The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Infiltrating The Sinaloa Cartel: How A U.S. Veteran Took Down Mexico’s Most Dangerous Cartel

Episode Date: August 4, 2024

Dr. Hal Bradley is a pastor in the Pacific Northwest. But before he joined the ministry and became a counselor he was a lieutenant in the Sinaloa Cartel during the 70s and 80s. Fresh out of the marines, he reconnected with friends he made on a trip to Mexico when he was a teenager, only to find out they were now part of a major crime syndicate. He joined up and became responsible for their operations in the Northwest United States. But the realities of this life and the people he was involved with made him rethink the path he had chosen. He then turned himself in and spent 20 years helping the federal government dismantle the organization he was once working with. Today he helps people struggling with addiction as a way to further combat the sins of his past. His story of redemption is an inspiring one. Go Support Dr. Bradley! https://www.hostingauthors.com/authors/DrHal This Episode Is #Sponsored By BlueChew! Visit https://bluechew.com/ and try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code MITCHELL at checkout, just pay $5 shipping! Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

in the spring of 7475 when they talked me into grabbing a specific type of car and bring it down and then there are chop shops who cut in all the compartments for it and they taught me how to smuggle when I was very I was 19 my first crossing by then I was already working for the similoa cartel I got home to 350 kilos sitting in my driveway 100 kilo minimums but was doing more than that I remember having dinner at certain ranches where I would see bound people load in the back of the truck hear the crack crack and the distance and 30 minutes later they're coming back sitting at the same table with me eating dinner. Dr. Hal Bradley is a pastor and a social worker in Seattle, Washington. But for over 20 years, he was the largest distributor for the Sinoa cartel in the entire Pacific Northwest. A chance trip to Mexico when he was just 15 years old back in 1969, put him in contact with some of the future bosses of what would become the Guadalajara and later the Sinole

cartel, people like Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Joaquin Chapo Guzma. After spending his early years running clothes across the border for the cartel by 1989, he was the exclusive distributor for the organization in the Pacific Northwest, from Portland, Oregon, all the way up into Canada and Alaska. He was quite literally an underboss of the Sinaloa organization. That's how official this guy was. But then he abruptly chose to turn himself in, and for the next 25 years or so, he operated as a mercenary for the DEA and the CIA conducting undercover drug missions all over Mexico and Latin America, where he was nearly killed more than a handful of times. Today, he works with recovering addicts in the Seattle area, and he's an author of many novels

that detail his time, both in the cartel, and working with the fence. Go to Dr. Hal Bradley.com to check out all of his books, including his bestseller and autobiography, A Fox in the Lions' Den. And of course, for more stories with Hal, go check out that Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect Show. You guys, this is one of the craziest interviews I've ever done. I promise you. Without further ado, buckle up.

This one will leave you with your jaw on the floor. Dr. Hal Bradley, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. I didn't want to live that life anymore. When you fight something as powerful as a drug cartel, you better have a bigger baseball bat. And who bigger than the Department of... justice. I meant that I was going to disassemble the Pacific Northwest faction controlled by the cartel that controlled me. That's when I got kidnapped. They kept the bag on my head as they were beating me. And I remember hearing the screams of the two men that were with me. And then their

screams stopped. And then I remember nothing. That's when I see lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. And then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door. And I started running. running and he pulls out a burner, shank, it's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive.

Now, do you think that the cartels historically have relied on gringoes, even more than their own people, to actually traffic the drugs once they make it into the U.S.? No, they rely upon themselves in those days. They told me, Akin so Khoroson Vivi La Sangredi of the Ciudad. in the village that I lived in as a child, they said, the blood of this village pumps in your heart one day return to your village. And that's how I became involved. So I'm the only gringo I've ever known that carried that type of status,

that type of love and trust. I was one of the children. What do you think it was about you that they... My genuine love for them right from day one. I'd never even heard Spanish spoken. I was from Edmunds, Washington, north of Seattle. And we should save this for the story because it's really good and I'm going to lay it out.

Oh, we're telling the story already. We're in it. Okay, good. Yeah. Yeah, I got caught smoking a cigarette with two friends in 1969 at Edmonds High School. And back in those days, you got kicked out for a half a year. And my mother didn't want her son wandering the streets. She was a divorced woman raising four children on her own.

But she had a friend that owned 11% of the Anaconda de Mexico Mining Corporation. He was a Sicilian guy, and she was his mistress for 20 years. Wow. Very connected guy. Wow. And he saw something even then. in me at the age of 15, that made me different than the other kids. All of my brothers and sisters are extremely straight people, have lived very successful lives.

I'm the only one that ever stepped outside of that world. And so they sent me to Mexico. He took me down. I spent a week and introduced me to my personal bodyguard that would protect me why I was in country. His name was Mimel, and he used to carry a machete slung through the back of his back where he could reach over and pull it out and a gun on his hip. and his life depended on my life returning to the state someday. So he was committed to that regard.

But the village was only a couple hundred people. They were adobe houses. Where was this in Mexico? This is on the border of Zacatecas in Durango in a town called Walthario. So about 70 clicks north of Durango heading towards a state of Durango. From the city of Durango, excuse me. And Vicente Guerrero was a town of maybe 10 to 15,000 population. which was the closest number.

So I was extremely remote. And the mining camp that I was at was just outside of Waltario about two kilometers. And we would bathe in a big pond on the weekends, all of the people. We'd have these beautiful feasts where they would cook food and play music. And that's how I lived.

Wow. And you really took to it. It sounds like you loved it. I'd never heard Spanish before. They didn't have one person that spoke English. So right away, I started writing down every word I could compare. And within a few months, I had the language starting to where we could communicate. But the mothers and daughters love me.

The fathers and sons hated me because all of them saw this blonde hair, blue-eyed kid. And their daughters were just in love with that. That's right. Yeah. And I'm 15, so you know how you are at 15. Owner time. But there wasn't a house that I wasn't welcome in at any time. And they just took me as one of their own.

And what were they mining? We were mining zinc and silver. Okay. But primarily zinc, but we had silver traces coming in through the mine. Did most of the people in that town work in the mine? No, no. What do they do? It was actually a cartel-controlled mine.

I see. It wasn't known up here in America. My mother didn't know. Nobody knew. They were mainly, mainly processing heroin. And I'm not going to say the name of the cartel family out of respect. But even when I walked in, I never violated my village. I never violated that family.

And they're a very famous family. Okay, but back then in 69, correct me if I'm wrong, but history tells us that there weren't cartels, as we know them today. They were just families. They were syndicates. They were organized crime families. And they were of their territory. They didn't conglomerate.

Like Angel Guy Otto formed the union of all of the cartels. That was many years later to come. So in the late 60s in Durango, which is part of the northern, the golden triangle, as they call it. Part of the triangle, yes. Durango, Sinaloa and Chihuahua? No, no, Sonora. Sonora, right. Sonora, Chihuahua.

And no, Sonora. Well, you had Sonora, you had Durango, and you had Senoloa. That's a triangle. And then Halisco. Halisco was the area where Rafael Caracintero controlled later. Right. Later, but that we're getting ahead of ourselves in the story. So in 69, was it mainly marijuana they were growing, or had,

Poppy production happened. And you know how Mexico got into the heroin business? We put them in it in World War II. We were running out of morphine for the European campaign and the South Pacific Campaign. So the State Department went to Mexico and said, well, let's train your farmers to grow poppies so we can produce morphine. Wow.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? And what happened was after World War II, our representatives in the State Department didn't go back and train them to grow something else. So the first generation of the heroin, heroin producers, the opium farmers, was created by the Department of Justice from America. Wow. How many stories are like that of our foreign escapades, right?

Pretty amazing. Now we're three to four generations into families that are now cartels that grow it, and they don't see nothing wrong with it because their grandfathers did it. Their fathers did it. Now, when you're 15 down there, did you see any of this? Did you see Poppy Fields? Absolutely. I used to ride my borough alongside the Poppy Fields daily.

I'd see the Chihuahari Indians. They would come down off the ridges. At first, when I got down there, they were afraid to come near me because Mimo, the man who was in charge of me, was a very dangerous man. And they knew right off that I belonged to him. I was under his protection. But as time went on, the months rolled by the Chihuahari Indians. They would wave at me.

And the people out there harvesting the opium from the bulbs, they started waving and coming up to me. And so within months, I had it. And the Chowari Indians, they would take corn husks from corn and fill it full of marijuana. And they'd roll these big, fat, big, whatever you want to call them. Joint? And they would sit around at night around campfires and they'd smoke it and pass it. And they allowed me into that culture.

Yeah. And they've been doing it that way for thousands of years. Wow. Did you know what heroin was? No, I just saw a beautiful fields full of really pretty flowers. I had no idea. None. And my borough, you know, he had before I got him, he had already done those trails and passed.

They gave me a borough that was trained when I first got up there so I could go down to the town at night. And he would know how to get me back and all of that. And I met Ramon Ariona Felix. Have you ever heard that name? Wow, from the Tijuana Cartel? The Tijuana Corridor. Ramone was seven years old. And he came with, I believe, an uncle who was a friend of Mimo, the man in.

in charge of me. And Ramon and I would take off on the boroughs together. And I was 15 at the time, 15, 16. What connection did his family have to that town? The man that was my personal bodyguard was a friend to a member of their family. And they would come and visit. I met, Ramon came down two times that I can remember clear, but I think it was three. But he would come and him and I kind of became friends, you know. Yeah. So I hear him riding with Ramon Ariano Felix when he's seven years old, eight years old. And we documented all that because we knew the significance of history later would be important. Right.

So later years, I did go to Piawana and I did look up Ramon. Wow. And I did see him. And, I mean, we literally wept and went out and snorted coke and got laid for three days and went crazy. And by then I was already working for the Sinaloa cartel. But he just told me you can't say that. They'll kill you. Yeah.

So it sounds like his family, they were already getting into the trade. Oh, yeah. It was marijuana first. We were all until 79. That's when I started getting my first loads of cocaine. But up until then, for about five years, I was driving loads north out of Senola State and through Sonora, entering in through Nogales, Galaxico, Mexico, and Mexicali.

I can remember coming through Tijuana and watching one of my compilades up on the bridge waving at me as I was driving right under him with a car going into check stations. Pretty amazing. I never got caught. I did probably more than that. than 70 runs. Wow. Never got caught.

Of marijuana? Of marijuana. Yeah, by the time I was doing coke, I was flying. How much marijuana were you taking out of time? We could pack in about 80 kilos per car, and I had my college. I was in college at the time, and I had some of my other guys recruited into bringing their cars. And oh, Christ, I mean, I built an empire at that time just with a bunch of college students living on GI Bill and unemployment checks. And the next thing you know, we're making $50, $60,000 at a time.

And this is in the 70s. Yeah. It started in 75 when I did my first run through Nogales. So how did it, so backing up to 69 when you're 15, you're only supposed to be down in this little town for the summer, right? No, it was a semester and then it extended on. I was down there about a year and a half. And did your mother know about the poppies and the cartels? No.

Did your, her lover that owned the mine? Yes, he did. He was in the business. He was in the business of heroin as well. He was a Sicilian. He was in a lot of businesses. He was a very wealthy man, a powerful man. Now, how did that arrangement work between the mine, his ownership, and what he gave the families?

Were they partners in it? What worked was a produced cash from the harvesting of the heroin, and they just employed people to run the mines. The mine really never was meant or designed to make money, although it made a hell of a lot of money. Right. And it was a front operation. Sure. I was in country about three months. I witnessed my first execution, sitting there having a bite to eat in the cafeteria with Mimel.

And this guy walks in and blew it walked right up the table next to me and blew his brains out right beside me. And, you know, I'm sitting there and I'm looking at this. I've never seen past fistfights in my life, you know, and this is death. And Mimel told me to stay seated and he took the guy out there and talked to him. when he came back and says, don't ever tell anybody what you see here at the mind, ever. And I never brought it up until I started writing the book six years ago. I kept all of the secrets.

What did that do to you? It was just reality. For some reason, I understood and accepted it. And I was by far not the first execution I witnessed, but it was the first execution. Wasn't you afraid to die at 15? I think curiosity played into it more than the fear of death. I'm in a new culture, a new society. I don't understand their language.

I'd only been there a few months by the time I witnessed that first execution. So you weren't abhorred morally yet. No. Yeah, that would come into play later. Men would talk to me every day. He explained to me that I'm in a different world. He explained, he spoke English. He wasn't of the village.

He was specifically assigned to protect me. You know, I was the Sicilian's family, so to speak, and they would have killed him if something would have happened to me. That was a memo told me that himself. He says, don't wander off, don't do nothing. I need to know where you're at. Did you tell your mother that you witnessed an execution? No, I've never told anybody until five years ago.

Wow. Okay. So you stayed down there for a year and a half. Did you get involved while you were? were down there or would that come later? That came later, but what I did get involved with is the love for the village, the commitment to them forever. And to this day, I carry it so deeply in my heart.

I've never been loved by anybody like I was by that entire village. And they treated me like one of the children. You know, they didn't treat me special or anything. And, yeah, it's a very beautiful thing. My love for Mexico is, you know, imprinted in me because of that, even with all the horrors I've seen and survived. It's a great country in many ways. Yes, it is.

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We've got a special day. deal for our listeners right now. Try Blue Chew free. Yeah, gratis, pure gratis. Sin cost. Blue Chew free when you use our promo code Mitchell at checkout. Just pay $5 in shipping. That's bluechew.com with the promo code Mitchell to receive your first month free. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank Bluechew for sponsoring this podcast. All right, let's get back to how. Now, you must have learned Spanish perfectly after a year and a half. I learned it semi-fluently at the time, but over the years have forgotten it. And, you know, six years ago, five years ago when I got hit, I've had memory

lapses since then. You know, I was in the death throws in the final moments of life. And we can get into it later or whatever. I don't care. But thinking about it right this minute, I had already released being in this world. And I was very happy. I was at peace. as the guy was still stabbing me because I knew I was going to be dead in seconds. And I just let go. I gave all this up. That's a freeing, liberating feeling, though, to know that when your time actually does come, you'll be. It's a blessing.

Wow. Because I just felt the love of God. I knew that I was encompassed, you know. And my PTSD doctors had I deal with that were very worried for months because I thought that I might try to commit suicide because I kept reiterating to them how ready I was. wonderful it felt and I was just done with the world you know yeah it was coming to its end is the next part of the journey yeah it's pretty fascinating you know as a doctor myself i look back through that experience and i cherish it you know and as a hospice chaplain i take people through the dying process all the time and i really know how important it is to make them ready and prepared to take

that final entry stage into that next life yeah and i absolutely love doing hospice i love it wow it's So it's such a blessing. Well, we'll get there. So you spent a year and a half in this Pueblita. Yeah, a little bit less than a year and a half, about 14 months, I think. But yeah. And then you go back to Everett, Seattle, finish out high school? No, my brother had been wounded in action in Vietnam.

I went home in Remington Hospital and my brother was in a hospital bed there, my older brother. And I was afraid to leave him because I thought it would be the last time I'd ever see him. And I spent time on the ward and I'm looking at all these young men. with various wounds from combat. And I was so angry and so upset they had hurt my brother, who has been my idol, my whole life, and that I said, I'm going to join the Army. Now I'm 16.

Wow. So what I did is I went to the community college, signed up for the GED, got my GED, and two weeks before I turned 17, I took my oath to go into the Army. But I had to wait until I was 17 to actually go in. Right. I mean, I was a paratrooper before I was 18.

I had silver wings on my chest at 17. Okay, so did you go to Vietnam? No, I did not. I went to Germany. Okay. My brother was wounded in action in Vietnam. I see. I was in, the war ended in September of 75.

I was in from 71 to 74. Okay. And what were you doing in Germany? I was a paratrooper. Okay. But what kind of action was there in Germany in 71? Well, we would pull guard duty at missile missile incitation, or we'd be up on the Czechoslovakian.

border. At that time, I've been to Berlin, you know, at Checkpoint Charlie. And, you know, we, we were used mainly in those capacities at that time. And the beautiful thing was my brother was actually an embassy guard for the United States Marine Corps in Frankfurt at the time that I was in country. So I got to see my brother. And then our father came over since both of his sons were there where he was out in World War II. And we took 30-day leaves and our dad traveled us throughout all the areas he was at during the war. Incredible. Yeah, it really was. It was. It was amazing time. And then John got transferred to Russia and I got injured in a parachute fall and was Medevac State site and PTSDed out March 74. So March 74, you're a civilian again? Yeah, I was at the

Martinez VA hospital after leaving the Presidio Hospital. And then when I left the Martinez VA hospital, I went up to Yucaya, Mendocino County and then Sacramento and decided to go back to Mexico go and visit my village. Wow. Yeah, it was pretty interesting. So I was down there in the spring, winter spring of 74, 75, when they talked me into grabbing a specific type of car and bring it down, and then there are chop shops who cut in all the compartments for it.

And, I mean, it was brilliantly designed back in those days. They didn't have the x-ray machines or nothing. And they set it up and they would dip my kilos, prepare kilos of marijuana in a liquid oil. So dog penetration was not a worry. We didn't have to agree about dope dogs. Wow. I mean, they had it down, and we would drill a couple holes in the trunk of the car. So by the time I made it to the border, which is eight or 900 miles, a dust would accumulate.

So when they would open up the trunk to inspect the car, it looked like normal. Right. You've been driving all day? And they taught me how to smuggle when I was very, I was 19, my first crossing, and sprayed deodorant on your face, wear sunglasses that aren't too dark or not too light. Look at the officer directly and the eye and answer all of his questions calming, and you're going to go through. And that's how I did it. Yeah. And you made 70 runs.

Over. Wow. And you said you're going to college at this time? Yeah, I was using the GI Bill. But I started making so much money doing the pot trade that I went ahead and dropped out of school. And then shortly after that, I bought a plane, got a pilot's license, and then got another plane that was a little bit larger and started making hops down into the Arizona desert. And the Yaki Indians have a reservation, half in Mexico and half in America. are you're familiar with that?

Yeah. Yeah, I can tell. And so we had permission through the cartels because by then we had cartels. Right. To do the canyon flying through their reservation. And then about 200 miles north of Hermosillo, there was a rancher. We cut out with bulldozers, an airstrip. So I'd get there and they would pack the cocaine into the plane there, and then I would take it and fly it back.

So you weren't making any weed drops when you had your plane? No, no. You'd switch entirely a coke. And what year is that? 79. What happened? I was going down, originally I was back there picking up more marijuana

and had my other two cars that were following me doing the same thing. And he says, oh, no more, we're not doing this no more. He says, we want you. So the first time I did bring cocaine in through a car.

It was after that that I got the plane into that. I see. So you must have done fabulously in the weed business to be able to buy a couple of planes, right? Yeah, we did it okay. Now,

did you have your own customer base? Or were you just giving it to who they wanted you to give it to? No, I had a man in Winters, California, just up north of Sacramento, and he had a ranch out in that area, and his barn was just, that was our head of operations. And that's who we would give it to for distribution. He would pay me so much a pound at that time. And so I just had one customer I sold to.

So you're strictly smuggling. You're strictly transporting. And selling it was my marijuana, not his. I did it for me. Okay, so you had your own. So you were giving it to him. It was my own game. So you...

But I stayed safe, brother, because I had one person buying it all. And then he got taken out by the feds. And then I spent about a year or so out of the business, went right back to being a poor student. That money comes fast and goes fast when you live in that world. But then somebody came up from Mexico and approached me, and that's how I got back in. Back then, did they, cartel have distribution of their own? in the United States, or were they simply giving it to runners like you and then you guys just free market after it crosses the border, you sell it to whoever your clientele is?

How did it work? They absolutely had brokers in the United States, but what they didn't have was somebody that was blonde hair, blue-eyed from the village and made it a very unique scenario. So I was given a lot of free gratis to grow it myself. You know, I built the transportation trade routes. We didn't stay just on an interstate five. You know, there's spotters and there's people that are trained in law enforcement to detect such activity. So I figured out different routes to get it all the way into Vancouver, Canada.

I put it on, you'll read in my book, a Foxton Alliance den, how we took and used the maritime ferry. And I was running as much as 50 kilos of cocaine at a time into Alaska. Yeah. Which is hugely profitable to sell Coke in Alaska, right? Well, you know, in Alaska, 20 is a $50 bill. Yeah. Yeah. They were doing the pipelines at that time and stuff in our.

We couldn't satisfy the nature. But I had an organized crime syndicate in Anchorage that they were my only client. And I would deliver to them. Yeah. And what are you getting a kilo of Coke for at your base price? At that time, now that's early 80s. Coking was pretty high. I think I was getting at about 18 to 19,000 a kilo, 100 kilo minimums, but it was doing more than that.

And I was moving it up there at 28 to 30,000 a kilo. Yeah. And I'm popping off 50 at a time. So I was making a couple hundred grand in my pocket after everybody's expenses. Right. Two times a month. Sure. Sure.

Not counting Vancouver, not counting Seattle. Right. Yeah. So you get out. So basically you're now in 7980, it's fully transitioned. Your operation is fully transitioned. Yeah, I'm strictly cocaine. And I got busted in 84 in Sacramento.

I had a small amount found in the house. And they were excited when they, found it and arrested. I wasn't home. They hit my house when I wasn't home. They left the arrest warrants on my table when I got home. So I ran out in the garage and I'm thinking, oh my God, I'm really going down hard because up in the rafters I had concealed an area where I had just packed full of kilos of cocaine. And all they got were like a couple hundred grams. But it was enough to put me away for three years. And I paroled out of Folsom prison in 1989 with the D number, D64038. That's an original number. If your audience

wants to look it up. What does that mean? Could you tell us? Well, D64038, now they have double-digit numbers. There's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of more people have gone to prison since the time we were in there. But Folsom, I'd never even been arrested in my life. I'd never been in jail in my life. It was my first experience. And so going into Folsom prison for a first time ever is pretty radical, especially in the 80s when they were rounding up the Southern California gangs. You know, we had the bloods, the cryptocers, and Nortennos, the Aryan brothershood.

even answered to La M.A. E.ME. Right. The Mexican mafia. Yeah. Oh, I can't imagine how wild Folsom was. Well, I was blessed because, one, the Aryan nation attached me immediately because they saw that the high-ranking Mexicans in the yard were in touch with me right away. Word was sent in that this Cabacho, this Gringo, it belongs to our family in Mexico. Make sure he goes without nothing.

Make sure he is protected. We want him to return to us. And the Aryan nation. caught wind of that and went, what the hell is going on? So I actually became somebody who could go in between the two races because everything is separated by race in federal, state prison and federal. But, yeah, it was an interesting time. And you must have been so unusual because you're this high-level drug trafficker

but you're a state prison. So they don't see a lot of guys like you in there. No, they don't see hardly. Mainly guys like me are federal level. Right. We go into the, which I did go in the feds later. So backing up a little. little the how you know between 79 and 84 when you did your first stint in prison how did you see the

organizations down to Mexico changing and evolving well as stated that's a very good question as stated they protected me even going into prison so by then we were very well established you're talking in 1984, cocaine had now been on the West Coast comfortably about five years at that time. You know, Griselda, who was the representative in Miami for Don Pablo, who is our boss, the cartels were getting from Don's organization. When Grisela fell here in California, that pretty well evaporated everything for the Miami flows and all of that that was going through there. The Cali Cartel continued on in Florida.

I see. But when Griselda went down, you think that, That cemented. It made going through Mexico instead of through the Caribbean the optimum resource for their kilos to make it to the American markets. And you said you met Pablo Escobar? No, I knew. I did not meet Pablo. If I said that earlier, that's a misconception.

I was involved with Pablo's business. His kilos had the soccer ball symbol on him. That's how DEA formed Operation Northern Exposure to take me out. They took a 38 kilo bust one night and down. town in Seattle. The guy had just left my house. It was a $1.5 million deal, and I gave him half down and the next day to do the rest of the deal. And they grabbed him at an Anthony's restaurant in the parking lot, and they thought they were only getting a guy with a couple of kilos, and they opened up the trunk, and there's damn near 40 keys. And then they saw the soccer

balls on them. And that's when the State Department and the Department of Justice jumped in and said, hey, we got an Escobar representative up here in the Pacific Northwest, and Operation Northern exposure was formed in 1991. So Pablo Soccer Balls made it all the way from Medici and Columbia, all the way up to Seattle, Washington. That's what put the heat on me. I see. They were used to seeing the Alacran, you know, the Scorpion stamps,

or the USAs or the ones that had lot numbers, Estrellas, those were the Kilo brands from the Mexican cartels. now you said the Mexican organization that you were working with or for was actually working for Pablo Escobar. Were they working for him or were they just buying from him? Because at a certain point, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo always says full name. That's his full name. He, at least in lore, popular culture, broke the monopoly that the Colombians had. And instead of working for them, they started essentially.

buying from them and getting paid in cocaine. So for every one kilo of Coke that they moved for the Colombians, they would get one for free. It was something like that. That's not necessarily true. I did know Miguel Engel, personally. I did meet him a few times in Alisco when he had transferred to Guadalajara and set up his organization there. That's where I knew Rafael Caracantaro. And he was from Gughey-Conson-a-low area.

You know, Rafa and Chapo. And at that time, Chapo was just a weed merchant like I was. Right. That's how I knew Chapo, you know. So you knew Choppel from the weed days. Yes, I did. That's how long... I sent you a picture of me with Chappo, I believe.

Yeah. Yeah, you got it. I would be careful showing that. Now is he, well, it's going to go in the episode. Yeah. But only a couple hundred thousand people see it. Doesn't matter to me, brother. Is he...

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anxious. He knew he was more than what he was at that time in his life. He knew. Chapo knew very well. And later years, I was at a cartel wedding in Kulia Khan. That would have been in 91 or 92. And I was

sitting at the table of bosses. My wife was sitting across the plaza area with the wives and mistresses. And then at the main table, the wedding with a wedding couple and their parents there. And Los Tigris de la Norte, a very famous Mexican band, were playing at this wedding that night.

And all of a sudden, these guys come running into the place, and they all got AK-47s. And the band went silent. And I remember somebody went back out of the area we were at, and then they brought El Chapo in. And he walked straight to the wedded couple, gave them a present, paid his respect. And then he came over to the table of bosses where I was sitting.

And they were saying, when they introduced me to Chapo, they're saying, this is our friend from the Pacific Northwest. And Chappalo told me, says, oh, I remember you, and he gave me a hug. And it was really an emotional moment. Wow. But he was a nice guy. Well, I think Chappo was what Chapa was.

I'm not going to comment on. Light is a better word. Ruthless. Yeah. Scary. Was he as ruthless as they say he was? More, more. Put a pin in that.

So, how were by 84, the family you were working with in Mexico, were they still just couriers for Pablo Escobar or were they to your knowledge today were they actually clients of his well Miguel Angelo Felix Gariaro which I'm very proud of you for knowing his name for being a Gringo that's very impressive he was already in construction of formulating the syndicate with all of the cartels that was what was going on at that specific time and you know the angel of the skies and all that he was up there in whereas in my books I write about that in my novels and uh so did Pablo was in charge still.

And when you say that, what do you mean by that? Well, Pablo had all the cards. Pablo was ruthless. We call it Medellín, the school of Medellin. And what he did was he taught the cartels how to do torture tactics. He taught them how to do all of the extreme violence. The cartels were not that violent at the time. They weren't giving acid bass.

They weren't, you know, doing the multiple beheadings and the body mutilations at that time. They were just walking up and shoot you. And that was it. He taught the. art of torture, the true torture. Really? What I survived, you know, what you know about. He maintained control until probably 89 or 90.

When he was on the run. Yeah. And, you know, it was Chapo that broke the back on that. It wasn't Miguel. Really? Yeah, this stuff people don't know. Chapel went down to Medelline. And he told him, I can move so many tons for you and I can have it up in the States in a couple

days. And Don Pablo called him, well, if you can do that, he says, we'll go in business. business with him. By God, Chapo did it. Wow. And he was using the angel of the skies. Señor de los ceilos. Yeah. De Los Alesselos. Very good. Yeah, yeah. He was using him.

And they together formed the union. And they made the Juarez cartel, the corridor for entry into the United States. I was all built by them. But that was Chapo. Okay. And by then, he was digging tunnels in the desert and, you know, the Calexico tunnels, all of that stuff. And the one in Tijuana, which is in Narcos. That show Narcos.

That really happened that way, by the way. You know, DEA saw the fans blowing and all that. I've actually talked to agents that were involved when I was undercover and operational. Pretty amazing. I was down in Mexico when Rafael killed Special Agent Kiki Kamarina. I was there. And it was very, very heartbreaking. I knew they'd made a critical error.

And I was down there packing cars, getting ready to head north. And the DEA, the United States government, man, I mean, they hit them like you would not believe. They instantly stopped the flow of drugs for about seven or eight months going into America. They had to take what we had up here, state side, and live off of that until they could reclimate the problem that was created by Rafa. What did you do in that time? You just hold on to your bricks? I got the hell out of there, and I stayed out of there. But I remember being debriefed by agents when I first walked in.

You know, having a drug kingpin walk in, that's not under arrest. They weren't close to getting me. It wasn't about that at all. I went down there to negotiate my time. I had my millions. I had my real estate holdings. They can look up Snohomish County Records and look up my name and they can see what I had. It's public information.

I was done. And they gave me hugs and handshakes. And I got home to 350 kilos of cocaine sitting in my driveway. So because I am an underboss, I had the ability to turn the load around. I told the two Solalos, the soldiers that brought it to me were heated up federally. get that the hell out of here. And the next day I walked in. Wow.

That's when I made my choice. When you were, so you were an under boss, you were the biggest distributor of cocaine in the northwest of America and Canada. In its history. Um, yes. Your, are you utilizing? How is the coat getting to you? Now that Chopo is firmly entrenched with, uh, the Colombians, are you picking it up

stateside after it gets smuggled over? As I just stated, they would drive a right to my driveway at that point bringing it to me. I was too valuable, too important. I was building the empire. And my best friend in the drug business, a guy named Pat Grady, Vietnam Vet War Hero. He in the 80s, the early 80s, we connected and started the building of the cocaine business in Seattle.

Pat Grady was the one that introduced me. And if you look at that books, a fox and the lions den, you'll see a picture of him, and it's dedicated to him. They just killed him a couple years ago because of me. Who was they and how do they kill? When they found me and hit me five years ago, about two years after that, Pat and I were seeing him walking out of my lawyer's office.

Pat thought they were coming to get me. So we made a call to get some security to get me out of there, kind of like what's going on right now. And he went home, and they held him down and shot him full of fentanyl and killed him right there. He was dead within 48 hours after he protected me. I carried that very deeply. I loved him. I love him. Yeah.

And it was all about, but he helped me build the original empire. How did you guys do that in Seattle? Well, at that time, I was bringing cocaine up. That was in the early 1980s. And Pat was a distributor, but you didn't have the Mexican connection. Right. And my cousin, my prima don't Tyler, was his friend. And Tyler said, well, you got to meet my cousin, how, man.

He's off into this. But Tyler and then were all drug users. And the one thing the car tells, and I write this in my book, Fox and Lionsden, the cartels don't like you wearing lots of gold in those years or driving fancy cars or living outside of a means that can be explained. And Tyler, my cousin, may rest in peace, he was a drug user. And so we backed away from him immediately. And we started meeting very serious business people that had the money to buy the kilos. And pretty soon word got out that we have a Mexican source here in Seattle. the Canadians came down and I started working and that's how I built right you had the best

price the best quality oh yeah nobody's gonna buy from anybody else why would you well we wouldn't let anybody buy from anybody else we controlled the market the Cubans tried uh I just made a call to Senaloa they sent up a team and a couple days later there wasn't any Cubans left in the Seattle area you're kidding me oh no no no talk about murders of Cuban drug deal I'm not going to commit or confessed to any murders I'm just going to say there weren't any more Cubans moving cocaine in Seattle about a week after I made the call it again to cool you're so you are completely dialed in

with the bosses down there absolutely they know what's going on in your territory absolutely and you have carte blanche to tell them hey I need help and they'll send hitters up absolutely wow my god you know I grew up around chapel and then before they were

bosses you have to understand our history goes back 40 years and so when you have a relationship that long as your friends down in that country become more developed and larger, you're one of them. You're a compotherate, your Paisan, your family. You came up together.

Yeah, you came. They remember. We'd sit around and smoke, dubies, and laugh about the old days when we were all kind of broke and things weren't going real good. And, you know, as we're sitting poolside within their mansions full of prostitutes and pounds of cocaine laid out on the coffee tables and everybody but us getting high. So you didn't get high? Oh, hell no.

Pat and I were taken to a ranch. outside of Latuna. Latuna is a town that Chapa was born and raised in. And I flew down to Kulia Khan with Pat. They asked us to come down, and we were wanting to negotiate to get more kilos north. So that's what we thought the meeting was about. And as I explained in my book,

they drove us out of Kuli Khan, took us up in the mountains to Latuna, and then at a ranch probably 15 to 20 kilometers south of Latuna. And we've flown this ranch, and we see this guy bound in the middle of a corral, And we see all these young cicarios or kids around the corral. And the two soldiers grabbed me and Pat, and they take us over to the corral. And then they led in three Rottweilers, and they ate this guy alive right in front of us. And the ranch owner of the boss, the hefe, he came out and called us into his house. And he says, he was wearing a lot of gold jewelry.

He was driving new cars. He was putting himself out there where he was drawing attention. So if you want to keep buying gold chains and driving new cars, the next time we call you down here, you're going to be in the corral. And that's a true story. That's how the cartel started changing. This is the Medellin University concept that was coming into play at that time. You know, we witnessed multiple executions.

I remember having dinner at certain ranches where I would see bound people load in the back of the truck, hear the crack, crack in the distance, and 30 minutes later they're coming back sitting at the same table of meat and dinner. I've driven under bodies and Mores that were dangled off overpasses that were meditated and hacked up and sitting there on the phone talking to somebody, oh, I got to move the car a little so I can get it by the bodies that are hanging under here. I grew up at that time that the violence became real. Yeah. Now, when you saw something like that, had your moral compass now started to flash red, so to speak? Well, I'm not going to confess or copped any crime that could come.

come back and haunt me. No, no, no, I'm not asking about that. But what I'm going to say is this, I had already gone through certain stages of my life where there are things that I had to do to stay alive and in those actions. Yeah. Yeah, let's just leave it at that. Yeah, I was just asking about, I was 27 years old when I became a trusted member of the family as a result of something they made me do. Okay. And I asked that because, later we're going to talk about your decision to turn on everything and everyone. Bear in mind, you're not talking to a chavato here. You're not talking to a rat. I didn't get caught and arrested and decided to tell on people to save myself. You're talking to somebody that

made a clear decision and was laser focused on taking on an enemy far greater than himself. But there had to be a moral or some kind of higher purpose for that. There was. There was a baby crawling across a living room floor at the bottle dangling out of his mouth. That was when I walked in. Wait, can you explain that further? I was my first born child. And I wasn't going to raise my children up into this. And years later, before I walked in, years later, we were in Mexico at that wedding.

Actually, that's when my wife lost her love for me and we ended up being divorced over it. She never knew what I was. I never talked about my business to my family. She just knew that I was doing very, very good. the antique business and all this real estate and things were wonderful and I was required to take her to the wedding and that's when she saw who I really was and I watched the love leave her eyes and then they told her when my son our son would be 12 that they wanted him to come to Kulia Khan and they would put him in school and they would make him the next blonde-haired blue-eyed generation

and that's she told me I'll kill you if you do that to our child you will die for that And that's what started turning you emotionally away from the life? He was still a baby. He wasn't 12. They were telling her when he was 12. But all of this, do you think that had... That was part of the decision. And the fact that I'd already made mine.

I was financially set for life. And I didn't want to live that life anymore. But the problem with it, if you're talking about a bunch of us who were peasants, we were kids in our youth that had nothing. And once you start getting rich and wealthy and powerful, you don't want to give that up. I wasn't of that mentality. I was very content with working, building my companies, raising my children out of a crime life element. Do you remember me telling you before the interview that my brothers and sister have all been legitimate all of their lives?

Very straight, very decent people. I'm the only one that walked that path. Do they know what you were doing before you went down the first time when you did your state bid in Folsom? Did they have any knowledge of your activities? They did. They knew and they all kept me out of their lives. I wasn't allowed to be part of my own family. Did that affect you?

Very much. Still does to this day. I've still got a sister and a brother that totally keep their distance from me as a result. Still? Yeah, all these years. What about John? John is my hero. We keep in touch, but from a distance.

I see. John was a man of great honor. He's a highly decorated Purple Heart recipient from the Vietnam War. Did 23 years in the Corps after that. He's just a highly distinguished, very honorable man. And though he, I'm sure, loves his brother, I don't think he can ever forgive what I became. He saw things. He would come home on leave and walk into my house, people strapped with weapons and stuff going on.

He knew that I was a bad person at that time, a dangerous person. Do you think that was one of your biggest losses? Everybody loses something in this game. Would you consider your relationship with your family to be one of the bigger elves? Now I'm going to share some with you. I've never shared. The greatest betrayal and greatest loss I've ever felt and I'll never forgive myself was having to take down a lifelong friend of mine that goes all the way back and knowing that I had to take him down in order to accomplish my mission and what I had set myself to do. That will never leave me. Who is that? I'm not going to say his name out of respect. Who was he? Was he a gringo or a Mexican? Probably 10 miles from where we're at right now.

15 maybe tops. He was a friend from Mexican, Mexican from Mexico. Got it. A child. Oh, wow. My age, but we were children. Right.

And did he end up doing life? No. Did he turn himself around after he got out? No, we were sentenced together the same day. They gave him 15 years, which was a blessing. Gave his son-in-law, 18. And I got my sentence from life mandatory all the way down to eight years. as a result of the work that I had done for the Department of Justice.

So I have to push back a little bit just because that's what I do and it's out of love. Please feel free. You say you had to take a guy down to accomplish your mission, but wasn't that really just to save yourself? No, not at all. And I'm glad that you're asking it that way. And I thank you for that respect. Sure. What the reason he ended up getting taken down.

And I tried to stop him from coming stateside. The reason he got taken down is because we were so intertangled through phone call communications, DEA photographs of us being together in the United States. There was just too much on him. And what I did do, and God forbid me for saying this now, is I did try to alert him. I went to Kulia Khan and said, brother, you're already a multi-multimillionaire. Please stay down here. We have federal heat.

And it was right after that when I walked in. I tried to save him. but I didn't. And when the commitment came, this is where the military comes in you as a young man and you're trained in certain ways that your comrades have to be able to trust you as much as you trust them with their lives.

And that was the mentality it took on when I made the decision to walk in and go after an enemy that wasn't going to give me my life. You see, when you fight something as powerful as a drug cartel, you better have a bigger baseball bat. And who bigger than the Department of Justice who have been chasing me for the last few? years as the primary target of the Pacific Northwest. I knew that I had a chip to play in the

poker game. But you did have heat on you. Yeah, I had a law enforcement agent, narcotics division in Seattle on my payroll. So yeah, I was getting reports when my people were being monitored or observed federal involvement, things like that. So I had him on there for about two years. So this cop was feeding you information about the DEA activity? A high ranking cop. Can you tell us about him? Yeah, he was a lieutenant grade. He worked narcotics division, Seattle PD. I had a guy that worked for me that was moving a lot of cocaine in the Seattle area. And he actually grew up with this officer. And Mike O'Day is the name of the guy that knew him. Mike is dead. So I don't mind telling me. Mike owes me a quarter of a million dollars. Maybe you collect after you leave this earth. Yeah. It's all good. But Mike put me together with this lieutenant. I never met the lieutenant. I never saw him. He never saw me. Mike was our go between for everything. And what he would do is he would print off sheets that came right out of his department. So I could see the stationery and letterhead.

I could read the intel regarding the surveillance and that. And then I had to burn it right in front of Mike O'Day. Mike would photograph me burning up his sheets. So there was nothing evidentiary that could ever take that. Right. And how much were you paying for that information? Thousands, thousands. I would say a minimum $2,000 for a sheet.

But I probably paid him $80,000 in less than two years. Yeah. It wasn't cheap. And it never came back on this lieutenant. I didn't know who he was. Yeah. Right. That was my story and I'm sticking to it. How did it work in the structure in terms of payments? Were you consigned a certain amount? Say it's a thousand kilos. Is that a typical order from the Coley-Connor? What I would pay him was I'd pay him what I felt the information was worth. I'm sorry to interrupt. I meant for the product, for the merchandise. trying to get a sense of how the structure worked. Were you cash on delivery when you were buying? Oh, no. This is me. I didn't pay a penny up front. Everything was brought to me.

Yeah. And I had absolute trust, of course. He did my childhood friendships, you know. Right. And so then your customers, are you just giving it to one guy? Is he doing the distribution or how did that work? No, I had over 30 people in my employee at that time. And the people that worked for me, I only had three lieutenants that directly,

dealt with me personally. And they were all under a guaranteed death sentence, if anything happened to me. They were informed that, and they knew that they witnessed death, so they knew that they were involved in a very serious scheme. So the bottom line is I was totally shielded even by distributors. And years later, people go, oh, yeah, you were moving two, 300 kilos,

and yeah, we were buying your kilos, so you've got to know this guy and that guy. And I'd just tell them I didn't know anybody. I was home raising kids and opening up my stores and I worked a normal life. At nighttime, I was this drug dealer. Right. And all these bricks just get delivered to.

You don't even have to leave Seattle. Yeah, they were delivered to my safe houses. And then I would go out and confirm the count. And then I would get away from it as rapidly as possible. And then distribution would happen. What was the typical order? 250 to 350 kilo loads. That's where I was at.

And then what does that take you to turn around? How much time? Days, week. You know, not that long. Yeah. I had really good sources up in Vancouver. They could cash me out for 200. plus kilos in a day.

They had that kind of money. Are these biker gangs, Hells Angels, or who were they? Well, you know, I used to be in an organized biker club. I would never talk about any biker club, so I'm not going to say that at all. But what I will say is that I did have Russian involvement. I did have an Asian community that picked up from me, from my people. I did have different organizations. I want to make it real clear now in this interview that in the time that I wore a patch on my back,

I was affiliated with Bandito's Nation. I was never asked to spy on them. I never did spy on them. I honored my brotherhood. And I remember when I got my bottom rocker, I was in the Amigos at the time. And down in Panama, I worked in a human trafficking case. And we're all sitting in this bar at the end of the day. And one of them goes, hey, Hal just got his bottom rocker.

And they all said, you know, that's why we're down here. So Hal and his friends can ride those highways and where, whatever the hell they want. and they actually had respect towards the clubs. And I've always respected them for that. Interesting. Well, they weren't involved in my drug business or anything, so there was no. But I wouldn't espied on anybody like that anyway. I would have turned in a patch.

Wow. Fascinating. So you were just in this club as for you. I loved the Brotherhood concept. And the brothers, I, you know, and I had a private investigation agency at that time called Surveillance Services Northwest. I sent you a copy of my license. And at that time, when I was in the club,

they would want to investigate people getting close to the club that had a hangarounds and stuff like this. So I did that for the clubs, you know, and I was glad to do it because if somebody was heat or something, maybe I could prevent a murderer or an execution or something like that. But I actually had some of my Patch Holden brothers approach me on the side and say, man, you're a freaking mercenary. Can we get into this?

I mean, this is really, but I've never admitted that. to any club holders because I would get them in trouble. So, a long time ago. So things are going smoothly in the business, as smoothly as they can go. I assume you never have to worry about payment because you've got an army of cicadios from the other side willing to come up and collect if need be. I made examples. I did make examples of a few people that were lagging in the business.

And I didn't need to call anybody up for that. I was quite capable of dealing with that myself. Okay. and with some of my own soldiers, if you will. Right. And it's very important that I did dirty my hands in those days because word would get out that, yeah, you know, you don't want to do something wrong with these people. Do most of the bosses from Mexico get their hands dirty on their way up? That's how we all came up.

Is it kind of necessary? You don't have a choice. That's just how you come up. Like I said, I got topped on the shoulder one day and had a guy reach around and pull a pistol. out of my hand and said, now we trust you. And I was 27 years old. Yeah. And when orders come down, you know, you don't, there's no such thing as quabbling with the orders.

Have you forgiven yourself? Absolutely. Do you know? God has forgiven you? Oh, absolutely, of course. I believe that. I do too. But you know, it's a terrible, immoral, mortal sin.

You know, I know, the sins that I have witnessed in my lifetime and seen are certainly a lot more immoral and a lot more terrible than taking a life. I've seen very, very bad things that I will carry the rest of my life. I feel bad for things I've seen. But it's all part of the journey. You know, when I became interested in becoming a pastor and all that, it wasn't some guy sitting there using it as some kind of shield or something.

I truly felt my calling. And at the time that I entered the prison, I decided to take those years and do my seminary o'competent. completions. So I was cramming like crazy. And like I said, Johnny Gambino, who threw my feast when I got ordained formally in the prison. Everybody around there knew that it wasn't some kind of a game with me. They realized how serious I was. And as a hospice counselor trained by the hospital department there, I would sit in those death rooms at night and watch people die and I'd be cramming doing my seminary studies in death rooms. You know, and I did two and a half years of that before I could.

completed. And I think I sent you a page out of my Bible with all their names. And I took 24 fellow prisoners through the dying process. Yeah. Yeah. So what year was it that you decided that you'd had enough? The fall of 1993, I walked into the U.S. Attorney's Office with the most powerful attorney in the Pacific Northwest. His name was Murray Gooderson of Colt Gooderson and Greater. And he handled only organized crime cases. And when I walked in, uh, I was taken to him by a family attorney who had gone through school with him and said, you're far beyond anything I can ever do to help you, but I know a guy. And Murray Gooderson interviewed me that day and said, yeah, I will retain you, and I will make

the calls at the U.S. Attorney's Office, and I will set it up. Yeah. And he said, but you've got to follow through if I do this for you. And we did. When I described to you about that meeting, it was historic. Right. It had to be shocking to them. To them, yeah, I made sure I was wearing my three-piece suit dripping in gold and diamonds. I walked in giving the impression immediately of just exactly who the hell they had sitting in front of them.

Right. I didn't want them to come marry me to some guy moving 20 or 30 kilos a month type guy. I wanted them to know that they had an underboss in their presence. And they did. Is that because you wanted them to know that you had the best information? I wanted them to know that I was putting my life on the line, and this was a gambling chip. All I wanted was to not go away for life with no hope for parole.

I already had Kingpin status. They had it. They had the status on me. Now, could you, would an option have been to simply quit to have taken your millions and fled somewhere? Well, you can't. The cartel would have just hunted me down and killed me for that. Could they have found you if you had gone to Europe? Brother, they can find you anywhere in the world.

Believe it. Really? Yeah, I dealt with the Spetsnaz officer one time down out of Columbia. I was going down there and negotiating. $2,500 kilo deal with him. And he told me, he says, you know, you know. And these guys actually had satellite system times on the satellites that were going around the globe.

I mean, that's how connected. He was directly involved at the Politburo. Right. I mean, that's the kind of people that the cartels have. They have more money than their governments do. They can buy any form of intelligence services. No, I knew I had to root out the people that were coming at me that weren't going to give me my freedom.

You know, the love and handshake, it's kind of like the Italian thing, guy that kisses you as a guy that delivers the death. And there was no option of saying, passing, giving the business to one of your best workers and telling the guy. I did. I went down there to negotiate their people taking over command of what I had built for them for their organization. And they were all in agreement. And I got home to 350 kilos, a third of a ton sitting in my driveway. And you didn't want that. No, no, I was down there saying I'm done. And I just, I, uh, I had made the commitment to my child.

my wife and uh so you think if they hadn't delivered that load if they would have respected your wishes to step away you wouldn't have betrayed them it wasn't betrayal it was survival there's a big difference but do you think you they would have let you go free if they didn't they didn't flat out didn't that was their message i got home to a load waiting for me that was the message so i i like i said i turned the load around feigning federal heat and the next day walked in did you send them the rest of that money or did you hold on to the money? I kept a few bucks. Sure.

I kept what I needed to for to survive what I was going to go through. Everybody calls that your escape fund. You keep a certain amount of money put aside in case you have to try and vanish. But you know, all to do is cut your wife's head off and drop your kids in vats of acid and put it on a film and let the whole world see it. So then you will see it eventually. That's what they do. When you walked into that meeting with your lawyer,

and the U.S. attorneys, did you know that you were on their radar? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I had an officer on payroll who told me, you know, they're making moves around you pretty rapidly. They knew who I was. They identified me. Right. So they recognized you when you walked in. Oh, my God, yes. It floored the AUSA, Doug Wally, was the U.S. Attorney Representative, and it floored him. He just gave me a couple hours and when we stayed there. And then they took me into this large conference room with a really long table. And all the way down, both sides were alphabet agents. You know, C-I-A-D-E-A-T-F, IRS, on and on and on and on.

And they're all looking at me, and they're kind of pissed off because they wanted to take me out. Right. They didn't want me to walk in. But they never knew really how deep I was with my commitment to them. When I walked in and said, I'll route this thing out for you, I meant every word that I said. And within a few short months, They were cutting me loose into foreign countries with nobody watching me. And I mean, I earned their trust right away.

Okay. So when you say, I'm going to wrap this thing up for you. What do you mean by that? I thought I was going to disassemble the Pacific Northwest faction controlled by the cartel that controlled me. Gotcha. Gotcha. Meaning take down all of their operatives in the area that you once controlled. Take it all.

Were you going to try to get them, were you going to try to wrap up people in Mexico? as well. Did you make that promise to do? I did wrap up people in Mexico and further south. Where? I was in Central America, a few different countries. So this is 1993. Tell us who the bosses are, you know, at this time. Pablo is basically, I think he got killed in 93.

He did. I was in Uncle Poco undercover with the CIA and DEA doing an operation at the time when Rao Oriano Felix flew in from Bogota. and I was sitting at the table there. I didn't even know he was coming in. And he left me a card and it had his name on it, which was very significant to the DEA and CIA. It was confirmation.

He was at that meeting. And he was weeping. And he just said, you know, they've killed Don Pablo. And none of us had the TV on. We didn't see it in the news. And that was the day it happened. And then, of course, that night we turned it on and watched everything. Right.

The world had already seen. Now, who in Mexico was the best? biggest target at the time in 1993? I can say the Sinaloa drug cartel and specifically Lieutenant Grade Level people, which I got. I got them. So that would have been... I didn't take out Chapo or none of the bosses. I was aware that they were target objectives, but, and I never brought up my village in Durango

until five years ago when I confessed to a killing that I witnessed as a kid. I protected those that I loved. So if your goal wasn't to take down the bosses or your village, which I can respect, what was the point of even doing it? Great question. It's like the way I built my organization. I had layers of people between me and the actual distribution points to where I was protected. But the bosses in Mexico do the same identical thing. So I wasn't getting my kilos from Chapo.

I was getting my kilos from somebody a couple steps below. And those were the targets that we went for were the targets that I could get closest to. And so then they wrap those guys up and get them to ideally flip on their boss. Well, they certainly try, but a lot of people know better because they have families living down there in that country. And we all know what happens to those families. Okay, so you are now working for the alphabet agencies. Department of Justice, correct. Now, the CIA, what presence and involvement do they have in taking down high-level drug targets in Mexico, Colombia, et cetera?

Well, look at the Iran-Contra affair that Oliver North exposed back in the 80s. The CIA, of course, was directly involved in all of that, Maine, Arkansas Airport, things like that. So, you know, the representatives there at that meeting, I can only assess where they're knowing full well that I would soon be traveling out of the country. The CIA does not work in America unless they're doing a joint effort operation under the guise of the Department of Justice. Only then can a CIA agent question or act in any capacity. They are the FBI of the world, not of America. So then how did you deal with them in Mexico? What was their function for you?

Were they just a fixer, a courier? Joint operations. When I was down there in Acopoco, I was down there, I think that one was a $1,500-kilo deal I was setting up. But that night, the CIA with joint DEA were photographing planes that were coming out of Central America doing parachute drops of narcotics in the foothills. Wow. And it was all news to all of us at the same time when Pablo got killed. Right. And we were down there on other unrelated business.

And I remember breaking away from the house and getting to the hotel where the agents were at, sitting in the lobby for hours waiting for them to come in from the field. And when they came and they saw me and they, you know, did the heads up and nod, yeah, okay. And the deal was whatever floor they were staying on, I would get off on the elevator of the floor below, walk up the stairs, and then identify myself that way. I see. So they're essentially just intelligence, just like that's what they do. That's what they were doing. The central intelligence. So when they're working in foreign countries, they're just there to support the DEA in intelligence gathering.

Let's just say the CIA does a little bit more than that, but that's good to go. If that's what people want to believe. No, we want to know the truth. What do they? What the truth is, is the CIA does it? whatever the hell they want to do. They kill people. Of course.

They are granted immunity. No country can lock up a CIA agent. They're diplomats. And they do what they feel is necessary to do for the preservation of liberty in the United States of America. And I commend every one of them for it. Yeah. How's that working out now? The entire world's walking away from us.

It's a politician's up, but it's not the CIA, brother. So not the military. So your first foray, your first mission, now that you've turned yourself in, is in Acapulco? No, no, that was 15, 16 months after I'd start. My first mission started in Mazelon, Sanaloa. I was under an SAC down there in the office, and that's when I got kidnapped. I was in the SAC special agent in charge of the office, knew that I had a very heavy meeting going on in Kulia Khan. It was to meet a general in the Mexican Army at the airport.

I would fly by helicopter out to his ranch doing eyes on 3,000 kilos that my supposed Canadian counterparts were wanting to purchase. And I got snapped off en route to the airport. Driven off the road, grabbed, bagged, bound with two Mexican nationals with me. They didn't make it when we were taken into interrogation up until five years. ago, I've never been honest about that with anybody because I was told by the SAC that if I let them know what they did to me, that it would become a safety issue. My cooperation would stop in that instant. And I would have to face the rest of my life in prison because that was only about three months into the 19 months, I believe, I can't remember exactly, but I still had a lot more

work to do to work the life sentence down to where I got it down to it. And how much time did you owe them working? Did you have a set amount of time? I had to earn whatever I could earn from life. Of course. That's what happens, that you work for them as long as they say. Well, I had a little bit more control than that because they knew how valuable I was to them. They've never had anybody walk in. Of his own free will, not under arrest and not even under threat of immediate arrest. Do what I did. This is a personal vendetta. This had nothing to do with, oh, my God, I'm going to go to jail unless I tell on everybody. Well, it sounds like it because you're working off a life sentence. So it sounds like it was self-preservation. No, the self-preservation was for my family. It had nothing to do with me. I knew I was going to get killed anyway. You can't go against something like that and not expect death. Okay, so what was the agreement that you had worked out after that big meeting in Seattle? Let's start there. Well, the first thing they did do is not arrest me, but they stamp me on a green card instead of a blue card and said, as of right now, you're cooperating and you're working for the Department of Justice, multiple agencies. I had an SRE number with DEA and SA number with U.S. Customs.

just open files with other agencies. And it was amazing to them. I made careers for everybody involved, two of them, two of the agents that I truly love in my heart that went through 30 years with me of my life. Both of them became SACs, one of Seattle,

one of Miami-Dade office. And I remember in their retirement, getting him texting me, the U.S. customs guy, he was a Greenhorn when he met me. 30 years earlier. I was his first case assignment. And he's going, you should be standing here with me, brother. Because I helped get him all the way to the top. And I texted him and I told him, well, I am with you, brother. That was the last time we communicated. Okay. So do the bosses down in Mexico,

you know, all of the names that we've named, do they know that you flipped? They didn't at first. They became aware later. How long did it take them? A year. Okay. Maybe. So now we're back in Kulia Khan. You're getting kidnapped. Yes. Tell us exactly what happened. The two guys you're with got killed. Well, what happened was the SAC opened up his big mouth and let agents know in Kulia Khan that I was the UC working for the Department of Justice.

Oh, shit. And the very agencies telling are on the payroll of the Senilead drug cartel. So they made their move. Took me out while I was en route to the airport to go meet the general. climbing his helicopter, go look at the load. And they took me to a black site, an interrogation site that's off the map. If your audience doesn't know what that is. I was still bound.

They kept the bag on my head as they were beating me. They suspended me in the air. My arms behind my back ropes. Boy, it's hard to talk about it. Ropes lifting me up off the ground. why they were beating me, jabbing me with weapons, and then they put a gun to the side of my head and pulled the trigger, cocked it, pulled the trigger,

cocked it, pulled the trigger repeatedly. And I started losing the concept of it because I wouldn't give them anything. I did not tell on anybody. I took it, and I was ready for death. And I still live with the certain sound of a click. It puts me into an almost catatonic state to this day. Because every time it clicked,

I thought that was it. Right. And then I heard English-speaking voices rushing in. And then I remember hearing gunfire. And I remember somebody coming and pulling the bag off my head and my face was so beaten at the time that I was non-recognizable. And I remember this guy holding a picture of my face in a plastic card. And he was saying, are you, how Bradley?

Are you Bradley? Are you Bradley? Right. And I need a second. It's okay. That's okay. I could only shake my head. And I remember them cutting the straps off me and carrying me to a helicopter and medevac in me out of there.

And then I remember the debriefing. And I remember hearing the screams of the two men that were with me. And then their screams stopped. And then I remember nothing. And then I woke up in a medical bed. And I remember At that time the SAC said, well, if you let anybody

States side know what's happened You know, this will be the end of you working off your case And you're going to go to prison for life and all this Because he flat screwed up He put me out there It was a hard day So how did that conclude? Why did you survive?

Because I was rescued They got me, extracted me, got me Statside, healed me up They didn't give me state side right away they had to get rid of bruises and body damage. Right. And once I made it stateside, I remember one of the DEA agency and, well, it was never meant to be anyway.

And I just said, fuck you. Why did you put me in that situation if it wasn't meant to be? And the primary target was the president of Mexico's brother who had ties to the Cali drug cartel, not the Medellan cartel. And these were his kilos. And these federal agents in the Mexican federal agencies were paid to protect that information by the cartel. Yeah, it was a heavy case.

Wow. But I guess that never, that case never went through because you got exposed. That case was classified. What happened was that's the president of Mexico's family. Right. With absolute confirmation that they are in the cocaine business. And I'm going to say for your audience that it wasn't the president of Mexico. He had a brother that was involved.

Yeah. But it just wasn't meant to be. Right. But we had them. So you could have had them if that, if your handler, the SAC hadn't screwed up. Yeah, we would have had them that day. Wow. And we had agents on site and everything.

It would have gone down. Now, do you think they would have shot you if you hadn't been a gringo? Do you think they think twice after the Kiki Camerino thing about murdering? No, I do not. I think that they would not have shot me. I think that they would have tortured me over a period of days and let me die slowly and painfully. But I think that the reason that they didn't know was they were under orders just to extract information. You know, they only had me a couple days at that time.

And that particular time I was captured. There's another. But I always worried more about what I had witnessed being done to people that took days to kill them than I ever did about getting killed. I figured I was going to get killed anyway when I made the decision to walk and I just needed to get my family distance from it. Right. Now, did they protect while you're working, did the government put your family in witness protection? Yes, they moved my family, yes. That must have been a huge load off your conscience. It was.

We had work to do. We got them out of there. And, I mean, like one of the agents I told you that I love so very much, literally shielded me with his body one time on a million dollar Coke by I did. And he was there. And, I mean, they were shoving me into a sheriff's car. And he was shielding me with his own flesh to make sure no round got into my body. And that's the kind of commitment that we all held years later through the growth. Now, after this near-death experience in Kulia Khan, it's safe to say your cover with, you know, Sinaloa.

That organization is blown. I was. So, but then you go back to Mexico. They say, we're going to give it another try. I did, but I was also, at that point, I started becoming operational in Chicago, which was the cartels hub. I write about it in one of my action-adventure novels. I took out the number one guy for them in Tucson. I had another reference point to introduce me to, and I went under it.

another identity and got him wrapped up in a few days. And he was the number one in Tucson. In Operation Tucson, Cartel is episode one of the 12 books I've written on the action and adventure novels. Okay. I'm so sorry I didn't bring them to you. I brought them down for you. How many over the course of this? I worked New Orleans too and worked Los Angeles, worked Oakland, California. Now, you say you were just, your goal was just to take down the Cina Loa cartel in originally yes originally but it grew and grew to encompass the entire united states of america yeah i started actually getting a feel of uh of deliverance if you will you know i was a cubs scout i was a boy scout i was in the united states army you know i've taken multiple

ose in my lifetime so there was always the side of me that knew that i was doing wrong but keep chugging anyway you're into that world and uh i don't know uh i wasn't a left more federal prison when I was approached there and said, well, how would you like to go before a judge? We'll make this go away and become a DOJ contractor, an actual contractor. And that's with the 17 years of my life. Okay. So, yeah, let's explain how you get into that. So before you go to Leavenworth, how long are you working with the government as part of your proffering?

I worked 19 months before they took me before the judge. And by then, from what I was told by DEA, was the cost of cocaine had gone by $2,000 or is a kilo higher in the Pacific Northwest because of the damage I did. Right. How many operatives for the cartel had you wrapped up in 19 months, do you think? Multiple, but I don't know because a lot of it, once I get something into motion, my part would be done. Another part would come into play.

I would do introductions and introduce other agents undercover to people, and they would take them down later. And had you worked anywhere besides Mexico? I have. Some of that's classified. I can't discuss it on your show. but I've worked in Costa Rica, I've worked in Panama. I've worked in a few other countries that I cannot discuss.

Okay. So at the end of 19 months and all of this work, successful work that you've done for the feds, do they say now it's time to go do some time? Yeah, yeah, they were really, really in my corner. By then I had earned my bones with them. Right. They knew that I did do everything possible. I had completely eliminated the entire corridor in the,

Pacific Northwest. I took it all down. Right. I wasn't able to protect certain people. I was able to protect certain people. This is, you know, we're laser focused and I needed to know that I had enough credibility established with the Department of Justice to where their agents out in the field risking their lives knew without a doubt they could trust me. Right. They knew. Right. And like I said, I wasn't some drug user or alcohol. I wasn't anybody that screwed around. I was always very serious. And you don't know how much time they're going to give you. It's like you do as much work as you can, and then you go before the judge and hope that they have your back when it comes to like a character reference. What I saw was the serious commitment in the final months before the sentencing date came, how the guys were feeling towards me, how dedicated they were to me.

So God only knows what they were saying behind my back to the law agencies, the attorney generals and the people that, the prosecutors. But I knew that I was in pretty good hands. And I had survived some pretty incredible situations. Some of the agents had survived some pretty incredible situations. Well, yeah, you had almost been killed. Yes. Well, you know, an agent can't do what a contractor like me can do because an agent's never been dirty. Hell, I was dirty for 15 years.

So when I would be infiltrated or inserted by somebody else of an organization, I can talk that language instantaneously. And they know within minutes, I can assess as they assess me within minutes. We know that they're real. So you go, you go for sentencing. Is this in Seattle? It was in Seattle. Okay. It's about 1995. It was September of 1994. Okay. I went in prison in October. They gave me 30 days after they sentenced me to go home and be with my wife, which has never been done for someone like that. Did you repair the relationship? relationship with your wife when you decided to start working for the government? No, I never got repaired after Kulia Khan when she saw my world.

To this day? My wife is dead now. She came back to me when I got out of federal prison, brought the kids and spent the night and said, can we fix our marriage? And I told her no. And she dropped out of a heart attack. I lost her. And I regret that. Why did you say no?

Anger. For selfish reasons, she had found someone else to, supposedly start building a life with and but he was not good to my children and yeah I wish I haven't told her no because I still love her to this day yeah but it was sometimes where emotions create foolish decisions you were young too yeah let's not forget this I was 39 I was 41 or 42 yeah you're just a kid yeah we can yeah I'm 70 now so you're right so what are you sentenced to they sentenced me to eight years instead of life with no hope or parole.

And then the judge said, well, you can take 30 days, put yourself in order to just report to the prison. I mean, it was like amazing. Everybody was shocked. I was shocked. But he did it so I could say goodbye to my children, my family. And he felt I earned it. They knew they could trust me.

I wasn't going to go run. Were you paid for your time working? They put me on a payroll the whole time I was working. But I didn't start making bounty money. until I became a contractor. Then you're paid by job. Right. A whole different ballgame.

So you go into the feds. What's your first stop? First off is Inglewood, Colorado, FCI, Engelwood, right next to Florence, where they're holding Chavo, the Supermax. And then I fell ill, very ill. And they medevacned me to Springfield, Missouri, to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. And I volunteered for an experimental drug. And here I am 25 years later. Yeah, I was going to be dead within a couple months.

What happened? My liver was shutting down. Wow. So they did injections into me, and nine months later, I was totally cured of the hep C virus. Wow. And by that time, I was already being trained to be a hospice counselor, had started my seminary studies. I was very busy. And you went to Leavenworth.

What happened was after I did a couple of years there at the Medical Center for Federal prisoners and then one day they just said you're being transferred to Leavenworth year last year I said okay you know so I went to Leavenworth and opened up I worked in the education department helping guys get their GEDs and then I started a a hospice training program getting them certified and I worked with Hospice 11 worth coming into the prison and we would train these guys on 10-week cycles I did four classes in a year and giving them a chance to learn compassion for other beings instead of going out with anger.

It was amazing, it was incredible. I was in the news all the time and it was just really a big thing. And even the warden, Warden Booker of Leavenworth came down and saw me one day and said, geez, you've really started something here and I think we're going to continue it on. And I want to share something with you, brother. The last night I was in Leavenworth, I was out on the yard and one of my brothers came and got me and said, hey, come come with me, we're going to take you and give you a little party, a going away party. So I go downstairs in the basement.

of the holding area where we were at. And somebody hits the lights and there were several hundred people there, guards, the hospice people from out of the prison, the warden, all of them were there to send Pastor Bradley off. Wow. Never been done in the history of 11, where I keep getting these never been done. Yeah.

But it was really, really encouraging and that's how I left prison. So with, you know, your whole life changed. Yes. And you are, you've now got a doctorate in pastoral studies. I didn't have the doctorate. doctor at the time I completed bachelor's almost to my master's level in the prison system. I went to the University of Sedona

in Arizona and completed to my doctoral studies. Correspondingly they allowed me. But the moment I walked out of prison, I had a five-year tail on me, a paper tail. And I was sent to a halfway house and within 24 hours, DOJ officials showed up, you know,

took me before a judge and here I am doing U.A's, I'm on federal parole. And I'm flying into foreign countries buying 500 kilos of cocaine and doing drug deals. Okay. So then... That's amazing, isn't it? But why? Why if you've, you've seemingly got out of the life, though? But no, but you did your time. They came to me and said, how would you like to become a contractor? Right. And let's just finish your prison sentence right now. We'll just end it. So I got my freedom. So get rid of the five-year tail. No, no. The five-year

tail came after my release. They still kept me on paper. Right. It was part of the condition. They just made my sentence shrink down to nothing and I walked out. But what I'm asking, though, is you got out of prison for doing all this work beforehand. So why did you then? I didn't get out of prison for doing all that work beforehand. The work I did before was what got me down to an eight-year sentence. Okay. I was in the system.

And one day I get hauled into the warden's office and, hey, you're going on a plane. You're going back before a judge. Don't know what's up. So I got flown back to Seattle. And agents stood up with the U.S. attorney who by then was friendly with me. We were very compatible. And they said, yeah, we can use someone like them. Oh, I see, because you only did three years off an eight-year stretch.

You still owed them another four or five years. Yes, I did. You do 85% time. Right. So you still had at least another four. Four. So this is there, hey, we'll get you out early. Under condition.

Okay. Could you have said no to that offer? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I could have. But, you know, I took 24 hours and really thought it through. And, you know, I knew that I had a talent for it. I knew that I knew I had the receipts. respect of a lot of agents and various agencies, I knew I could trust them.

Did you feel like what you were doing was also right? Yes, I did, absolutely. By then I had been formally ordained. I was a minister. I was already accepted at a church in Seattle, Washington, which I was reordained February 3, 1999, by a bishop. And three years after that ordination, I was installed as a senior pastor of my own church under his domain. And I worked at about two and a half or three years as a senior pastor,

but I was jumping off on missions at that time, and I couldn't do both. So I got a sabbatical from my church stepped down and started going after drug dealers, human traffickers, weapons dealers. Okay, so let's go into this. So now you're a mercenary. Now you're like off the map, deep as deep gets undercover. Brother, I'm off the hook at this point.

Right. Because I know how the feds need me to work, and I know how to infiltrate and be inserted into various agencies they were targeting. Okay. So who are they targeting? And where do you go first? Take us through your time there. I'm fascinated by this. Yeah.

It's an interesting journey, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Well, what would happen is they would say they would make an arrest in a foreign country. And this person would be willing to cooperate. So what they could do is since that person is not known yet by their own organization to have been. placed under arrest, they can bring me down under my other identity that the U.S. marshals had created for me, the Canadian cocaine buyer or whatever. And he would say, yeah, we've been working with this guy in Canada.

We want him to fly down. I want to introduce you. And that's how I would insert into these organizations. You were a kilo buyer from Canada. Or something, a human trafficker, whatever. Tell us about the human trafficking really quick. What does that mean? That's a hard one.

I've witnessed a lot of very bad things. In that industry, they're they... Is that children or are those migrants, like seeking work? No, no. This isn't migrants being moved. This is young people being sold into the sex slave trade. So that's real? That's more than real. It's happening as we speak right here in the city as we speak.

Right. It's horrifying. It's ugly. Yeah. They deserve to die slow death and I'm a man of God. Right. But, uh... Well, God isn't against punishment, you know?

No. forgiveness is different than punishment. Is it not? The man that killed me, the man that was sent to assauss me in 2020 when I came out of the coma a day or two later, the first thing I did was forgiving. All I was was a name and an address on a piece of paper. I've been in the same spot he was in. Yeah.

I understood it. But getting back to the human trafficking, I know you have an interest in that. Where does that come from mostly Colombia? No, a lot of it comes right out of the villages in Mexico. Some people literally sell their children. because they don't have enough means to survive the others. A lot of it is transported out of South America and through Central America. They end up in the shipping ports of Mexico and then they're delivered stateside by transport as a rule.

But I've actually been in houses where I've seen children in rooms kept. It's again very hard for me to talk about. Why couldn't I save them? Why couldn't I do something? Why couldn't I kill the bastards at it? Why didn't I? Right. It's the ugliest part of civilization.

There's nothing uglier. So that means there's buyers for obviously like, you know, prostitutes. But also rich, fat, white guys. Wow. Yeah, that's the market. Yeah. Yeah. And they're in Montana, they're Idaho, they're Nebraska.

They're in the places you wouldn't even begin to expect them to be. And are those guys like buying these children from these trafficking organizations and holding them captive in their? They're prisoners. They're prisoners. I have a man, as you know, I'm opening up the Crisis Victory podcast, which I'll be coming to you to help me with. Thank you, brother. And one of my people in there was sold into the slave trade business.

He was kidnapped from America, transported to Tijuana, and was left naked and chained to a bed for two years and sodomized by owning males. And he was a guy, a kid. Wow. And his two years that he spent in captivity, which I'll be sharing on my show, it was very hard for me to listen to what he survived and went through.

But the good news is when he got out, he killed the guy that was watching him and opened up the doors down there where the other children were at. And they were running in the streets of Tijuana, naked, every one of them. The police came in, surrounded them. And he was taken to the embassy, the consulate, because he was an American. And so the story goes. So you were able to help dismantle some of these human trafficking. organizations as a mercenary. And weapons cases too. And weapons, arms is a bigger business than

narcotics or people. It's the biggest business in the world is that right. Absolutely. Are we talking about weapons from America smuggled into Mexico? I did a case. It's in one of my books, actually. A guy had six stinger missiles for sale and outside of Boise, Idaho. And yeah, these go for a few hundred thousand dollars per missile. And we went after him and the stories in the book. But yeah, yeah, I worked with people that needed boys. weapons in Mexico. And they come to the gun shows and stuff like that and buy tons of weapons, but not the kind of weapons we're talking about. Who's buying Stinger missiles in Mexico? Cartels. For shooting at military targets? For shooting at anybody. That's an enemy.

Right. Yeah. The Stinger missile is a heat seeking device guided missile. Wow. You take down planes with stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Those are high priority targets for organizations to go after that are government organizations. Right. Right. Yeah. So how do you take that do you pose as a buyer or a seller of weapons? Like, how does that work? I actually tell a story in one of my books, how we did it. Yeah, I get infiltrated and introduced as a buyer. You know, I'm representing a group of people out new and I'm a Nazi racist, you know,

because Idaho, you have a lot of white supremacy people. Right. And, you know, I have a ink on my arm from my swazes and stuff when I was in another life. And, yeah, yeah. And, of course, having the skill set that I have from a lifetime of living in that, It's very easy for someone like myself to get inserted into that. And they are not college level degrees. People are idiots.

I mean, you're talking about really devoted Nazi white. Yeah, the dumbest of the dumb. Yeah, they are. And so you're posing as a buyer for cartels or just for yourself? No, never for myself, always for an organization. And always with lots of money, showing lots of money. Right. It's the hook.

When it's too good, when it looks too good to be true, it usually is. It usually is. said, my friend. Were there any cases? So you're just kind of, you're getting paid per operation now. Yeah, I'm a contractor at that point. I'm paid according to case. Do they give you a gun? Are you allowed to kill people? No, I'm not allowed to kill anybody. In self-defense, I assume you are. Well, yeah, in that case, of course. But normally there's cover on me from a distance. I see. Sniper cover or whatever. It's always a car full of agents sitting outside of a residence. If I'm in that residents. I'm wired. They're hearing the conversations. I was never afraid to wear wires because

I was, you know, the stature of the way I carried myself, warned it, don't, don't even question me, don't get near me type of attitude. But if we thought, and there were occasions where I wouldn't wear listening devices on me, then I didn't wear listening devices on me. You assess, according to the person you're dealing with. Now, I assume because of your history with Kulia Khan and Sinaloa, You can't do missions there anymore. You're too hot. Yeah, I'm wanted. Yeah.

I'm definitely wanted. I was working a dope case up in San Diego and in just south of Tijuana, Rosarita, actually. And I came back up in a sheriff that was a Connecticut department and said, yeah, you know, we heard you had a $100,000 contract on your head. Be careful down there. Wow. That's the only time I ever heard the statement made, but I sure believed it. Yeah. I had some pretty powerful enemies by then.

Right. So you tried to avoid areas where they thought it was going to be obvious that you'd be recognized. Like, did that ever worry you that you would somebody in a deal would literally recognize you from the past? Well, you think about those things, but you also understand you have various intelligence agencies behind you that have already done the foreground work before you're inserted into an area. And you trusted them, even after their fuck up in Kulia Khan and almost got you killed? There was only that fuck up in Kulia Khan. That was the only time in that agent I never liked from the day I met him. but the ones that I trusted my life to were agents I knew for many, many, many years.

And I believed everything they said. So this is the late 90s, early 2000s now. Oh, yeah, this is in the 2000s. How had the world of cartels changed from your time, say, in the 80s when the Colombians were running? It had changed enough and drastically enough to wear a lot of stuff I no longer profiled or fitted into. There were assignments that I would be talked to about and I wouldn't accept them. Okay. I was a contractor now.

I'm not somebody working office case. So you can turn down jobs. And they respected that. So what jobs would you turn down? Something where we didn't have enough intelligence gathered from a region where I'd formerly worked, jobs where I happen to know, actually know the people and knew that they were loose cannon situations. You know, sometimes what will happen is say a shipment gets taken off. Well, what they do now, which they didn't do back in my ears, is to say, well, who's the last five or six guys that joined in the last seven or eight months?

kill them all. That way we're for sure going to get the one that did it. And that's what they do now. Wow. And they've been doing it consistently for probably more than 15 years. You think they've gotten more violent? I know they've gotten more violent. I know they have.

I've lost friends, good people that I've known in horrible death. Horrible death. How would you mind going into it? Acid baths, bodily mutilation, limb amputees, where blood's being pumped into the. them to keep them alive, where they're being bodily disassembled, things like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, the culture down there has really gotten demonic. Is that a word? Yes. That's a good word. It's a disrespect for life. There's not really a lot of upholding of what the Christians hold dear, which is life. Yes. You know what I mean?

It's a value. It's about control, intimidation, and instilling fear. Right. A lot of the times people that are victimized and killed in those capacities of their relatives, children, mother, father, grandparents to the target that they're going after. That was always my concern, was that they would take out my family one at a time, something to that nature. And I would be taken out later, of course, but they wanted me to hurt first. Did it, as your time as a mercenary, is your family still in protection? No, when I got out of prison, my wife had already left me and took the kids to be with another man and build another life.

So were you still worried that the cartel could find them? No. No, I was not at all. Okay. Why? I was already removed from their life. And I know how the cartel thinks, I understand the world. I lived for a decade and a half.

They were no longer an asset that I would be afraid of having lost because in their mind I've already lost them. So they were protected by her choice. a divorce and move on. Right. Yeah, because you hadn't been working with them. You were off the map. Did they know you went to prison? Were you worried about getting touched when you were in prison?

Being in prison was part of my cover. They could check my background and say, yeah, he was in Leavenworth and, you know, and it didn't show that why I got released. We doctored up everything to where if I got investigated. I was a hardcore type guy that, you know, and prior to that when I went to Folsom prison, I didn't tell on anybody. I took my hits and went to prison. Right.

You know, so I had, it was easy for the, them to build the image that was necessary to get me inserted into highly organized crime levels. Now, in the 2000s, this is when Chapo is coming to his full power. This is like two decades, two and a half decades after. Chop was the head of the son of a drug cartel. He's a boss. He's now becoming the most powerful drug lord, at least figurehead in the world. In the world.

In the world. Did you hear from him again? Did you hear from his people again? Did you hear anything? Did you have any brush-ups with the old crew? I did not. I was working enough other types of cases and enough of other countries that it wasn't necessary for me to concentrate on an area where I would get picked out.

What were some of the most active countries that you worked outside of Mexico? Surprising in Costa Rica. Really? Yeah, the Colombian drug lords. A lot of them bought ranches on the Caribbean side. And as I understand it now, I was talking to someone that lives down there recently, told me that those ranches have been seized. They've been imprisoned, and now they're turning them into humanitarian places where Christians gather.

Right. You know, they help people with them. Right. But yeah, yeah. They would like step over Panama. Panama has always been a hub. I've done a lot of work down there. Yeah.

And that's a remarkable industry to work out of. But the lords, the real lords, they were in Costa Rica. Interesting. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. So that's their hideout and that's where they bump Coke from, it's a transport hub. It's part of the transport route. From Columbia to Mexico.

Yeah, in Guatemala, Salvador. I've been in Managua and Nicaragua working. And yeah, those are hot zones that are highly protected by the cartels. Now tell us who, what do these guys look like? You know, it's not some kid with a, you know, in the mountains of Sina Loa with a giant AK that he can barely hold. those guys aren't buying 2,000 keys. I've heard that it's erudite, you know, upper middle class, or wealthy individuals,

usually lighter-skinned Latinos. Not the soldiers. Yeah, it's not the soldiers. So who's a guy in Managua that's buying 500,000? An elitist. Somebody that's, you know, in business and known to be in business, also known to be a drug trafficker. But who the hell cares down there?

He's making money for a lot of people. Are they usually connected with the police? The case that I worked in in Monago, I was inserted into Monago. The police didn't even know I was in their country. It was a CIA thing I was doing. I did a couple of those, but I really can't talk about those on your show or anywhere else.

I'm not allowed to disclose that information. Okay. So we'll talk around it in generalities. How do you make it into a country and they don't know about you? Are you airlifted in by chopper? Or how do they get you in there? I don't know if I want to give up that information. Oh, come on.

This is not giving up anything. I understand. I understand. There's agreements I've made. And I have to stand by those agreements. I apologize on your show. No, that's okay. I mean, this is like Tom Clancy novel stuff.

Yes, it is. But there's also the line of honor. When I tell a man who tells me this is classified, this didn't exist, you can never, ever discuss this. I need him to know that I will never, ever discuss this. Okay. Because it's beyond respect. It's survival.

What was a case that you helped make that you're most proud of? That's classified. I can't talk about it. There's one that stays. I mean, I'm very sorry. I can't. Was it a drug case? Can you tell us what kind of case, at least?

Inserting. I was inserted in a country south of Mexico, but north or Costa Rica. I was captured. I was held in a prison camp for seven weeks. with another agent of that country, a foreign agent. And real bad things happened to him and me in there. And I'm under current treatment from the VA about it. And it's so deeply classified that I can't even tell my doctors.

Do you think that's where you mentioned having PTSD? Do you think that's where that comes from? Or was it the incident in Kulia Khan when you got kidnapped? One of them. There's, I think, a multiple of incidents. You know, I've lost friends and brothers horribly, and I've witnessed things. I've done things horribly. I just lived in a very bad world for a long period of time.

And my reclamation from that world and trying to claim out of it, there were things that I had to do to get out of it. There were things that I watched being done to other people, children in a room being held, things to this nature, where I didn't do anything. And I regret those decisions. Wow. I regret those decisions. Wow. Yeah. Those are things we live with.

What happened to me in that particular agent of that particular country? My government doesn't even know I was there. It had nothing to do with America. I got approached by a foreign intelligence agency because I had a connection with one of the people they were going after from federal prison of all places. He had written about me in a letter. They got the information. And I was at the American embassy in Mexico City doing something else. of my country and I was approached on the side and so I met them for dinner and they offered me

a whole bunch of money and I went ahead and did it and yeah we got caught were they do you think that was a setup no okay no they they had an agent of their own in there with me you know the funny thing is the guy that I was in prison with which gave me the association which was the end was oh yeah yeah yeah I haven't come down and visit type thing and we show up down there and immediately we're both grabbed. We were hauled to an undisclosed camp that moved us for the seven weeks we were in captivity. And I never even saw them.

And I think they used that because the agent I was with was blown. And that's how we got caught. Okay. His cover was blown. It wasn't me. Wow. Yeah. I was just in a bad place.

You're lucky you are alive. Yeah. I wrote about it in one of the books, but I camouflaged the way I wrote about it. But the way we got rescued, I'll tell you this. much was the camps where I were called dry camps because they were moving us. Dry camps? Yeah, dry camp was where they don't have running water. So they have a water truck that comes in.

And what the agency of that intelligence agency that company did was pour a chemical into the water truck. And several hours later, everybody in the camp was bang, knocked out. They were sick virally from it and knocked out. And the two truck drivers were paid off to let it happen that came out of the camp. and then a team came in and got us from their country. And that's how we got rescued. And they gave you the word, don't drink this water. There was no word given to us.

We were bound to, you know, to, we were bound to two trees sitting outside right at the edge of the perimeter of the jungle camp that we were in. And we were watching everybody going to get in water and I'm thinking then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, they came in and got us out of there. But you don't have to, I'm probably overstepping here, but do you think that was a Navy seal? kind of extraction? Nothing is like our seals. I've been around them and they're amazing. This was this particular country's own intelligence, people and their own special forces.

I see. I see. Wow. They paid me a lot of money for it. I'm not going to say how much, but it was a lot. But you still got paid? I got healthily paid. Okay. And my country never had any idea. But it's because of my country and me being in one of the embassies where somebody spotted and found out who I was And by then they've thoroughly examined my credentials. They know that I've been in prison.

They knew I was in the cartels. They knew I would profile. And my name was in a letter that some guy from Levin wrote home to his family about. And, yeah, I've got my friend, do, do, do, do, do. And so then they find out that I'm an operative. So it's perfect thing because I'm a contractor. I'm a freelance operator. And that's how I got caught up in that.

I've never talked about this ever. Wow. You're the first. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for sharing that. So after that incident, did you continue working or was that it? I continued working.

I was down in, it was 2018. I was going down to meet a cartel pilot through an associate of mine in Sonora, Mexico, in a town called Ciudad Obrigan. And I had a friend of mine, a neighbor, and it was an affiliate of their family. And they knew that I'd been a drug dealer and all this. And they said, hey, well, we've got this cousin of ours, who is a pilot for the cartel, flying heroin into the States. Wow.

So I may call to the agency and said, hey, guys, I got this. And, you know, we have what's called the Brownsville Act. If I go undercover representing as an agent of the United States into their country, under the Brownsville Act, we have to notify Mexico that we are inserting an agent into your country. But his mother dropped dead. And I was there. I'm a pastor. So they had me go into Mexico just as a pastor doing the formal funeral rights for his family as what I told him. So I didn't have to get turned in where I would have gotten killed for sure.

Right. You don't have to check in with authorities. No, I'm not under the Brownsville. I'm going down there to bury a friend's mother. Well, I was down there. They connected me with this guy. I was able to disqualify him, actually, to where we didn't pursue him as a case. But that was a weekend.

They moved El Chapo into the United States. A little cartel blew into 10,000 pieces. I'm right in the middle of it. I'm listening to people getting shot. Two doors down in the neighbor. and I'm at, they put me in the trunk of a car, drove me through a couple of cartel checkpoints, got me to an airport, walked me on a plane. I flew into Tijuana from where I was at, the Obergon Airport. And when I stepped off, I took a taxi to the border, walked back in the United

States. I was met by agents. I was debriefed by agents. And the next morning, I said, I'm done. And I retired. And I retired in 2018. Wow. After 17 years. Wow. 17 active years. Wow. Yeah, not amazing. That's unreal. And I had agents. texting me and calling me after I retired, saying, you know, you really paid your debt back. You really did what you said you set out to do. You know, you should feel good about the rest of your life. Yeah.

And then you're going to read in the book of Fox and Lionsden how a few years ago they set me up with two kilos of heroin, had my house rated. I got busted with two keys. But somebody, I believe, in the DOJ, made a call to the prosecuting attorney's office and just basically made everything go away. Wait, who set you up with two kilos? The cartel that killed me, the ones that assassinated me. They mean attempted to assassinating?

I left this world. I felt myself leaving. Okay. I don't know how I revived, but I think God. What do you mean, though? So they found you and... Well, they found me and what happened was I had reed, they came and gave me what they did was they came to me. And you were asking about my wife and kids, and this is going to be interesting to you.

Guy Polza, I just did a bedside hospice job up on the sixth floor of Providence in Everett. And the guy passed away. And whenever they passed, I always go down to the river there. Have a cigarette, sit on a log, and reflect on a good memory of the patient. And I remember pulling in the parking lot, I look in the rear room mirror, and I see this really nice pickup pulling in behind me. And I got cold chills right then. So I pull and I jump out of the car, and he gets out, and he stand there walking towards me.

He's got the Seniloa belt buckle, the hat, the lace shirt. I knew he was a mid-level cartel player the second I saw him. Yeah, guys like that don't. walk around Seattle, Washington. Yeah, it wasn't to come, and he wasn't there to execute me, but I thought he was. He reaches in his vest, so I figure he's pulling out his gun to go ahead and put me down. So I just turned and faced him, just being defiant and go ahead and take me, you know,

you've got me. There's nowhere you're going to run at that point. He's 15 feet away from it. Instead of pulling out a gun, he pulls out a cell phone, and he clicks it, and he scrolls it, and he walks over to me right up to me, and he shows me all four of my children. Now, that morning, my son, my son, who lives with me was wearing a black jumpsuit with red stripes down the legs. And I'm looking at a picture of my son and a black jumpsuit with red suit.

So they knew I had my kids covered. My daughters I haven't seen in years. They had gone to live with other people. And I'm looking at my one daughter with children coming out of a Walmart, a son in a parking lot of a small strip mall. And the other child was at a church in a church parking lot. So here's all four of my children. And I remember just kind of freezing. And he said, come here with me.

And he takes me in the back truck and he has me a little duffel bag. Two kilos of heroin, a couple pounds of meth, I think, or something. Nothing they would want. A guy like me, they would hand me 100 kilos. So I knew something was really weird right then. He says, we want you to put this out on the street. And what they wanted to do was destroy my credibility and ruin my leg. Because they had obviously been watching me for a while.

My daughters were adopted. I don't know what their last names are or where they lived. That's why I felt my kids were protected. Right. So what happened was somebody on a law enforcement payroll was able to give the cartel access to it. We believe it was Beltron Lave's family. They took out the cell and they were 60 miles north of where I was living. Wow.

So anyway, I grabbed it and Pat was still alive. And I turned to Pat and I said, I've never sold heroin in my life. I don't know what to do with this. He says, you got no choice. They showed you the kids. Get the shit out there so their police people can know. you're dealing or whatever they want you to do for your punishment. Pat was very wise like me.

He understood our world. So Pat helped me do that. And they came back and I just couldn't do it. And I said, screw you, get the hell out of here. And the guy looked at me like this, shaking his hand. And less than two weeks later, they hit me. And you still kept the dope though? Oh, no, no, no.

I let the narks. They couldn't find it. I took them right to and gave it to them. Oh, right. Of course, of course. Of course. Of course. I needed to let their law enforcement officer on payroll know that I actually did what they wanted me to do.

That's why Pat helped me in putting it out on the street. And they're law enforcement, the ones they're paying off, the cops that the- Absolutely. And you think it's a Beltron-Lava. But Belton-Lava, those guys have-ells all over there. But they're not even a cartel anymore. You have a picture of them. They sure as hell are, because the FBI told me not three months ago that that's who they were.

They came by to let me know they did get them. Okay. But in the completion of the story, when they came by the next time and I rejected them and they left, when the guy came knocking on my door at midnight, he was wearing a tow truck driver's uniform with the company shirt and the name on it. And the hat pulled down. I mean, he was dressed like a tow truck driver. And I have a classic Corvette stingray in the back there. And he says, yeah, I'm a tow truck driver.

I actually, you know, hear your car. Can you come down and take a look at him? We can do the paperwork. and I woke up out of a dead sleep at midnight, so I wasn't thinking at all. Right, right. Walk down the stairs. Was he a Mexican? No, he was a white guy.

He was a cartel killer, a white guy. And he says, no, you hit it down here. Can you take a look at this? I dropped down to my knee, and I knew. As soon as I dropped down to a knee, I knew in that instant. And that was the first knife strike that hit me. And then I went into defensive posture, but he was extremely skilled and well trained. And he had stabbed me multiple times before.

And at the same time, he's delivering blows to various parts of my body, immobilizing my body. And I'm 65 years old, getting just totally mulled by this guy. Where does he hit you with the knife? He got me at the top of the head. He was trying to hit the neck, like you just pointed to immobilize you. And that's what we were taught in the military. And the last knife strike when he hit him, I heard my head pop, and the blood was covering my eyes. And I started losing, I knew I was going to die.

And that's when I got that feeling of, well, it's okay. I quit worrying about being in the world. I started getting ready for where I was going. It was beautiful, brother. I didn't want to come back to this. And that's a true story. That really happened that way. And did they leave you?

Did he leave you for dead? Oh, yeah, he left me dead. He left me. I was gone. He thought he had killed you, I'm sure. Well, I was slipping into darkness, just like the song said. Right. And we both, because he could feel my giving up.

You could tell that I knew I was dying. Yeah. It was like a lightning bolt hit me or something. I kind of got an electric charge of my body, and my eyes opened. And I remember crawling to the back door of one of my tenants, I have a five-plex. And I knocked on the door. They came in, 911, and next thing, you know, I was in and out of consciousness. I remember a forensic nurse talking about me.

I said, this was a cartel kill order. Please secure my room here in the hospital, get me protected. Wow. And they didn't probably believe it. I don't know, but when I was under for a day and a half. and when I came out of the coma there was no one there so I called Pat

and Pat got down there within minutes with a couple of guys to protect me but got me out of there and got me back to the same house I got hit at because I have security upstairs and a couple months later I got served the papers saying well we're going to prefer charges on you

on the heroin we found which is fine I knew I could I knew the truth would come out that I wasn't out there dealing on my own free will and all that and I remember the judge at the sentencing thing going, Jesus God, he said, you really ought to write a book and do a movie. And I said, well, Your Honor, I brought you a copy.

I'll sign it and give it to you. But they were blown away. And a couple months ago, this happened about a year and a half ago, the sentencing part. And a couple months ago, I went to the courthouse to present him with a couple of novels. And his clerk came out and said, you know, we still talk about you almost every day.

We've never had anybody like this in our court. Oh, I believe it. So it was really cool, you know. So what was the sentencing, though? Not a day in general. And I'm with two kilos of heroin in possession with intent to deliver. Yeah, but didn't you? I thought you were going to give that up to the cops.

I did give it. They hit me as a search warrant. They took me downstairs and cuffs. This is really a good part of that would happen. They hit my house. I had five people. They're homeless people. I was feeding and stuff.

Half of them had warrants, so they're arrested immediately. I'm all down the stairs and cuff sitting on a bench. And the guy says, well, we know you're in the banditos and all of us. So we know your old school that it does. So that told me right there. They didn't have any idea who I was. They were just a warrant team. Yeah.

And they were announcing over there, we got Bradley in custody. Well, their boss was a commandant in the Linwood office. And I believe this was told me he overheard my name. Rush is down there, comes there and say, take the cuffs off of him, gives me a hug. Said, what the hell's going on, Hal? And I'm saying, well, I can't tell you because I need to prepare an attorney at this point. And I knew the Department of Justice would need to be notified. Right, right.

And did they ever get the guy who stabbed you? As was my understanding, they took out the cell completely. Okay. That's what I was talking. No surprise. It's kind of a suicide mission when you act that brazen. But the fact- Well, we do know they were located 65 miles north of Everett in Bellingham.

That's where the cell was operational. And that's how we think they may have just stumbled upon me by accident. Right. After all those years. After all those years. Yeah. You're talking 30 years ago. Right.

Right. And, but boy, life can come back to get you, huh, brother? Yeah. I mean, that's like a lesson in karma. and just faith in a way that you survived. Yeah, a two-time striker walking out without doing a single day in jail with jail with two kilos of heroin. Think of that. Just think of that.

So your life now is obviously you're writing the books. You've written the books. I'm a pastor to the homeless as I've been for 19 years. My love is in the dopouses and in the camps, you know, and having people brought to me that are in need. And I do this every day of my life. and I feed every day of my life at my home. And I'm just very careful and cautious as to who I allow in. I know the streets well enough.

And recently in the last year, I backed away from working in the trap houses. They're just too dangerous. Yeah. They are. Is that because of fentanyl? Or why is that? It's definitely because of the desire for fentanyl. And plus I'm tired of looking at some of the dirty stuff.

You know, I see underage minor girls sitting on a couch waiting for their turn to go into a bedroom to have sex with some guy for a $20 hit. I'm tired of looking at that stuff. Watching a couple of kids sharing the same needle at a kitchen table and then crying because their self-esteem is so low and what they feel about themselves. And now basically what I do is I'll feed some of the locals and if somebody's like in an overdose state,

the Veterans Administration, they provide me with NARCAM kids and they know the work that I do for my community. So I insist people bring overdose cases to my home so I can bring them back. They won't take. them to the hospital. They got felony warrants out on them and they know they're going to get dope sick if they get arrested. So that's not my place to judge that part of their life. Just help them. Why are you doing this? Why are you after all these years? Because I truly care.

I truly care about every one of them. There's no other agenda to it. It's just caring for another human being. When you've seen and experienced as much as I have and seen what I have, then caring about humanity becomes the ultimate. objective of your life or what you have left of it. Considering all of that you've seen the worst, the horrors of humanity. Yes, I have. Have you lost faith in humanity or actually been strengthened by it? You know, that's a good question.

And I haven't really thought of it in that context. All I do is every day I wake up with absolute joy in my heart, waiting for what he sends me through the door and being ready for that. And that's the truth of it. That's my life. And I just dealt with a 70-plus-year-old woman that was gang raped by five guys last month. And she's coming around now.

And she was brought to me. And I mean, she was beat up and tore up. And they raped her for her money. A little bit of money this old lady had. But the nice thing is she was brought to me to deal with. And I insured her, no police involvement. Well, we'll take care of. I let her clean up in my home.

I did her laundry. I set her on a couch and then I waited for her to talk about what she wanted to talk about. These are tragic things, and people need to be able to release according to their own ability, if you will, to do that. But that's what I do with my life. And I write books and working on the podcast show, I'm dying to get it going. I love your podcast show. I've watched it, and I've been on many podcast shows. Yours was probably one of the very best, if not the best.

Thanks, Dr. Hal. You do a good job. And you were one of our best guests. I can say that. I want to thank you for that. I gave you my whole thing. today. Well, I don't want you to ever lose faith. I never will. Nothing mankind can create would take that from me. It's powerful. Thank you for that. Tell us where they can buy your books. And I would

recommend starting, because you have many books, I would recommend starting with this one, a fox and the lion's den. This is kind of a much more detailed account of what we just talked about, about your life's story. Where can they find those? Lowercase, DR Hal Bradley.com takes you right to my Amazon site. And then all of the books I've written are listed there. And aside from this one, which is my autobiography, the other books are fictionalized renditions of one man's war against the cartels based on my true life story, but animated for entertainment.

And some of the books are written. They're pretty graphic. I would caution the readers to be careful if they don't have the state. to read what happens to people in these type of situations. But they're pretty amazing. I tried to do it to honor the Special Forces teams, the law enforcement agencies, the contractors like myself, those of us that are outside the wire, putting our life on the line.

So these are fiction books, but based off of real life events of your time undercover? Well, in the 17 years that I was operational, I would be operating out of various embassies in various countries. teams would come in from outside the wire and they'd get debrief to come down to the cafeteria and we're all sitting together and we sit away from everybody else because they're not like us and we start talking about stories or whatever we had just gone through that we can talk about and over 17 years i had amassed dozens and dozens of stories and i said oh my god i've got to start writing these action adventure novels so to your audience enjoy the books they're they're

absolutely amazing and they honor people that deserve to be honored. They're dedicated to them. And we'll look out for that podcast just as soon as you get to it. The Crisis Victory Show. Amazing. Thank you. Dr. Hal, thank you so much. He's going to stick around for a little quick bonus episode. Patreon.com slash

the Connect show. Go to his website and check out his books. And once again, brother, really appreciate it. Thank you. From one Northwest boy to another. Yeah. We made a real connection. Thanks a lot. Thanks, guys.