartel at that point in time involved in torture i wouldn't bet any money on that because i have no clue could it happen absolutely could it could it have not happened and it's all put together in in some sort of hollywood form sure but i'm just gonna stick up for the one agent okay i highly doubt that's fair i highly doubt and just one quick follow-up there is that because

is that a bias towards the fact that you worked with a lot of great people at the DEA and you're making that assumption? Or is it because you think that it's completely, it wouldn't have been possible for him to pull that off? I think we have enough assets out there that we would have been able to figure out if he was corrupt before, during, or after that, number one. Number two is, yes, I have worked with a lot of great people. And the idea of taking money in corruption versus having a colleague that you work for and responsible for, brutally tortured and executed, I don't know if you know,

when they kidnapped Kiki Cameron and beat the crap out of him and ultimately killed him that way, they didn't kill him by traditional means. They tortured him for days. There was a doctor that injected him with drugs that kept him awake so he wouldn't pass out. His last words were, I need a doctor, number one.

Number two is, remember I told you about that supervisor that was working undercover, the guy named Joe in Detroit, and I took over for him on the undercover deal. He was transferred to go work on that operation, which was called Operation Leyenda. He was friends with Kiki Camarena, and he was a fluent Spanish speaker, and they transferred Joe over there down towards the Guadalajara area to work on that investigation. But that's why I believe that. Hey, are there corrupt agents? Absolutely. Very few. And we love arresting them. We love them. I have been involved in investigations where we've had intelligence

analysts arrested for corruption or stupidity, because sometimes there's a fine line between the two. You can provide information to the enemy out of stupidity versus being actually corrupt. But I've worked on having DEA agents arrested, DEA intelligence analysts arrested. And as I told you earlier, Scarface, I've arrested a corrupt cop, an FBI top 10 fugitive. But there was another agent, and I don't mind saying his name.

His name was Rene Delacova. Rene Delacova worked with us in Columbia. He got promoted. He went to Panama. Or no, he was in Panama. I take that back. He was in Panama. You could see his picture.

He's the one that was marching Manuel Noriega onto an airplane when he was in panama he you could see his picture he's the one that was marching manuel noriega onto an airplane when he was arrested okay so renee gets renee delacova gets all sorts of acclaims he was a very nice guy friendly jovial you name it well he ends up getting promoted he goes to florida that guy behind you right there well that yeah yeah that's renee delacroix okay absolutely i'll put that picture in the corner okay so it says remembering them who wrote that article i highly doubt it was renee because i'm going to tell you a story so that's renee let me let me do this real quick just to confirm. Okay. I'm going to put my glasses on, step away from the camera. That's definitely Rene Delacova. So Rene was a very likable guy.

He was a friend of mine. He was a friend of all the agents in Bogota. That's where he worked. That was after Noriega. Yeah. And he gets promoted. He goes to Florida, right? And very rarely do supervisors work undercover.

Almost never now, and the reason being because of him. What happened was they were doing money laundering pickups, right? And they picked up millions. He was the undercover agent on the group. And the reason supervisors can't be undercover agents is because when you think about it, let me move a little closer here. When you think about it, there's no supervision going on. Nothing, people can run amok. So what happens is he's picking up money, suitcases full of money for money launderers. So he goes and picks up a half a million or a million dollars here and he takes it back. He's being followed just like all the protocols, everything, right? That I talked about, all that money gets logged

and placed and ultimately drop off at the reserve after it's been photographed and tested for drugs, all that stuff. He does that several times in a money laundering operation. Huge deal, right? Well, ultimately, they took the guy down and the case agents are interviewing the guy and they say okay and the supervisor's not there in the interviews and he basically says okay well we've got you delivered seven suitcases and i'm making up the numbers it could have been six could have been nine or whatever totaling this amount of millions of dollars to our guy and the guy sat back and he said no no i don't i gave him 12 or 11 whatever it's something like that so what happened was renee went and made pickups on his own with no backup nobody knew discount he he got the page because

he's the undercover agent he gets the page saying i got another half a million or a million or whatever ultimately these agents knew something was wrong make a long story short internal affairs what we call the office of professional responsibility opr part of our internal investigating our own, get wind of it. They do execute several search warrants on his house, safety deposit boxes, you name it. Bottom line is, Rene was stealing money from drug dealers and technically from the government, and he made millions. Well, he paid the ultimate price when it comes to apart from death and that's

freedom well he was sentenced to prison i don't know the amount of time that he got but uh there's more to that story people can research it on their own there could have been an accomplice that he was involved with all that stuff but the bottom line is the guy that helped take down manuel noriega ended up stealing money from the government. Corrupt agent. We're really glad that the agents that were on top of the investigation, honest agents, got word to the people that had to get the word, too. Rene De La Cova was a corrupt agent, and he went to prison for it. Do you think when you look at, it could corrupt ea agents fbi name naming whatever it is

some of them obviously just were bad eggs who got through and maybe were always bad people but do you think sometimes it's guys who learn to rationalize to themselves and get to a point where they they're they're capable of doing that because they feel like they're working on this $100,005.22 government salary, and yet they're out here arresting people like Manuel Noriega, and they feel like they should get some for their time. I hear where you're coming from on that, and I will say this. I think that kind of philosophy, that bruise in someone's head, is more at the state and local level where there's less constraints, which also mean, hey, you know, who's going to notice? I'm doing this, I'm doing that.

But remember, to become a DEA agent, the background investigation process and everything else that goes on and the drug testing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And everything that you're involved with, it's, I'd like to say, DEA selects the cream of the crop. And when you get the cream of the crop, every now and then a bad egg is going to slip through. But we go through so much background investigation, so much interviewing, so much this, so much that. And there's so many rules and regulations that try and keep something like that, as I point back to the screen, from happening with Rene Delacova. Yeah, that's a closer up picture, by the way, right there. So

there you go. Definitely Rene. And I mean, we hung out in Bogota together, et cetera, et cetera. And he was still friends with guys in Bogota when he got arrested. And some of them were like, hey, let's let the justice system take a part. I said, I'm looking at the one guy. I said, Javier, not Pena, not Pena, a different agent. I said, are you kidding me? They executed search warrants on how many safety deposit boxes do you have? He goes, I don't have one.

I said, well, imagine having seven. Why do you need seven safety deposit boxes? It could have been eight, could have been nine or whatever. But my point is a whole bunch. But no, I don't think the, for the most part, DA agents rationalize that. Every, when you have a top secret clearance, every five years you go through another background investigation. And so during that time, they're looking at your tax returns, they're checking your financials. Did you get in above your means? Did you go through a divorce, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? Do you have unexplained income?

And it doesn't mean that you couldn't have had your grandmother die and she willed you her house and all of a sudden you have $200,000 in your account. That's traceable, though. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So the important thing is that there's checks and balances, number one, that prevent corruption. But more importantly than preventing corruption at the end of the game, it's at the beginning of the game, finding the right people. And remember, with all the protocols, and I've talked about this on my TikTok page about corruption. Can you imagine two DE agents sitting in a car?

Hey, we just got $100,000 in a brown paper bag that we took out of that crack house up there in Hoboken, New Jersey. And hey, you want to split it? One agent looking at the other saying, yeah, why don't we do that? Why don't you take half i'll take the other half that isn't going to happen it's just not going to happen why is that not going to happen because the minute this one agent says that to the other agent this other agent's thinking one of several things a i'm being tested b he's internal affairs c i'm an honest guy why would a fuck would he ever ask me that?

See, I enjoy my career. I enjoy making my salary. Prisoner dilemma kind of thing. I enjoy all of this stuff. What am I going to do? I'm going to turn him in immediately. I'm going to turn him in. My point is, an agent's not going to talk to another agent like that.

You're going to have, for a term that's used periodically in the worldwide world of active shooters you're going to have the lone wolf agent right the one that decides i'm going to be corrupt and i'm not going to tell anybody not that not that it was the example i'm about to give not that it was two dea agents it was a dea agent and a secret service agent nonetheless two people on team government but to maybe make your point for you when you look at that fucking mess of a case cartana no the silk road case there was there were two rogue agents on there who ended up doing about six years a piece in prison one was dea one was secret service and they were both ripping off at one point on the same crime scene and didn't know it because they weren't talking to each other about it so when they both went down like neither knew that the

other was doing anything and they were operating alone so they didn't it's not like there was a discussion like oh let's go let's go well that the day of that day the arresting agent should have bought the powerball ticket because the odds of that happening are pretty slim. Can it happen? Absolutely. But Renee and the agent that you just described with the Secret Service, and there are other things that happen with agents. Agents that make the news normally make it out of stupidity, meaning it's not corruption. It's doing like the crap that happened in Cartagena before the president visited Colombia and a couple agents with prostitutes or something like that. What happened? When was that?

That was in the last five or six years. It wasn't in the last five years. It was probably in the last seven years. Google it really quick. You got that fancy computer there. And basically what it is is they just go DEA agent, Cartagena, prostitute. Boom, it's going to pop up on your screen. They did stupid stuff, and they deserve to lose their job.

DEA blamed for handling of agent's sex parties with hookers. Sounds like a good time. Yeah, that sounds like something you'd see. And it's run by the DEA. I'm sure they drug tested the door, right? Everyone's clean. Yeah, who knows what exactly happened there that day, that weekend? I don't know.

Those agents, A, would have been kicked out of Columbia immediately, B, demoted, C, probably fired. Probably fired. Depends on how much further. Did they commit a felony? Did they commit misdemeanors? What their track record was. I know if I would have had the chance, I know if Joe Toff was in charge of Columbia at that time, they would have been fired. Yeah, it's a liability.

Immediately. Immediately. But that happened. Yeah. And so what I'm saying is sometimes when DE agents make the news, they make it out of stupidity. They do something stupid. How about the retired DE agent in Florida that got mad at a guy on a traffic light thing and shot the guy in the chest. Killed him.

I didn't hear about that. Did he kill him? I don't know if he killed him or not. Google, Florida, DEA, road rage. My point is the guy was retired, a retired agent. I don't know if the case has had its ultimate conclusion. Was this 2022? Yeah, it was in the last year florida road rage shooting leaves two daughters shot uh no did you put dea in there yeah i did it was trying to make me put dad

d a agent uh shooting uh what is road rage a crime in florida hold on florida da agent shooting car former florida d agent who claims self-defense is that it yeah exactly yeah brad san sanawoski i think he was a firearms instructor i've heard a lot of things about the guy i don't know enough so all i know is this he He pulled the trigger and... Yeah, it says Brad Sosnowski. I can't. It's a little small. Sosnowski, 55, told Boynton Beach Police he shot another driver in self-defense when the man approached his car from behind Monday.

Sorry, I think it was popular. And he lied through the whole story. I think surveillance cameras picked up a different scene. He said he was approached or attacked by the driver. Lied. Bottom line, stupidity. Right. Stupidity.

Right. And that's the way a DEA agent or a former DEA agent makes the headlines almost always. The chances of people like, man, there was another corrupt agent out of Florida that's been really big news lately. A lot out of Florida, man. Yeah, well. Interesting country down there yeah exactly but uh he was um he was a hispanic agent i forget his name guys we are posting mid-form clips from this podcast every single day on youtube we have been since january and unfortunately there's like three fucking subscribers over there so the link is in

the description as well as in the pinned comment i'd really appreciate you guys subscribing because shout out to alessi alamon he's been helping me out with this channel and he's not going to do this for completely free forever and the channel is literally not even monetized a lot of people have been asking me for this channel for over a year we finally got it i would love to see you guys go over there and join it'll be a huge. So thank you in advance to everyone who's going to do that right now. But if you write DEA corrupt agent Florida cartel, it should pop up. But he was way in. And I'm sure lots of supervisors are going to probably possibly lose their job because they didn't do a good job of supervising them.

Did it pop up? There's a couple that we were looking at that popped up but i get the stories is it this one jose arizari that's it yeah that's it that's it so my point is he was a corrupt agent renee delacrova for the most part corruption doesn't exist and i and i would hate to leave this podcast saying that we spent a lot of time talking about corruption because the truth of the matter is, although corruption is big in movies, it's big on the screen, it that if they had one ounce of thought that somebody was corrupt, they'd turn them in. That's how they do it. There is no blue line where we don't cross or we cover for one another. No, no. I can't wait for the YouTube comments on this one.

No, I'm telling you. The people that see that, it just doesn't happen. When it comes to DEA agents, we arrest our own or we encourage anybody to turn in a corrupt agent. And believe me, there are agents that have gotten divorced and their spouse, whether it be male or female, have called DEA and said, hey, I was married to him for 12 years, and he told me that he lied on his background, that he had tried something or he did something. We go back and investigate it. And agents can be fired 12 years later because an ex-spouse said that he lied on his background or she lied on her background investigation. My point is take it take it really really seriously yeah remember the part about my very first interview i told the truth

about the weed exactly and then i was able later on to explain that in my second interview a few years later now imagine had i lied and then years later one of my high school buddies comes and says, I see Ken McGee's on Pablo Escobar. He's done this. He was on that. He's on the American Heroes channel. He's done this and done that while I was an agent, say, for example. Or he was a spokesman for DEA on CNN.

And they call up and say, you know what? I used to smoke weed with them all the time in high school they'll investigate it they will today for weed well because I lied on my background okay all right investigation you know that's I did not lie because my point is had somebody said I'm just creating a scenario because I told the truth right um and and that's the way it is so but what about i mean we're kind of like all over the place on this topic discussing the corruption angle of it but we started this this silo with the kiki camarena thing which the implication was like the cia and i do want to say this before i bring this up you had mentioned this

earlier about people who are like abolish three letter agencies and stuff like that I agree with you I think that's crazy and I also think that you know people want a boogeyman to blame for everything and they can't see the nuance of like hey there's some bad people sometimes that do bad things at these places I'm going to call it out every time I'm not then just going to label the entire system as completely corrupt doctors corrupt judges life insurance salesmen corrupt grocers that will manipulate your machine so you're paying more for fruit yes whatever it's everywhere in every profession and do i hold people in like government or even at like a high profession

like doctors or something to maybe a higher standard yes and you should and that's and that's completely fair and i won't apologize for that but you know i also recognize that some things that you may want to look at and immediately label like murder or corruption or whatever maybe like a kiki camarana situation i don't know you know there's a lot of stuff that we don't know because it involves intelligence and involves things where there's tradeoffs for things around the world. You know, and there are some really, really difficult moral quandaries that have to be accepted in a job like yours or in a job in the CIA or FBI where you as much as you want to, if you're a good person, want to fight for the badge of freedom and justice at 100% rate, sometimes you got to trade off that 25% because 75% is a bigger number and that 25 out of South America and Mexico and everything. You know, people, reporters have talked about the involvement of various agencies, but maybe on the other side of the deals or things like that.

CIA is the one that comes up a lot. To start, though, in your experience in the late 80s and 90s how much did you see let's call it agency interference that wasn't necessarily in your security clearance pay grade where you may not have understood why for example this cia guy or whatever is here and doing things that seem to be counterintuitive to what you need but they're there and you just have to accept that. Sure. Sure. Well, let me, for your listeners as well, a lot of people say he was a CIA agent and he's a DEA agent. A CIA agent and a DEA agent are complete opposites. And what do I mean by that? A CIA agent is the equivalent of a DEA informant. CIA guys are called case officers. There's no such thing as a CIA agent.

Do you follow me? I follow you. They're called case officers. So when somebody says that this guy was a CIA agent, maybe he wasn't a CIA agent, or maybe he wasn't a CIA case officer, actually on the payroll, getting his life insurance and medical insurance and getting a check every two weeks from Uncle Sam. He could

have been a CIA operative slash agent, which once again is like an informant. Right. So meaning someone who could be from Columbia, for example, who works reports to a case officer exactly okay exactly yeah okay that's number one so just so when you're when you're having a conversation when somebody throws out the term he's a ci agent well that's that's the movies i understand what you say it could you want to be clear that it could mean a couple different things we got to be careful well it it there are no CI agents that are government technical authority or I mean officials because they're called case off so the people I'm talking about

just to be clear are the case officers I understand everywhere we got assets I got it I got it I get okay that's number one number two is I can't speak for the CIA I never personally had involvement where I got shut down because of something I didn't understand. But I will tell you this, when it comes to DEA, and there's a lot of different creative ways to catch bad guys, whether surveillance techniques, whatever the case may be, and a lot of different ways that sometimes are border illegal. So we go through steps to say, what's legal, what's not legal. And we are always shut down if it becomes something that's illegal. For example, I want to do a wiretap on so-and-so's house in Dearborn, Michigan. Well, I just can't contact the wiretapping group and say, go

set up on that guy's phone. I have to get a serious, long affidavit together that's approved by a judge, and then ultimately, we get it. We get the search, or I'm sorry, we get what's called the Title III wiretap intercept, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. However, if I found out that that guy was playing a terrorist act, there's something that can be obtained immediately under the FISA laws in courts where a foreign FISA, foreign intelligence, foreign investigative sensitive activity, whatever the case may be, the FISA allows you to go up on that guy's phone and then file the paperwork and explain why you went so fast. And that's not on drug deals. That's on acts of terrorism.

You follow me? But, for example, when we go undercover and we do not do drugs, we don't experiment with drugs, or you're taught a multitude of ways to get out of having to do drugs, because for us to do drugs, we compromise our position, compromise our health, compromise our safety. We could OD because you don't know what it's like to take drugs, but also technically it's illegal, all those things. But what we do every now and then is we release drugs to the community. And what do I mean by that? What do I mean by release drugs? Yeah, what do you mean by that?

I knew I'd get your attention and every one of your attention out there. And what do I mean by that what I mean by yeah I knew I'd get your attention and every one of your attention out there and what I mean by that is you want to deal with a guy it's called a reverse operation you know a guy wants to buy a hundred kilograms of cocaine right and you got to prove to him you're a drug dealer and that you have 99% pure cocaine so you give them a sample and the sample is basically the size of a sweet and low package right okay but you just don't get to do that okay mark my words let me take you down the road real quick please you want to get approval to release a controlled substance in the street to convince this guy that you're a

high-level drug dealer, right? First off, you're the case agent, a GS-13 pay grade. You got to get approval from your supervisor, who's then going to go to his supervisor, who's a 15, who then is going to go to the head of the office, who is technically the number 16, but it's called the SAC, Special Agent in Charge. And then what does he do? He says, craft all the paperwork. We send it to Washington, D.C. We have a whole unit that reviews the paperwork as why it is better in the community to release this small amount of drugs for the betterment of the community. And then it goes all the way to the Attorney General's office. For a packet of sweet and low.

Exactly. Why? Because of perception that technically you've violated the law releasing cocaine to some guy out of the street. So my point is the checks and balances. Now, real quick, Google that ATF and that operation that they did where they were sending guns to Mexico. I forget the name of the operation. Fast and Furious, I think it was. Oh, yes.

It was Operation Fast and Furious or whatever. Yeah, I'll pull it up right now. So Fast and Furious. I need the operation. No, not the fucking movie. Well, it's not the Vin Diesel movie. Yeah, we know that. Yeah.

ATF gun walking scandal. I'll read the quick thing, was a tactic used by the Arizona U.S. Attorney's General Office. Oh, wait, no, this is not. Gunwalking or, oh, yeah, gunwalking or letting guns walk was a tactic used by the Arizona U.S. Attorney General's Office and the Arizona Field Office of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which ran a series of sting operations between 2006 and 2011 in the Tucson and Phoenix area where the ATF, quote, purposely allowed licensed firearm dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers hoping to track the guns to Mexican cartel leaders and arrest them, unquote. I see the thought process. Yes, I do too.

I see, that's the equivalent of us releasing that small gram of cocaine right however then little mary dies by one of the guns and you know well it's more than that because those guns ultimately made their way to cartel members it's not a consumable product it's a it's a daily daily used product it's a, exactly. It can be used all the time. I understand why they did it. I understand how they did it. I understand how they got permissions. However, had I been on the receiving end of, do we grant permission of this and that,

I wouldn't have been thinking about the moment. I would have been thinking about the moment several years ago when all of this is exposed and thinking how many people died because of the guns that we provided because they go to cartel members they're whacking people left and right in mexico i don't know the numbers i haven't studied the case i had the general specifics of it but whoever made the final decision on that and didn't think right it they just they didn't think of the long-term repercussions and i'm surprised it made it all the way up that far because when you think about it you know

you're releasing guns the cartel members what could possibly go wrong yeah what could possibly go wrong you know that's like what could possibly go i mean it it's a symbolism thing though more than anything and what i mean by that is if i just wanted to look at this logically you know they're getting their hands on guns anyway right oh absolutely right absolutely they're gonna kill anyway but the fact that a gun was serial number a10574 which could be traced back to the store that they allowed this to happen and happen to kill little innocent mary over here because sicario jose got pissed off or whatever now it's a news story right whereas if sicario jose just killed her with you know his fucking nine millimeter that he already had now it's just another day right so i i get it but this is where

i actually feel a little bad for the government sometimes when they're trying to do the right thing there was a bigger picture but they they can't there wasn't corruption involved there it was just it was an operation that i don't know the overall results, if the ends justify the means, but it definitely has the perception of this was not well thought out in the long run. Yeah. So real quick, the analogy that I gave to you about where that we release drugs in the community is a lot different than letting some Glock 9mm with an extended magazine dozens and dozens or however many there were get out and because those are the same weapons that are being used against de agents and other agents that are overseas and serving in some of those foreign foreign posts we um and then why again why would we have done what we did with the drugs because ultimately we want the guy to say

yeah i want to buy 100 kilograms of cocaine and here's 2.5 million dollars we're going to wire it to you we're going to put it in this suitcase and deliver it to you and on some clandestine airstrip in in the remote areas of arizona or whatever the case may be and we seized the 2.5 million dollars in cash and buying 100 kilograms of cocaine is the same as possessing 100 kilograms of cocaine it's the same in essence the same kind of penalties and so that's just one way that we operated to take another major drug dealer off the street you know and that's what happened with uh john delorean do you know the delorean do you know the delorean story you know the delorean car right yeah i know back to the future i don't know the

delorean story delorean created this organization where he built those beautiful cars that were made out of what stainless steel and uh he ultimately started this company i believe it was in ireland and he was running low on cash and i'm running company. So he decided he'd get in the cocaine business. He met with some DE agents out of the Detroit office, as a matter of fact, to buy cocaine. They got him on video saying, oh, I can't wait to get this and we're going to turn this into this kind of money. Is it on the screen behind me? It's mind bog-boggling so he went down for that he went down for that and i think ultimately they called it entrapment or something of that nature but um the undercover agent um met with him and they've got all sorts of films this is a professional

businessman that started a car company that was going to revolutionize the industry of automobiles and he turns into a drug dealer i feel like i've looked at this before but i'm not sure that's a wild story that's a good podcast right there yeah well i can tell you the guy who was on that case is no longer alive i believe uh i asked about him to a friend of mine about six months ago and uh his first name was jerry and um and make a long story short um something happened where he left the agency many he left the agency many years many many many years ago before very shortly after i joined but something happened where there was a domestic and bottom line is he killed somebody and then killed himself oh or somebody killed him and then killed themselves one of the two oh make a long

story short it was tragic but he was a he was a pretty neat guy from my understanding too he was like a sports trivia expert and you know he had a radio talk show after he left dea that was all sports trivia and all that. But anyway, he was the undercover agent that took down DeLorean. But my point is that's how major operations are done. And you take a look at that guy, DeLorean. I mean, John DeLorean was huge. He ran in the names of like Lee Iacocca, the head of Chrysler, and the Fords and everybody else. So that's one of the reasons you had that very inquisitive look and all of you people out there

in social media land also were wondering, what do you mean they release drugs into the community? Yeah, I want you to explain. Now you are going to have the folks that are sitting there are going to say, the CIA released a bunch of crack cocaine into the ghettos in California and all that. I've heard all of that. And I'll tell you what, I haven't really studied it that much. Am I going to doubt it? I don't know because I didn't work for the CIA.

But, you know, I worked with the CIA a lot. And I'll tell a funny story really quickly. There was a CIA agent that was assigned to the American embassy in Bogota, Colombia during the Pablo Escobar days. Did he look like the guy in Narcos? No. As a matter of fact, he looked like my seventh grade science professor. Well, that's how they like him. The guy in – I had another guy in here, Jim Lawler, who was a legendary spy at the CIA in anti-nuclear proliferation and weapons of mass destruction for like 25 years.

It's interesting to talk with you because your expertise was in the field undercover with nuclear arms deals and things like that. And it's like the whole reason we went to Iraq was because they had WMD. And that turned out to not be true. That's exactly right. People ask me about that sometime. And it is true that saddam hussein had been working on nuclear weapons before then he had used chemical weapons against the kurds the kurds are an ethnic group there in iraq killed thousands of them in fact one

of his cousins was known as chemical ali and chemical ali used and it was hilarious because he's older now he's i think he's like 70 years old or something but the guy that they have in narcos playing the cia agent who they make look extra corrupt in there it's him like it's like it's and i sent the picture to jim i'm like jim this is like it's like they took you 25 years ago and right this is you in the fucking movie. So I always wonder what that guy looked like. So that's sad to hear. Well, it was after we took down Pablo Escobar, and yes, the CIA did help, and so did the Delta Force, and so did the Army, and so did the Mill Group, and so did the Department of State, and so did the Columbia National Police, and so did the DAS, which is the Colombian equivalent of, like the FBI. It was called the Departamento Administrativo de Securidad.

Anyway, they're no longer an agency in Colombia. That's one three-letter agency I guess one country got rid of, the DAS. But I worked with them every day on the fugitive team and met some incredible, courageous law enforcement officers. The Colombian National Police, the honest guys that worked with us courageous as can be and the same with the das agents i keep on hearing this i've heard this from a lot of people who were down there like you when you listen to different interviews and stuff they highlight how that's a huge misconception that like oh they were all corrupt or something they're like so many of these people were incredible what they did there are some that are corrupt yes but not

the ones we had vetted ones and we also had ones my my friend that helped me take down the fbi top 10 fugitive armando garcia he was a member of the das and he we located where armando was and obviously you need a foreign representation there to help make the arrest and then they turn them over to us and we get them out of the country in whatever way we we do we do it legally but he drew down on the guy armando garcia was a former cop and after he got caught he said to the my friend ricardo he said that ricardo he goes hey look i've got an apartment over there in cali and i've got this car you can have the car you can have that here the key the part and just let me know my friend said no You're the corrupt cop not me and that made

the article and seeing the Miami Times I believe because I I Advertised that I I advertised the fact that that an honest DOS officer and that guy right now Isn't now a naturalized American citizen lives in the United States oh well not the the DAS officer but what what took me down that road was this representative from the CIA yeah okay who was assigned to the American Embassy in Bogota and let's face it we work with a lot of people and don't know clear you said this was after Escobar was killed. Yeah. Well, he worked during, before, during, and after.

Okay. So he was there before. Got it. So we were handing out awards to people within the embassy, and I went to him and I said to him, I'm not going to say his name, but let's just say his name is uh michael ducksworth michael duckworth i just made that name up right it's a good name strong so michael duckworth so i say hey michael look can i talk to you he says yeah i said look you and i both know that michael duckworth is not your name as a matter of fact, I know your real name because one day you pulled out some papers and you had accidentally another driver's license

that I caught a glimpse of it and I know where you're from. And I saw it and I know it. But I'm just wondering, we're gonna give out these certificates of participation and award for the Paul Blaschmar things, and I just want you to know that I will do whatever you want because someday you're going to retire. Someday you're going to retire.

Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale expertise and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. And people will know you worked for the CIA if you chose to say, you could start your own private company, you could do whatever,

and I want your certificate to have your name on it, and I will get you one, not present it, I will just give it to you. Quick question, quick clarification. I want to make sure I'm not fucked up here. Yeah. Are you insinuating that this guy was not identifying as CIAia he was identifying

as like state department or something no he was no you're right and i should have clarified he he identified as cia well you knew it was a different name yeah yeah we know he was cia he worked with the cia he didn't promote himself as cia on the outside unless following their own protocols on dealing with CIA operatives and things like that. But in the meetings he did. Yeah, in the agency. Right.

They wouldn't call him CIA. They would have different words. And whenever we referred to the CIA, we wouldn't say the CIA. We would say we're going to go up to the fifth floor, which is where they were at the time. Got it. Okay. Thank you for your question. And he looks at me, Michael Duckworth, and he says, I said, there'll be a time you're going to want to talk to your parents and tell them how great a job you did in your career and all that. And he looks at me and he says to me with a straight face, he said, thank you very much for asking.

And I would like you to, I would, I'm honored to be able to get this certificate. And the name I want on it is my God-given birth name, Michael Duckworth. I looked at him and I said, okay, dude. That's what you'll get. And I knew that wasn't his name. I knew his other name. I knew it. But he didn't think I knew it until I told him because he made a small little mistake with a bunch of papers that he had once. And because at the end of the day, whether you have 10 or 15 different aliases, ultimately you are somebody.

And he made that one small little area where we were in his office and he was sorting through some papers. And I don't believe that their paychecks come in an undercover name you know so i'll bet they don't unless it's someone you know what i don't even want to say because that world sometimes there's certain things and even though i've had some guys in here from that where it's like they would never even talk about how some of that is done anyway yeah and i i think a lot of uh i think a lot of the cia work is glamorized a lot by tv and things like that they're basically an intelligence agency you know they they from what i've been told they don't

carry guns in the united states unless there's a reason for it number one number two is they don't carry guns overseas unless there's a reason for it in In a place like Columbia, there is a reason for it, but in different areas there isn't. But some of it's glamorized and they have a job to do. And I think they do that job very well. Had they made their mistakes like any other agency? Absolutely. Did I enjoy working with them? Absolutely. Did I enjoy going into their offices? Yes. It was kind of interesting. They put me in one room, then they put me into another room, and then they turned on some electronical device after I got searched before I went into their office. And they understood the security protocols ad nauseum so much because they never wanted anything. They didn't want anything compromised.

And they did a very good job at that. So we got off on this topic. We did. they didn't want anything compromised and they did a very good job at that but uh so we we got off on this topic we we did we went into the agency thing i'm glad you're you're trying to bring it back though because what we were what we were on before we went to that and i'm sure that'll tie back in naturally was you had gotten switched to the escobar desk, call it, in 1991. And so now you're on it. That was a long conversation. I mean, we've talked about corruption. I told you we do it live here.

We talk about that. We talk about this. Can you imagine if you had like three people with ADHD in this room? We'd be talking about Pablo Escobar one minute and then- Well, we almost have like in our own way like we have but that's why i love podcasts like this because you had described to me in in the car about how some of your friends joke you're like the forrest gump of of the dea just because you found yourself in the most interesting places at the most interesting time and and

hearing about all your different experiences many of which we haven't even brought up yet today yeah you know it's it's very it's it's very easy for a guy like me to then want to dig deeper on like the perspectives you had on these things sure and to get in clarification my friends didn't say i was like forrest gump of dea i said i was like the forrest gump of your friends i know i said i'm like the forrest gump of dea i said i was like the forest your friends i know i said i'm like the forest couple law enforcement i don't think my friends would ever have called me the forrest gump unless of course i was doing a forrest gump i'm going for his gump well this is my friend ken mcgee here he's a dga that's pretty good i could see why you were good undercover that's that's good well i can't yeah He's the DEA guy. That's pretty good. I could see why you were going undercover. That's good. Well, Ken, he's on TikTok. You can watch my friend, the DEA guy.

So my point being is, yeah, I was like, all of a sudden, here I am. I'm in Detroit, Paul and his undercover deal. I'm at the Olympics in 1996. I'm next to the bomb when it blows up. I mean, all of a sudden sudden i find myself years before that in columbia i signed the pablo escobar case and in 91 you're on the case and day one after you've talked to john toft and said what the fuck why'd you put me here now you're here what take me there what happened what was the joe toff i'm sorry what was the like actually maybe a better way to to get there would be for the people out there who haven't seen all the different things on pablo escobar let's let's dig into him a little bit and what when he started to get big who he was in columbia

and then we'll work our way to what your assignment in 91 was let's let's uh give a brief synopsis on pablo escobar um pablo was basically a criminal um basically and he he grew up got involved with little things little scams whether it be stolen cars stolen motorcycles any way that street criminals can start to make a buck and ultimately he got turned on to cocaine he started um making his own cocaine in his own kitchen and slowly but surely he met some other drug dealers like jose gonzalo got rodriguez gotcha and he ultimately built an empire you know let's put it this way he's the phil knight of the drug world phil knight was a guy making tennis shoes in a garage with another guy with a waffle iron, pouring rubber into a waffle iron, creating kind of a tacky base of a shoe, and then ultimately becomes Nike.

So Pablo Escobar was the Nike or the Phil Knight of the drug world. He started small, started to do this, started to do that. And then his empire just grew and grew and grew and grew and grew and grew. How young did he have so much power to where he just had everyone working for him, though? Through money buys power and through fear buys power. So those that wouldn't work with him, a lot of politicians didn't like him. He wanted, not only did he want his money, he wanted popularity. He started a race car group where him and his cousin would race cars,

and he would finance these fancy cars to come in, and they'd race Renaults. And they wanted to win the Columbia Cup or whatever it was called. And very interesting in Juan Pablo's book about his father talks all about the Renault car racing series. And it was fascinating. He never won, but he wanted validation. He wanted to be a champion. He wanted to do this. He wanted to do that. And then he wanted more validation. So he ran for political office. They talk about the whole story in Juan Pablo's book, too, about him running for political office and ultimately how people wanted him out of office because of the concerns of him being a drug dealer. So he worked his way up and through power and through violence, I'm sorry, through money and through violence, he gained power and more power and more power. He was a very smart man.

He really was. And he compartmentalized a lot of things. But ultimately, he created too many enemies. And his son points out that he created the enemies more or less because he went into politics. And once he went into politics, he started to get more enemies, and then he got forced out of politics, which caused Pablo to be angry. Pablo had a temper. And if you recall, when you hear the story about me following the family to Germany and getting the family kicked out of Germany was a catalyst for Pablo going down.

Because he got so angry, he started making phone calls. He called the German embassy, threatened to blow it up. He called his son, and all those calls were being monitored because his son was placed in a hotel. And so the phone calls were being able to be triangulated. And it was his temper that caused him to eventually go down so so pablo validated himself and he got so much money he started building buildings and he started buying properties and and i am sure that there are some sort of assets out there that are just buried through time that belong to Pablo Escobar. Sure. So he utilized family members and some of them betrayed him after he died. They didn't

take care of his family after he died. And he was a fascinating guy that in reality, if he went to prison instead of was killed, he probably could have written a book or two, not about drug dealing and all that, but how to build an empire. Keep in mind, Forbes magazine placed him as one of the richest men in the world. Well, he was.

What was his estimated net worth at his peak? I don't know. Give or take billions. They go back and forth with statistical data. And I don't think he ever agreed with those numbers from what I've heard. Probably not. He was probably worth more. Yeah.

And so you take a look at – I mean, he could have written a book, like I said, about how to build an empire. You know, I gave this analogy of Phil Knight in Nike. And I'm not saying Phil Knight is a bad person or anything like that. He's done a phenomenal job building an international company. And he's changed many lives, much for the better. But so that's Pablo in a nutshell. Ruthless. He was absolutely ruthless.

And he was more than willing to take a life, to make a point, and almost take up for the most minute issue. He would have somebody killed. And there are stories left and right of him having people killed and tortured or just snapping his fingers saying, take him out. Keep in mind, I mentioned earlier, he wanted to kill one person on an airplane. And it turned out the person wasn't even on the airplane. And they put a guy on the airplane with a boom box and the instructions to

the guy on the airplane was when you take off you're going to get instructions on who you're supposed to be following and who you're going to kill when when the airplane arrives at the location you're going to follow the guy out the plane or whatever and they told this they sold this kid a bill of goods. Guy gets on the airplane. He's got his boom box. Goes up to a certain height. Presses the button that says play. Boom, the plane blows up.

Ten minutes outside of Bogota. It's destroyed. Lives ruined. That happened in November of 89, right before Thanksgiving. I had only been in Columbia at that time for about ten months. It was like – And this is the height of the crisis that he became at this point, right? In that time period, like 88, 89, 90.

Exactly. And it created a lot more enemies. Yeah. A lot more enemies. I mean, you know, I try to look at people like this and have some understanding of how it gets there right and you and i were talking i'm not referring to what we were talking about earlier like well how does it shape you or whatever more so when people i i think i think i need a safe space right now just kidding what do you mean the safe space meaning how did it form you and all the violence and this and that.

We talk about people. I wasn't paying attention to how I was saying that. Sorry. I need a safe space right now. Well, you would know something about those working on college campuses. When I think of safe space, I think of the Jodie Foster movie where she locked herself in a room and and had a barricaded room isn't that called panic room yeah i think that's what it is yeah and that's what i think as a safe space but safe space is something else in today's day and world it is it's like oh my gosh you were offended

well let's all go to our safe space and we'll feel good i'm i'm i'm sure there's a reason for a safe space in this day and age but could be. I think the way they use it is probably a little wrong. If we look at it, I agree with you. But getting to what I mean with him, though, is to get to a point where you're worth billions of dollars, you have unlimited power, you now have a family, you have more money than you could spend in a thousand lifetimes and you have a business where not even the government can stop you his downfall came because it was never enough several governments even better several governments his downfall came because it was never enough he didn't have a moment where he said oh shit like we're rolling right here with a with the business i think i'll just keep it on on cruise control now we'll just you know ship our

cocaine to the u.s our government's not going to care about that not drop so many bodies our government does care about that i'll pay off my politicians to make sure everything's kosher and that's the end of it but this guy had no capability of that or or how about this take your 100 200 300 million half a million or i have a billion a lot more and invest it in a legitimate firm and live off your seven or eight million dollars a year in interest my point is totally get out of the profession which uh which obviously he didn't do and couldn't do not what he did and and i i just you know i i don't understand how people that psychological like hamster wheel that happens where even when you get to that point you you have to keep on putting you know the money on on black

you know what i mean like and and letting it ride and to let it ride when you're as we said a sociopath like that means to then push away everyone who could even slightly be even blackmailed into supporting you by blowing up planes and stuff because you wanted to kill one person or a presidential candidate yeah and then ultimately killing a presidential candidate killed the the attorney general you talking about no i'm talking about um galan who was like the bobby kennedy right the bobby kennedy of the political world at that time he had him executed um on stage right before he was going to give a speech and uh i was in columbia at that time too. It was wild.

Every day it was something different in the news. But how you get there, how you get to be a person like that, a lot of things have to fall in place. And I think history has learned that lesson. You will never have a Nazi Germany again. You will never have a – I don't think so. Still knocking on wood. Yeah.

You never know. Yeah. You'll never have a pablo escobar again you'll never have certain other things happen again because we've learned and and we review and we revisit the scenarios that have occurred in our lifetime and we keep these tragedies on the front burner and always remember them so we never forget them so we never have them repeated and that that's why I gave the Nazi Germany. Have you been in YouTube comment sections about that? No, I haven't. I know it's a comment section, but you might feel a little differently about that if you look.

And that's not a good thing. I mean, you'd be surprised at people rewriting history and and ways i mean look people there are plenty of people who maybe they're just misinformed because this isn't a government type situation but there are plenty of people who look at pablo escobar and think he was kind of cool they don't look at the guy who was a pedophile they don't look at the guy who was a killer of tens of hundreds of thousands of people you could say i don't know what the exact date is so someone looked that up you know they don't work that for for escobar okay like who he killed like how many people he killed they don't look at a guy who you know shipped ungodly amounts of drugs and even if it was cocaine and it wasn't i mean i think he did ship other stuff too so

that's not even relevant like point is he's he he broke every international law and punished anyone around him just because they looked at him in a way that he wasn't sure he liked you know and there are people who will in a way even if it's like kind of as a pop culture joke if you get what i mean they'll still kind of glorify it this was 30 years ago you know i like looking at these pictures that you have here i don't know if you have the one down there that white booklet but you know you got these you got these hd pictures where you know i'm seeing the crime scene when this guy died and i'm like you know damn that looks like it could have been yesterday and yet it feels like people there you go and this one i'll probably have to bleep out on camera so we don't get demonetized. But I'll put these – That's why I turned it the other way around. I'll put these pictures on – if it's bleeped out right now on camera, I'll put these pictures on my Patreon, which you can get Julian Dory on Patreon because you have all kinds of amazing things here.

But I look at this and, yeah, I mean it looks like it could have been two days ago based on the quality of the photograph. And yet it's so long ago and people will forget all the bad things, all the beyond drugs bad things this guy did. Right, and you had talked about there are people that, on the comment section and things like that, I find the comment section sometimes entertaining, sometimes frustrating, and sometimes insulting, and sometimes insightful. And so the range of emotions. And I will always listen to somebody. And that's part of the compassionate part of me. I will always listen to somebody's opinion and see what they have to say. But some of them are wearing the tinfoil hats and some of them do need to increase your medication or get on medication and some of

them are extremely intelligent and give some very well thought out points you know the interesting thing that on those comment sections by the way on my tickiktok page there every now and then you read one and it's just three words fuck the dea plenty of that yeah plenty of that and uh what do i write under that i some of them i can't help from responding i just write anger issues you know or i say something like uh must have had a bad experience oh It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors. So, what should we talk about? No sugar added. Neutral. Refreshingly simple. What's better than a well-marbled

ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. You know, whatever. Because a lot of people's opinions of DEA are formed by the media, by Hollywood, by a little of this, a little bit of that. And the same thing with Pablo Escobar. A lot of the opinions formed on him was, he was this Robin Hood or whatever the case may be. But I just don't think the world will ever be able to see a criminal as big as Pablo Escobar again.

And when it comes to political criminals, it's getting far and few between the way the world operates now with the United Nations, NATO, and different governments overseeing parts of the world that maybe we shouldn't be in but I just don't see it happening Like it did in the 40s in in Nazi Germany, just like I don't see Somebody becoming the level of Pablo Escobar. Will there be huge? drug dealers absolutely will there be very Bad political leaders that we have that that that do that that that have people executed to run wandering regimes. Exactly. Like I said, Idi Amin not only would kill his adversaries or his opponents, he would

eat them. So my point, he would. That's well documented. Punch on that fancy machine you got over there. Idi Amin's favorite meal. I don't know what it was. I don't think I knew that. But yeah, he would sometimes have his opponents, the people that he'd killed, he would feast on them, so to speak.

What a sick fuck. No, a horrible, horrible, horrible human being. Wow. Just a horrible, horrible, horrible human being that should be in the handfuls of conversations such as Adolf Hitler and some of the other individuals. Just a horrible person. But then again, around the world, there are those people. But I would like to say that, and also because of the form of social media and the news and multinational keep in mind there was no overnight news cnn was relatively pretty new in the 90s okay now we have a shooting on a school campus everybody in the world knows about it within 12 minutes there's no waiting for the papers the next morning it's

around the clock 24-hour news my point is when in a criminal world if somebody gets too big things are investigated very rapidly very rapidly uh whether it be you know there's um there's a serial killer it's out there like that people now you've got thousands of armchair sleuths saying oh i know who that is or i'm going to solve that crime or i'm going to find that fugitive or whatever because they're all working off the internet and they're armchair sleuths meeting online detectives so to speak and every now and then they hit a home run every now and then they find the golden ticket to willie wonka's factory and they help solve a crime outstanding i got no problems with any of that but it's the same thing about advertising criminals and criminal behavior number one people are learning more and more about it rapidly.

Number two is on the international circuit and some of the political atrocities that we spoke about, things happen very quickly. We've learned about what's happening in Ukraine with the Russians, et cetera, et cetera. We hear about that instantaneously. Certain things are just not going to get as big, whether it be the criminal element or some of the other elements. But it's money, too. It's money and interest, too. I mean, you don't hear about what's happening in Yemen every day.

I don't talk about that on the news. You don't hear about what's going on in parts of China. And why don't you hear about it as much? Because there's money and influence involved. There's money and influence, and what else? They control media media they control the people they control everything so the information can't get out about some of the atrocities absolutely absolutely but slowly but surely it does get out because why because you just said it

so what about they're not talking about the atrocities in yemen how do you know about it because everything's controlled over there well you know about it because some of it leaks out. Well, it's math though, too. It leaks out and a subset of people in the population will find out about it because they're looking. But the average person who may just be going about their life, they don't work in podcasting or something where part of their job is to try to know things that are going on. God knows I fall short at that, even I do. So you look at the average person, they got a family, they got kids, they got things to do, places to be. How the fuck are they going to know what's going on you're going to do your next podcast on the theory and invent invention and the continuing use of safe

spaces across the world so people can have their safe space because somebody didn't like their barney t-shirt or whatever that they were wearing. But all kidding aside, back to what you're talking about. We were talking about Pablo Escobar. Yes. And ruthless man, glorified by some, vilified by others. Yes. He is one of the most despicable human beings that ever walked the planet. But when he was a father, he was an outstanding dad.

Did what he could, tried to make it to every birthday party of his kids, hugged his kids, talked to his kids, gave them lessons about life, things of that nature. Kind of kept his, didn't get inebriated in front of him, didn't do a lot of things. He tried to be a good role model as a father, even though we know you flew me here from Detroit into Philadelphia to speak on your podcast about how evil this person was. How do you? But he was a good father, it sounds like. And you guys, so maybe going to like 91 when you. Even though he put his kids' lives in jeopardy, because there will be some people, how could you call him a good father when he did all that stuff catch my drift here no i understand what you mean that's my drift when you're working on his case in 91 you know you guys have insane intelligence on him as far as things that are known about bad he does and all these different

things but like did did you guys also know that and know that you know this guy's a little bit of a different guy around a few select people in this world who he happens to actually care about we just knew that he was very loyal and loved his family loyal to the extent of what an international multi-billionaire drug trafficking trafficking um murderer he was we knew that he had special loyalties to his family members uh without all the extracurricular activities where he would cheat on his wife or whatever the case yeah which which obviously i'm not condoning that was part of the culture yes you know here he is he's he's running around doing what he's doing with his millions of dollars and and But he wouldn't let his kids see that but what what like why don't people talk about?

Why don't you hear as much about like the pedophile angle and stuff like that with him because I mean his well I believe he married his wife when she was 13. He was I think she was 15 He got her pregnant allegedly when she was 15. part of the calculation here like this guy is also like a literal sexual deviant right well cultivating informants always also dealt with periodically finding women that could get into an organization as well and do whatever they had to do to get further deeper in and deeper in and many of them had a track record of being involved in that that material that type of thing and we're not going to change their lifestyle but we can say hey if you're going to do this if you have information please let us know but back to the

abortion when she was like 12 years old i don't know if that's ever been documented and here's why i say that who knows that for a fact three people pablo tata which is his wife Victoria Tata was her nickname and whatever doctor it was my point is did that happen could happen could not have happened but do I know that he was involved with underage women and all that absolutely and and like any like any of those guys that were at that time running the gamut to being major drug dealers or whatever they had their they would have people just go out and find these people and bring them to them you know and that's that's how it worked um it's like the uh what's the guy's name jeffrey epstein yeah i mean guy

had so much money that he cultivated a relationship with a woman that would bring a staple of stable of all these poor underage girls who had no idea what they were getting into. And it's the same thing with Pablo Escobar. The same thing. Through money buys power, invincibility, and whoever would challenge him was executed in one way, shape, or form or another. Yeah. You know, they talk about stories where Pablo got caught with, he didn't do much time in the jail before the final prison that he went into. He didn't do much time before. And I think he got caught once with a kilogram of cocaine. He got locked up for a little while, ultimately just a little while,

because ultimately there's bribes, there's payoffs, and there's assassinations so um what's the old saying um plomo or pluma no wait um no plomo or plata and uh which bullets are or most silver silver or lead or silver yeah yeah yeah um and um um i accidentally used the spanish word i believe for feather when i corrected myself but uh plata is money or silver they're referring to and plumo is um lead so which one are you gonna select your choice sir you work with me you get plata you work the other way you're gonna get some lead right and when did he i guess at what point was it like the mid-80s where the medellin cartel was viewed as the biggest cartel in colombia and the biggest one in the world so i guess he built that throughout the late 70s into the early 80s through various underworld connections in other countries and

then he because colomb Colombia had a special ability to produce high-quality cocaine at high volume, then he was the vacuum that filled that void? Yeah, it was through the 80s that he amassed his fortune. It was also through the 80s near the end that he started to have his downfall. So there was a 10-, 12-year period where he was flying high. And it was earlier when he was racing the cars and doing those things and running for political offices and eventually getting kicked out of political office, voted down by his people.

But when you talk about that vacuum, it was the perfect scenario for him. They could get cocoa paste and materials from one country. There was remote regions. And it was the perfect storm of different types of people, like Carlos Lader, who ultimately was arrested and is still doing time in a prison in Miami. He was part of the, or in the United States. I believe he's in Colorado right now. Yeah. Yeah. He was in the movie Blow. Yeah. Carlos Lader. he was in the movie Blow. Carlos Slater. He handled all the transportation.

The Ochoas did some other stuff. Pablo did other things, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There were a handful of members of the original Medellin cartel, okay? And they grew faster and bigger than the Cali cartel. But let's briefly talk about the Cali cartel because I was down there at that that time as well and i showed you the certificate there was a team of agents i ended up getting transferred from the medellin group to the cali cartel group because we quickly once pablo went down we quickly shift focus now focusing on the medellin cartel or a cali cartel guys were already working it, but now that became the priority. Okay. And so Jerry and Chris and Dave were agents that were the street agents that really worked hard on the Cali Cartel investigation.

I was the backup supervisor in that group reporting to a guy named Ruben who passed away recently. But Dave and Jerry and Chris did a great job on the Cali cartel. But we're all part of that team. It's that small team. I've been transferred from one group to another now to work on this investigation. I learned my lesson from the first time. I got transferred to the group. Remember, I said I didn't understand it? I understand it clear now. I was assigned to that group because I was a senior agent. I could be an assistant to the supervisor, backup supervisor, and work with these agents that had all less time than I did in Columbia. All of them. To include my boss at the time in that group, a guy named Ruben.

But keep in mind, Medellin was a primary cartel. Cali was a secondary cartel, right? It was viewed that way. What's right? It was viewed that way. What's that? It was viewed that way, and it was that way. By the end, was it that way, though? Like by the early 90s, wasn't Cali as big? That's what I'm saying.

Okay. Did you say early 90s? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Because at that point in time for a few years, Pablo was being persecuted. He was being chased. He was running. He didn't have

as much time to dedicate towards drug dealing. There's masses of money everywhere, et cetera, et cetera. He's hiding. He's doing things. Khalid's cartel was the gentlemanly-like cartel. More business-oriented. More business-oriented, oriented less violent understanding that violence violence is what brings the focus in the eye of authorities on you however did they have their times where they had to kill people and they did and all that but they certainly weren't placing bombs in commercial districts to make a statement to the government saying if you continue to try and extradite me i'm going to set off bombs in every different areas.

Every Sunday night, we'd have a barbecue at an agent's house. He lived up on a hill, and you could oversee the city. And he called his place Studebakers. It was this sudden, that was the code name we had when we were going to an agent by the name of Gary, his house. It was Studebaker's. And he had an apartment that had a big patio that overlooked. Getting housing in Bogota was also a huge deal because we had to have two ways in and out. We had to be on the fourth or

fifth floor or above. We had to have special coating placed on the glass of our places. We had to have all sorts of security checks done on wherever we were going to live. We didn't live in a compound. We lived in individual houses. So Studebaker's, Gary's house, was up on a hill. And every Sunday night, we would go out there and we'd have a barbecue. And every now and then you'd hear, kaboom. And you would just look out because the sound traveled first and you'd look out on the horizon of the city and you'd see smoke elevating okay and that was a time there was a time where pablo just didn't want to kill people innocent people he just wanted to cause massive chaos so he would blow up explosions five six seven o'clock at night eight o'clock at night in financial districts or areas where business businesses were and that wouldn't kill people? No, but they were closed.

So less people would die. How nice of them. Exactly. But the Cali Cartel ran things differently. So let me tell you briefly more about the Cali Cartel. One of the reasons Pablo Escobar went down is because of the Cali Cartel. Because here's what happens. The government starts pursuing Pablo. DEA starts persecuting and pursuing Pablo, right? And then the Cali Cartel says,

remember some of those reasons we want to become informants? I said that you learn in the academy, A, B, C, D, one of them is to ruin and eliminate the competition. On a much macro level, the Cali Cartel was doing that with Pablo Escobar. They knew that he was on the run. They wanted him out. Pablo never wanted to coordinate with the Cali Cartel. One of the reasons his wife, Tata, wasn't killed

later on after Pablo died, his wife, Victoria, met with Cali Cartel. One of the reasons his wife, Tata, wasn't killed later on after Pablo died, his wife, Victoria, met with Cali Cartel members and said, the only reason we haven't killed you is because we have heard on tapes and intercepts that we have of you talking on the phone with your husband about why don't you make peace with the boys from Cali, the men from Cali. Make peace with them. So we know that you weren't trying to harm us. You were trying to become gentlemanly-like. But then they said, but we're still gonna kill your son

because we don't want him to grow up to be like Pablo Escobar. But through the whole stories of negotiation and things of that nature, Pablo's son was allowed to live by the Cali cartel. So back to the Cali cartel. So they slowly but surely, they were becoming the number one cartel and what would the name of the brothers or away or

yeah so there were two brothers who ran it and then they had Pacho Herrera was another main guy and who was the the other dude the hell was his name there's another key figure oh well you touched on the main ones you touched on the main ones but real quick this is the certificate for being on a team that took down the cali cartel and this was at near the end but real quick before i i tell you it you can see it occurred just keep the mic with you can see it occurred june uh on june 6, 1995, Gilberto Rodriguez-Jorjuela, as well as on August 6, Miguel Rodriguez-Jorjuela, were apprehended by the Colombian National Police in Cali, Colombia. That was a joint effort by the DEA and the Colombian National Police. And I already mentioned the names of the agents that were extremely involved in that. And I was honored

to be the backup supervisor in this group as well because the supervisor had a lot to do with getting money approved. And we didn't have certain technology. A lot of times when we're talking, we're talking on regular telephones. And so every day I would write up a code so we could have a conversation in code on the phone that the Colombian, whoever was listening to our phone calls, couldn't intercept. Who was listening to our phone calls? Members of the phone company. Who was paying them?

Cali Cartel. Okay? So if I had a conversation that said something like, the frogs are jumping on the lily pad that is next to the tree fort. The frogs was the code for the Columbia National Police. The lily pad was an airport that was located with the name that had the name of a forest in it. Okay. So it might have meant the Columbia National Police are gathering together right now at the airport. And this is the name of the airport. Why? Because they're going to go on a feeding frenzy because the flies are coming out because it's going to rain tonight. And whoever listened couldn't figure out what I was saying. Okay. But the rain meant that there might be firepower on the other end, meaning the bad guys might have guns. So you guys had to become like the mobsters on the phone in this country as opposed to the other way around.

That's a great analogy, and I'm going to steal it from now on for the rest of my life to be able to tell it. We were the mobsters creating the code. And it's really funny because Internal Affairs came and did an investigation on one of the agents because somebody alleged that we abused somebody's rights. And they said, well, how did you do that? I said, look, we didn't do any of that. And we had, no, it wasn't abusing someone's right. We abused the security privileges of the embassy. Somebody made a complaint.

And I was already out of the country by then, but I got interviewed. I said quite the opposite. We took steps. Sure, we talked about international investigations on an open line, but here's the code. And come to think of it, because I save everything, here are the codes for every day for 45 days that you're talking about. So you tell me if I have this conversation about the frogs on the lily pad that are next to the tree fort and it's raining and the flies need to eat or something like that. You tell me if you can figure it out. So those codes ended up saving a guy from being suspended. A high level person that was in charge at the time was accused

of not following protocol. But these were the certificates that were given out. This is very similar to the Pablo Escobar certificate that was put together by the team where a lot of people who were involved in the investigation were honored. I'm holding that up to the screen for people to see. So you see it says Special Agent Kenneth McGee, and it talks. And you'll see on the left side of your viewing audience, it's written in English. And on the right side, it's written in Spanish. So this award was given to a lot of Colombian police officers. And that award is very similar to the one that we did with Pablo Escobar. Let's get back to the Cali Cartel. Why did Pablo Escobar go down? Well, we'd like to say it was the DEA. We'd like to say it was a Colombian

national police, but it wasn't just us. It was a team. It was a team of a lot of people. And sometimes on a team, you might not have a member of the team, but you're definitely going to take advantage. Let me give you a sports analogy. Yankees are playing the Red Sox. They hate each other, right? They hate each other, right? They play every game of the season

and we're going down at the end of the season right and all of a sudden the Yankees are tied with the Detroit Tigers to win the division title and the Detroit Tigers are playing the Red Sox that day who do the Yankees want to win that game for reds for the red side so the enemy of my enemy is my friend right well i can tell you this we did not work with the cali cartel we didn't you hear that youtube commenters yeah we don't want to hear otherwise we did not work with them we took advantage of the steps that they took in their world while they were pursuing Pablo Escobar. Ken, this is a safe space. You can tell me if you worked with him.

So I'm going to tell you more. I promise you. If you work with him, it's cool. I'm going to tell you more. No, because it didn't happen. You sure? But I could be like some of those guys every now and then. I meet them in the airport and they say, yeah, I served in the service. Oh, what'd you do? I can't tell you top secret you know and i'm like okay and then you know what did they do they they worked at a naval base in um cornado off the coast of san diego and uh they were um map makers yeah trying to sound important

exactly anytime ever anybody ever says i can't tell, and they get that look, and they say, I can't tell you. Sometimes it's legit, but I understand exactly what you mean. There's plenty of people I've gotten that look from where it's not. Yeah, but the guys that are legit don't say it that way. Most of the time, they just don't go there. Unless they have a podcaster sitting across from them who's asking a question and they're not sure if we're on camera yet. Or if we are on camera, they're like very taken aback by the question. That has happened.

Make my day. Anyway. So back to what I was saying. So what happened was the Cali cartel wants to eliminate Pablo Escobar and they helped fund a group that was called Los Pepes, which in Spanish was an acronym. It stood for people persecuted by Pablo Escobar. And they funded Los Pepes. And Los Pepes were involved. There were Sicarios. There were people that were funded. There were hitmen. There was bombing experts. There was all sorts of people that were people persecuted by Pablo Escobar. But basically what it was was a shell company for cartel.

It wasn't even a company. It was a group. It would be like an informal group that created this name Los Pepes, and they would kill Pablo Escobar. They'd kidnap his nanny for his kids or a homeschool teacher or a kindergarten teacher. Whoever worked and surrounded themselves or worked with the Escobar family, they killed him. They killed seven of his attorneys, I think like in a week. That's a lot of attorneys. That could have been whoever touched and helped Pabloablo it could have been on signing a uh a

deed for a building he bought anybody that was associated with pablo they would kill and they would also blow up buildings that they thought were owned by pablo escobar they blew they they blew up his warehouse that destroyed cars and works of art and things of that nature they did all sorts of things to make it. It's Truck Month at GMC. Tackle the open road with added confidence in the 2025 Sierra 1500 Pro Graphite at 0% financing for up to 72 months. With an available 5.3 liter V8 engine,

20 inch high gloss black painted aluminum wheels, off-road suspension with available two inch factory installed lift kit, plus a towing capacity of up to 13, pounds you'll be ready for anything this truck month truck month is on now ask your GMC dealer for details things miserable for Pablo so he he had it coming from every end but we as DEA said let's just take advantage of this. It's happening. It's not like we're going to be able to stop it. They wanted to eliminate Pablo Escobar, so we marked their moves.

I kiddingly said to Joe Toft once, I said, I think we could solve the national debt. I said, by how? I said, if we had T-shirts made saying Los Pepes or something like that, we could sell them and make millions of dollars because people are loving Los Pepes. They were like a vigilante group that were out there trying to rid the world of Pablo Escobar. But why? Only so they could continue their criminal empire, working with the Cali Cartel. Or the Cali

Cartel was basically the empire. Just a subsidiary. It was a show company basically. So Los Pepes did a lot of things. And it was because of Los Pepes. It wasn't because of the United States government. And it wasn't because of the Columbia National Police.

It was because of Los Pepes pablo sent his family to germany all right so so let's go there because you we opened up the i don't know if there's gonna be two podcasts or one we'll see how long we're going here but you opened up the beginning of our conversation talking about that flight to frankfurt germany and this was in 1992 isn't it yes okay november of 92 so november of 92 at this point escobar has been he's gone totally mad the country is turning against him los pepes are at their are at their peak of killing every killing everyone around what was that i said yeah yeah so los pepes is at their peak of killing everyone around him and pablo is starting to lose some of his own men obviously through that he's losing

some influence cali cartel is taking some of his market share he's still sending a lot out but he's getting worried and so he decides that his family for their safety needs to take safe haven in another country and he picks why did he pick germany well that's a great question let me clarify something it was 93 it wasn't 92 i misspoke 93 um and what happened was he picked he didn't pick they picked picked London and Frankfurt, Germany. So they had tickets to go to both countries. Nobody knew where they were going to go first. They were being escorted at that time by the government of what's called the Fiscal General, the Fiscalia, which is like the Attorney General's office.

That's basically what it's like. They had bodyguards assigned to the family temporarily because things were just out of control. Scalia, which is like the attorney general's office. That's basically what it's like. They had bodyguards assigned to the family temporarily because things were just out of control. The government was worried if something happened to the family, Pablo might turn around and say, oh, you guys did it and cause all sorts of chaos and destruction. So it was a very interesting plot that the government of Columbia was working with us, but part of the government of Columbia was protecting Pablo's family and would not relate the information as to what was happening. So all we knew was he was going to London or Frankfurt. And I got tickets to London

and to Frankfurt, myself and two Colombian police officials. And why were you picked to do this because i was in the group um and i um um at the time at the time pena i think had to leave the country the next day to go to the united states pena was out of the country when pablo went down um when pablo died that day pablo or javier was out of the country and he obviously came back very quickly but in the show they show this as the plane ride is taken by steve murphy but that was you yes it was okay yeah i think narcos uh compartmentalized a lot of characters and built them into steve and javier i don't even think they gave joe toft any recognition in the movie. But so, yeah, they had Steve follow the family. And I think they made it look like it was months before or some time before.

It was so fast after the trip to Columbia, or I'm sorry, to Frankfurt and return to Columbia. It was just a few days. Right. It was where he was killed. So they go, they get on this flight. Let me follow up the track there. So they get on this flight. We didn't know where they were going to go.

And so me, I just got a little backpack, and I also had another shoulder bag that had a camera built into it. So I had the camera built into it, and I could just press a button on my shoulder strap, and it would take photographs. And I'm looking right now down here at all the photographs you took on that flight. It's pretty wild, including of their passports and everything, but there's just all these. And there's a story how I got a picture of their passports in a minute. So, yep, so I'm following the family of the German arms of the Colombian police officers.

They're on the flight with me, and we're just like tourists on a plane, and we're watching every move that Pablo makes. And we keep on seeing this one guy come up to him and talk to him, and we weren't sure what he was. It turned out he was a reporter that somehow stumbled on the fact that that the Escobar's were going to be on that plane and took advantage of it and started to talk to him and interview him and we were trying to figure out who he was and one of the Columbia National Police officers got into a conversation with him on the side

and in the airplane and said, what's that all about? And he goes, oh, I'm an international correspondent. And so that was one strange twist to it. And then so they got on the plane. I was picked because I was a backup supervisor. I was just one of the agents in the group and it's just said no one else can go um i forget where steve was that day but uh i think steve might have been at the airport with me and then um i get on the plane take off we fly to germany i'm watching them i'm taking pictures

with my camera and what did you just have to like press something here or like how did yeah it was literally i could have the strap like this i like you know some people will have a shoulder shoulder camera bag and i'd have my hand like this like holding the strap and i just go like this press like that so i'm looking at again i was looking at the pictures while you were putting that here and i'll put them in the corner of the screen as well but like this is like mid-flight and you're like turning around to like take a picture like this. Like, how are you getting there? Or I could be walking down. Keep in mind that passport photos are another set of photos I took.

And I'll tell you about that. But I'm walking down the aisle and I'm just clicking the pictures. Or I'd stand up sometimes and I'd stretch. And I'd stand up sometimes and I'd stretch and I'd just press the button. And, you know, they were regular 35 millimeter cameras. They weren't, it was film. It wasn't digital stuff. So we're following the family to Germany.

I'm watching this guy and it's a long flight. We stopped in Caracas briefly. And the Caracas military was all lining the runway as well because what's one of the fears? Los Pepes learns that Pablo's family is on the airplane and they try and take the airplane out. Or some guerrilla terrorist group working out of Venezuela or somewhere over on that side of South America decides to do something. Everybody was at a very heightened sense of security. Because once the Escobars show up at the airport, they were followed by an entourage. And there was press. There was everybody. Cuts cuts out of the bag it wasn't a secret anymore it wasn't a secret so we fly to Germany we land after we go uh Bogota to Caracas to

Frankfurt we land in Frankfurt and the plane stops mid-runway, and German authorities get on, and I'm looking as we're taxiing down the runway after it stopped, right before it stopped, there's tanks, there's police cars on both sides. They had this unbelievable setup of security. They take the Escobars off the plane, they whisk them away, and then we pull into the gate. The DEA agents from Germany meet me and the Colombian police officials, and we wait and wait and wait.

But before I got off the plane, I went and sat, because the Escobars are out of there now, right? i got off the plane i went and sat because the escobars are out of there now right i went and sat in their chair and i start rifling through the the pouch that's in front of the chair oh do you have that yeah where there's pull this is crazy i just remembered that so i go i go rifling through that area and see did they leave any documents? Did they, she left her gloves. I found her gloves on the planet. She probably had a few of those. Yeah.

She had a couple of them. And then, and then just, there was chewing gum wrappers and everything. And there were these pieces of paper and one of them dealt with, dealt with a note that he had written the Sun the Sun the Sun had written this note do you know if it's the Sun or the mother who wrote it I think it's the Sun because I think he probably spoke better English okay and turn that mic to you just a little bit while you read I think it was the sun okay and um it says basically those are some serious glasses i gotta tell you i'm impressed oh they're cool yeah oh it's magnet too it's amazing we have a friend who is in frankfurt he said that he will be looking for us so he can help us his name or he

his name is oscar ritory he is a journalist but he isn't coming for interview he's name is Oscar Rattori. He is a journalist, but he isn't coming for interview. He's coming because he knows somebody in Columbia who, who is spelled H-O, can give us the help we need. He said that he will be here at 8 a.m. So if he asks for us, please let him know that we are fine and tell him that we need his help. Tell him to call Gustavo de grief gustavo de grief was the attorney general the head of the fiscalia i take that back the chief prosecutor of the state um i'll put this in the corner of the screen they call that the fiscalia and those haven't been seen in decades i just pulled those out in regards to doing some additional research on Pablo Escobar.

And so you just took this and got to keep it? Well, I made copies of it, and I got to be honest with you, it's been 30 years. I don't know how that ended up in my Pablo Escobar file, because normally I would have put that in a case file. I think probably I made a Xerox of it, and there was no way to put punch holes in it and have it placed in our case file perfectly. You follow me? It would have gotten lost in there. So I think I just kept it.

I had asked you earlier, and I think you said you were going to get to it. But I just want to make sure to cover the base, like why they thought they were going to be able to get. I mean, you're going to talk about in a second, like what happened when they got on the ground and how you got them back to columbia but why did they even think that they could get through in in germany like why was germany going to take the family of the most wanted criminal in the world like in asylum right because i think some of those reasons we spoke about before about germany germ germany changing some of their views and things of that nature, but it backfired on them, backfired tremendously on them. And what happened was once they ended up in Germany, they were whisked off the plane and

very quickly they were denied admission to the country. There were four people on that plane. There was Juan Pablo, Pablo Escobar's 16-year-old son. There was a little girl by the name of Manuela, and she was Pablo Escobar's daughter, approximately nine. And then Pablo Escobar's wife, Victoria, her nickname was Tata, T-A-T-A. And Pablo Escobar's son, Juan Pablo's girlfriend. And it's my understanding he's married to her today and wonderful family and they live in Argentina. So he kept the same girl that he had met when he was a 16-year-old kid. So they ended up getting denied admission.

And so they immediately appealed on humanitarian reasons and claimed political asylum because they were being pursued by a organization that wanted to kill them, Los Pepes. And keep in mind, the Escobar family was all on the run for a long time. And the Los Pepes were looking to kill them. And they would have killed them. And it wouldn't have been a pretty death.

They would have, had they gotten to him before pablo died they would have probably tortured them in a way that would have infuriated pablo escobar just to make him even angrier because los pepes all they cared about was eliminating pablo and they didn't care about anything else. Like I said, they killed so many people. Again, I will repeat it for those people out there in social media world. We didn't work with the Cali cartel and we didn't work with Los Pepes. We monitored their activities. And it's important because if you didn't, for the greater good, that's what makes this all a chess game. And that is this. It's interesting we talk about a chess game because the head of the Cali cartel was called the chess man. And when he was arrested, the headlines was checkmate.

But it's a chess game. But one team has got the white pieces and the other team's got the black pieces okay let's just say we the dea were um the black pieces we had to follow rules and the white pieces don't have to follow any rules so that's why a battle like this takes so long and that is we're following certain rules and that is this we're not kind of sponsor and sanction people blowing up building and killing people for the good of the greater or whatever no we didn't could that happen in other organizations someplace else other countries other government possibly but I will tell you it didn't happen with DEA but you still were okay with it

happening well we were sponsor it but you said I didn't happen with DEA. But you still were okay with it happening. You didn't sponsor it, but you said, eh, enemy, enemy. I didn't say we were okay with it. I said we monitored it and took advantage of it. Right. Okay? Because keep in mind, remember I talked to you about that other group? Group one and group two?

The other group was against the Cali Cartel, looking for the Cali Cartel people. So we were still searching for Cali Cartel members. We were still searching for them. But the focus was on Pablo Escobar with that group, and it was the world focus. And then once Pablo went down, then our main focus. So I guess what I'm saying is you can own a beautiful home, right? And your focus is on remodeling the inside before you paint the outside. Painting the outside is still important, and you're going to get to that, but you want to remodel the inside first.

However, if somebody came along and said, hey, I've got some information on a good deal of paint, you might buy all the paint ahead of time in anticipation of being able to paint the exterior of our home. Maybe it's a simplistic analogy, but no, we took advantage of the situation. We monitored it. And any actions that were taken by Los Pepes, we would hear just like you would. They wouldn't, or just like the media would, and just like everybody else would hear. We wouldn't sit there and say, Los Pepes is going to go and kill so-and-so. If we did, we'd have an obligation to stop that. We would. Did you stop some?

And we would. Did you stop some? I don't recall that happening, but I can tell you on more than one occasion in Columbia, when we knew an informant was going to get killed, if we had information, we'd pull the informant out. We'd send them to another location. We'd give him money, and we'd stop working with him or do whatever we could do to prevent him from being executed. Was it when they get off the plane? That happened often, by the way. When they get off the plane, though, in Frankfurt, and you said they were denied, and then they tried to say we're a political asylum, which they eventually got denied. Was it anything like they showed,

in this case, Steve Murphy in the show, playing your role, where, if I'm remembering this correctly, it's been a while, where he had to go to some of the agents and be like, yo, that's Pablo Escobar's family. I'm with the DEA. You can't fucking let him in here.

Did you have to play that role at all, or were you just sitting there on the ground waiting for orders? No. Hollywood takes their creative liberties. Sure sure that's what i figured but yeah it wasn't me that said that's pablo escobar's family you can't let him in but it was me and dea representing a whole where i'm speaking on behalf of the dea from bogota speaking to the german officers are the german the DEA agents that were assigned

to Germany, and collectively as a whole, as well as other communications from the embassy in Bogota, sending messages to the embassy in Germany and the consulates in the various areas saying, this is the situation. DEA does not want this to occur. You don't want this occur. You don't want to bring this to your country. So we were providing information as to why it's not a good idea for them to enter the country because we wanted them back.

We wanted them back. Because what happens if they end up in germany well number one number one is it harmed our investigation number two the truth is los papas would have gone and found them and they would have killed them in germany so i mean there's there's national conflict yeah there's there's a lot to be said about them getting expelled and they thought they were safe there, but they weren't safe anywhere. This was going to have a dynamic married, but he had met her. That story is well documented because he didn't want his son to get involved in a relationship so young, so early, and be so committed.

He said, ah, there's a lot of women out there in the world, experience, you know, that kind of thing. But no, he didn't take that lesson from his father. He went and married this woman and became a productive member of society. But my point is, the convincing wasn't actually like Hollywood has. It said, look, you know me, I'm with DEA. You can't let these people in. It was more of a team effort where I'm saying, pass this word. You need to

say this. You need to say this. You need to say this say this and remember i might have told you earlier about them not wanting i did tell you earlier about you know their their laws now on making sure rights are preserved and things of that nature so we're just waiting we weren't sure what was going to happen we technically did not have the influence to say to the german government don't let them in we requested we requested and keep in mind once they got kicked out pablo started making phone calls to the german embassy in in uh in bogota it's a small little embassy you know you know you son of a bitches i'm gonna blow up your embassy and do whatever he said all those things but um so that was one of the things that transpired collectively as a group did i speak my piece absolutely

did the german the german agents rdea german agents listened and then they conveyed our because they were like you know they're like 13 hours before they had no clue this was going on and we had been working on it around the clock not just this but the whole escobar thing for ages how long ahead you had said it was really quick but like was it like a day or two ahead where you knew she was going to be going somewhere no it was that morning literally that day it was that morning so you had an informant tip you off i guess yeah basically and word got out somehow i mean because like i said ultimately at the airport the press showed up so i don't know i'm not exactly sure how the

press got there but your ticket was already bought and you were on your way two tickets i had one to both places which is uh from when you get to government paperwork the part that you never see in the movies was a pain in the ass to process. Why did you buy two tickets? Some bean counter in Washington, D.C. wants to know. Why did you do this? You had to pay a cancellation fee and all this stuff. I'm like, God help us.

God help us. But a guy like Joe Toft just said, don't worry about it. Just throw the paperwork in. We'll figure it out. He looks at the administrative officer and says, take care of it. And so we go on. So the goal was to get them kicked out. And that's exactly what happened. How long did that take start to end, like for the appeal to be denied?

Less than 20 hours. Okay. Yeah. I mean, they never got out of the airport. They never got out of a holding area. Right. So they just sent them back on the next flight to columbia yeah and what happened was they seized all their passports and they put two german immigration officers on the plane with them because they were being

kicked out the german immigration officers maintained the passports the german immigration officers knew we were federal agents in Columbia National Police. So they knew who we were. We knew who he was. But he obviously didn't tip off. They, there were two or three German immigration officials, did not tip off the fact that we were on the plane. So you went on the plane ride back, too. Only DEA didn't have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the Escobar's family two days in a row but they didn't make you on that the family didn't make you when you were on that no there were like

there were like two or three hundred people and and i think one day these pictures are close though man these are close range and one day you're a memorable looking guy yeah and well i looked a little different you had the handlebar and that's mustache and everything back then i would remember that yeah and uh but you know you wear a different jacket you turn a jacket inside out you wear a baseball hat you do this you do that you you walk a little bit differently you don't make eye contact a lot of the times uh when people can identify people later you learn this as an undercover agent if you make eye contact with somebody it plants something in their brain subliminally that they might remember you later if you never make eye contact like I didn't make eye contact with them and tell a story I'm going to tell you in a second they they

you just become another moving part in the in the environment in the atmosphere people walking past them back and forth back and forth you know you picked me up at the airport today when you were walking towards me and and there was that pickup truck you were talking about whatever do you remember what the driver looked like you know I didn't I never looked at the driver yeah you never made eye contact with him no but if you made eye contact with him and you dropped me off tonight you might say that's the same guy I saw earlier today, that kind of thing. So don't make eye contact with them. You become more,

more transparent, so to speak, a wall flower on wallpaper on a wallpaper wall. So, um, so they ended up getting kicked out. Um, and we, we've got our tickets already and at that time they wanted them out and this guy uh the the reporter i was telling you about oscar ritori he is running around filming things all in the airport of all of this stuff going down he caught me on film i'm sure several times along with dozens and dozens of other people. They delayed this aircraft a few hours so the government could make their decision, right? And I'll never forget this.

As I'm walking on the plane, as the Escobars are already on the plane, walking on, and I hear this screaming, you can't do that to me i have right in broken english yelling at the german soldiers the german officials grabbed his video camera everything he was filming and took it oh and sucks to suck yeah and i spoke to the german agent that i say german agent the de agent in germany right i spoke to him later on that i say german agent the dea agent in germany right i spoke to him later on the phone i said thanks for all your help etc etc and i said what happened back there and he goes they seized his camera and said that it was a security concerns filming

within the airport keep in mind munich olympics right keep in mind terrorism taking on this taking on that all that stuff so they seized it i don't think he ever got his film back because i never have seen any footage of what he filmed oh that shit's gone yeah i didn't give that no i don't think so so here we are we're on the plane the german immigration uh officers are on the plane they got a handful of passports and i said to him on the side i said can i see the passports. And I said to him on the side, I said, can I see the passports? He goes, sure. And I said, I'm going to go photograph them. He goes, okay. So he slipped me the passport so nobody could see. And I went into the bathroom and I pulled

that camera out of the undercover bag that I was taking pictures. And I just start clicking off photographs because I'm thinking, okay, where they visited before. So I want pictures of their visas, what their, all their identification information was, what a good photograph it was of them, even though we could have maybe have gotten them from the Columbia national police. Keep in mind, Pablo Escobar's corruption spread so far that it wouldn't be behind him to say, get a hold of somebody at the passport office and tell them to destroy the records of my son's passport. Can we put these on the screen? Or is this, because this is passport information.

Yeah, what I would do is- I can blur out certain areas. Yeah, I would do that. Okay. I've shown my DEA creds on, and my manager blurred this part out. Julian, this part, right, they blurred this out, and they blurred it a little bit. So it wasn't like putting identification out on the line. All right. I may need to check that when I do it.

So everybody could see it. Okay. So here i am i've got their passports i go into the bathroom and i start clicking off all these photographs because i didn't know if i'd ever get this opportunity again which i never did no one else ever did either and as i just finished up i take the passports i put them in my pocket i open the door and there's juan p sitting there. He's the next guy in line. Ready to go into the restroom.

Now he got eye contact. I looked at him eye to eye, and I said, perdoname. And so he walked by. Make a long story short, we land in Bogota. Once again, they stop the airplane en route on the tarmac, take the Escobar family off. I stayed on the airplane with the Colombian two police officers that I went with. And then the Escobars are whisked to the local hotel called the Tecandama. And then from that point, the rest is history.

Pablo starts making phone calls. Ultimately, some phone calls were triangulated. Ultimately, he was killed on that rooftop in Medellin, Colombia by a Colombian national police officer. And we're going to have to bring you back to discuss all the details of that, the details of the Cali cartel and that full investigation and how that went down, as well as some of the things that happened after you left Colombia, because I've got to get you the hell out of here on a plane.

I wish I didn't have to right now, but we're literally, we've got to go to the airport right away. This has been fucking amazing. It's like a history lesson as well as like incredible perspectives throughout it. So I'm so, so glad you came into town and I think people are going to enjoy the hell out of probably what's going to be two podcasts.

I got to check later. Might be one, we'll see. But Ken, amazing stuff, man. Thank you. Well, thank you. I greatly appreciate it. And again, I will remind your viewers, if they want to hear some more stories, go to the DEA guy on TikTok.

And my manager's got some other things brewing as well. So we'll stay in touch. And thank you very much. And thank you for listening. Thank you for your insight. And to all you folks out there, share this podcast. And if you have any questions, fire them out there a lot take care and god bless and be safe throw them down i was beautifully said by the way throw them down in the comments section if you have questions and

i'm going to put the link to your tick tock page which i would highly recommend to people i want you to start making youtube shorts as well by the way we'll talk about that afterwards but i'll put a link to that down in the description so people can go check that out and follow. We got to get to the airport. I don't want to be stuck in Philly for the night. I know. It's the worst airport in America too. Anyway, that said, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.