Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Cartel Smuggler Makes Millions, Flips to Feds, & Get's Caught! | Dr Hal Bradley

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Dr. Hal Bradley was a lieutenant in the Sinaloa Cartel during the 70s and 80s before his life took a wild turn. Dr. Hal's Linkshttps://www.hostingauthors.com/authors/DrHalF*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code COX15 at theperfectjean.nyc/COX15 #theperfectjeanpod Go to https://www.Qualialife.com/true for up to 50% off and use code true at checkout for an additional 15% off. For your convenience Qualia Senolytic is also available at select GNC locations near you.Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [e-mail] you extra clips and behind the scenes content?Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime 📧Sign up to my newsletter to learn about Real Estate, Credit, and Growing a Youtube Channel: https://mattcoxcourses.com/news 🏦Raising & Building Credit Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/credit 📸Growing a YouTube Channel Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/yt🏠Make money with Real Estate Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/reFollow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69

I had Kingpin status. And Chapo at that time was just a guy like the rest of us. You're not going to be able to walk away from this. There was a $100,000 bounty on my head. I'm going to have to go to the DOJ. I've tried to get away from the cartels. They're not going to let me go. How would you like to go to work and make your careers?

And these agents, unfortunately, were on the payroll of the similar to the cartel. And this is how I was found out. I got caught smoking a cigarette on campus. And back in those years, Matt, they kicked you out of school for a semester for a violation of something is true. trivial with cigarette smoking. But my mother was working full time. My parents had divorced by then. So she was raising three kids by herself. She didn't want me wandering the streets why she had to work. So she had a friend that owned a mining corporation down in Durango, Mexico.

They made the decision to fly me down there. So we flew into Mazatlan, Senaloa State. And we were met there by two of his workers from the mining company that took us up to the state of Durango from Senaloa. This is the part that just kills me, by the way. At that time, was Mexico just a lot less dangerous of a place? It was. It was a, it was a, it was an amazing time to be down there in the 60s. It was just starting to blossom into some of the criminality issues that were confronted with down there today. But basically, uh, where I was at, up in Walterio and then two clicks further to the mining camp, there was only a couple hundred people in the village. They only had one power line running through the village. And all,

of the housing there were adobe shacks and it was extremely primitive mat everybody bathed in a public pond a pond and uh the women washed the clothes in the stream that flowed into the pond and on the weekends they would get together and have festive activities you know with big cookoffs and the men would be drinking and the young kids like all of us would be out there swimming in the pond and it was just a great memory, a great time in my upbringing. But the mining camp was not only producing zinc and silver, the mining camp was a front operation for brown production. And this was controlled by, back then Matt, they didn't have cartels yet, but they have for criminal organizations in Mexico. And you're probably aware of that history. So this was probably

within four to five years before the cartels actually started getting in formation. But anyway, when all my friends are still home riding their Schwinn bicycles with apanger handlebars and banana seats, I was down there riding a burrow, and I was riding in the back country outside of the mine, and I would take the trails that would take me along the poppy fields, and in the innocence of my youth, I never realized that that was. was opium production to manufacture around when I just saw these massive fields of really beautiful flowers and then we had the Chihuahari Indians and they lived up in the mountains above the fields where the poppies were growing and they grew grass for the family that controlled that

area, the crime family that I later became attached to. And it was just an amazing time in history It was amazing time to be 15 years old. The people that had the mind, they were organized criminals. And the man that took me down there was deeply connected. He was a Sicilian out of Northern California. It's where he was based. But he had strong criminal ties all the way back to New York. And he had always seen something different from my brothers and my sister.

All three of them, you know, have now been in marriages over 40 years, We're all in our 70s. They have never been lawbreakers. They lived really good, decent lives. And I guess it was just my destiny to walk that path. And Mr. Siri saw that. And so when we went down there, he had advised me that I was going to have a bodyguard that would be my protector for the entire time I was in country.

And he also advised me to not discuss anything about what I may or may not observe. you know, like writing letters to mom and saying, oh, I just saw the poppy fields or oh, the Indians are smoking pot, things like that. I was adjoined. And memo enforced it. And I had been in country a couple months. Oh, yeah, I should say that not one person in the village spoke English, Matt. Not one.

And I'd never even heard Spanish in my life. This is 1960s. I'm up above Seattle, very, very minimum Latin American population up here. And so I had a culture shock. dilemma going on for the first probably six to eight weeks of being in country but every time memo memo was your bodyguard he was my bodyguard and memo did speak english and memos was a he was a very serious man a very dangerous and violent man and knew that his life depended upon my safety while i was in country so he kept a pretty close eye on me man and uh i recall one time we were in the

cafeteria having something deep before the workers went out and I took off for the day on my borough to go exploring. And this guy came into the cafeteria and walked up to a guy that was sitting at the table right across from me but by me and put a gun to his head and blew his brains out. Now, bear in my mind, Matt, I'm 15 years old and the worst thing I'd ever seen up to that point in my life was a fist fight on a Friday night at a cave party somewhere, that kind of thing. So Mimmo grabbed my arm, set me back down because I was reacting physically to what I had just witnessed. told me to stay down, stay where I was at, grabbed the guy and took him outside and talked to him. And then Mimel at the door flagged me to come outside. And he explained to me, he says, whatever you see down here, he says, don't ever, ever tell anybody about what you observe. And

he said, this is a different culture. This is a different way of living than you're used to. So you need to get your mindset in that you're going to see things and you're going to have to leave those things forever down here. And up until I hit 65 years of age, I never discussed it, never told anybody about any of it until I started writing my books. And I believe I did mention a Fox in the Lions Den, which is my autobiography. But I also have 11 other episodes that are action-adventure novels that are called Codame the Fox series. And they entail my work, the 17 years I worked as a contractor for the Department of Justice.

We'll get into that a little bit later. So I was in country a little over a year down there where my brother had been wounded in action in Vietnam. He was at Bremerton Naval Hospital, so I can remember it coming home and going over to Bremerton and seeing my brother in that ward, and he was recovering from combat wounds. He'd been shot in the back. And I looked at all the guys on the ward mat, and these guys are like 19 years old, And some of them had napalm, permanent napalm damage to their bodies. I mean, they were all, you know, pretty chewed up.

And I became angry. I was very, very upset with seeing my brother wounded and then looking at these other men. And I decided to do something about it. So I went to the community college in the town we lived at. And I got my GED. And two weeks before I was 17, we signed me up to take my vows at the age of 17 and then enter into the armed forces. I joined the Army. I went to Fort Knox, Kentucky for my basic in November of 1971. Vietnam is still going on full bore. And I was sent to Tigerland in Fort Polk, Louisiana,

for my AIT training, which is advanced individual training. And Tigerland was a special camp. It was a camp where we had green berets that came in from Vietnam, and I mean just came in from Vietnam, and we were going through a very specialized type of training. Now, I'm 17 years old. I'm not even 17 and a half yet, and I'm in Tiger Land, and I'm going through prisoner war camp training, jungle survival training, I'm going through special weapons training, and just a basic combat discipline, and relating to escape and evasion trainings, these things of this nature. So at 17, things really implant and you take a strong focus to knowledge as it comes into your life. And right after AIT was finished, I had an offer to go to paratrooper school at the airborne

training back in Fort Penning, Georgia. So I jumped out of bus and I went to Fort Benning and did my zero week, ground week, tower week, jump week, and got my silver wings on my chest. And by now I'm 17 and a half years old. And I'm sporting silver wings on my chest. and I'm just so proud and so trained and so ready. And they were separating some of us at that time at Fort Dix, New Jersey, to fly out. Some were going to Vietnam, and some of us got sent to Germany. And I ended up transferring and going to Germany instead of to the war. They got lucky.

Yeah, yeah, and no, one part of me was resentful because my brother had been wounded in action, and that's what I joined up in the first place was to go and fight. But the other part of it was, When I was in Germany, which I was there for 19 months, Matt, we pulled a guard duty up on the Czechoslovakian border, the missile institution. I mean, we were still actively needed and ready. And you've got to realize I had been to Berlin.

I've been to Checkpoint Charlie, where the separation of East Berlin and West Berlin corridor was the passage route for it. I've stood up on the wall and looked across into East Berlin and remember full well, you know, the darkness, the dismal look to it, the whole nine yards. and it gave me a format and an understanding of just exactly what freedom is and what we needed to be fighting for in our military time and service.

And I took real hard to it. But the culture was something I learned how to speak German, not fluently, but good enough to get around, and was able to go to Holland. And I went to Amsterdam for New Year's 72, 73, and down to Paris, France. My father came over for 30 days and to, take me around the war sites that he had been during World War II, which was fascinating.

And my dad was the day after they liberated Dachau. My dad was an MP that brought the photographer's and the press people to photograph what they had just liberated there. He was also a Marine Corps, I mean, excuse me, U.S. Army military police inside of the courtroom at the Nuremberg Trials. And if you ever look at the film of the Nuremberg Trials, And you look at the two MPs standing in the back of the room by the door. My father is the one to the left, which I...

Really? Isn't that cool? That's pretty cool. Yeah, I love World War II. I'm a huge World War II buff. Like, I, listen, I've probably watched every documentary on World War II on YouTube, at least once. You and me both, brother. You and me both.

Go ahead. Did you watch Netflix? Like, Netflix? Yeah. They have a great series called, um, I think it's called Hitler's Hinchman. Yeah, the inter-sinctum. Yeah, it's really...

Yeah, it is. Yeah, he didn't do too well in Berlin when the Russians came in, did he? You know, it was... That's interesting. It really shows you what happens when you surround yourself by yes men. Absolutely correct. It shows you how easy a country can fall under a dictatorial rule, just by the snap of a finger. and a concept taken out of context, simple.

Yeah. But anyway, well, my brother was also in Germany at the same time. He would come back. He was still in the Marine Corps. He stayed 23 years. And he worked in the U.S. Embassy in Frankfurt, where my father flew in. I was in Bodkutsnark at the time with the 8th in Patriot Division. And they granted me a 30-day leave because my dad was there.

And, you know, that was really significant. And he took us all the way to Linz, Austria, where he had. been in. And that's where Hitler was born, was in Lens. And we got to see all of these sites. And my brother was reminding me recently about when we went by the Dachau Museum. And my father said, no, I can't go in there. I can't take a look at that again. So we went ahead and bypass that museum. But we were in Birches Garden at Hitler's Eagles Nest. We did that whole thing and saw Hare Goring's buildings. And it was fascinating. And it was really fascinating, Matt, because we were, We were with somebody who had been there in the war.

So that time passed. My father went back. At that point, I was transferred out to bomb holder, which was a hardliner unit. And what they were doing was they were concealing Vietnam, guys coming out of non that had brown-born addiction problems from all the China white usage and stuff like that. And they were hiding them there. And then actual congressional investigation was activated while I was in that part of the country. And I remember the paranoia that some of these guys had in their heads.

And I ended up being forced to use Browns. And that's how I became an addict in my early years of life. Because if you didn't, then they didn't trust you. If they didn't trust you, they'd probably kill you. Because these guys were really, really messed up bad coming out of NOM. And they were supposed to go there for rehabilitative purposes to prepare them to go back to the United States and not put a black eye on the military for, what had happened to so many of them.

So I did have an adverse exposure to what Vietnam did at the time the Vietnam War was still going on. And I got injured on a jump, and I was Medevac State Side ETS out of the Army of March 14th in 1974. And I can remember we flew into Walter Reed, and we land there, and I'm watching these Hercules, C-130's coming in, and they're offloading the flag-draped coffins.

And I'll never forget that as long as I live. The enormous impact it had on all of us that were deplaning from medical flights and having to stop, you know, right there in the middle of the airport, why they paraded these coffins through there. And it really is a site you don't forget. But I was transferred from there to Procedio, San Francisco, and dealt with the problem. I was in Presidio, got my leg all fixed up, and then I went to Martinez VA Hospital, and from there I ETSed out of the military. I decided to stay in California,

so I ended up in Sacramento for a number of years, but then I moved up to Mendocino County and got involved a little bit in the Emerald Triangle activity. And on my show, the Crisis Victory podcast show, I actually do an episode about the Emerald Triangle and the history of it and how a lot of the nom pets were coming out of nom and they were heading up there and good god everybody setting booby traps and living like they're still in the jungle and war in those years you're talking uh 1975 76 77 but at the same time in the first couple years that I got out there in early 74 I took my GI Bill Matt and I enrolled at Sacramento City College and in the fall of the year during the Christmas vacation

I decided to go back to Mexico and visit my village and that was probably the fatal air that altered the path of my life permanently I went down there and the people that controlled the mine and had power over the village and everything the criminal family which are now known as an actual cartel and I'm not going to say their name I never have given them up

and it's this one of the boss as his son was with me during the time I lived down there when I was 15 and 16 and he said listen we need you to get a car come back with it we'll cut some compartments in it and we'll fill it full of grass we're going to make a whole bunch of money and this is just you and me brother you know it's not going to be my family controlling it just us us doing it so I said okay yeah whatever that sounds like a cool thing to do and went back up I picked up a Ford LTD which is what they told me to get. I drove it down there and they put it in a shop and they cut all these cool compartments in my car and packed 80 kilos in there. And bear in mind, Matt, we're only

paying $20 a kilo in 1974 and 75 and 76 from the Choirie Indians up there in the village. So I got back up there and I'm getting 650 a pound, which is roughly $1,200, a little over $1,200 a kilo. And I've got 80 kilos that we paid less than two grand for, including gas and the car to get me there and back and uh just made a ton of money overnight and uh so i mean this is before like this is before it was such a huge problem right like it you know they're not enough log sniffing and pulling over and they just did you pretty much drive through or just stop and show your ID and drive on in or was it you know what matt that's an excellent question i'm so glad you ask that because the audience needs to understand in the mid 70s yes they did have dogs and yes they did uh take

the time to study and observe somebody. But the village taught me how to act with that. They said, just as soon as you hit the 28 kilometer zone, once you pass through there, scrape off that Teresa sticker. Because the 28 kilometer zone is not a checkpoint. It's 28 kilometers

before you hit the bury, the border, when you're coming out of the interior of Mexico. And that's where you show your paperwork for the vehicle and stuff that nature. And then they just flight you through that one. But as you approach the border, what I would do is I would scrape off the terista sticker and i would get the karetha sticker what is that well it's a

sticker that shows that you were inside the interior of mexico they put it on your car i don't know if they do that anymore but they certainly did it back then because we used to have to do uh get rid of it and have somebody wash the car you know and uh pick up a couple little souvenir knicknacks and a gift shop there in no gales or whereas or wherever i was crossing that particular time the first time was no gallows. And throw them in the back seat of the car, spray deodor it on your face so you don't sweat accidentally. The body will sometimes react and make responses that you're unaware of. And this is what they schooled me on when I was down to get in the car loaded. And then they said, you got to wear sunglasses that are too dark. They're not too light. Everybody needs a good pair

of jeans. What I like about the perfect gene is that the moment you put them on, they feel like sweatpants. They don't ever pinch or bind up. As a matter of fact, they're super stretchy. There's never any point where you feel like they're binding up on you or they're tight or they pinch you or anything like that. They're comfortable in pretty much any position that you sit in. They're really great. They're comfortable and they look great. Normally, a good pair of jeans cost anywhere between $150 to $200. But the perfect jeans are reasonably priced at $79.99. For a limited time, our listeners get 15% off their first order plus free shipping at The Perfect Gene.N.YC or Google the Perfect Gene and use promo code Cox15 for 15% off.

That's 15% off for new customers at The Perfect Gene.NYC with promo code Cox15. Please support our channel and tell them we sent you. Fuck your khakis. Get the perfect genes. And whatever you do, maintain focus and look that agent in the eye and don't break eye contact with him. And just stay calm and you'll be fine. And after that first one, brother, I've never been caught. I've done probably close to 70 crossings in my lifetime.

Never once had a problem. But it's all about attitude. It's all about following that discipline. And brother, being in the Army in my younger years, that's where the discipline was formed. It gave me that edge that maybe a lot of, other people starting in that kind of thing would fail from. I knew how to

take orders. I understood the chain of command. I understood discipline. And I understood the importance of being discrete, the discretionary warfare, so to speak. So I got through that. That first time went up there. My God, we made just a ton of money. And

some of my friends I was in college with said, God, man, can we get in on this thing you got going on? And I ended up hooking up two other cars, Matt, with guys like me we went down there and we started running three car loads up there at a time. Now, in the town of Winters, right above Sacramento on Interstate 5, I knew a guy that was really large in the Mexican marijuana movement at that time.

I'd been introduced to him through someone that was buying pounds on my first run. And for the rest of the time that I did it, I only had that one guy as my customer. And he would pay us for the entire load when we brought him in cash up front. He didn't pay the full retail, of course, but we were. still making an enormous amount of money. And I only had to deal with one person. So my risk of rest was extremely minimized. And that went on for a couple years. And then the Fed swooped in on him and removed him. And as fast as you're making money in the narcotics business, you can lose all that money just as fast. And if you don't stay in your game and keep the supplemental flow

of capital coming, you're going to be ass broke again, which is exactly what happened to all three of We ended up broke again, and we're back in college, living on almost $400 a month on the GI Bill type thing. Anyway, 1979 rolls around. I just come back from Mendocino, County, Yukonia, California. By now I've got a, I picked up an old Cessna 172 Skyhawk, a little four-place plane, did my VFR certification, not instrument flight, but visual flight ratings. And so I started flying and getting used to doing the flying. I think when we had discussed this earlier,

I explained to you how it would take a few gas tank stops just to get the thing down to Arizona. Yeah, I did. But we got a 185 later. That was no problem. It flew a lot better, more range, whatever. But I got the last time I took a car in New Mexico, this was, I believe, 79.

Now they had blow. And this was our first exposure, Matt, to the industry. And instead of hugs and handshakes and peace and love and everybody's got that hippie mentality, you know, we're pulling up to the village or outside of the village to the garage where they would load the cars. And I'm looking, these guys have all got AK-47 automatic weapons, some assholes and they're screaming at everybody giving orders and making us, you know, feel like we were in an instant threat, immediate threat. And this is you're not doing more than no more.

You're going to be carrying blow to the United States. And by then I'd already had the plane. So I explained them, well, I got a plane. And they say, well, we got a route. And the route was the Yaki Indian Reservation, which was in Arizona and Mexico both. And they had open canyons where I could do canyon flying through their non-detectable during those years. And so I got the car load out of there, said, Jesus Christ, what have we gotten ourselves into? This is really, like, dangerous.

These people are violent. They're hostile. They're threatening. And, I mean, like a light switch, brother. The industry changed overnight for me. But instead of having a few hundred thousand dollars, where all of a sudden having multi-millions of dollars, just an instant transition.

And with that comes to threat of robbery. Of course, a larger arrest threat. You have to be responsibility for millions of dollars, right from day one to people that will flat out, cut your head off, throw you in an acid bath. They'll do horrible things to you. Columbia trained the cartels in the art of torture techniques. Before that, if you had a problem with a cartel,

because now we have cartels. I can fully remember people being put on their knees and shot in the head right in front of me. I've seen it multiple times. They didn't do what later years we started observing and do. I once told you about watching three-wise. while or Zena Man Alive. And that was, yeah, that was mainly just a lesson.

We were flying to Kuliakonda negotiate getting more kilos and me and my friend Pat Grady, may rest in peace. And instead we get taken up to a ranch outside of Latuna, which is where Chappell was born. And we look over there, there's this corral. There's this guy on his knees in the middle of the corral, and he's all tied up, and I'm thinking, oh, my God, what's going on here? And Pat's looking at me thinking, oh, gee,

Jesus, what the hell have we got ourselves into? And so the guy that, the two men that drove us up there to the ranch, took us over to the corral. And that's when they released three Wattweilers and ate the guy alive right in front of us. And I can still see it as if I just saw it yesterday. And this is 30 years ago. But we got taken into the ranch house and the heffey, the boss of the ranch. Why did they, yeah, why did they kill that guy?

They killed him because he was drawing attention. into the cartels by extravagantly spending money, which is exactly what we were doing. We're buying tons of gold chains by that time and brand new cars, expensive cars. We're buying real estate like crazy and have no explanation to where a single dollar of our money is coming from, which in my later investigation against me in life, Operation Northern Cartel, I mean Northern Exposure, excuse me. One of the customs agents told me that that was the gateway into getting into me because there was no track record showing legitimate funds.

Now, you've worked in the money criminal industry. You understand how important it is to hide money. And I don't know your whole story. Well, to source money, you know, money laundering. So they have a, they start looking at you. They're like, yeah, he's got an extravagant lifestyle, but he's also flipping houses or has, you know, 20 or, you know, whatever, 30 apartment buildings or so there's at least some source of income. Exactly. And that's exactly why they had us down there and did that that day because we were spending money hand over fist.

We were now blow dealers and we're making, Jesus, 20 times the amount of money we were making a few years early in the pot business. And we just didn't have control. So they taught us control. But what I'm trying to explain to the audience is this is the veracity of how the cartels had manifested into such a violent way of doing things. when they set an example somebody died that was the example and i've seen it more than once but that was uh that was one time in particular i thought i'd share on your show um no HR department they don't they don't write you up and put something in your file and say hey two more write-ups and you're fired yeah they don't do that brother but uh at that point it was also the time

when they said well you're not going to come down here and pick up loads anymore you're done flying you're done we need you state side we need you to develop the corridor in the Pacific Northwest. And these orders came down. Now, El Chapo Guzman is now forming the Senaloa drug cartel in partnership with some other people. But Rafael Caracanero, who was from Senaloa, he was the main grower in Mexico during that time. And Angel Felix Gallardo, who became the godfather of all godfathers. He was the one that formed the syndicate bringing all cartels, major cartels, excuse me,

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Sinsamea is what they called it back in that day. And the problem in the earlier is when we'd be buying kilos, they would be full of seeds and big stocks and a lot of leafy material in them. And there was no buds. That's also why they were $20 a kilo back in the early 70s. But what he grew was significantly better. And it actually became Matthew competitive

to the Northern California markets, which by now were in full operation. You know, the Humboldt County, Medicino County, Trinity County, the Emerald Triangle. And so there was a competition base there, and the cartel says, oh, yeah, no problem. We'll just send some Mexicans up to Northern California and we'll start our own operations. That's how they became competitive to that specific strain. But Raphael was a grower, and he loved growing his grass. And, I mean, he grew conservatively in the hundreds of tons before,

Special Agent Keegan Camerina came across the operation out in the middle of the desert and had it taken down. That was the beginning of the end also for the stability of Rafa. And I knew Rafa personally. I met Angel Felix Garado a couple times. I didn't know him other than Signore. You know, he was the boss and shook his hand. And Chappo at that time was just a guy like the rest of us when I first met him. And yeah, the blow street coming into our lifestyle.

was not only transitional, but it was a real eye-opening to the reality of the danger the cartels were now becoming. And this is inclusive in the United States. When Pat and I built the industry in Seattle, Vancouver, Canada, all the way up into Alaska, the pipeline areas and stuff like that, if I had a problem, and there were a couple of times when I did, I could make a call down south, a team would come up, a crew, and it would just eliminate the problem. Was this, like you have that, you sent me a bunch of documents. One of the documents was a picture of you and Chapo. Yeah.

Is this before after that? This is during that time when I first met Chapo. That's when the picture was taken. And the guy in the middle of the picture that you've got, he was a killer for the organization out of Alisco and later in Sinaloa. And when I, in that picture, he had over 200 executions under his belt in the that we took with them. But I'm glad you brought that up for your audience's sake.

You and I fully documented this entire interview before we even came on the air to discuss it. I sent you countless documents confirming missions that I was on when I was a contractor, lots of photographs of even my time when I was in the emcee, riding with the Manditos Nation and all of that. I was a state licensed private investigator. It was all kinds of things. But, and oh, yeah, and most importantly, when we talk about the prison time. My job in there was as a hospice counselor for fellow prisoners. I was trained, completed my seminary years, and all of this came as a result of where we're at in the

story right now in Seattle, Washington. I got nailed on a small blow charge in Sacramento, Calatonia. I was still living in Sacramento, but I was operating in Northland's blow came into our life. And I got busted with a few hundred grams down there and ended up getting a three-year sentence. Went to Folsom Prison. And I had a D number, which is an old number today, 86 to 89 when I was in. My number was D-64038 for anybody that wants to look it up. And I came out of Folsom prison and decided to leave Sacramento, go to the Pacific Northwest, and just get the hell out of the business. I didn't want to go back to prison again. Did you still have? a significant amount of money at this time?

I mean, after three years? I had some, but I didn't have a significant amount. I had enough to foothold myself and get my life started again. But that didn't matter because within months after my release, Matt, they found me up there. They sent a representative North and says, hey, you need to go to Las Vegas. Here's your money. Here's your plane tickets. Go on down.

So I took my new bride. I'd gotten married. Who's this? When you say they, you mean the cartel. Yeah, the actual Sinaloa drug cartel. Okay. And so I flew into Las Vegas and I hooked up with an old compothera of mine down there and he says, look, man, you know, you're not going to be able to walk away from this.

We know too much. We've seen too much. You have to understand the rules. You're in this now. You're in it until we either get killed or we go to prison for life. And, you know, he was as upset as I was. But what he was talking about were realities that we both knew based on what we had survived up to this point and what we had witnessed down there.

This was an extremely dangerous time. We're talking 89, 90, when I started, go back to the, and at this point, Vancouver, Canada sent representatives down, and instead of moving, you know, 100 kilos a month, all of a sudden my orders are 250 to 350 kilos at a time coming up. And we had some guys up there in Vancouver that were capable of putting together $15 million in an afternoon. and they were large.

I dealt with a Russian element up there. I dealt with an Asian element up there, and I dealt with a motorcycle element up there at the time. And the business was instantaneous because I didn't have to come up with any front money or nothing. Once I got established in the Northwest, the loads were brought to me and delivered to my safe houses, which I had found and created for that purpose.

I laid them out on map routes, showing them different. alternative routes to use because Interstate 5 was, they had spotters that were specifically trained to look for something of suspicion. And a car full of Latinos certainly looked suspicious in Washington State back at that time. So I got them alternative routes. We got the safe houses established. At that point, I've got probably more than 20 people working for me. So I had put three guys out in front of me and those were the ones that dealt with everything. So I was never seen by the buyers. I didn't deal with anybody other than say it was a new client. We certified their credentials by saying we knew people that knew these people and said, yeah, they're good to

go. I would sit down and I'd negotiate a deal and then I'd be the hell out of there. So aside from when a load came in and running up to a safe house and doing a quick count, quick inspection, that would be the only time that I was exposed to the actual kilos of blow were coming to me. And at that, by that point, I had Kingpin status. The feds were investigating me. They were aware of an uptick, but they had no idea at how many kilos we were running at that time. I remember they took off 38 keys at Anthony's restaurant parking lot in Seattle. And that was the largest amount of blow seized in Seattle during those years at that time.

And the deal was going to be for 80 kilos. And I broke the deal in half just on a feeling. and they were going to pick up the other half. The deal was $1.05 for $80, but they never made it back on the other half. But I also had an officer in the narcotics division on payroll the first year and a half that I'd reactivated that industry up there for them through a friend of mine. A guy named Mike Loday, he's dead now, so I can say his name and still owes me a quarter of a million dollars, but that's gone. Anyway, it was somebody that Mike had grown up with, and the guy became a lieutenant in the narcotics division of the police department in Seattle.

And him and I never met eye to eye. And I would just shove money in envelopes that Mike O'Day would give him. In return, I'd get sheets printed off that would give surveillance information, whatever they were doing to people who were getting my kilos. Anything tied to me, we would get information. And I would say in a year and a half's time that I had in my pay team, at least $80,000, so he wasn't cheap. But what was instructed, when Mike O'Day would bring me the information right out of their

police department, I had to ignite it in front of Mike and burn that page up, why Mike would take a picture of me doing that. In this way, there would never be anything evidentiary that could come back on our police officer source that we had. And it was very brilliant, actually. I was glad I never met the guy. didn't need to. But anyway, Operation Northern Exposure that was formed in 1991, right after that 38 kilos were taken down. And the reason they formed it and so rapidly acted upon it, Matt,

was because these particular keels had a soccer ball symbol on them. And that was Don Pablo Escobar's personal signature to the United States markets. The Mexican cartels, they would have like USA written on them or Estrela, meaning star, or they would have a lot number like 206 or 510 or whatever. And some of them had the Alicran stamp, which was the scorpion stamped on the kilos. And this would be signifying which cartel would be the ones that were providing the blow. But when a soccer ball showed up up north, they're saying, oh, my God, we've got an Escobar representative operating in the Pacific Northwest.

So Operation Northern Exposure was formed as a federal multi-agency task force to take down the Pablo Escobar connection in the Pacific Northwest. And I was the primary target. I was that man. And I can remember later, once I started getting heeing up and I was advised by Mike O'Day, he said, look, our police officer guy said, they're closing it on your brother. You need to do something. Get out of it if you can, but you need to do something. they're moving. They're making moves. So I flew down to Kulia Khan, and I sat down at the table with bosses, and I said, look, guys, I've got it built for you. I've got heat on me. It's time for me to

move away from this. And best wishes, da-da-da-da-da. And everybody gave me hugs and handshakes and a bunch of drinks and got laid and just had a wonderful couple days together. By the time I got back home, there were 350 kilos in a white van and two soldiers sitting in my driveway at my home when I pulled in. Because of my status as an underbop, I had the authority to turn the load around. And my message to them was, look, we've got federal heat, get that the hell out of here,

and I'll be in touch soon as to whether or not, let you know what time we can get back active again. And that was it. But what you're saying is they just disregarded, you flying down there saying, I'm out. Absolutely. They just discarded that. If it just let no, send him 350 keys and he's going to keep going.

That's exactly what they did. The message is you're not walking away. No, that was the message. And these are people that I'd known for decades. I was really, it was the turning point in my life. That night I made the decision. Looks like I'm going to have to go up against them because if I don't walk out, I'm either going to get hit by someone robbing my loads.

I'm going to get hit by the law and I'm going to go away forever because the quantity amounts that I was doing and the drug laws at that time were. really bad. So I knew I was a lifer if I got caught. So that night after I turned a load around, I made a phone call to an attorney that I knew who knew a very powerful attorney, a guy named Murray Guterson of Colt Gooderson and Grater, and he handled organized crime cases. He was a defense attorney, just the best you could get. And I made arrangements for me to see him the following day. I told him the situation I is in, and I said, I'm going to have to go to war with these people, and I need a bigger baseball bat than they do. And we discussed me going to the DOJ, and that's exactly

when I walked in. So I wasn't some guy that got arrested and started telling on people to cut a deal. It wasn't like that at all. This was a survival mode that I had no choice that I knew I had to go do, and I knew if I was going to be combative with a drug cartel, especially that cartel that I would need something significant behind me. And that's what I did. The following day, I walked. So did he call down there and arrange for people to be there waiting for you? Did he explain all of this over the phone? He did, Matt. I was sitting in his office. He picked up the phone called the Assistant U.S. Attorney General and said, I've got Hal Bradley here in my office. He wants to come in and have a conversation. Now, unbeknown to me, they were already preparing warrants for my properties

to be searched. I had a lot of real estate by this point. I was just a king. And it's all public information. Snowhounish County Records. It's 91 to 94. I had a, I believe I had 47 rentals at that time, a half a dozen business licenses. I went all kinds of companies and everything. I mean, my life was good. I didn't need to be a drug trafficker anymore. I didn't want to be a drug trafficker. And my first son had just been born. And she was pregnant again with the daughter that came later. So I walked into the U.S. Attorney's Office that day, fully expecting to be taken into custody, but I said I got a deal. And then what they did was they say stay in this room for a minute. We're going to make some calls. And then they brought all these alphabet agencies together, representatives of ATF, DEA, U.S. Customs, IRS. God, some I can't even remember right now. But I got taken into a conference room. with this really long conference table, Matt, and they had all these agency people lined on both sides,

and I was at the head of the table, my attorney present, and at the end of the table was the AUSA, the assistant U.S. attorney that was going to be assigned the case. So we sat down at the table, and I said, listen, I said, you obviously know who I am. I'm the primary target of operation or exposure. I am Al Bradley. I've tried to get away from the cartels.

They're not going to let me go. How would you like to go to work and make your careers? And everybody knew that I had lifelong ties down there. They knew that this was just literally a gift being dropped in their lap. So they did not arrest me that day. Instead, they assigned me to an agent with U.S. Customs and an agent with the DEA. And I filled out a green card instead of a blue card, which is what takes you into custody. And they said, okay, well, we're going to make you operational.

You're going undercover. And we're going to, we're going to Mexico. And literally, careers were made. And in the 19 months before I ended up going before a judge, the caustic blow had elevated by $2,000 a kilo as a result of the impact that I had on the Pacific Northwest markets. And this was stemming from a foreign country going down. I operated in Mexico, various countries in Central America. And when I say Mexico, I mean one side of it to the other, one end of it to the other. We were all over the place.

And we took down some significant people. not only were careers made, but my own career was made, and that's unbeknownst to me. The arrangement that you make with them is not, so you're not in a position to say, I'll work with you, drop everything, because they already have, they're already working on putting together a case. So the arrangement you make with them is, I'll plead guilty right to something, and then I'll work that down. That's exactly right. They already had snitches and informants in custody that were giving up information on me.

They had their case. Right. What they didn't have is they didn't have a player like me that was voluntarily going to take them south of the border and route out the element that was threatening my very life, my very existence, and my very family. Are they flying you down there, you know, as how Bradley? And they're introducing you to people. Like, how are you getting introduced to? Because this isn't, you're not going after the, the Sittaloa cartel directly.

I did. I went after the factions that I was affiliated with. You have to realize the Sinaloa cartel has thousands of people. There's lots of different cells. And the cells that I was operational with are the ones that I took out. So I did use the Hal Bradley for that insertion. Later, I became under a different identity. and I became designed as a U.S. Marshall set it up with a new identity for me and I was a Canadian buyer

and what they would do is say they pinched a guy in an organization down there got him to cooperate well we'd use that guy to insert me into that organization and then I would start the process of setting them up for prosecution taking them down which we were very so you set up a drug deal you know where they're bringing cash they're bringing drugs and then you guys just bust them. And we took them down. It's exactly right. And it was highly effective. In 1993, I was assigned to the Mazelon-Sin-Loa office. I was under an SAC down there who knew that I had connections and ties to Sinaloa, specifically Kulia Khan. So I was flown into Mazat-Lan and was able to re-establish the people I knew in Kulia-Kan. Now, this is before anybody knew that I had walked in

on my own free will. This is in that original 19 months from the time I walked in before I got sentenced. So I was meeting a general in the Mexican army down there. He had 3,000 kilos out at the airstrip or out at his place, his ranch. So I was being driven to the airstrip in Kulikon to climb in a helicopter with him. Go take a look. And then I could do a call and say, yeah, I'm visually here with it. Looks good. Let's buy it. Type of thing. But unknown to me in that incident was the SAC of the Mazat-Wan office had talked to some agents that he knew down in Kulia Khan, and these agents, unfortunately, were on the payroll of Sinaloa drug cartel. And this is how I was found out. And that day I was blown off the road. I had two Mexican nationals with me. We were

grabbed out of the vehicle, bound, bags put over our heads, roughly treated and dumped in the back of a truck, and we were taken out to what's called a black site. It's a an interrogation site that's off the map. And what they needed to do is they had me for the purpose of extracting information. They needed to know just exactly how far up the ladder that I had knowledge and awareness of the involvement of the people because this general was getting these ton quantity amounts of blow directly from the president of Mexico's brother. And this is where the concern factor came in.

And as a result of that, I was taken. I was tortured. The two men that were captured with me, they were killed. And I was rescued. I remember by that point, I was severely beaten. I had been suspended in the air with my arms behind my back and constantly pummeled. They put a gun to the side of my head and repeatedly pulled the trigger. And I started losing reality and awareness.

But this goes back to Fort Polk, Louisiana, Tiger Lang training, prisoner or war camp training. And just how imprinted that training became later in my life. Because when I was in captivity and being tortured at this time for information, I slipped back into remembering that never give up nothing, don't ever give up anything. Because the moment you do, you are no longer useful for the purpose of being kept alive. And that's what got me through that. And then agents found me. They came in and rushed the place. I was rescued, and I remember them pulling the bag off my head as they lowered me down under the ground.

And the guy had a picture of me in a plastic envelope, and he's saying, are you Hal Bradley? Are you Hal Bradley? And I couldn't even talk. I was so in shock at that point. All I could do is, yeah, yeah, I shook my head. Yes, I am Hal Bradley. And they extracted me, put me in the helicopter, took me to a medical facility that was highly secured. probably a CIA site.

I can't confirm that, but that's what I believe later that it was. And they cleaned me up and waited for the healings to heal, the bruises to go away before I was even allowed to go stateside. Because I was told at that point, if you ever let anybody know that you went through this, it becomes an instant security issue. Our agreement with you stops right now, and you're going to go face the judge, and you're still looking at life. So naturally, I kept it to myself.

And up until five or six years ago, I never even detailed. until I started writing my action adventure novels and doing that type of work. Anyway, in 19 months, came, and then I was before the judge. And then all of these agency people, one by one, stood up before the judge and said, look, he did everything and more than we ever possibly imagine. And we deserve that this man deserves his life. So the AUSA got my sentence taken down from a mandatory life all the way down to years. So the judge actually allowed me 30 days before I self-surrender to go to federal prison. And

here I am a kingpin, which is just historic. And the 30 days I was able to get my family planted, everything together for them. And then I took a flight to Inglewood, Colorado, well, Denver, and then took a taxi to Inglewood and entered an FCI there, which is a medium security facility. And it's right next to Florence, where they have the Supermax where Chapo's at today. So, Senaloa at this time has to know that you've been involved in this whole thing. They did. Is there like a standing order to try and find and kill you or they just shrug it off? No, they don't shrug nothing off, brother.

And I'll get into that a little bit later. A San Diego sheriff was someone that told me there was a $100,000 bounty on my head after my release from prison when I was operational in Tijuana and Rosarita. but getting to the prison thing yeah i had to be very very careful uh they were well aware that my life was an extreme danger and uh so what they did was they took me out of the state i got on con air and flew conair out of portland organ area went back to colorado and started my time but i fell ill my liver was shutting down i had hep C for probably a couple decades and didn't even know it and started getting tired and the next thing you know i'm i'm not doing

well at all. So they put me on a med flight to Springfield, Missouri. It's a medical center for federal prisoners. And, you know, they, in advance, they said, yeah, this guy's got the cartel looking to kill him, so we got to keep a special eye on him, that kind of stuff. And I went into chemotherapy treatment for 11 months that I got there, got cured from that. But during that time, Matt, they needed, they were doing an experimental program with training 11. fellow inmates in the hospice care so we could take our fellow prisoners through the dying process. And I sent you a picture of me in the newspaper laying hands on a fellow prisoner as he was dying for verification of my story, if you remember.

And then I sent you a page out of my Bible listing the date of each of the decedents and what they died from cause of death and all that. So you could corroborate this information with your story here. but a time came. I completed seminary studies while I was in Springfield, was formally ordained. I used to play botchabal with a guy named Johnny Gambino. And Johnny, he kind of hung with all the Italian guys, of course, Gambino.

And when Mr. Gotti came in, I'm already a certified hospice counselor with an ID tag and I can move around the place and I was actually able to get with John Gotti a couple of times, get some messages over to Johnny Gambino. And shortly after that time, I got orders cut to be transferred to Leavenworth. So I'm loaded up on a private van, and I'm driven across the state up into Leavenworth, Kansas, and I entered the Leavenworth system right away because of my educational experiences.

You know, I was already at Master's degree level in completing my studies while I was in prison. And so they put me in the education department. I was training inmates to get their GEDs. I was working, teaching an actual hospice class for certification with hospice of 11 were coming into the prison and helping me train fellow prisoners and the art of caregiving to the people that are dying. And we even had guest speakers coming in, Matt, that were terminal patients that were very, very close to death. And it was quite a program. It was 10 weeks for cycle.

And then the hospice 11 would certify them as true. trained in hospice counseling. It was a great program. I really enjoyed it. And I got a lot of publicity there also. I was in the newspapers, and I don't know if I sent you any of that stuff, but I've got tons of it. The time came for me to come out of prison, to leave Leavenworth in the night before I left it. I was out on the yard with a friend of mine who was from Yucaya, California, that I hadn't seen in a couple decades, and he was doing a big stint there. And he says, hey, man, come with me. Someone wants to say goodbye to you. He took me down to the basement, and they flipped the lights on. And here was like easily over 100 fellow prisoners that I had trained in

my classes. And there were guards that came up congratulating me because I was leaving the next morning. And I was already a minister. I was already formally ordained. So I had ministerial clothing flown in, which is how I left the prison. And even a warden booker, that was a warden's name at the time, came down there and congratulated me in the work that we did, things to the nature. We had this big feast. It was amazing. And the following day, I left, flew into Seattle, and I was given instruction to go to a halfway house up here. And I entered the halfway house. And I had already talked to a bishop in the Seattle area about maybe coming and working in his church, continuing my ministerial

studies and my work. And he met me at the halfway house with his wife. And that was in October 18th of 1998 and February 3rd of 1999, he formally ordained me under their Pentecostal tutelage in Seattle. Three years later, he installed me as a senior pastor of my own church. Now, bear in mind, within the first week after being released, two of the agents of the Department of Justice came and met me there and took me back before a judge, getting all responsibilities remove so I could freely move inside and outside of the United States. I sent you a document corroborating a trip to Costa Rica, if you remember. And on that document, yeah, that document I sent you was to get my passports activated and all

this stuff. So now I'm flying down to Costa Rica to buy 500 kilos in a whorehouse. I'm a pastor of my own church. I mean, my God, my whole life is just, it was so incredible. and it got to where I was jumping off on so many missions, Matt, that I literally had to go to my bishop and request sabbatical from my post as a senior pastor of my own church because I felt that the work that I was doing in protecting our nation was far more critical. Then the bishop consented, he agreed.

He kept my credentials alive and I still have them to this day, and this is 20 some odd years later, both the bishop and his wife who was co-pastor. They both passed on, but I'm sorry. still actively charged into the church organization that the next generation have taken over. During all of this, my first cousin was in the Hells Angels. But over here in Western Washington, this is Bandito Territory. And he had talked to me about getting into club involvement. He knew some of the bandits and all that. So I got a sponsor. And I joined a group called the Amigos, which is an offshoot of the Banditos up here. We're still red and gold. Still the same family.

So I went ahead and prospected and later patched in as a full patch member. And for about three and a half years, I wore a patch on my back. And I absolutely loved it because at this time, I was trying to diffuse from working internationally. It was very dangerous work. I had a wife. I now had a couple kids. And I wanted to stay in investigations because I loved it. So I got a call from Olympia, Washington a couple weeks later and says, hey, go down and pick up.

up your badge and your ID card. You're now a legal, licensed private investigator. And I sent you a document showing you my business license, so you have that. It was amazing, you know, the only guy with two major felony convictions in the history of Washington States now got a badge in his wallet. Well, that kind of freaked out the bandito's there sitting there going, look, man, you know, we can't have a guy with a badge on him, and he just isn't going to work. And so I was able, after three and a half years of being a full patch member, I was able to

lead, but in good standing, which means that they don't beat the shit out of you and take your bike from you, and you can never speak to any of them again type stuff. It was quite the opposite. I had the respect of all of them. I was never asked to spy on them by any federal agency. The work that I was doing, departments with the CIA, DEA, customs, was totally disconnected to their world. I joined it because I wanted to know what the lifestyle was like.

I wanted the experience, and no regrets I absolutely loved. To this day, I'm still in touch with some of them. And they have permission to be in touch with me because I left the club in good standing. What was the work you were doing with the CIA and the other agencies? We were doing narcotic-related cases, weapons-related cases. I worked on human trafficking cases down in Panama and worked in El Salvador. As you know, I was actually captured in El Salvador. or I was doing a case in Acapulco.

I remember coming back to the embassy in Mexico City, and as I left the embassy, I got confronted by a couple Salvadorian intelligence agents, and they said, this is who we are. We'd like to buy you a meal and sit down. We'd like to make a deal with you. Have you do something for us.

We'll pay you $75,000, your expenses, and we only need you for a day. We just need you to do an intro. So I was naturally interested. that I went to the cafe. How did they know who you are? Beautiful. I'm so glad you asked that.

When I was in Leavenworth, one of the high-ranking officers of the MS-13 was getting ready to pull out and being deported back to El Salvador. Him and I became friends on the yard, and he had written my name, contact information, everything inside of a letter, and had mailed it down to El Salvador.

Well, naturally, they're flagging everything going in and out of a prison, and that information landed in the hands of the Salvadorian intelligence agencies. I don't know how they found out that I was a contractor, but obviously they did, and they waited for me to come out of the embassy, and that's when they approached me. So anyway, the deal was this. In all 11 of my action and adventure novels, I talk about my sidekick name Manning, and that's to honor the Salvadorian agent, that my job was to introduce him

to my associate that I knew in Leavenworth and be able to get him inserted into the MS-13. organization. And then I was to back away, go out on a diplomatic courier flight, and take my 75,000 and walk away. And it didn't work that way. We landed in San Salvador. We ended up at a safe house that night getting briefed and prep for the meet. That's when I met Manning. That's when I got down there. And the following day, we drove north across the country up to the Guatemalan border, but still inside of El Salvador. We arranged to meet my associate at a restaurant up there. And we came in the restaurant, and he wasn't there.

And the guy says, yeah, yeah, just come on out back here. We'll take you to him, no problem. We're just making sure no one's following you, that kind of stuff. And so we bought into it that I could tell that the agent was nervous. And what had happened is they recognized him. They knew who he was. And we walked out that back door. Both of us were knocked unconscious instant.

And when I came to and I came around to consciousness again, we were in a, well, it's hard to talk about. It was really a bad situation. We were held at what looked like a really impoverished ranch as near as I remember it. And they started working us over immediately. And the story that we had set in the event of a situation like this was, well, I had no idea that this guy was a cop. That was what we did to keep me alive. And we know that that doesn't even work most of the time. They're going to kill you anyway.

That's MS-13. They're very, very violent people. But that's the story we stuck to. And, Mani, what they put him through. And, I mean, I had daily meetings. I went through hell. I mean, there were almost every day I thought I was going to get executed. And, but they did physical atrocities to my associate that I took him that they didn't do to me.

And they would make me watch. and it was just a real bad time. Anyway, seven weeks into the captivity, they've been moving a staff for camp to camp. There's only like six or seven of them that are with us because there's only two of us that are the prisoners being moved and relocated. And the water truck comes in.

Everybody gets their water. They bring us over cups of water. We're drinking the water. And, brother, I'm telling you not two hours later, I was the sickest I've ever been in my life. I mean, I was on the ground, puking up my guts and I was in bad shape, but so was everybody else. And it was in that moment that they came in and they struck. And this would be what I would say, the El Salvadorian version

of Special Forces team, their own people. And they just started dropping these guys. They were just blowing them away. And I remember this one guy coming up on me and Mani, and he's got a rifle leveled at us and he's getting ready to take us out. And then all of a sudden part of him exploded. and I'm sitting there with my hands bound like this, and I'm wiping parts of his body off of my shoulder and my face, and I'm sicker than a dog. And Mani's laying on the ground, puking, and God knows what else. I wasn't paying attention.

I could smell the flesh of the sky in my face. And they got to us. They cut us loose. They extracted both of us separately. They took Manny one direction. Team took me in other direction, put me on a helicopter. her. And I remember when I climbed on hop, they had a female nurse there. And she was so kind and so patient. And I can't even describe the words because I couldn't talk. I couldn't make words form.

I was in such a bad way at that moment of my captivity and rescue. But she got me calm down. And I just remember breaking down and crying, uncontrollably crying. And I didn't even care about all the pain in my body. We had been severely abused for weeks. And yeah, they got me to a psych, got me medically discharged out of there. I was put on a flight to Mexico City, not back to America. And by diplomatic courier. What happened to Manny?

I don't know. They took him on a different helicopter. That's haunted me all of these years. And this goes back almost 20 years, a long time ago. And I don't know. My PTSD doctor at the VA hospital, who works through these with people like myself that have been captured in prison and tortured, they know that that's the haunting flag in my head. Because over the seven weeks we were together, all we had was each other.

All we had. The only hope I had was this other guy in captivity with me. And when that's taken away from you, it's indescribable the magnitude of loss. And like I said, it's been almost 20 years, and I still weep sometimes over wondering, because what they did to him were very, very horrible things. The abuse was an abomination. And, of course, I thank God that I wasn't assaulted the way that he was assaulted. but I can never

it's almost like I can't forgive myself I feel guilty that I wasn't as badly treated as him if that makes any sense to you. It's hard to describe it. I've talked with other fellow POWs back in 2003. There were seven of us at the Seattle VA that were recognized as captured prisoners on foreign soil

in the service of our country. I sent you a copy of that letter. You know, it talks about me being captured and tortured and all that. And we got the survivor patches that we all wear on our vests or wear on our hats, kind of like Pearl Harbor survivors. Can we go back to or finish the story? You had, they flew you out. You were about to explain what you're going to, and I interrupted you,

just because I thought, what happened to manny? You know, so what happened when they flew you out and you get there, you land? I damn here ended up in the United States federal prison. In the first place, I wasn't authorized to take on any contracts outside of the Department of Justice. and in truth I was aware of that I knew that but 75 grand for one day I mean what the hell take the shot it's just the old it's the old part of my life jumped into play there the temptation of the money so anyway I landed I'm turned over to two DOJ officials there at the embassy and boy they've reamed me from one into the other and they let me know that you know

we still haven't decided what to do with you I made it right by assuring them that I would never step out again that I'm now fully aware Although I was aware, I didn't think it was so serious. You gave him the whole, golly, gee whiz. I never would have done that if I had known. Well, 75 grand. I mean, it's my fault for falling into the trap. But anyway, they still saw a value in me.

So it was good. And I continued to work for quite a few years after that incident. I ended up retiring as a contractor after 17 years in the year 2018. I was in Ciudad Obergone, which is in the state of Sonora, Mexico, working a case down there involving a pilot who is flying Browns into the United States. We had information. I had an opportunity to go down there outside of the Brownsville Act, which is whenever an agent enters Mexico and is operational,

they are, they to notify the, I believe, ambassador of Mexico under the Brownsville Act and let them know that they have activity in their country. It's just an agreement we have with Mexico. But I had a friend whose mother died, and they asked me to minister, go down and be ministered to the service. So I went down with him, and I didn't go down there under the case. I went down there as a pastor serving a family friend. But I was told, well, if you happen to stumble across something,

you know, while you're down there, well, hell, that's going to work. So we all had it set up that way, so I didn't have to say, yeah, I'm Hal Bradley. I'm an undercover operative for the DOJ and let's tell all the Mexican authorities and go through that same ritual I went through once before type thing and that didn't happen as a result of going as a minister.

So I met up with the guys, I qualified them and then was later able to disqualify them, which I'm really glad for because it's a wonderful, beautiful family. And the information on it was not information that became relevant to the case. So, you know, we, we, We discontinued the case. But that week, when I was down to see a Adrobergaon, Chappo was being transferred to the United States, Matt.

And during the transfer, the Sinaloa cartel blew into a hundred little factions. And Sudea Rovergan was under that control, was a faction of the Sinaloa cartel. So there was a rapid gunfire going on within the same block that I was staying at at this house. And they kept me in the house for a couple days in hiding because they were afraid blonde hair blue who I, you know, Gringo, in the middle of all this, he's going to get whacked. And they ended up loading me up in the trunk of a car. They drove me out of town and went through two cartel checkpoints to get me out of there, got me to the C.U.D.D.O.G.O.G. International airport. Walked me onto the plane,

personally escorted me, the whole family. And, yeah, I flew into Tijuana. I departed from the airport there, walked across the border into San Ysidro, and I was met by federal agents. upon entering, re-entry into the United States. They put me up in a really nice hotel that night. They debriefed me, and the following morning, I said, guys, I've had it. I'm done. I'm 65 years old, and 17 years is enough. And that's how I departed from being a contractor.

So what are you doing now? Well, I'm still a senior pastor affiliated with the Folk Gospel, Kinecostal Federated Church Association. I'm also a hospice chaplain to the homeless and destitute out here. So when Providence Hospital, they are aware of who I am and they've worked with me over the last almost two decades now where when one of the homeless people come in that don't have family visitors or friends, they'll give me a call and say, hey, Pastor Bradley, you know, we got another one because they know I'm certified hospice. And I'll go down and I do bedside services with them and I'm with them when they pull the plug and they pass. And I was up until two years ago, which I've got almost 20 years of doing, Matt. I work in the trap houses, and I go into these houses just to be of assistance.

If somebody in the event somebody needed me or if I get a phone call, that somebody's in trouble, I see a lot of very bad things in these particular environments. And I carry a little med bag with me and NARCAM kits. I've pulled a few people out of overdoses that were, in fact, that's why I got called. I've dealt with countless victims in the last 19 years. more often than not, they're brought here to my residence because people that have felony warrants will not let anybody take them to the hospital to be checked. They'll bring them over here instead. I've had overdose cases brought right here in my house. I believe I sent you a

picture of a girl laying on the floor, and I was being, yeah. Yeah, so that's what I do. But two years ago, I was sitting in a kitchen table in a house watching these three young boys, shoving, sharing the same needle, shooting, shooting drugs. And I looked over in the front room at the couch, and there's these young girls waiting their turn to go into a bedroom to trade their bodies for a $20 hit, a fentanyl. And I just, that was kind of it for me. I just said, well, I've been looking at this exact same thing for damn near two decades, and I don't want to see it no more.

So then I started getting involved in the writing of the books and starting to prepare to open up the Crisis Victory podcast show that I have, introducing survivors. But one more segment that we should put into this was when the cartel did find me up here and they hit me and left me for dead. I think I sent you a segment on that today, actually. And I wasn't going to let you leave without mentioning that. Yeah, it's pretty. That was June 6th, June 7th of 2020.

I got a knock on the door about midnight. and I was sound asleep so I was groggy and I go to my door and I'm looking through the security screen that I have here and I see a tow truck driver and normally it's a knock like that it's either somebody's left on my porch steps that just got brutally assaulted dropped off here or somebody beaten up or maybe an overdose case or whatever throughout the years I've had various hours where people show up like that but anyway I'm looking through the screen here's this guy wearing a tow truck company hat and his name is on the shirt and the tow truck company's name is on the side of a shirt. And I'm going, yeah, and he's saying, do you know who owns that yellow Corvette

Stingray out in back here? And I said, well, yeah, it's mine. And he said, well, listen, I'm a tow truck driver, and I was going through the alley here where your car's at. And I hit your car by accident. Would you mind coming down, looking at your car and we'll fill out the paperwork? And, you know, years earlier, I would have never had a million years stepped through that security door. But all right yeah let's go look at it I did and I got to the back of my Corvette and I don't see damage to it and he says no look down underneath right here and this you'll see where I hit your car and the instant brother that I dropped out on my new I knew it was a kill order and I felt the first knife strike and then I felt him holding my head and pushing it forward because what you do in a case like that

when you're using a knife it's hit the guy at the base of the neck and it instantly ragdolls the body it immobilizes you, and then you can do what you've got to do. But so having had that training in Fort Polk, Louisiana, I under, we had knife training, we had all that training during that time. And I knew when he was pushing my head forward, that subconsciously came back to me. So now I'm scrappling with this guy, and I'm a 65-year-old man. You know, I'm an old guy. He's probably in his 30s.

He was definitely trained in the martial arts because where he was delivering blows to my body to immobilize me, he was doing exactly that. But he kept, the knife that he had, I'll hold my hand up, but it was between these two fingers, there's a blade about, maybe that long. And as he would be striking me, the blade would penetrate. And so I got into where he was hitting me on the top of the head, and then he's taken me and he's dragging me over by the fence, and that's called a killbox.

A killbox is a place where he takes somebody out of the sight of other people or any accidental exposure to the actual kill. and you do them there and deposit them there. And I don't know, it was like superhuman strength came in me. I knew I had one last struggle to get away from that eventual situation. So he took me to the ground between my pickup truck and my Corvette, and he hit me in the top of the head again with another strike. And I heard a pop.

And by then my eyes are completely blinded by blood flow coming out of the top of my head. but that last strike I started losing consciousness and in that instant I became aware that within seconds I was going to die and it is really you know it must be my faith I don't know what it is I don't know how to describe it but the most beautiful peace came upon me and I no longer cared about anything here I wasn't worried about materialism I wasn't worried about leaving people I didn't have any of those thoughts I just said okay I'm ready and I knew I was ready to die. And then I lost consciousness. Well, I was awakened. It was almost like a lightning strike or something went through my body. I remember jolting. And then I could hear a voice fading into

my ear. And it was one of my tenants. I have a fiveplex. And he's right directly underneath me here. And he was sitting there. They were on the phone, 9-1-winning it in. And they're scooping me up and they're trying to get him and his wife are trying to get me up the stairs and back into my safe area because they didn't know, I didn't know if he was going to come back. Nobody knew it was a very horrific moment.

So we got me back upstairs. They plot me in terms. By then, the police have arrived, paramedics have arrived. And I remember my son was screaming. My father is dying. My dad is dying. My dad is dying.

And that's the only conversation that kept echoing in my head. And I didn't want to die in front of my son. I didn't want him to carry that my wife, his mother, died when he was 12, and he was there. And that's what was flashing of my mind. But the medic saw the top of my head in about the silver dollar size. Patch of my head was completely gone.

There was no scalp. Nothing was right down to the bone. And he says, we got to get this guy in the hospital stat. I remember them carrying me down the stairs, load me into the ambulance, and then I blacked out. The next time I came around, I was in Providence. in the emergency, and they had a forensic nurse. And I kept telling her, this is a cartel kill order.

I need protection here in the hospital. And they never even wrote it in the damn report. You know, they must have thought I was delusional or whatever. I don't know. But I was unconscious for a day and a half. And when I came out of the medically induced coma, I looked around and I had no protection at all, Matt. And I said, Jesus Christ, I've got to get the hell out of here.

So I had my cell phone in a plastic bag by the bed. I called my friend Pat. He was still alive at the time. They killed him two years later up here in the town I live in. But that's another story. Anyway, I called him. Pat got down there with minutes with a couple of guys because I am a doctor. I just refused anything.

They said and signed myself out. And we got me out of there, got me back up to my upstairs residence here, which is a secured site. And I spent about eight or nine days in bed. with a bedpan. I mean, I literally couldn't even move. I was so screwed up from the attack. But I survived, obviously, and it's five years later, and I'm on your show talking about it. And I thank God for it. I'd like to close by saying, thank you all. God bless you all. May God keep you all. And go survivors.

Hey, you guys. I appreciate you watching. Do be a favor. Hit the subscribe button at the bell get notified of videos just like this also we're going to leave all of howells links to his to his podcast youtube channel to his uh the the books that he's got i i believe they're all on amazon regardless we'll leave all the links in the description box so you just click on those go there subscribe follow check out all of his stuff once again really appreciate it please consider joining my patreon it's ten dollars a month it really does help colby and i make these videos thank you very much see you