Locked In with Ian Bick - I Was A DEA Agent Who Took Down The Cali Cartel | Chris Feistl

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Chris Feistl spent 26 years working for the DEA, including three years in Colombia during the 1990s, helping take down one of the most powerful drug empires in history — the Cali Cartel. His real-life work was portrayed in Narcos: Season 3, but the truth behind the show is even wilder. From undercover operations to high-stakes cartel takedowns, he witnessed firsthand the danger, corruption, and chaos of the war on drugs. Over his career, he earned the DEA Award of Honor, Award for Exceptional Service, and multiple Performance Awards for his role in international investigations. In this exclusive interview, he opens up about what really happened in Colombia, how Narcos got it right (and wrong), and what it was like to spend decades hunting some of the world’s most dangerous traffickers. #LockedInWithIanBick #DEAAgent #Narcos #CaliCartel #TrueCrime #DrugCartel #NarcosNetflix #realstories Thank you to BLUECHEW for sponsoring this episode: Visit https://bluechew.com/ and use promo code LOCKEDIN at checkout to get your first month of BlueChew & pay five bucks for shipping. Connect with Chris Feistl: Website: www.After.Escobar.com. After Escobar is available on Amazon (http://a.co/d/4U3kWXB), Barnes and Noble (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/1146855946), www.AfterEscobar.com, and in select bookstores worldwide! Signed copies of After Escobar available only at www.AfterEscobar.com. Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Shop Locked In Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00 Becoming a DEA Agent & Taking Down Cartels 04:44 Early Life, Law Enforcement Dreams & First Arrests 13:11 From Small-Town Cop to Federal Agent 20:01 Joining the DEA: Training, Requirements & Reality 27:47 First Assignment in Miami — Cocaine Capital of the '80s 38:41 Inside the Miami Drug Wars: Chaos, Cartels & Corruption 45:42 Cartel Smuggling Tactics & DEA Challenges on the Ground 53:03 Dirty Cops, Corruption & How the DEA Adapted 01:01:12 Hunting the Cali Cartel Bosses in Colombia 01:12:40 Deep Undercover: The DEA’s Dangerous Life in Colombia 01:20:01 Surviving the Cartel Wars — Second & Third DEA Tours 01:31:00 Coming Home: DEA Retirement & Life After the Mission 01:36:02 How Netflix’s Narcos Got It Right (and Wrong) 01:40:02 Hard Lessons, Close Calls & Reflections from a DEA Agent Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at USAA.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. Look, if you wanted to be a DEA agent, a real DEA agent in the late 80s, you had to go to South Florida. When was the first time you were really tested as a police officer? It was staggering the amount of cocaine that was coming into Miami at that time. What do you think was the first lesson you learned on the job?

So it's basically we're going after anybody who's wanted within the Cali cartel, but specifically those four kingpin, so to say. Chris Faisal spent 26 years as a DEA agent, including multiple years in Colombia, helping take down the Cali cartel. If you've watched Narcos, season three, you've seen a story on screen, but the real story is even crazier. From undercover operations to hunting cartel bosses, this is the real DEA story behind Narcos.

Chris, welcome to Lockton. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thanks, Ian. I appreciate it. It's great to be with you. Yeah, I'm glad that it was warmer today, so you didn't escape the warm weather to come out here. And I came with all my cold weather gear, too. I didn't really need it. Yeah, and thanks to Steve Murphy for connecting us. He's gotten us so many great guests and another one in the books today. Steve is one in a million. He's a good friend, good guy. Yeah, and speaking of books, tell the audience about the book you graciously gave us today.

So after Escobar, taking down the notorious Callie Godfathers and the biggest draw, cartel in history. If anybody is seeing Narco Season 3, the next line of progression in that show is DEA and the Colombian security forces go after the Cali cartel. So this book is basically about myself, my partner, Dave Mitchell. We were sent to Columbia to help the Colombians go after the next biggest cartel, which took over after Escobar was killed in December 1993. Were you out there at the same time as Steve? No. Steve left a few months before. I got there. I got to Columbia in mid-1994. Steve had just left a few months prior. So you and Steve are older than Wes. Is Wes the younger one out of the group? Okay.

Yeah, Wes is the junior. I don't think you'll like that. The junior partner. That's funny. Where do you grow up, Chris? I grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania in a small town called 44, which is about an hour and 45 minutes northeast of Philadelphia. Who are you raised by? My mom and dad. My dad was a school teacher. My mom was kind of a stay-at-home mom, and then she worked in a library. So no one in law enforcement? Nobody. That's the strange thing. And, you know, initially with my story is I didn't have any really ambition or desire to go into law enforcement.

What happened with me is I played basketball in high school, played basketball in college, and the summer of my junior year, we went down to the beach in New Jersey, wildwood, New Jersey. And, you know, of course, you get to hang out at the beach, you do a little surfing and stuff. You need some money, right? So you need a job. So when I got down there, we were looking for some work and somebody told me, hey, go into the municipal building. Because I hear they're hiring lifeguards and seasonal police officers. I thought, what the hell is a seasonal or a summer police officer?

So I went in, I checked it out. And sure enough, that's exactly what it was. you go through a week academy. Check this shit out. Now, this is 1984. 40 hours, one week training academy, and I was carrying a gun. That's crazy. Crazy.

So that kind of piqued my interest. And when I was there one night hanging out in the bar, which was kind of a normal occurrence back then, some girl approached me and asked to sell me methamphetamine. And, you know, I don't know, what the hell do I do, you know? So I'll just play along with it, you know, how much, what do you got, blah, blah, blah. So it went back to the real NARCs and we set up this undercover deal. And it's a matter up on the boardwalk. We negotiated for a deal.

But I was majoring in law and political science. I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to negotiate sports contracts, you know, be an agent. So it wasn't on my radar. But once I worked that undercover deal and I started doing a lot of, police work, I thought, hey, this is pretty cool. So I started looking into FBI, DEA, CIA, and, you know, long story short, as I worked at Virginia Beach Police Department for a while, and then I got hired by DEA. And the seasonal cop was at the Virginia Beach Department, or did that come after?

No, that was, Virginia Beach was real, real police officer, right? So that was full-time, you know. But, yeah, so I did that while with for three summers, I got some good experience. And while I was at the beach, I paid five bucks an hour. Pretty good money back in 1984 as a 20-year-old kid. Yeah, I actually interviewed a guy that was in the Wildwood Police Department, but I don't think it was, I think the training's a lot different now. Yeah. And it's not a full-time gig, I don't think now, but the training was a lot more legitimate, I guess. Yeah, and you got to think about the liability issues, right? 40 hours, classroom stuff. qualifying for one or two days, you know, then you're out carrying a gun enforcing the statutes

and laws of New Jersey. So I think it's much more rigorous now if they still even have that same program. What was the world thinking about meth at that time? That's a good question. I think meth was I always considered more harmful and worse for you just because of how they make it with all the chemicals and stuff. So I think it had like kind of a worse stigma. than cocaine did. And you had never heard of meth up until that moment? Oh, no, I had heard of it. Yeah.

But again, I wasn't involved in law enforcement or anything, you know. So a girl comes up to the bar and says, hey, would you want to buy some meth? And I'm thinking, you know, how much? What do you have? You know, so it was just a whole different experience for me because, like I said, I wasn't in that law enforcement realm. Looking back on it now, do you wish he became the lawyer and the sports agent? No, not at all.

I'm not the kind of person that wants to sit behind a desk or, you know, do that kind of work. I want to be out in the field. I want to be active. I want to do stuff like that. But that was, you know, I didn't know anything really about law enforcement back then. So I was more into sports. And I thought that would be a good career. So, no, I'm glad I did what I did.

What did your parents think about you getting into law enforcement? Well, my dad was a teacher, you know, extremely smart man. had a master's degree, had a doctorate degree. And he was always one of those people that just said, hey, whatever you do in life, do the best job you can. But I'm sure he would have been better if I got into the more of the academic realm, you know, such as being a lawyer going to law school. But he was behind me 100%. You know, my mom, I never really told her what exactly we were doing and kind of lied to her all the time and just, you know, hey, I sit behind the desk. I don't really do anything. because I didn't want to worry.

After college, how would you have described yourself? After college. Well, I was, I didn't graduate college until I was 20 years old, my second semester in college. So I was still a kid. And I was still trying to find my way to where I was going to go. Not a lot of experience because I grew up in a small town. So, yeah, I was ready to get out, try something new, try something good, try something, you know, to challenge me. Did you have siblings?

No. You were an only child. Only child. What was that like? It was good. I mean, you know, where I grew up at was a great place to grow up. My mom and dad were supportive and everything I did. You know, when you're the only child, you get all the attention.

You get to, you know, do that. I was fine. I didn't have any issues with that. All right. So you graduate and then you go into the Virginia Beach Police Department. Right. So after while with three summers, I went. So now I'm like, okay, I want this career in law enforcement. So I need to get a little bit more experience. So to do that, I apply to the Virginia Beach Police Department because I had some relatives down there. While I also applied to DEA and some others. So I figured, you know, DEA, these federal agencies will take a long time for me to get hired. So in the meantime, I can just go there. I can work, I can get some experience. And if they ever call me, I'm ready, I'm good to go. Back then, were they taking people fresh out of college?

Or did you need experience? Well, there was a big hiring push back then in the mid to late 80s. You had the Vice Presidential Task Force, which was just established in Florida to combat smuggling in the Caribbean corridor. So there was a big push. But they wanted people who had some kind of law enforcement or military experience back then. So they did hire some people.

fresh out of college or that didn't have experience, but I think for the most part it was, if you had that law enforcement background or military background in training, you were kind of a little higher up on the pole. What was the Virginia Police Department like, or the Virginia Beach? Virginia Beach was great. It was a good department. It had, at the time, I think, about 600, 650 sworn personnel, large department for back then. Very advanced. We had the computers in the car. We had, you know, semi-automatic weapons. So it was very good department. And it was great living there, right? You're on the beach. You know, you're close to the

outer banks, good surfing, you know, a lot of good nightlife. So it was fun. Virginia Beach was a great place. Was there, it was mostly younger individuals that you guys were policing at that point? Yes and no. It depended on what sector or what zone you were in. If you're down at the ocean front, Yeah, you had a lot of, especially in the summertime, a lot of rowdy people down there getting drunk, fights, stuff like that. Were you assigned to a specific unit or were you just patrol the whole time? Just patrol. Did you have aspirations to go further than that? Well, I didn't, I wasn't really the patrol kind of guy.

That's not what I really wanted to do. So, you know, I was hoping by that time I got picked up by one of these federal agencies because I didn't want to wear a unit. I didn't want to respond to domestics or traffic accidents and stuff like that. So, yeah, I was hoping like DEA, CIA, or FBI would call. Why do you think you were against those? It's not that I was against it. I just preferred to be more like federal. I can work anywhere in the U.S.

I can work overseas. You know, I wanted to have that option to go to different places and not be confined to one, you know, one jurisdiction. When was the first time you were really tested as a police officer? That's a good question. There were a couple incidents in Virginia Beach, armed robberies, you know, rolling up on a scene. One time we rolled up to a 7-Eleven and we were just sitting out there drinking a cup of coffee. And sure enough, the armed robbery happened right in front of us. So we got in a foot pursuit, you know, I had to draw my weapon as a kid.

You know, I was 24 years old at the time. And, you know, it's amazing how those experiences or those circumstances, time slows down. It's like everything is just in slow motion. So, yeah, there were a couple pretty good calls like that when I was in Virginia Beach. This episode is sponsored by Blue Chew, the original brand offering chewable tablets for better sex. Guys, the holidays are coming up. Families talking about turkey, stuffing, and gravy. But let's be real, you should be preparing to serve something else worth being thankful for.

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Other than law enforcement? Probably not. No. I would have stayed in law enforcement, but at some federal agency, whoever would hire me, basically, you know, so. At all the ones you applied to, what was your top one in your mind that you wanted to go for? D-EA. D-EA or CIA. And that was specifically because of your experience with the drug bus? Well, with DEA, too, the more I researched DEA, the more I kind of liked what they did. And like I said, they had offices in every state throughout the United States. Back then in the 80s, when I applied, probably over 60 countries, we had foreign offices. So that ability to travel, to visit these different countries, to learn languages, that was what kind of really piqued my interest.

How long were you with the Virginia Beach department before the DEA called? A year and a half, almost a year and a half. Oh, that was really quick. It was quick. What was it like to get that call that day? It was good. It was because I had been waiting, right? So there's a funny story with DEA.

Because I applied to DEA almost about the same time as I applied to Virginia Beach. And, you know, the minimum qualifications, right? That's what they called the minimum qualifications back then. It was, I'll miss a few, but you'll get the point. point. U.S. citizen had to be 21 years of age, college degree, like I think a 3.0 minimum GPA, you know, vision, like very basic stuff. And I got a letter the one time, like six weeks after I applied. And I said, oh, shit, drug and forth, this is it, this is it. And I got the, I read the letter, and I'm reading it. I go, here, Mr. Feistel, you do not meet the minimum requirements for employment

with the Drug Enforcement Administration. And I was like, how can I not be minimally qualified? I'm a U.S. citizen, right? All that basic stuff. So I called back down to DEA because I applied out of the Philly office because I was still in Pennsylvania. And I said, look, I think you guys made a mistake, right? I mean, how can I not even meet the minimum qualification?

That's pretty bad, right? So they said, well, let's take a look at it. We'll get back to you. And, you know, they looked at them, sure enough, they go, yeah, you're right. We made a mistake. We're going to continue on with the, you know, the hiring process. So, but it was pretty funny. I would think, man, how can I not even be minimally qualified?

How old are you at that point? Wow. At that point, I was probably 22, 23. 22, probably 22. What was the next step in the process? Interview. They didn't have a written test back then. So interview and then background check.

Was a background check hard? No, because I was, you know, I didn't have any problems growing up or I was never in trouble. So, but they do a pretty extensive check. You know, they'll run you through all the indices that come out. They talk to your neighbors. They talk to employment. So it's a pretty extensive background check. I wonder what your parents thought of that.

Well, it was my parent, it was the neighbors, right? Because you get that knock on the door and it says, hello, I'm agent Ian Bick from the FBI and people were like, oh my God, what's the FBI doing here? You know, and you can see people, you know, I'm here to talk to you about Chris Feistel lives across the street and they're like, what did he do now, you know? And they're like, no, it's just a background check for employment. So it's, you know, I think they were more startled or, you know, taken back than my parents were. Do they go through like your college performance, both socially and academically too? Yeah, I think they do more so now, but yeah, they do. Especially now, they do all the social media

checks to, you know, to see what you've posted, see what you've done. So, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty extensive. Even Mr. Beast team do that when I did the Mr. Beast thing. They go through, they have a team that, like, goes through your social media just to make sure everything's up to snuff and you're not posting anything crazy. And you'd be surprised in this day and age how many people post inappropriate stuff on these, you know, websites or on these, you know, your social media accounts. And, you know, some people get disqualified immediately because of that. And then they have burner accounts too. Yep. Why don't you just write it down to a diary or something. If you want to go make a burn, it doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't. But, you know,

that's why a lot of those people don't get hired. So how long did it take from that initial call to actually go into training? About a year and a half. Another year and a half? Yeah. So you were with the department for three years ago. So that's why I was with Virginia Beach for as long as I was, because I was just waiting for DEA to call. And it's funny how my process to get hired got accelerated a little bit because I was working in Virginia Beach. I got a call at night, and it was, you know, a code two call, like the alert tone came out, and it said, you know, assist DEA at this address. I was like, oh, shit, something's bad happened.

So I go flying there, lights and sirens, you know, I almost getting in like two or three accidents getting there thinking it's like some kind of shootout or whatever. They need help. And I pull into the parking lot, it was a hotel. And I was like, you know, I turn my lights off. And I was like, I don't hear anything. I don't really see anything. I'm like, is, you know, I call in the dispatch.

I have like the right address. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, DEA, you know, you should see them there. So I finally get up with some of the people there. And it's to transport prisoners. So how it comes out is this like code two call? I don't know. But what happens is my FTO, my field training officer, was there. And he was talking to one of the DEA agents and one of the DEA agents that was assigned to the

Norfolk office, which is borders Virginia Beach, was an ex-Virginia Beach police officer. And he says something to the effect, hey, you know, this guy will be working with you soon. And she's like, what are you talking about? She says, no, he's applied to DEA. He's just waiting to get hired. She says, is that true? I said, yeah. So he goes, well, talk to this guy, Wilbur.

Wilbur was his name. He's the recruiter. So he's like, hey, you apply to DE? I go, yeah, I'm just waiting to do my PT test. I've been waiting for, you know, a couple months. snowman's called me or anything. So he says, here's my card, call me Monday. So I call him, got me right in, took the PT test, I passed it, and man, I cut a lot of time off, and I got hired not too long after that. When you're waiting that long, is there a part of you that

thinks you're not going to get in? Well, at that point, I figured I was going to get in unless something came up in my background check, because I had passed everything else. So it's kind of just that waiting game as to when they're going to call you. How hard is a PT test? I mean, that depends on who you ask, I guess. I didn't think it was that bad to test. But when I took it, now it's changed quite a bit over time. But I think when I took it, you had to do a two-mile run in under 16 minutes, something like that, which isn't that difficult. You had to do a certain amount of pull-ups, certain amount of push-ups, certain amount of sit-ups.

And it was like a shuttle run, like a sprint thing. the test in and of itself wasn't that difficult, but you had to score at least one point in each of the categories, and you had to get a certain score to pass the test. Once you pass it, that's when they ship you the academy. That's one of the final things that you do, yeah, because they want to make sure that you're in pretty good physical condition before you get there because two or three days after you get there or even the next day, you take that physical fitness test. and you have to pass it, because if you don't pass it now, you're gone.

So they want to make sure that you're in, in shape before you get there. Do you do that solo, or are you with a group of people? Group of people. And were people similar in age, or were you one of the young people? So you mean, but like before I got there? At the actual, like, physical fitness test, the PT test. Like the preliminary one before the academy. That was just by myself.

Oh, that's by yourself. I was by myself, right? So those are only the applicants that are getting ready to go to Quantico. So once you actually are in the academy, are you youngest? Are you middle? I was the second youngest in my class. And most people were people that already had careers. We had, in my class, we had a wide range of people.

A lot of experience, a lot of ex-military, a lot of ex-cops, a lot of guys who worked on the federal task force before that. So, yeah, we had all kinds of different people. So when I got the call for DEA, it was 23. and by the time I got to Quantico, I had just turned 24. Did you consider the military at all? A little bit, but I never went that route, but I did consider it. Why do you think you didn't go that route? Well, you know, I don't know.

I took the test to be a pilot, and it was a pretty hard test. It's all kind of like mathematical and engineering stuff. and I was like, holy shit. And they told me like, well, you did really well on the test, but you didn't score high enough to, you know, to get into the pilot program. I was like, okay. And then I just got involved in other things

with law enforcement and stuff. But, yeah, it's not something I really, really pursued. Compared to everyone else in your training class, did you feel least amount of experienced or middle or on the higher end? I would say middle to hire because even though I was 24, you know, technically I had about three years of police experience.

So, you know, I had a good background on, you know, firearms, the laws, you know, arrest procedures, self-defense stuff. So I felt like I was pretty much at least middle to maybe middle to upper, as far as experience. What do you think was the most difficult part of training? I didn't think the training was that difficult at all, to be honest with you. For me, probably the running. Like I said, I play basketball in college, but I'm not a distance runner. You know, I can run all day, but not, you know, playing that basketball and starting and stopping.

Just to go out and run, I'm not a runner. And we would do, you know, four, five, six mile runs there. And I did not like that at all. Did not like it at all. So I would say that even though it wasn't that difficult, it was probably the thing that I didn't like at the most. Did you find yourself running a lot in your career later on? No, no, hell no. Just playing, you know, playing sports was the only time I would, you know, run.

I could never go out and just run. And that was the hardest thing for me, preparing to go to Quantico was, you know, I had to get that two-mile run down and under the 16-minute time frame, give or take right around there. So for me, that was, it took me a while to get down to that. Because I could run, but I was slow and not a good distance runner. Is there something you wish they taught you that they didn't? That's a good question.

You know, there's a lot of stuff that you deal with that they can't really prepare you for. So they do the best job they can. Obviously, when you're in training, you know, doing different scenarios, doing surveillance, you know, firearms, self-defense. But, man, when you get out of there on the street, it's not like you're in the classroom. You know, things don't go as planned. you've got to think on your feet. So, you know, I think to be a good agent or to be good in law enforcement, even a detective, you know, you really, you need to be able to think outside the box and react quickly as things happen.

Did you get to mingle with some of the other people in training and kind of see what their intentions were for joining and what their missions were? Well, actually, that's where I met my partner, Dave Mitchell, you know, who I wrote the book with and was my partner down in Columbia. He was in the class ahead of me. So we would often pass people in the halls and, hey, you know, you're in six weeks ahead of us. What's the training like? What do we need to look out for? You know, what are the pitfalls, stuff like that? So that was, you know, it was pretty good.

And we got some good advice from people there like, hey, you know, just keep your head down. Stay out of trouble. You know, do your job. So once you graduated, what happens? So when I graduate from Quantico, so the last week that you're there, they give you your assignment of where you're going. Now, it's changed since then, but back when I went, they wait until the last week. And I would always joke around and tell people like, I'm from the Northeast.

I hate the cold weather. I said, if I get New York, because a lot of times they put people who had law enforcement experience, they put you in major field divisions, New York, L.A. And I said, man, if I get New York, I'm quitting. I am not living in cold weather anymore. And that was like a running joke there. And so back then, they asked you, you know, you have to list five places that you want to go. Not that you're going to go there, but that's kind of like your wish list.

So they asked me, all right, you know, which you can write them down. I put one, Miami, two, Fort Lauderdale, three, West Palm, four, Tampa, five, Fort Myers. Right? So I think they got the hint that I wanted to go somewhere warm in, and, uh, So what they do is that last week, they would call each person up by name and you have to go up in front of the class. And they give you an envelope,

and you have to open the envelope up and read where you're going. And there were some people in my class. There was one guy he was from Texas, never left the state of Texas in his life. And he opens up his thing, and he's, Yuma? Where in the hell is Yuma? So he went to Arizona down on the border.

So I'm thinking like, this is a guy like one or two front of me because they went in alphabetical order. So I'm thinking like, oh, shit, these people aren't getting what they want. And I walk up there and the instructors are going like shivering cold. I'm like, yeah, sit, man. I get New York. I'm done. And I open it up and I got Miami. So it was my number one choice. Do you think you actually would have if you got New York? No, I wouldn't have. I'm not that kind of person. I would have stuck it out. I wouldn't have been happy, but I would have done what I had to do. Now, would they send new recruits out of the country or is it always? No, no. Okay.

You have to be a domestic assignment first, usually, you know, for probably five or six years, minimum. Until you get to a certain level, right? There were exceptions, but generally no. You had to work domestically for several years. So you can learn the job, right? You don't want to send someone into a foreign country and they don't even know the job yet. And when you were assigned to one city, was there speculation of how long you would be there or is it to be determined? TBD.

because some people I know that they worked their whole career in one city. They didn't want to move. They had kids. They had school, whatever their reason was. And then he had other people that, you know, as soon as they got there, as we say, they're 13, their promotion, they would start looking to go somewhere else overseas or a different assignment. So you go to Miami, this is what the early 90s or late 80s? Late 80s.

Okay. What was that like at that point? Crazy, man. It was crazy. You know, home of Miami Vice. Home of the cocaine cowboys, right? We always joke around. I see, hey, you know, cocaine is like falling out of the sky.

And literally it was, right? Because you had all the air activity going on from the Bahamas into the Everglades and the Keys. It was a crazy environment. But that's one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Miami because, look, if you wanted to be a DEA agent, a real DEA agent in the late 80s, you had to go to South Florida, right? That was just what I said, Miami Vice, Cocaine Cowboys. and like I said, where can I learn the job the quickest, right? Where can I learn all these different types of investigations?

What kind of cases can I work? Where can I do that, work on the biggest cases, and learn as quickly as possible? To me, it was Florida, right? Plus it was warm, you know, I wanted to get down there. So that was my whole mindset about going to Florida was, you know, learned a job quick and become the best agent that I could. What do you think was the first lesson you learned on the job? Good question.

Always be alert, be aware of your surroundings. Second day on the job, might even by my first day in Miami. Did a case. It was like a five or ten kilo by bus for cocaine. We hit the house. People scatter. Somebody ran out the back.

You know, we were driving around because some people had escaped. They put a description out over the radio. And I was probably a good half mile, mile away by this time. And I saw somebody walking down the street that happened, actually fit the description. And it went over, started talking to him. Sure enough, that was one of the people that was part of the deal. So you always got to have your head on a swivel and be aware of your surroundings. Since you came from Pennsylvania, were you surprised by the amount of drugs that were in the country when you got to Florida?

Yeah, I sure was. Do you think the public knew about how many drugs were coming in at that time? Because it's not like there was social media or the Internet or anything. No, but there had been a couple, there was, I think it was, it might have been, I might get it wrong, but like a Time magazine article about Miami, it would be Paradise Lost, right? And I talked about how South Florida and Miami had changed because of all the drugs coming in. And, you know, Miami Vice put a big spotlight on South Florida. And back then, too, you had the cocaine cowboys. You had these shootouts going on in Dayland Mall, a lot of violence in Miami and South Florida. So I think people that were down there and around there knew about how bad it was. Maybe some of the people, because you didn't have the internet or anything back then, right? So people who lived outside that area maybe didn't grasp how severe that problem really was. But yeah, if you were down there, you knew about it.

What was a typical day like for you there in your early days? Busy every day, running and gunning, you know, one, two, deals a day. coming in early, working late, working weekends, traveling. Yeah, you were very busy back then in the 80s. Are you working with local police or are you on your own units? Or how does that work? It depends on where you're at. In Florida, we pretty much did our own thing.

We didn't have much of a task force. We did work with local PDs on some cases. But generally, we kind of worked our own stuff. And are you guys after the bigger fish or are you guys picking low level? Yeah, biggest and the baddest. What was your first major bus that you were a part of? I did an undercover deal with one of my partners, probably maybe a month after it was there,

flew in a couple hundred kilos from Columbia, South America, brought it in, posed as transporters, met the bad guys after we got to stuff in, turned it over to them, took them down. So that was probably one of the biggest ones that was quickest. It was probably got 250, 250 keys at the time, of Coke. Being a new DEA agent, was it hard to make those connections to do those type of undercover work? Back then, no, because we had so many different informants and assets that were coming in every day.

And we used to sit there and fight in the office like, oh, Jesus, Mario has another K. Why did that one yesterday? And I just did one today. And they were constantly coming in. And that's why as a new guy, right, the FNG, as we call him, right, the fucking new guy, you got all the stuff that people didn't want to do, which was great because that's how you learned the job. So you were constantly, you know,

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with all nine essential amino acids to help build muscle, give you energy, and keep you satisfied longer. So keep it real. Look for the seal. Real California milk. These deals, so it was very busy. When you first had that big bust, did you realize that that wasn't necessarily the biggest that was out there? Like, I've talked to several DE agents who say they're surprised by how big 200 keys is, but that's just not even the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, very true. Yeah, you always know that there's going to be bigger cases. and bigger loads coming in, for sure.

It's crazy how much cocaine was out there. It was staggering the amount of cocaine that was coming into Miami at that time. So did you work any of like the cocaine cowboy cases at all? Well, after a little bit of time, that was a little bit before, you know, the cocaine cowboy era. I got there a little after that,

but I started to get some good assets, some good informants. And we started to work these higher-level cases. started to work some wiretap cases, but a lot of the cases I did were maritime smuggling investigations, right? They targeting the Cali and Medellin cartels because, you know, in the late 80s you had Cali and Medellin that were both operating in Columbia at the time. And over time, we developed, you know, quite a few assets. And we had a pretty good network set up where we would pose as transporters. We had access to like GoFast boats.

We had access to coastal freighters with containerized cargo. we had undercover house in the keys, right? So we had a whole good network of stuff. So we would pose as these transporters. You know, back then, you know, there were two weaknesses that these cartels had. One was transportation. One was communication. They were always looking for transportation, whether it be by air or by maritime vessel.

So we had that service that we can offer. So we were able to infiltrate some of these organizations through our assets and bring in, you know, thousands of key, was a cocaine, a shot on these coastal freighters. Did they have any screening process, the cartel members, when they were hiring a transporter that's undercover? Well, the main thing is you had good assets, they were good informants that were introducing to you. So, you know, we had one guy who was very good.

He was an older Colombian man. And, you know, you could sit there all day and talk to this guy. You would never suspect him to be an informant or working for the police. Just because he was an old, heavy set guy. You know, so, and he had these connections. So his word went a long way. And then when he was able to introduce, like, the captain of the boats who were also Colombian, these guys ate that up. And what would happen to someone like him once did the cases busted open when they know he's the mole?

Well, we always did it in a way not to get into detail of we would take the load off in a certain way that didn't come back onto any of our assets. Okay. Yeah, and what's in it for those assets? Money or working off a beef, as we say. Someone who's been arrested before has federal charges against them, cooperate to try to get those sentencing or those charges reduced. Now, is what you guys were doing back then, what we're seeing on TV now with the boats going across

and they're smuggling in and they're blowing the boats up, even though you guys weren't blowing them up back then? Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of it, but yeah, absolutely right. there was no aerial interdiction like that, whether they were blowing boats up in the East Pack or in the Caribbean. Yeah, that's pretty crazy to see, especially now on TV. Surprising to see, but I think it's pretty effective. How do you think the boat smuggling has evolved over time since back then compared to now?

Or do you think it's the same routes and same everything? Well, if you're talking about GoFast vessels, it's going to be the same routes. You're going to get to point A to point B as quick as possible. But I think now you've seen that expand into over the years, obviously, these fishing vessels, right? You have just shrimp boats or whatever, taking these very securitist routes off the western coast of Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru, going out into the East Pack, into the Eastern Pacific, around the Galapagos and up into Central America. That was a big route that came a little bit later in the 90s. You also see a lot of containerized cargo, right? Cali Cartel put that on the map, smuggling large amounts of cocaine in legitimate, you know, produce, coffee, shrimp, fish, whatever you can think of, you know, machinery parts. You know, and you have these massive coastal freighters with hundreds, if not thousands of containers on board. If you don't have specific intel about that one container, you're never going to find anything.

So, and they know that. So that's why containerized cargo is very difficult for us. And I think because of this activity now with these kinetic strikes in the Caribbean and you're starting to see them in the East Pack, these drug trafficking organizations are very adaptable, right? They change quickly to what we're doing. And I had said weeks ago, if not even a month ago, that because of that Caribbean corridor right now is so hot

with those kinetic strikes and these boats getting blown up in the East Pack that they were going to switch. or in the Caribbean, I'm sorry, that they're going to switch to the East Pack, which they did. You've seen a couple boats now that have been blown up in the East Pack. But again, they're going to adapt to that. So I think you're going to see more containerized cargo coming out. They're not going to blow up a container ship, right, with thousands of containers. You're probably going to see a little bit more air activity, right?

You're going to see that air bridge open back up between Colombia, Venezuela, into Central America and Mexico. You're going to see the dope starting to go into Panama and being driven up the Pan American Highway by land to avoid those strikes. And I think also you're going to see more activity with these semi-submersible or fully submersible vessels transporting larger amounts of cocaine. Because you have a fully submersible vessel, submarine very hard to detect, right? Oh, they are hard to detect. Okay. Even with today's technology? Yeah, if you have like a fully submersible submarine under the, you know, under the water, pretty hard to, I mean, we can do it, but it's more, it's a lot easier having a speedboat going right across the water when you see the bales of cocaine right in the boat, you know.

So they'll adapt, they'll change, and they'll try to make it harder for what we're doing. Now, the freight liners that they were using back in the day were those U.S.-based companies that were running the freights or were they overseas companies that were bringing product here that they were using? A lot of it was overseas. you know, different flagged vessels from different countries. So were most of those people in on it or they had no idea that there was drugs coming? They don't know. Again, you're transporting a container that says, you know, just make it up, coffee. You know, the weight's about right.

If it's in there, they have no reason to suspect. Now, if it's overweight or something, then you can get a little suspicious. But otherwise, you know, yeah, those companies aren't going to know. So back then, not every single pallet or shipping container was searched? No, no, none of them are. Really? If they're loading in, let's just say, Cartagena, about in Kia, somewhere in Ecuador, who's going to search the containers before they get on?

Now, do they, in the bus that you guys did get on the freight liners, did they have soldiers with them on there, like cartel members? No. So they just leave it. Okay. Right. Less attention, the better. Probably less risk doing it that way.

too. Yeah. You ship a container from a legitimate company in Columbia, Venezuela, to a legitimate company in the States with legitimate cargo. Who's going to know, you know, unless you have somebody on the inside giving you information to say, hey, this container, XYZ has coffee in it, but it also has, you know, a bunch of cocaine in it as well. Do they teach you about the cartel specifically in the academy or is that something you learned on the job? I mean, they'll, no, they don't teach you about that. I mean, they may cover it and say, you know, right now at this point in time, these are the biggest drug cartels operating, but they're not going to get into detail about that in the academy. What did you come to learn early on about cartels? Got a lot of money. They got a lot of power. They got a lot of influence. And they corrupt a lot of people. And that's why they're able to be as successful as.

they are. Did you see a lot of law enforcement getting corrupted back then? In the states? Yeah. There were a few. They were my first six months on the job. We had two people in my group got arrested. For corruption. One was, one was like income tax evasion, but one was for corruption, yeah. Working with the cartel. With local drug, not really the cartel per se, but local drug traffickers. Wow. And they were in your academy too? No, they were in my group when I got to Miami. Okay. And they were older than you? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. There for a while. So what happens after that? You're in Miami for how long?

Six years. I worked in Miami from 88 to 94. And why do you leave Miami? Because I think my next step, my next progression is to, if I want to be a real, real DEA, and I got to go to Columbia, right? I got to go to the heart of the drug trafficking world, the epicenter, the mecca of cocaine trafficking to go after the biggest and baddest drug cartels on the planet. So I had worked, like we talked about quite a few investigations, targeting like the peripheral parts of the Medellian and Calais cartel, like the transportation cell. So I had a pretty good background on who these guys were,

you know, Escobar in the Medellin cartel, the Rodriguez is in the Cali cartel. And they thought, you know what, I want to go overseas. I want to work against those guys. And I want to learn a language. I want to travel more. So that was my, you know, kind of impetus to go. down to South America, down to Columbia.

Did you have to put in for that? Yeah. Okay. And is it hard to get approved for that? Well, Miami was a big recruiting ground for Central and South America back then, especially Columbia, because the office in Columbia knew that agents working in Miami got exposed to a lot of the Colombians. They worked cases hand in hand with the Columbia office.

So that was kind of the preferred recruitment center. say, not to say that there weren't people from other parts of the country, but Miami was a pretty, one of the main recruiting grounds. And I applied initially, and I didn't get, I didn't get the spot. And there's a picture in the book on the first chapter, you see, where I didn't get, when I left the academy, I didn't get a haircut for almost six years. I haven't a half years. So I had hair down to the middle of my back. You know, I had three earrings. I had two in one ear, one in the other. had, you know, the gold chain. I had the whole chabang going. So, when I

applied to Columbia, I didn't get selected. So who do I call? Right? I make a phone call. I call. I call Murph. I call Steve Murphy. And I'm like, bro, how can I not get, I didn't get hired, man? I didn't get selected. I said, I had great evaluations. You know, I know a little bit of Spanish. I'm familiar with all the

trap, the players. What's the deal? He's like, dude. And I outlined this in the book pretty well. He's like, bro, you got to get that haircut, you know. Because the country at that shea in Columbia was a guy named Joe Toft, like a very serious guy. And Steve's like, man, he probably thinks you're going to roll in here with your surfboard and your board shorts on. And, you know, the embassy can't do that shit, bro. So I'm like, fuck. So like a day or two later, I went out, I went across the street and I got my, at lunchtime, I got my.

I got my haircut, right? They lopped off like 12 inches of my hair. And about a week or so after that, I get a call from the country at Teshe, and he goes, hey, I heard you got your haircut. I was like, yes, sir, I did. He's like, just be patient, keep putting in, things will work out for you. And he just left it at that. Were you afraid to go over there?

No. I was actually looking forward to them. And did you feel like your Spanish was good enough to live over there? Well, before you go to any country, before DEA will send you and they deploy you, you have to go to language school. Or if you're not a fluent Spanish speaker, if you're fluent Spanish speaker, let's give you a test. If you get a certain score, then you're good to go. So if you put into for Moscow and you got selected, you'd have to learn Russian, right? If you went to Thailand, you'd have to learn Thai.

So when I got selected, yeah, we had to go to language school. And depending on how advanced or how well your Spanish was, it depended how long. you went. You could go anywhere from, you know, two months to six months or more. Was it hard for you to pick up Spanish? Not really, because, you know, you hear a lot of it when you're in Miami, right, all the time. My partner at the time was Cuban. He had access to a lot of good assets who only spoke Spanish. So I would pick up bits and pieces of it. And it got to the point where I was able to understand pretty well, although, you know, speaking, I was okay, but not that good.

So when I went to the language school, I went for a couple months, and I got the score that I needed to to go overseas, and we were good to go. What happens to your partner stateside when you leave for overseas? They either remain there or they, you know, stay in the same position or they put in to go elsewhere as well. Will they come with you? No.

I mean, unless they apply and get selected. Okay. So it's not like, yeah, it's not like you go together as a tandem. So you get to Columbia, what happens? So I get to Columbia. Even before we get there, right, there's a lot of issues and concerns about, because me and my partner, Dave, we got selected at the same time. We went to language school at the same time. And we reported to Columbia at the same time.

But there was a lot of concern about our appearance, right? How are these six foot two, six foot three? Because Dave's even bigger than I am. How are they going to blend in in Colombia, especially? working in Cali, it's going to be dangerous for them. They're not going to be able to get anything done because they're going to stick out like sore thumbs. And we had heard over and over, like the motto was, you guys don't blend in, right? We had heard that over and over. And right before we got there, there were two Hispanic agents that were working in Cali that got their

photograph taken by the cartel. So this photograph makes its way back to the embassy. It's brought in by one of our assets and kind of throws it on the table. And kind of throws it on the table. and goes, look, here's a picture of the two agents. The cartel knows who they are. They know their names. They know where they stay. They know where they eat. They know where they sleep.

They know where they went to cars. So, of course, you know, in the U.S. government, complete knee-jerk reaction. Oh, my God. It's a threat against DEA. No one can go to Cali. So our first day in the office, Dave and I, we say, hey, we got some leads, man. When can we go to Cali? you go, we're not sending anybody to Cali right now.

Like, what do you mean? How can we investigate the Cali cartel if we can't go to Cali? Well, you got to do it from the embassy. Why? Well, one, you guys don't blend in, and then we heard the story about what happened with the agents getting their photograph taken. So that was my welcome to Columbia moment. Like, yeah, investigate the cartel, but do it from Bogota.

Is it hard to not stick out when you're white and then Columbia? Well, in Cali, it was extremely difficult because, at the time in, you know, 1994, there was zero American presence in Cali. None. There was, you know, because of the danger, because of the Cali cartel, there was zero. And it was no way, again, the two, six foot two, six foot three guys could not, could blend in, right? We're going to stand in. You can't, there's no way that camouflage us, right? So yeah, it was hard. So later on, as we get down the road and we're there for a little while, we have to start doing all of our stuff at night. Right. We have to start working unilaterally. We can't work with the police or the military because they're corrupt. We're doing everything at nighttime because obviously if we're doing stuff during the day, we're going to stand out.

What about like just going shopping or doing stuff on your off time? We didn't do any of that. So how would you get food? well, we would go out. We had certain places at restaurants that we would go to. We would go in and we would go out, right? When they opened, when there was not a lot of people there, we would eat or we would just get stuff to go. We had safe houses. You know, we had people run out and grab us. We had a driver that rented apartments for us in his name because he was Columbia, who would come over periodically and stock our refrigerator and stuff. But it was hard. So there's a lot of trust put in to these assets that are helping you guys out there? Well, this was a vetted U.S. Embassy employee

that just happened to be Colombian. But, yeah, with assets, we didn't put a lot of trust in any of them until we get a little bit further down the road, but not with identifying safe houses, never with that. Now, did you have a family at this point? No. Do you think you would have went to Columbia if you didn't, I mean, if you had a family?

Probably, yeah, because that's what I wanted to do. So when you get to Columbia, Cali, Columbia, what was the first thing you, or that surprised you out there? The level of corruption because, so our first trip to Cali, when we're, first, as we talked about, we weren't even allowed to go to Cali, right? So, you know, me and Dave, we keep badgering. Look, this is not a viable strategy. If we're going to investigate the cartel and we're going to be effective, we need to be

on the ground in Cali. We need to be able to talk to the police and the military. So after, you know, hounding them for a week or so, 10 days, they finally agree, okay, you guys can go to Cali. But these are the ground rules. So listen to this. This is what we're dealing with. One, you can go for the day, but you got to be back before nightfall. You can't spend the night.

Okay. We'll see how much we can get done doing that. Two, we can never, ever, under any circumstances, leave the police or military. base without a police or a military escort, right? We had to be accompanied at all times if we ever left the base. And the third thing was, you know, DEA, right? No cowboy shit. No unilateral activity. Everything you do has to be in conjunction with Colombian security forces. So those were our ground rules. So we go over the first day, we go over early in the morning. We meet with the military. We meet with the police, the search blocks, right? These special groups designed to go out.

after the biggest and the baddest cartel leaders, just like in Medellin with Paulo Escobar and the search block. So we meet the two commanders of those units and we come back that night. So it's deemed a success. We established a liaison. You know, the cops and the military,

they want to work with us, so they say. So that was good. But as we start upping our trips to Cali and working with the military and the police search blocks, We're doing these operations and we notice that all of them, pretty much all of them are compromised, right? We have good intel. The military and police have good intel.

We do these raids. We don't come up with anything. And it's like a lot of times you see on these TV movies, like these mafia movies, right? You hit the door and you go in and your intel's good and there's nobody there, right? House is empty. But there's like a cup of coffee there that's still hot or there's a piece of food that's half eating. but nobody's there. So it was obvious to us that these operations were getting compromised. So when you ask me what was one of the biggest challenges that we were working there,

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activity, can't leave the base. So what do we start doing to be successful? We start violating those protocols and those rules every day. We get a car sent over to us. We start doing our own surveillance, me and Dave. We get safe houses. So we're away from the military. We're operating unilaterally, talking to our sources. So we're able to get away from the corruption that's at these search blocks. And we're starting to develop a network of assets now. We're starting to get a little bit better intel.

But still, we have to rely on the search block to do the enforcement. There are a reactionary force, right? So if we're going out and hitting a house, we have to use them. And when we use them, it's getting compromised. So we have to start thinking outside the box. We start bringing in these specially trained vetted units that are attached to the CIA. We start bringing them over land to do these operations in Cali, and we start circumventing the search block because of the corruption.

What's the main objective of hitting these houses? Is it to look for the individuals, high-ranking officials, or is it to get product or money or a mixture of everything? Well, at this point, the four major leaders of the Cali cartel, there's four, they call them the godfathers, right? Alberto Rodriguez-Orouela, his brother Miguel Rodriguez-Oto-Wela, Jose Santa Cruz Londonia, who's the number three guy, and Paco Hedera, who's the number four man. So it's basically we're going after anybody who's wanted within the Cali cartel, but specifically those four kingpins, so to say. And do you guys want to arrest them and bring them back to the United States? There's no extradition in Columbia.

that time. So if we arrest them, they remain in Colombia. And so what's it? Columbia wants a DEA involved then to help get them? Is that why you guys are out there? Well, yes and no. On paper, yes, they want DEA there to show that they're cooperating with the U.S., right? Because the U.S. is giving Colombia hundreds of millions of dollars a year to try to combat drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption, right? So they put on the facade that they're, trying to work with the U.S. government, but there were a lot of forces behind in the government in Colombia that didn't want us to succeed because of all the corruption. Did you even trust that once you make those arrests that they would be, I guess,

safe or justice would be served in Colombian prisons? Well, we know that in Colombia specifically in these other countries that if you have the wherewithal, if you have the resources, you have the money, you're major trafficker or major criminal you live like a king in these Colombian prisons you have access to cell phones televisions chefs maids everything you want and as we saw with these Cali cartel leaders as well as look at Pablo Escobar even in Cate Draal. He built his own prison. He had his own bodyguards. He did whatever he wanted in there and that's what happens. These traffickers do that. They're able to run their businesses. They're their you know their organization from prison.

So the U.S. is constantly asking them at this time. You have to re-implement extradition so that these guys can come to the U.S. where they're not going to be able to run their organization, right? And they're going to stay in these six by eight cells, 23 hours a day, and that's it. Do you take these players off the map, putting them in prison, does that affect the business or does it just continue? It continues. There's always another person, another organization that's ready to run. rise up and take over their place. So it has an impact for a little bit, but there's always

somebody else willing to step up. Now, once they realize that you're on to them, the DEA's onto them, does it become very dangerous for you as an agent? It was always dangerous working in Colombia or any foreign country, for that matter. I mean, look at Kiki Kamarina. He's kidnapped and killed in Mexico, you know, in 1985 in Guadalajara. You know, these traffickers, they don't care if you get too close to them, they're going to take action. And they did with, unfortunately, with Kiki Kamenana. And with us, the Cali cartel operated a little differently, though, right? They saw what happened with Escobar, right? The Medellin cartel and Paolo Escobar operated. Their MO was violence, threats, intimidation, murder, kidnapping, extortion. You know, they assassinated.

Let me look at the violence that Medellin did. They assassinated the minister of justice. Rodriguez-Lar in 1984. They kill the presidential candidate, Golan in 1989. They blew up the fucking Avianca flight with 100 people on it, right? These guys didn't care. It was rule through violence

and intimidation. And Calley saw what happened, right? Rodriguez gotcha was shot and killed by the police. Escobar was hunted down like a dog and killed on the rooftop barefoot, right? Callie wanted no part of that. They were like, hey, far better for us to bribe are the people that we want, right?

Their weapon of choice was the bribe, not violence. Buy everybody, pay everybody off, we get what we want. You know, we're not going to use violence. You know, they're not going to hunt us down like they did with Pablo. That was how they operated. That was their MO. But we were routinely followed when we were in Columbia, Dave and I, by the cartel. by their intelligence infrastructure,

which was known as the Cali KGB, by corrupt officials, by taxi drivers who worked for the cartel. They wanted to know what the DEA's movements were. They wanted to try to identify our assets was the big thing, because they didn't want to go after a DEA agent because that would bring too much heat onto them, right?

And they saw what happened in Panama with Noriega in 1989. The U.S. invaded Panama to go after Manuel Nordiaga. And Cali Cartel thought that that was a viable option. So they wanted no part of harming a DEA agent. But what they would do, their thought process was, and they knew how we operated,

that we couldn't launch our own unilateral operations. We had to utilize the Colombian security forces. They had that covered. They had them all corrupted. But the biggest threat to them was what? Informants. So if they could follow us to who we were, were meeting with, they would eliminate those people in a second.

When did you first start to feel like you were making headway out there? Well, after we were on the ground for almost a year, one year of every day living in Cali, doing operations, having them compromised, we were finally able to, as we talked about, go outside the box. And there were three things that led us to be successful. And we talked about most of them. One, using these vetted units attached to the CIA from Bogota, 200 miles away. So we would bring them in to do these operations.

Two was allowing myself and Dave to work unilaterally, right, to go out, do our own surveillance, plan our own operations. So we would do all the background work, and then we would call these units from Bogota and say, meet us at the corner of walk and don't walk. We'll see you here tomorrow. And that's all we would tell them. And they would come and we would go to a location and go, okay, that's the location, this is the target, let's go now.

So that was the second one. And three was the recruitment of assets that were, you know, well placed within the cartel that were able to give us this real-time, actionable intelligence. So after a year on the ground, almost a year, we're able to recruit two high-level assets who give us really good information about Hilberto Rodriguez-Odouela,

the leader of the Calais Cartel. And through that information, we're able to identify like a personal assistant. And the sources say, two independent sources who corroborate each other that says, look, if you're able to follow this guy, he will lead you to Hilberto because he goes to where Hilberto's at every day,

he answers his phones he sets up meetings he does whatever Roberto wants so if you follow him he'll lead you to him so we bring these units from Bogota we set up to surveillance we surveil this guy for a week

he's highly trained in counter surveillance so this is what you're up against check this out so this guy would leave his apartment sometimes in a car he'd drive a mile parked the car, get in a taxi, take a taxi a mile, get out, get on a bus, take the bus, walk across the

street, circle back, go into a store, put a hat on, put sunglasses on, like super surveillance detection. And, you know, after the first day, we lost him in like in two minutes, right? He changes. He gets on a bus. He gets on a tag. We're like, shit, this guy's good, man. So it takes us a week.

We're finally able to follow him to an area where. there is, it's in a cul-de-sac at that end, and there's five townhouses up there. So we don't know where he goes into, but we know it had to be in one of those townhouses because there's nothing else up there. He had to go up this big staircase, like these stone steps that went up a hill, and then there's nothing else up there. So we hit all five houses at the same time, and sure enough, we find Hilberto Rodriguez in a hidden compartment, which we call it Caleta, like in a secret hiding space. So that was our first big break after almost a year on the ground.

What happens when you make an arrest like that in the area? What's a community like? Oh, it's like a scene in Iraq or Afghanistan. They shut the whole street down. They block it off. There's helicopters flying over. There's all kind of soldiers out front surrounding the area. I mean, everybody in the neighborhood or around there knows

that there's a major government operation going on to go after. And of course, in Cali, everybody knew. was probably one of the kingpins. Is it like the movies where you guys are under kind of like attack when you're making the arrest, or his guy's trying to get him back at all? Well, we had heard that they would try to do that at some point, but it would never came to fruition because that's what we would do. Once we were there, we tried to get the person out of there as quickly as possible,

and back to like an Air Force base, a secured environment, and then fly them to Bogota to get them immediately out of the area. they never tried that with us, but we had intel that while we were trying to move these people, these kingpins, that they were putting something together to try to do that. A guy like that knows that he's that, that he's wanted that bad, why do you think he would even leave the house to begin with

or his hiding spot to move around? Well, a lot of them didn't because at that point it was such a manhunt. These guys were pretty much locked down in their houses. They didn't leave, right, wherever they were at. Before that, they would have visitors, they would move around. But once, and plus with Pablo Escobar, too, in the Medellin cartel, they were at war with the Medellin cartel for six years. So these guys, starting from 88 on, they weren't moving around, like, freely.

They would go out at times, depending on the security situation, but they were constantly worried about Escobar and these assassination attempts against them. There were car bombs going off all over Cali and Medellin. You know, one side was trying to kill the other side. There were these like super high profile assassination attempts against Pacho Herrera and others. Give you one example, why they don't leave the house, Pacho's main passion was soccer, right? And he used to go out and play these soccer matches in these.

He had these like world-class soccer fields that he built with stadium lights and everything. It was like his own personal stadium. And Escobar and the Medellin cartel had information that Paco played at this place in Kandallari, a city in Kali, on a certain night. So they sent like two truckloads of assassins camouflaged as police officers. And they roll up to the soccer match and they jump out and they just start open and fire. and they killed 19 of Pachos people and they wounded eight, but Pachos survived. And there were car bombs constantly being deployed against the Cali targets. So these guys moved out of these, you know, these luxury Miami-Vice-type houses, right?

We would see into more like these apartments, right, on the upper floor. So it was harder for them to be attacked. And since that war started, they weren't moving around that much. So they were pretty much locked, locked down. So once you took him off the board and made the arrest, what do you do next after that? You go to the next guy, right? There were four godfathers, four leaders. Once you take one off, then you go to the next, you go to the next.

But it was always whatever information we had we would go with. So maybe one day you were doing a raid on Hilberto. The next day you were doing a raid on Miguel or the same day that he would do against Chepi Santa Cruz. so it was constantly doing raise trying to find these guys. It was a manhunt. Will they flip on each other or do they stay loyal? No, they were loyal.

Do you guys try to even? All the time. At that level of loyalty, huh? Well, you know, once they start cooperating, though, then they're a target themselves. And what ends up happening to them, all of them? Well, we start, well, first of all, Hilberto gets arrested in June of 1995. right after that, we recruit a very high-level asset within the Cali cartel, the head of security for the Cali cartel. And we start doing these operations to target Miguel Rodriguez, Suala.

Miguel was the CEO, kind of the operations manager of the cartel. So we get information, and that's our next target. We start doing these raids. We start going after him. And they all end up in prison? Eventually, yes. We arrest Miguel in August of 1995. Jose Santa Cruz gets arrested in July of 1995.

And Paco Herrera surrenders to Colombian authorities in September of 1996. So at that point, how long have you been in Columbia for? Well, by September 96, we'd been there over two and a half years. What does that feel like on your body, mental? you know, adapting to the culture? It was terrible because, you know, operating in Cotley, we're staying in safe houses. You're sleeping pretty much with one eye open because you're worried that the cartel is going to come and drag you out.

We lost a lot of, I lost about 20 pounds because you were constantly going, you know, and like I said before, a lot of our clandestine work was at night. So we would do liaison with the police and military during the day. And then at night, we were debriefing all of our assets and doing surveillance and recon missions all night. So you were never sleeping. So after weeks and months of doing that, it takes wear and tear on your body, right? Our circadian rhythm was all messed up. It was, you know, you're trying to sleep during the day.

It was a disaster. What were you eating? Whatever we could, you know, depending on where we're, you're, we were at when we used to stay at the police base and the military base, we'd eat in the cafeteria on the base, which you can imagine how that was. It wasn't very good. Sometimes we stared at the Air Force base, the same thing. Food on the go, grabbing stuff. You're not eating well at all. You're not sleeping well at all. The stress, you know, I always worried about the cartel following you. When you're out there, what happens to your life back home, like your apartment,

your friends, anything? Well, we had, obviously, our base of operations was in Bogota, so we had our apartments there. If you were living in Cali or you were traveling, you just basically, you know, lock up your apartment and you would go to do what you had to do. You know, there was no, we didn't have a lot of Internet or anything back then. You weren't talking to people back in the States much, so it was, you were pretty isolated. What did your parents think? Did you have communication with them? Yeah, but I never told them what I was doing.

Oh, they didn't know where you were? They knew, but I would say, yeah, I sit in the embassy. I have a desk job. I wasn't telling them anything about, you know, what we were doing or how dangerous it was or anything like that. I never got into any details because I didn't want them to worry. Were you allowed to tell them even if you could? Probably, but you don't want to take that chance if you're saying something on the phone. It gets, you know, intercepted or by the cartel.

They know you're going after them. I mean, just, you know, OPSEC, operational security. You just wouldn't talk about that kind of stuff. What was the most dangerous position you were putting over there? Well, there were a couple. I outlined one of them in the book pretty well as we were meeting an asset out. And it's a pretty good story. So we recruit the head of security for the Cali cartel.

And we get inclinations that he wants to cooperate. So I call him on the phone. I get a number for him. And I said, hey, we're in Cali. I think we should talk. and he's like, okay, I said, well, the sooner the better. He goes, okay, meet me at 3 o'clock, and he gives us this location, which is an hour outside of Cali.

It's in the middle of nowhere, right? So imagine you're talking to a counterintelligence officer for the cartel, the head of security for the Cali cartel, you know, weapons, explosives, force protection, an expert. And he says, you know, meet me out here an hour away from the city and come. alone. I'm like, dude, I'm not coming alone to meet you, the head of security for the cartel, it was in a place where we can't, you know, which is not good for us. And to me, when I'm talking to him, Dave, my party's like, no, no, we can't go there. We can't go there. So I said, you know, we're trying to negotiate back and forth. And I said, no, we need to be closer to the city

somewhere that offers us more protection and security. And then he says, well, you know, if we're seeing together, it's not going to end well for either one of us. And I'm thinking, like, too, I'm thinking, I have these visions now of us getting kidnapped or killed by the cartel. And so finally, we agree to meet out there. And I'll tell you, that was a pretty stressful meeting because while we're going out there, you know, we don't know if this guy's on the up and up. We don't know if we're going to get kidnapped or killed or tortured or all three, whether the police are going to come and arrest us. So that was a pretty hairy situation. And then, you know, just trying to, we would recruit or try to recruit a lot of these people who had charges in the U.S.

or who were under threat by the cartel. And a lot of times when we're doing that, you know, they have actual cicadios or assassins trying to locate these people and kill them. And then we're trying to meet with them to recruit them. So you're having to dodge a lot of these, and I outlined one of them in the book pretty well, um, dodged these assassins as well as cartel surveillance. So it was a constant stressful environment to operate in. Did you ever, did you ever find out that there was a direct hit put out on your life at all? Well, I was threatened, you know, a couple different times.

Uh, I actually have the recordings from where they called my, my phone and my apartment in Bogota, Dave's had people visit him at his apartment asking for him by name, you know, at 2 o'clock in the morning. Most dangerous country in the world, somebody, three people that you don't know come and ask for you, 2 o'clock in the morning. Continually being followed, intercept and trying to intercept our phones. So, yeah, but no, like, very overt, like, assassination or kidnapping attempts that we knew of. Does that still keep you up at night to this day? Like, is it hard to sleep? No, but I think about some of the stuff that we did, and I was like, man, I would never do that shit now, you know, but you're young. That was your job back then and you do it. But yeah, I don't know. I certainly wouldn't do it now.

And now there's no backup. Is there like if you're alone at night sleeping and there's an attack on you, how long would it even take if there is any? Our closest backup when we were staying in a safe house was 200 miles away. Wow. From the embassy. Now, I mean, if you could call maybe some. Colombian reinforcements, but, you know, who knows if they're corrupt or not. That was the problem. You didn't know who you were dealing with. So, but America-wise, you know, U.S. personnel-wise, yeah, it was the embassy 200 miles away. So after two and a half years, do you guys successfully take out all the leaders? Yes. And what happens after that? Do you stay or do you go back to the U.S.? We all rotate back to the U.S.? So you leave Cali and you go back to the U.S.?

Where do you go in the U.S.? When you go back? So after So first of all When we get to Cali Me and Dave We make a vow We say look We're not leaving this country

Until all four of these leaders Are either arrested or dead And so after Pacho Hareda surrenders In September of 96 We stick around for a few more months We're doing a few other things And then all of us rotate back

Everybody who worked on Cali We all rotated back I got promoted And I ended up in Washington D.C. Is that something you wanted? No not really but again, I'm not the office kind of guy. I'm not a suit and tie guy.

You know, the further away we are, as we call it from the puzzle palace, you know, the better. So I stay there for about two years and, you know, I don't like the work at all there. And then I go back to Columbia again the second time. I did a total of three tours. So the second time I go back in 1999. Is that hard to shift from being out in the field to a desk job, then back into the field? It's hard to adjust from being in the field and go into a desk job like that. It's not hard to go from the desk job back to the field because that's what you're wanting to do the whole time you're sitting there behind the desk, right?

But yeah, it is difficult because, you know, you join DEA, you join law enforcement for a reason. and you want to be out in the field. You don't want to be sitting in a little cubicle with a jack and tie on every day doing paperwork. But do they consider that like a promotion being at the desk? Yeah, well, it was a promotion. And to further your career in DEA, at some point you have to go to headquarters

and do your, like we say, your headquarters time in purgatory, as we call it. So my thought process was, and it was actually one of my, the guys I work with in Columbia, of Jerry Salome. He's like, dude, got to ride the wave while you can. Strike while the iron's hot. And I thought, yeah, it's pretty good advice. So what a better way to, you know, rotate out of Columbia, get a promotion, do your headquarters time, especially when you're young, right? So I got

to Washington. Let's see, I got there in 97, so I would have been. I got promoted. I was 32, so which was still pretty, it was pretty young to be, you know, a supervisor in DE. Why did you have to go back? Well, because if you put in for another position or you get promoted, then you leave the assignment that you're at. So when I was in Columbia, I put in to be promoted and I got a position, so I had to rotate back out. No, but then you went back to Columbia as a supervisor? Correct. Okay.

So you didn't step down, you're still in a supervisor role? Correct. Now, instead of being a field agent, like I was the first time, now I was running a group of agents that were basically doing the same thing. I was the supervisor of the group. And is that something that you can be trained for? Is that something you use your past knowledge mixed with learning on the job? Both. You use your past knowledge and experience that you gained while working in the field.

And then they send you to like these supervisory schools. We had to go to like a, back then it was a month where they teach different management stuff, things. But a lot of it's common sense, but it's still good to go through it. Going back there after a few years, is everything different like your assets, your connections, the people working there? No, which was a good point. Some of the assets that we work with were still there. We used.

Some of the police that we work with had now been promoted as well, and we're starting to rise up through the ranks. And, you know, you had a lot of good contacts. You had good resources. You gained more experience about what was really going on in Columbia, not just with the drug trafficking organizations, but the guerrilla activity, the political environment, which was a major, you know, hurdle to deal with down there.

So all of that prior stuff, which is why they sent me back the second time, was because I had a lot of that experience three years that I was there initially. Was the Cali Cartel still the main focus? No. Cali Cartel was not the main focus. By now, you had other organizations that were starting to rise up, specifically the North Valley Cartel, which, you know, they had made a power play a few times to take over.

after some of the leaders were arrested. They were responsible for killing Jose Santa Cruz. He escaped from prison. They shot him, killed him. They tried to assassinate William Rodriguez, who was Miguel Rodriguez's son. He took over after the four leaders were arrested. And even after Miguel was arrested, he took over.

They tried to kill him. And they ended up killing Paco Hedera in prison. So they made a major power play to take over is the main drug trafficking cartel in Colombia, as well as to gain control of the port of Buenaventura, which was on the Pacific Coast, which was one of the main transportation routes out of Columbia. So the Cali cartel wasn't necessarily able to survive or thrive without their four leaders anymore? No. No.

Is that unlike other cartels where you see you kind of take the head off the snake and it's still gross? Yes and no, but there was just so much enforcement activity going on against the Cali cartel and and during that time we had arrested a lot of their lieutenants a lot of their other major players not necessarily the the kingpins but these major players other ones had surrendered because they wanted to negotiate these sweet deals where they got a minimum prison time so with all of that that perfect storm this june the world comes to los angeles kick off fiefa world cup at the FIFA fan festival at the iconic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

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What was the hardest part about being a supervisor out there? Pretty much the same as being an agent, trying to deal with the corruption, trying to circumvent that, planning operations so that they weren't compromised, keeping your assets and stuff protected, and just knowing who to trust, man, trying to work with these groups.

Now, right before we left the first time, we were able to start the first DEA-sponsored vetted unit in Columbia, which means this was an S.I.U. A special investigative unit where we recruited these, you know, the best of the best, so to say, of the Colombian police. They were all polygraphed. They were drug tested. They went to training in the U.S. And we kind of molded that after the units that the CIA had. So once we started to get these vetted units that we could trust, you know, because they were all polygraphed, we started to have a little bit more of an impact, better results, and we could deal with people that we could, you know, as best you could trust.

Now, how long are you over there the second time? Just over three years, three years and two months. And you're in the supervisor role the whole entire time? Correct. What do you think was the hardest challenge for you over that period of time? Same thing, trying to work operations that didn't get compromised and to protect your assets. Are you a bigger target that time? You probably say that, you know.

Because you're more maybe well-known or people are probably, leaking information. Just being there for so long, you know, sooner or later, the bad guys, they all know who you are, you know, through corruption and whatnot. And obviously, the longer that you're there, the more chance you have of being identified and exposed. And what was the main purpose of your mission this time that you wanted to accomplish? To go after, there were some other major organizations that we had identified and was to go after

them. And we did, one of the big operations we did was called Operation Millennium, where, we indicted like 44 people, you know, the biggest drug traffickers that were operating in Columbia at that time, one of which was Fabio Ochoa, who from the Medell in Cartel fame, one of the Ochoa brothers, he was arrested during that operation. And by this point, is there extradition? Because you said indicted. There are. So this is what happens. So Columbia has this strange relationship with extradition. They have it. You know, there's violence. Escobar kills people. They don't have it. They go back.

part of the reason why, or the main reason Escobar surrenders in 1991 is because they assure him that he's not going to get extradited. So there's no extradition up until mid-1997. Columbia passes new legislation. And it says that Colombian drug traffickers are now eligible for extradition for crimes committed after December 17, 1997. So anything after that date? new charges, you can be extradited. So you guys can't use any of the stuff you've accumulated on them before? Nothing.

Has to be all new information, all new evidence. And then does the evidence have to be that they traffic drugs into the United States or committed a crime on the United States? At that time, yes. But there are some other laws that come into play, specifically 959 laws that say that, and this is how the North Valley cartel tried to circumvent that because we debriefed a lot of the main leaders of the North Valley cartel afterwards, and they were saying, hey, man, I didn't send any cocaine to the U.S.

I sent it all to Mexico. I say, well, dude, where do you think the cocaine goes after it goes to Mexico? It goes to the U.S., right? So because of that, we're able to charge these people with, you know, $9.59. How are the courts out there? In the U.S.? No, in Colombia. Well, they're horrible.

I mean, you know, less than 1% of homicides get solved. If you surrender here, here's a good example. So if you're a Colombian drug trafficker and you surrender, right? You get a third off your sentence for cooperating. And you get a third off your sentence for the mere act of surrendering. So you can basically get two thirds of your sentence reduced. by just doing those two things. So, you know, simple math, if you say you get your 20-year sentence, you're looking six, seven years in prison.

A lot of times these guys get out sooner than that. And are they always approving extradition, or is it a fight for the U.S.? As long as you meet certain criteria, they'll approve it. So the judges will work with you? Yeah. Is it a long process from the time they get arrested? Yeah, usually from initially when it started, it was well over a year. from when you were arrested

until the time you were extradited. Depending on how much you fight it or what you call it these teutalas, you follow these lawsuits, it can drag on for a while. But the normal extradition time would be eight to 12 months. And do you accompany them on these trips

or are there different agents involved with that? Both. Sometimes we take them back on our aircraft. Sometimes we take them back on commercial flights. It just depends on who the person is and, you know, the level of security that we need. Oh, they'll put them on a commercial flight? Sometimes they have, yeah.

Probably not the heavy hitters. Not as much, yeah, we don't do that as much anymore. We have our own aircraft. We have marshals. We have access to different aircraft that we can use. So you accomplish those mission objectives and then you come back to the U.S.? So after that time, I rotate back to the U.S. in 2002. I work in South Carolina.

I get a cup of coffee there. And then I get promoted again, and I go back to Columbia in January of 2004 as the assistant regional director for the Andean region. And what does that mean? So I was the number two person in Colombia. And under our area, our AOR, we had Columbia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru. So I was the assistant regional director for those countries. And is that more office-based out there? Or are you in the feeling?

Yeah, by this time, the higher you go, the best involved you are with operational stuff. And you're still young at that point? Or did you do a lot of time in South Carolina? No, I did just over like 15 months in South Carolina. So you're still in your 30s when you get up to that role? When I get to, yeah, yeah, I think I'm 39 when I go back. Was that uncommon or common to be that young and at that level?

No, I mean, it was not that common. I mean, obviously there were people that were my age that were promoted, but generally it would take a little bit longer. So this last time out there did it feel different because you weren't out in the field as much? Yeah, it's never fun when you're sitting there behind the desk. But you're still coordinating stuff and you're doing stuff, but you're not out there running around, you know, in Cal, you're Medellin or up on the coast, you know, which is the fun stuff, right? you're out there doing the actual work. You're more of a facilitator and a manager at that point, doing a lot of liaison with the national police.

But see, at that time, though, the good thing was, is by this time now in 2004, in that time frame, even a couple of years, the people that I worked with, like the cops, now they're at very high levels, right? One of the guys I work with is now the Director General of the National Police. He's in charge of the entire national.

National Police. So I have very good contacts. I have very good liaison and we're able to get a lot of stuff done just because of the relationships that we've built over many, many years. Now, were you getting called, there are people from your unit getting called to go to Iraq and Afghanistan at all during that time period? You could put in if you were an agent to go there. We had some people that did that to Afghanistan. Did the wars affect what you were doing over in Columbia? No. There are two entirely different things. And how long were you out there this last time for? Almost six and a half years. Oh, wow. That was your longest. Yeah, it was my longest one. Was that hard being out there for that long? Yeah, it was toward the end because at that point,

you're kind of getting, you're getting worn down and grinded down by the system, you know, the corruption. But the work was good. We were working all kind of different cases. But, you know, at some point in time, it's good to get back to the U.S. I did a total of over 12 years in Columbia. So it's, I don't know if it's the longest time ever spent in Columbia, but it's definitely up at the top for a DEA agent to have worked in Columbia that long. But I was ready to come back to the States. When you're there for six years, six and a half years, do you get to come home here for holidays to the U.S.? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. So you're not there the whole six years? Correct. It'll be kind of in and out. Yes. And when you're,

higher up in the rankings, do you get yourself like a house in Columbia or is it still not the best living? Apartments. Okay. Everything because, you know, Bogota's like New York City, right? So everything is, it's vertical. And do you get time off when you're in a higher position out there? Yeah. I mean, you get a little more because you have more seniority.

The longer you're on, the more time you get. But it's pretty much the same. When you look back on it, 12 years seems like a long time. How do you feel about that? It's a crazy amount of time. I can't believe I went. back three different times to do stuff. But you have a saying in DEA too is, you know, timing is everything, right kind of right place, right time. And I've always been, I've been fortunate

enough to be in the right place at the right time. I've had some good breaks in my career. So it's funny just how things kind of worked out. When I left Columbia the first time, I never thought I would go back. It just happened because of personnel changes and some stuff that happened. where I went back the second time. And then the third time when I went back, you know, same thing. It was one of my good friends I had worked with in Miami when I was there, got the regional director job. He'd never worked in Columbia. He didn't know anything about, I mean, he knew about it, but he didn't have experience working in Columbia. So he asked me if I would go back, you know, to kind of help because I had been there so much. And so again, I never planned on going back, but it's just funny how it

worked out. And were there still people from your first year there all the way on your last year? Or was Is everyone gone? Agent-wise, no. Police-wise, military-wise, yes. Like I said, those guys had all risen up through the ranks. And was it hard to deal with new different types of agents that you had never worked with before? Sometimes, because there were a few people that got selected that, for example, just do a hypothetical one, who would come from Detroit. Never been outside the U.S. in their lives, you know, worked domestically, never traveled.

And then they get down to Columbia or for any country in South or Central America, for that matter. And, you know, we'd say, like, dude, you're not in Kansas anymore. This is a completely different environment. And they're not used to that. Like, you know, hey, where's the drive-toe? Where's the McDonald's? You know, there's certain things that you can't do in these foreign countries that you take for granted in the convenience sake in the U.S. But so, yeah, that was an adjustment for them coming.

And also for us because, well, dude. you got to be out in the street your Spanish isn't that good so yeah it was there were some challenges what do you think you missed the most from working overseas yeah being an agent not a supervisor working out in the street and especially that time working in in collie because you know looking back on that that was uh you know you're on your own you know you're staying in a safe house you're pretty much setting your own schedules you're doing your own stuff you don't have anybody really telling you what to do. We're figuring it out as we go. And, you know, a lot of the stuff that we did, we never sought approval for because we knew that if we asked, we would get shot down.

So just having that freedom to act independently and unilaterally, I miss that. What about culture-wise from the U.S.? What did you miss when you were out there? The convenience, like we said, that was the one thing. But that was a good thing about living in Miami at the time and working in Miami because we had traveled extensively on cases throughout Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. We had done a lot of investigations. I'd done a lot of undercover work in different countries. So just being able to travel and to experience those cultures while you were there, by the time I got to Columbia, it was like, this is a breeze. This is, you know, no, no adjustment necessary. How did you know it was time to come back after that

last stint? Well, because, It's a good question because our tour is overseas. The maximum you could do is six years. So I was at the maximum. I couldn't do any more time. I had to rotate back the last time I was there. And where do you go when you come back? Phoenix.

Oh, okay. And do you retire from Phoenix? I retire out of Phoenix. How long were you in Phoenix for? Just under four years. So this was like 2010, 2012? 2014, I retired. What was the drugs?

situation like in Phoenix or in Arizona at that point when you got back there? Very busy. You know, Phoenix is a border or Arizona is a border state with Mexico. So you had a lot of the Mexican cartel activity in Arizona, a lot of meth, a lot of coke, a lot of money moving through there. So very busy environment back then. Do you think the, the cartel is just as dangerous on U.S. soil as it is in other countries? No, because you can't get away.

as freely and with what they do overseas, right? In Colombia or Mexico, with the corruption, they're able to get away with a lot more. They know that they're probably not going to get arrested. Here in the U.S., you know, they're going to get tracked down and they're going to go to prison here sooner or later, but they don't have that level of protection and corruption that they do overseas. Do you think they still exhibit the same level of violence or do you think they're more afraid to do that here? No, I mean, obviously they're, you know, with each other or, with turf wars or against informants, we have brutally violent here in the U.S.

Was it hard to make the decision to retire? No. You were done? It was pretty easy, yeah. You know, I always said that, you know, once I was got to my age where I can retire, so with the federal government, or at least if you're in 1811, which is, you know, a federal agent, like an armed federal agent, you can retire with 20 years of service. at a minimum of 50, or you can retire 25 years of service at any age.

So for me, since I came on so young, 25 years, I can retire, no matter how old I was. And I always said once I get to that point, I'm going to go out and do something different. So I did. I went into the private sector. I worked at a couple financial institutions doing anti-money laundering stuff. And then, you know, they came up with this idea, Netflix, to do this show called Narcos. And I got involved with that as well. So you couldn't be on the job and do that. So I had retired by then anyway. Did they approach you when they first crafted the idea or was it not until later on?

No, not until later on. The genesis of that was through Steve Murphy and Javier Pena to go out, the Pablo Escobar and the Medell thing. So that was the genesis of Narcos. And then they saw what kind of a hit and a success that that produced. And then they started to expand and go on kind of in chronological orders to what happened next. Because I know Steve was kind of hesitant to do it in the beginning. And he had to go to a dinner and they had to convince him to do it. Yeah, because, you know, and he's right in this respect because even I've been hit up for a couple different things.

And, you know, you kind of play along and it doesn't work out. And he gets strung along. And like Steve said, he was like, you know what, we've been down that road before and it's never worked out. So, you know, thanks, but no thanks kind of thing. But, you know, they were persistent with Steve. And I think they had a good story and they were willing to work with him, him and Javier. And that's how that came about. Do you feel like you were accurately depicted in it?

Yes and no. You know, one of the big things in Narco season three is, you know, Pedro Pascal, who plays Javier Pena. You know, Javier wasn't there for the Calais Cartel take down. But, you know, obviously Netflix saw what a star Pedro Pascal was. So you got to carry that star power over into Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but That's weird. Okay, one judgment.

Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Into season three. But the guy, the person who played me, Michael Stalled David, yeah, I thought he did a great job. How often do you think about your days in the DEA?

I mean, I know you wrote a book and you're doing podcast talking about it, but just when you're sitting there, maybe, you know, like playing golf or something, whatever you'd like to do. Not as much as you would probably think. I mean, you know, at certain points, you know, something jumps into your mind and you think about it or you hear something on the news or, or, you know, you get a call about a podcast. You think about it. But, I mean, it's not something that I really dwell on. Do you ever look back when you have a career that long in a certain area and think about if you had done a different career or something differently? Well, I think about what would happen if I ever became a lawyer, you know, an attorney. And I thought, man, I'd probably be

pretty bored, you know, after doing what we did. But, you know, I think I made the right choice. Like I said, I was always one of those people that I didn't want to sit in an office. I wanted to be outside no matter what it was, you know, and DEA kind of fit that bill perfectly. Coming up in your era and the DEA, we're agents writing books and doing like interviews or anything like that, or is it pretty secretive? Not really. Well, remember, DEA wasn't started until 72. So you had a few guys when they retired wrote books, but I don't know if that the popularity was there, right? So I think over time with some of these stories that have come out, that it's gained more popularity and you see more and more people, you know, telling their story and writing

books. And I think it's become easier now with books. You know, you can self-publish stuff. So you see a lot more books out there now by, you know, law enforcement, even a lot of military guys as well. Was it hard for you to write the book? No. It was pretty easy because, like I always say, it's not like you have to sit around, man, I've got to think of a good story to write, character development. I mean, just tell it the way it happened, right? And, you know, we've gone over this stuff a lot, so a lot of it was still fresh in your mind. We had a lot of notes. We had a lot of reports. Dave kept a journal, a calendar book, so he had a lot of stuff. So it was just pretty easy to sit. Plus, after doing the Narcos show and recounting everything, you know,

you just sit down and try to get it in a chronological order and in a way that's kind of entertaining to the reader. So I thought it was pretty easy to write the book, you know, editing and going back and having to cut stuff out, that's a lot more difficult. Did Dave retire at the same time as you did? No, and that's a good question. And that's why when you watch Narcos season three, my partner's name in the show is Daniel Ben Ness, not Dave Mitchell, because Dave was still working for DEA at the time, so they couldn't use his name. And Dave didn't retire until the end of, I think, 2021. And it was actually his idea to write the book. So that's how that Hulk came about. He retired. And he was like, hey, man, I want to get in on some of this action too. Let's write a book.

When he was still in and you were retired, what he call you and kind of, you know, try to rupe you back in or make you feel bad that you had retired and he was still in the action? Not as much make me feel bad. He was like, oh man, I'm not getting to be a part of that. That's not right, man. I said, well, dude, retire and we can do it. I say, no, I got to keep working. Are you guys still close to this day? Yeah, we talk. Yeah, I talked to him actually two days ago. That's awesome. That's like Steve and Hobby are still very close. Yeah.

What do you think is the biggest lesson your career has taught you? That's a good question. I always expect the. unexpected. Have a backup plan no matter what you do. Have a plan A, a plan B, and a plan C. A couple instance in the book where we talk about, you know, things that go south, being in some pretty hairy situations and having to revert to a plan B and sometimes even a plan C to get out of it. leadership, you know, courage, working under pressure. You know, I think a lot of those tours working in Columbia, it taught me a lot of life lessons as well as, you know,

don't put all your eggs in one basket kind of thing, right? If you have, deal with problems as they come up, that's another one. You see like the history of Columbia too, where you have, you know, the Medellin cartel, you take them down, and then you got to Cali, and then you have the North Valley, then you have the paramilitaries, then you have the FARC and these guerrilla groups, is that as problems arise, you've got to deal with them, right?

Because small problems become big problems, and it's a lot harder to deal with a big problem than it is a small problem. So you've got to deal with that stuff as it arises. Don't put it off. It's another lesson I learned. Well, Chris, I appreciate you coming on the show today. Oh, thanks, Ian. It's been great.

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much for coming out here, and it's great to meet you. Thank you, too. And we'll have the link to your book in the description in this episode. Awesome, thanks