The Rest Is Classified - 77. The Hunt for Pablo Escobar: The Medellin Cartel vs Colombia (Ep 4)

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

By the autumn of 1989, the hunt for Pablo Escobar and the Medellín cartel was intensifying. With the US military and intelligence agencies now directly involved, a new, more aggressive phase of the War on Drugs had begun. Join Gordon and David as they explore how Escobar, facing a relentless manhunt, leverages his position to strike an extraordinary deal with the Colombian state. Discover how he uses his “plata o plomo” (silver or lead) strategy - a mix of bribery, kidnapping, and murder - to bend the government to his will and secure his ultimate prize: the outlawing of extradition. This is the tale of Escobar’s political manoeuvring, a new president's desperate attempts to end the violence, and a surrender that was, in fact, a stunning victory. ------------------- Join The Declassified Club: Start your free trial at ⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ - go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, quarterly livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ------------------- Order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email: [e-mail] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Victory over drugs is our cause, a just cause. And with your help, we are going to win. Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin drug cartel. The world's 14th, which is man. He was, in many ways, a terrorist. This is an economic power concentrated in a few hands and in criminal minds. What they cannot obtain by blackmail, they get by murder. And I don't think he expressed anywhere.

regret at all. He tries to portray himself as a man of the people, this kind of like leftist revolutionary outlaw. Nearly everyone in Medellin supports the traffickers, those who don't are rather dead or targets. If you declare war, you've got to expect the state to respond. This is the moment where he goes too far. 13 bombs have gone off to Medellin since the weekend. By the end of 87, Bogota is essentially a war zone. U.S. spending for international anti-drug efforts is going to grow from less than $300 million in 1989 to more than $700 million by 1991. It is the certain knowledge that no one is really safe in Colombia from drug

cartel assassins. It's a conflict where the goal wasn't even to stop the flow of cocaine. It was to bring down this narco-terrorist. Everything has turned against him after this point. The whole thing he was building is collapsing. If you are robbed, what do you do? Who do you turn to? The police? If someone crashes your car, you expect the traffic police to solve your problem and to compensate you for your damages by forcing your aggressor to pay damages. If you're not paid what you are owed, do you believe that Colombian tribunals will force your creditor to pay the debt? members of the police and armed forces assault and abuse you, whom do you go to? I don't think one

single person has mentally considered the above questionnaire anything other than a useless exercise of hope, which we all lost many years ago, faced with the criminal ineptitude of our police and judicial systems. Here, the guerrilla groups, crooks and police, have been applying the death sentence on their enemies, and then they go and insult the ones who dare to call things by their name. Well, welcome to the rest is classified. I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McClarsky. And that was none other than Pablo Escobar. Who else? Who else? We are telling the story of this wild drug lord turned narco-terrorist. And I guess last time we looked, David, at how he had turned against the state in escalating violence. And in turn, how this had brought the United States into what is

really turning into a war on drugs in the sense that the U.S. military and the intelligence agencies are all piling in to get involved to go after him and to try and find him. And so the hunt is on. The hunt is on. We've gone from the boring prevention and treatment parts of the war on drugs and away from the interdiction of Coke shipments into Miami. We're in the middle of an actual proper war on drugs. And we last time Gordon talked about the kind of the different agencies that are trying to collect human intelligence on the cartels with, I think, pretty mixed success, the Colombian search block that is the sort of arm of the Colombian state that is going after the Medellin cartel, and Centra spike, this spooky unit of technical collectors

inside the U.S. army that are attempting to use direction-finding equipment to locate the kingpins of the Medellin cartel. But it's the fall of 1989. And what do the Americans know about the Medellian cartel? We've been talking in our earlier episodes about an organization that's really Pablo's organization. You know, it's a cartel, so he's collaborating with other leaders. But he's really the guy. I think that the Colombians understand this. But the American assessment of, or sort of the American view of the cartel at this point, I think is a little bit more incomplete, let's say, right? Pablo's one of many leaders, and maybe he's not the most important one. And the initial centrist spike focus is finding a leader in the Medellian cartel

named Jose Rodriguez Gotcha, known as the Mexican. He's apparently not Mexican, but he loves Mexico, loves Mexican culture, food, music, so he's called the Mexican. He is a a fat guy who wears a Panamanian hat with a snakehead on the band. He's also, I think he's featured in the Narco series, relatively despicable character. Fortune has put the Mexican on the cover, estimating his worth at $5 billion, right? So he's someone to go after.

Centra Spike, those direction finders, they find him pretty quickly. An informant has revealed that Gacha has regular phone conversations with a woman in Bogota. the information comes into the embassy, apparently through the DEA, Centra Spike starts listening for calls, and they find the Mexican quickly in an estate on a hill southwest of Bogota. It's the only house on the hill, and it looks pretty elegant for being so remote.

Centra Spike passes the information to the CIA who then give it to the Colombian president. And I think here, again, we have this kind of interesting case study and how the flow of information is working because the information comes in from a source. It could be DEA. It could be CIA. It gets fed to the technical collectors who then find a location. And the connection point to the Colombian presidency, it seems to me, is primarily through the U.S. ambassador. And the CIA chief of station will often go to those meetings. And so they probably pass that information to the Colombian president. The coordinates of that home are given to the Columbia Air Force, who then deploy a squadron of T-33 fighter bombers to destroy the house and everyone in

it. Wow. Maybe too much reaction. But the bombing run is called off at the last minute due to what were probably correct fears of civilian casualties in a surrounding village. But the jets booming overhead spook, Gotcha, the Mexican who flees. And the Air Force actually is accused of intentionally bungling the mission to let Gotcha go. Now, he's eventually tracked down, thanks to an informant from a rival cartel and is located because he's on the phone arranging for women to be sent to him in a remote area near the Panamanian border, right? So police assault helicopters then fly in for a raid, gotcha his teenage son and his bodyguards are all killed. Their bodies are actually placed on display later. At his estate, Gordon, the police find a working gallows, which I feel like

what estate is not complete without a working gallows, and a gold-plated personalized nine-millimeter with monogrammed bullets. And then, critically for the U.S. kind of view of the power structure of the cartel, after Gauta's death, Centra Spike sees a flood of phone calls coming into and then going out of phones associated with Pablo Escobar. Now, the top cartel bosses, they don't use landlines, right, which the Colombians are themselves monitoring. But none of the cartel leaders at this point seem to think that their cell phones or radios are being monitored, right?

Which, of course, is shifting with the American assistance. And Centra Spike begins listening to Pablo. And I guess very typical Pablo, he's polite on the phone when he's talking to associates. He's not cursing. He's not angry. He gives his standard greeting when he picks up the phone is, What's happening, my man? Right. So he's just, he's, he's relaxed. And I think the analysis of these calls after Gotch's death kind of fill in what at least was a sort of American gap on the cartel, which is Pablo's the boss, right? He's not upset necessarily by God's death. He's kind of handling it in a cool manner. He's divvying out Gotch's responsibilities to other associates. So that's a key point is like Pablo Escobar is the guy in this cartel, right?

Centra spike through these intercepts is also tuned in to another aspect of Pablo, which is his absolute viciousness and ruthlessness. So in one call, they overhear Pablo ordering his men to kidnap a Colombian officer and torture him to death slowly to send a message. So Pablo in these first few months of Centra Spike being on the ground and this kind of ramped up American effort to bring down this narco terrorist have settled on Escobar as the primary target. And Major Jacoby, who's the head of Centra Spike in Colombia at the time, it gets so focused on Pablo that in early 1990 on a trip home, he buys a bottle of Remy Martin Cognac and puts it unopened on a shelf in his apartment

and tells everyone in Bogota that he'll drink it when Pablo Escobar is dead. So for the first time, they're really getting an insight into who Escobar is as a person, how important he is, and the kind of connections and his network, I guess. And that's being filled out by technical attention. It is interesting, isn't it? The Pablo doesn't think, I guess it's a new form of communications, the cell phones and the radios. So they haven't quite got their heads around the idea that these could be direction, finded, located, or intercepted in some way. So it's that interesting point, isn't it, in which it's a new technology, because most people haven't got cell phones at this point. They really are pretty rare. So they've got this advantage. And it is going to give them a pretty unique insight. But it doesn't quite get to him straight away, does it? No, it doesn't. I mean, it's at this point filled out some gaps about who the appropriate or most effective targets will be in the cartel. And it's probably helped, you know, if you sort of walk this down from the collection to the you've probably got a much better order of battle on the cartel after just a few months of

listening in. But the direction-finding technology, it doesn't work all the time. And what we'll see is that there's going to be some adaptation on the part of the cartel. So Centrospike ends up intercepting, and this will be a turning point for the hunt in a fairly negative way. In early 1990s, Central Spike intercepts a phone call between Pablo and one of his Sicario's, in which they're plotting the murder of a presidential candidate, which at this point, they've now done multiple times already. They mentioned the date and the time of the hit and the intercept, but very frustratingly, not which candidate is going to be killed or where. And this kind of threat reporting, the station says, well, we've got to share this with the Colombians. We've got

actionable intelligence on an upcoming cartel hit. So the likeliest targets for this hit are given extra security. But it turns out that the actual target is a minor candidate from a small party who's gunned down successfully by the cartel. Pablo immediately issues a denial. But the Colombians, they're sitting there with this with this intercepted transcript of his phone call and they want to lick Pablo to the killing. And so mysteriously, Gordon, the transcript leaks to the Colombian. press, which is a disaster which anyone who works in Signals Intelligence will tell you is always the mistake. And David, I guess there's a history of intercepted calls getting leaked to the

press for someone to show off or make a point and then it doing great damage. I mean, that goes right actually back to the 1920s. There's a famous raid on a Russian espionage base in London, the Arcos raid, which gets talked about in Parliament and then the Russians realize the Brits are listening into their messages. And, of course, I think it happens with Bin Laden. It's a bit of controversy around it. Yeah, the satellite phone. Yeah, that he had a satellite phone and that it's being intercepted by the NSA.

And then he switches it off. And so it is the problem with intercepted communications that someone briefs or leaks about it because they want to make a point like they did in this case. And it does real damage. And Pablo will never again really hold an unguarded phone conversation. on a cell phone or radio phone, he's going to be much more circumspect in how he uses that technology, how he communicates with his associates, using coded language, constantly switching frequencies, all of which is going to wreak havoc on the hunt for him and make it far more

complicated to track the man down. But this partnership between the U.S., which is this kind of motley crew of centrist spike, and it's the CIA, and it's the DEA and FBI paired up with the search block. All of this together will become known as the PEG task force inside the U.S. government, P.E.G. Pablo Escobar Gaviria, which is full name. And I think it's one of these fascinating little inside baseball bits, which is Pablo's acronym inside the U.S. government is PEG. So everything, you know, the cables, everything, refer to him as peg. And peg plus the search block really start to squeeze Pablo throughout 1990. So in June of 1990, they kill one of Pablo's most trusted Sicario leaders.

And then in July, they capture Pablo's brother-in-law and a trusted associate. And I should say here, the they is the search block, which is being fed information from all of these different U.S. government agencies, right? On the 9th of August, they kill Gustavo Gaviria, Pablo's buddy from his very first days of kind of skipping school and stealing cars. he's a major character also in the Narcos series, right? This friendship between Pablo and Gustavo. So Gustavo's killed in August.

And these are killings that really, I think, start to get to Pablo a bit, both emotionally and professionally. His brother-in-law had been the cartel's treasurer, one of its main moneymen, and Gustavo had been one of his most trusted confidants. So you get the sense that this war starts to get much more personal for Pablo as you get into 1990. in October of that year, another cousin has killed. And those will be another feature of kind of these raids is afterward these cartel leaders. It's always noted in the search block records. They're killed in a shootout. And it's very unclear.

Are they actually killed in a shootout? Or is it a euphemism for the search block conducting basically a summary execution of the cartel leader once they've been captured? Yeah, there's a real tradition of this. I mean, you even hear about it. There's a famous thing, I think, in the Indian police, they call it encounters and encounter killings. You know, it's this idea where we encountered them and then we killed them. So he is feeling it now, isn't he? It is a problem. And he's also got the problem that, you know, despite all of the mayhem that the cartel has inflicted on the political life of Colombia, well, they've still had an election and they have sworn in a new president by the fall of 1990. Despite Pablo's attempts to kill basically every candidate who had run for the office, a new president enters the office. And I think maybe this speaks a bit to some of the success that the intimidation campaign has had, which is that this new president is more of a dealmaker. He wants the violence to stop. And as part of that, he's going to consider offering carrots to go along with the stick of the search block.

And he issues a decree that offers Pablo immunity from extradition and a reduced sentence if he surrenders and confesses. So we start to get this deal-making component to the hunt. Pablo's answer is he basically says extradition has got to be outlawed and the government needs to spell out exactly what kind of confession will be required for surrender and, crucially, provide a special prison for those who do surrender and offer protection to their families, right? And to make the point, Pablo and the cartel begin kidnapping members of prominent Bogota families. So really trying to get the government where it hurts, journalists, newspaper editors, and people who are just related to politicians and top aides so that they can further squeeze this new presidential administration. This idea of kind of negotiation and pressure, it does go to the idea, this is more like a war.

You know, if you think about what Russia and Ukraine are doing on the battlefield, they're each trying to get advantage on the battlefield, but it's partly ahead of perhaps knowing that it's going to end up in a negotiation. It feels very different from a traditional law enforcement manhunt in which someone's on the run and someone's going to get arrested or they're going to be free. Here there is actually a kind of political track, which is constantly going on, you know, in which there's discussions and negotiations about extradition and what it might look like if he was to surrender and what might survive and what might not. And how do you get leverage on the other side? I think it's really interesting and unusual.

in terms of what's going on. And it's that link between kind of banditry politics and crime in this case. And there's precedent, recent precedent at that point in the Colombian system for even like former insurgent groups like M19, a group that had recently overtaken the Supreme Court and murdered half of its justices nearly, which there's sort of a political process for getting these groups off of the path of violence and insurrection and into kind of more legal politics, right, to bring them under the umbrella of the state. So I think in Pablo's mind, there's no difference, right, between him and a political insurgency, right? I mean, he's an institution.

The Medellin cartel is an institution that is at war with the Colombian state. And if they could strike a deal, that might be better than the path of violence. Yeah, it goes to this idea where he sees himself as almost like a political institutional figure in Colombian life. I mean, that is how he pictures himself as equally. or even in some ways more legitimate than the forces of the government with whom he's fighting. What's going to happen here will maybe make his case for him that he's not so wrong in that estimation, at least not in the fall of 1990, because in October, the Colombian president kind of sweetens the deal for Pablo. And he essentially tells him that Pablo could choose the least significant charge against him and escape prosecution for everything else by agreeing to it.

Pablo wants more certainty about extradition, the terms of his imprisonment and protection for his family while he's locked up. But several of Pablo's associates do take the deal and surrendered to the government after this new decree is issued. And Pablo's life at this point is not particularly great because we have, I guess, transitioned from him living in comfort in Medellin now in the fall of 89 into 90, this kind of year. right, that we've been talking about. We've got the search block after him in his cartel. He's not using his phone because of that intercept.

He's away from all of his luxurious estates. He's using a courier for messages, much like Osama bin Laden did. Pablo was holding out while the National Assembly rewrites the Colombian Constitution. And in that rewriting, Pablo is hoping that he's going to have a chance to include or to intimidate the assembly to include a prohibition on. extradition, finally. So this is kind of, we've got this political wheeling and dealing going. He's on the run, but he sees, I think, in this constitutional rewrite, the opportunity to get exactly what he wants. And the violence, though, is going on all the while. And the first two months of 1991, there are 20 murders on average each day in Colombia. Four hundred and fifty-seven police

officers have been killed in Medellin over the 18-month span going back into 1989, there is a price out on the head of honest policemen and the search block is just continuing its hunt. Now, the prison is an important part of this because Pablo knows that even if he confesses to a much lesser crime than any of the, you know, the full body of crimes that he's committed, he's going to do a little prison time as the result. of this deal. And it's important that he has his own special prison built by him, financed by him, Gordon, to hold him and his associates while he does that time. And he envisions, and as part of this deal, proposes that he'll actually have a prison built in his hometown, which you can imagine

the advantages there, of Enigato on a hill called La Caterral on land that he owns. And again, he'll finance it. The guards in the prison are not going to work for the Bureau of Prisons, but for the government of Envigato, which Pablo largely controls. The only inmates would be his closest associates and Saccarios, and the search block explicitly would not be allowed within 20 kilometers of the prison walls. So it's prison, but it's prison light. But not as you know it. Yeah, but not as you know it. I mean, it sounds more like a kind of guarded, pound in which to be safe and run your business called a prison, but guarded by some people who you trust. The line between fortress and prison here is pretty thin. And I think Pablo actually

sees it as more of a fortress because, as we'll see, if he's incarcerated there, all of his enemies will know exactly where he is, right, which is not an advantage. But yeah, not many people get to design their own prison. No, it's a rare privilege. Now, as this negotiation between Pablo and the government is going on. Pablo, just, you know, to make his point, has a former Justice Minister killed. Also, the president's cousin is killed, and he's buried alive. So we have the sort of plomo part of the plateau plomo going on right up until the last minute. And then, on June 19th of 1991, Pablo surrenders, Gordon. Well, there, with the story over? Oh, no. Definitely not. If you think it's over, it is most certainly not, because it's going to get

wilder. But with that moment, with Pablo surrendering, let's take a break, and afterwards we'll see what happens next. Welcome back. So, David, Pablo Escobar has surrendered. He's given up. It's over. It's over. Why? I mean, that's the question, isn't it? I mean, you can

see why. I mean, because he doesn't want to get extradited and because he's, you know, done a deal in which he's going to live in this prison stroke compound stroke fortress. I mean, it's not a bad deal, is it? No, I guess not. And, you know, we talked in the first episode about Pablo's desire to potentially go back and get some higher education. And prison, I think, will be an opportunity for him to better himself at La Catebral hanging out with his closest friends and getting educated and reflecting on his sins. But, Gordon, you might be surprised or shocked to learn that Pablo has. turned himself in, not out of a desire to repent for past sins, but because on the day of

his surrender, June 19th of 1991, over vehement protests from Washington. And what's funny, the opposition of the government of Columbia itself, the constitutional and of national assembly that is rewriting the Colombian constitution, has voted to formally outlaw extradition. The vote is 50 to 13 and Pablo has at last gotten what he always wanted. So that morning gets up early, which is, as we know, bizarre for Pablo. He has breakfast with his brother and his mother and his sisters. He hasn't seen them in months. Still on the phone negotiating some of the final details. And there's this question of, you know, how is he going to actually get to the prison? So there's going to be a helicopter flight there. His lawyers have negotiated.

a ban on all flights in the area to make sure that he feels safe. And by early afternoon, a bell helicopter has taken off for the mansion where Pablo is hanging around. Of course, the mansion has a soccer field on the grounds. On board are a priest and a congressman, which sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. Along with them is one of Pablo's associates from the cartel. The helicopter sets down. There's dozens of armed men on the soccer field. and Mark Bowden in his book, Killing Pablo has a great description of Pablo Escobar that day. He's got black hair down to his shoulders, a leathery suntan. He's wearing sunglasses.

He's got a thick black beard that reaches down to his chest. Echoes of bin Laden there. Yeah, a little bin Ladenesque, that's right. He's got a light blue cotton jacket and Italian shirt, blue jeans, and his trademark, this is a trademark of Pablo Escobar's fashion, St. And we haven't mentioned. He's wearing sparkling new white tennis shoes. And he's got a portable phone and a battery pack.

a briefcase. And so they board the helicopter. They take off for the prison soccer field. Pablo, we should note, the prison has a soccer field, although it's not yet planted with grass, so it's just dirt at this point. And they land at the prison. Now, the prison has, it does have fences, Gordon, although we could argue whether it is to keep people out as opposed to in. Now, Pablo and his brother have, like any good sort of prison that you're constructing for yourself, he and his brother had visited weeks earlier and have buried beaten arsenal of rifles and machine guns on the slope uphill from where their cells would be, all right? And Pablo had apparently said, one day we will need them.

He'd assured his brother that they would need the weaponry. So Pablo is taken from the unplanted soccer field. He's escorted to meet the prison director. There, he very theatrically raises his left pant leg, withdraws a 9mm six-hour handgun with a gold monogram inlaid on a mother of pearl handle. and takes out the rounds one by one, flicking them to the ground before handing the gun over to the warden. He then calls his brother on the phone and tells him the surrender is complete.

Pablo, very PR conscious, as always, tells every reporter who will listen that his surrender was an act of peace, and he decided to give himself up at the moment. He saw the National Constitutional Assembly working for what he described as the strengthening of human rights and Colombian democracy. hypocrisy. He's a human rights activist. He's a human rights not, big on international law. Now, in keeping with the president's decree, Pablo acknowledges a single crime as part of this kind of surrender, which is acting as a middleman in a French drug deal that had been arranged by Pablo's

dead cousin. And Pablo has been tried and convicted in absentia by the French authorities. But Pablo very craftily, in the way he frames us, has said, well, you know, France's penal code gives me the right to apply for a revision of the case. And I get to do that before a judge in Colombia. And we all know how Pablo has dealt with judges in Colombia, right? So the idea here is that he's going to get a retrial for this French conviction in a home court. And Pablo will insist, look, I've never committed a crime in Colombia. I've got this ridiculous kind of minor charge in France that will get overturned. And so this surrender ends up turning into, I think, a pretty significant PR victory for Pablo.

Because he can spin things however he wants. But the reality is, I think a lot of the Colombian public at this point, is relieved that the war is over. Which is what he'd counted on. His strategy succeeded in lots of ways, didn't it? You put enough pressure on the state, force them to the table, get rid of extradition, he's got this one pretty lowly charge, and he's got a kind of fortress compound prison, which he can operate out of. I mean, that's the crazy thing. He's still able to live a pretty open life and to kind of get on with his business from there. I mean, it is a victory, isn't it? Both in PR terms, in terms of his image, because he's not confessing to all the murders and the mayhem his cause, and in practical terms. I mean, he's done pretty well out of it.

Unless do you think that Pablo's arrest is going to sort of bring the international cocaine market to its knees, there is some evidence that there was a blip in supply shortly after he surrendered, but it pretty much ticks right back up, right? So Pablo is focused, and I think this is part of why he wants to negotiate the surrender anyway, is it's really hard to run a massive international business when you are, hiding. You would like to have some vestige of an actual corporation, the ability to talk to your lieutenants and associates, the ability to conduct deals. And being at La Cateiraal, there are real advantages for Pablo. But he doesn't really want to use the phone, right? As we mentioned,

given that he's seen the intercept. So Gordon, what does Pablo turn to while in prison to help reconstitute his empire and communicate with his far-flung associates? I know what the do if it was me because there is one form of communication which man has turned to in desperate times in times of war in times of suffering from the time of the ancients through to the modern time when you need to get a message out when you don't trust your comms your electronic comms what would you do i think like me he was a man who loved the pigeon he loved the pigeon it's changed my view of pablo you know here i was thinking narco-terrorist bad guy, but he's a fellow pigeon man. He's a pigeon man. He's not all bad, Gordon. He's a lover of

our fine feathered friends. Although, to be honest, so are lots of prisoners through history. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure I want to associate myself with all the people who've ever used pigeons to communicate. But he does. He does, doesn't he? He uses them to communicate, get his messages out. He does, and he's got little leg bands on them that read, you know, Pablo Escobar, Back to the Security Prison and Vigato. So you know who it's coming from. Yeah. That's right.

That's right. So he's got the birds and he moves into the prison with all of his buddies, essentially. And surprisingly, Gordon, the prison becomes very luxurious, right? The guards are essentially Pablo's employees, right? So they're like butlers and bag men for Pablo. Cash is brought in. I was about to say smuggled, but I don't actually think it needs. needs to be smuggled in. It's just brought in in milk cans. They bury millions of dollars in the

soccer field, which they've now blushed grass is growing on. There's a bar. There's a lounge. There's a, there's a disco, Gordon, in the prison. There's a gym with a sauna. The cells, scare quotes, are pretty much luxurious hotel rooms that have kitchens and bedrooms and bathrooms. We should note, Gordon, we haven't talked about Pablo's weirdness around bathrooms, which will become a feature of the hunt going forward for him. It is really a part of his life in the prison. Pablo Escobar, he's not a germaphobe, but he's weird about bathrooms. And so anytime he moves into a new safe house or buys a home, right,

he always has the bathroom redone and has a new toilet put in. He does not like using other people's toilets. So he's got taste around the plumbing, let's say. No, I was looking at some videos of this. And it does look like a hotel. I mean, it really does look, looks like a kind of late 80s, early 90s corporate hotel chain. It's got kind of mini bar fridge. You know, you've got some quite bad art on the walls.

You've got the DVD collection. It's, you know, it is a kind of hotel suite, not a kind of trendy boutique hotel, but a kind of what you'd have thought as a kind of upmarket corporate hotel in the 90s would have looked like. And he's got a weird collection of kind of literature. and pictures and videos. I think I read, he had the full set of the Godfather films. Obviously, yeah. And I think some Graham Green as well, some quite good novels that he had in his collection,

which I was quite impressed that. I'm a bit of a Graham Green fan. That was like, nice. I think the dirty secret with Pablo's books is that he doesn't actually read them, but he likes to be seen to own them. Like your bookshelf behind you. Yes, exactly. I don't read.

I don't read any of these. He's got his own mug shots. I love that. I love the fact that he's in prison and he's got up on the wall mug shots from when he's been arrested and copies of his own indictments. You kind of go, this is a man who is relishing his kind of celebrity criminal status, isn't it? He loves it. Pablo loves pigeons. He loves family.

He loves getting fan mail from beauty queens. The family visit often. And they actually have a massive party to celebrate. his 42nd birthday in the prison. And here's another way it's not a normal prison is that Pablo often leaves, Gordon. He will often leave the prison and he'll go into Medellin for soccer games or he'll visit nightclubs. In June of 1992, he celebrates the first anniversary of his imprisonment by going to a nightclub in Envigato, right, out of the prison. So he gets to leave. This is an amazing incarceration. And these are, I guess, minor infractions because he just, he always

comes back. That's the thing, because he's not trying to flee. He comes back to the prison, but he will leave. He plays a lot of soccer in prison, Gordon. He's always on the winning team, as we discussed, before Don Pablo, always wins. He and his associates had committed themselves, like all good prisoners, to losing weight, turning into really hard men while in prison. And despite the gym that they had built and installed, within a few, like, days, this goes by the wayside and Pablo and his associates have gained a bunch of weight while in prison, right? The gym apparently wasn't really used a whole lot. They're eating terribly. They're getting fat. And he is still, though, despite all of the fun we're having, he's very concerned about security, right? Because

everyone knows where to find him. The government knows where he is. All of his rival cartel enemies know where he is. People inside the Medellin cartel who might want to do him in know where he is, right. So he had the prison very strategically built on a hill overlooking the surrounding area. It's very foggy at night, so it's harder, presumably, to land a helicopter on the grounds and to conduct a kind of night raid. He's got that arsenal that he's buried at the prison, and he's actually strung, strung wires over the soccer field to prevent helicopters from landing. And in case you think that the government in Bogota thinks that this is just a wonderful setup, think again because the state is looking to build cases against Pablo that can stick.

And there's a new vice minister of justice who's this academic, pretty idealistic guy named Eduardo Mendoza, who is given the horrible task of building an actual prison around Pablo's prison to presumably really be able to hold Escobar and keep him incarcerated. Now, unsurprisingly, nobody wants to take this job, right? And there are many delays in the construction, but construction does start on this new prison around Pablo's prison in the summer of 1992. The first fences start to go up. The government sets up listing posts just outside that prescribed 20 kilometer perimeter. The new vice minister of Justice Mendoza tries to get the Bureau of Prisons and the Army to go in and actually remove a lot of the luxuries that. that Pablo has in his prison, but no one will do it. Nevertheless, Pablo is very frustrated by the government attempting to quite literally box him in, in part, because he's having to manage

a cartel gordon this whole time while he's in prison. It's not just partying in Envigato and playing soccer, right? He's got some conflict inside the Medellian cartel. And Pablo, while he's in prison, has given more authority away to a couple families who have been associates of his inside the Medellin cartel. And from prison, presumably because he's getting cash squeezed a bit, he hikes their taxes and then sends men out to take what could have been up to $20 million from those family stashes. The heads of those families complain and come for this very consequential meeting to visit Pablo up at the prison at La Cathedral. I mean, this is a big moment because this is the kind of

conflict within the cartel. These two heads of families come and there's a confrontation, basically about money it sounds like. I think Pablo is convinced that they've been hiding, stealing money that should be his. And it's the classic thing, isn't it? Of the boss who feels his position is weakening and he's worried about the guys just underneath him that they're maneuvering to take his place, which is of course exactly what Pablo himself did. to get to the top. And he's thinking, well, I'm stuck in here. Maybe these guys think they can do a bit more. And so these two heads of families come to see him and he kills them. It is about cash at the end of the day. I mean, there are rumors that part of the problem, apparently tens of

millions of dollars had rotted in the ground that Pablo felt was his and the families weren't able to cough it up because the money had actually decomposed. And so they show up at the prison. there's a dispute. They're killed, both the heads of these families. They're killed in a gruesome way that is one of Pablo's apparently favorite ways to execute rivals, which is they're hung upside down and burned alive. Their charred genitals are sent to their wives. And then days later, Sicario's tracked down their brothers and they're killed. So it is a massive internal move against potential rivals. And he's conducted it. Gordon, from prison. I mean, again, it feels like Pablo overplaying his hand. A bit like, you know, bringing down the jet, doing these other things. He is supposed to be in prison. We know it's a notion of prison. Everyone does. But it's going to get out to the government that two heads of families have been killed by someone who's supposed to be a prisoner. If you're the government, that is clearly a problem because it makes it obvious that he is, he is not really a prisoner

and he is still able to operate outside the law. So it's bound to bring on the authorities. Well, maybe. I mean, I guess the problem in looking back on it is, I mean, we know what's coming. But the reality of Pablo's situation at the time is, even though he's in this luxurious prison, you have to think that some of his control over his business has frayed, right? And so I think what we're seeing is as he's applied this silver or lead approach to different problems, the higher up you get in the cartel, the higher up you get in the government, the more international it becomes, the more you bring some pain on yourself after you deal out the lead in particular. And that's exactly what happens here, which is the government in Bogota now feels it has to do something because Pablo has essentially committed horrific capital crimes from prison. And so what happens is the Colombian president says we need to send.

the army in to La Cate d'Iralle to transfer Pablo out of that prison and bring him to Bogota, which sounds hard when you say it out loud. He's probably not going to go willingly. Now, orders come down from the president to bring Pablo to Bogota. And you might be surprised, Gordon, that by the time our friend, the vice minister of justice, Mendoza, has reached La Cate D'Ral to help enforce this. The army judge. general on site basically says, I've only got orders to surround the prison. Not to go in, just to surround it. When you read the accounts, I mean, Mendoza, first of all, it's like, you really want me to go? You know, you want me to go in person to do this? And then, like, with the army guys,

you know, with the generals, there's this clear tension because you get the feeling that the generals are kind of like, yeah, we don't, we know, we haven't quite got the same orders you've got. And, you know, there's these frantic calls the presidential palace where clearly poor Mendoza is like, oh well, I'd better go in and talk to Pablo then. You just think, wow. I agree with all of that. But it is definitely true that what has happened is the element of surprise is lost, right? Because now Pablo and his men inside are preparing for an assault. And the poor Mendoza is sent inside to sort of treat with Pablo, try to convince him to come to Bogota. Unsurprisingly, this does not work. And also unsurprisingly, Mendoza has a gun drawn on him by Popeye, what if Pablo's been, and is essentially taken prisoner. Now, inside La Cate Dara, Pablo and his

manner, sort of feverishly working the phones, trying to figure things out, maybe do a deal. The general commanding the forces outside the prison is, again, sort of looked the other way. I guess you could say, well, the president says, hey, why don't you get in there? The defense minister is ordered to send a special forces unit to Medellin to bring Pablo back. And There are delays in getting the special forces unit there. The unit has to wait for pilots. Then on the flight to Medellin, the fog prevents them from landing. They start to go up the mountain to get to the hilltop prison, and they're all in trucks.

But the regular army units guiding them, Gordon, steer them down the wrong road, which leads them right back to the airport. So they just kind of go in this circle back to the airport. Now, the progress of the special forces unit is being reported in real time on the radio and on Colombian television and Pablo and his men inside the prison are watching. So they are literally watching the special forces unit come up the hill toward the prison, right? And they're probably also listening to some of the military comms themselves on a short wave radio. So they have a good sense of what's coming. To add even more chaos into the mix, apparently this special forces unit

is the same unit that conducted the raid on the Palace of Justice, the Colombian Supreme Court back in 1985, which had led to the tets of over 100 people, including 11 of the justices. So as Pablo is looking at this, he's probably thinking, maybe we don't want to stick around for this one because these guys, whatever happens, it's going to be absolutely bloody. Right now, the assault is supposed to begin in the morning. And we have an account of this from that hapless vice minister of justice, Mendoza, the poor guy, who's been sent inside to take Pablo back to Bogota and is now Pablo's prisoner. So Mendoza hears shots, explosions.

He tries to hide under Pablo's mattress, but it was so heavy. In my mind, it's a waterbed. I think it's probably not a water bed, but I like to think of it that way. So heavy, he couldn't actually move it. A Special Forces Sergeant breaks into the room and covers Mendoza quite literally by sitting on him. And then they escape by running out of the prison. And Mendoza apparently is running just at such breakneck speed that he literally cracks some ribs. Right?

They go out the main gate. They meet the army unit that wouldn't go in for the fight. There's one guard killed in the raid. A couple more wounded. Five of Pablo's men are captured. Where's Pablo? Where's Pablo? Where is Pablo?

Pablo has escaped, Gordon. Pablo has escaped the prison. It's remarkable. There is a joke that will fly around the U.S. embassy in Bogota in the days after this, which is how many. Colombian prison guards and soldiers, does it take to let Pablo Escobar escape? The answer is 400, one to open the gate, and 399 to watch, because that military unit outside apparently had just about 400 people. Pablo has walked out. I mean, he literally just walks through a gate,

doesn't he and up a hill. I mean, it's wild. He and his brother Roberto had led a small group of his men uphill, cut a hole in the wire fence, and walked over the top of the hill, right? Right past soldiers that were either on the payroll or too intimidated to stop Pablo. So he's, he's gone. Because I love the idea. There was all this speculation. He'd built these deep tunnels hidden underground to get out underneath the prison. Didn't need him.

No, just walk out, holding the fence. Walk past the, I just imagine him walking past some of the soldiers, give him maybe a salute, and then heading up the hill. So there, I think we should stop for this time with Pablo, having been imprisoned in a kind of. the prison, now escaped, if that's the right word, and back on the run. And now we will get to the crescendo next time, I guess, of this story as the hunt really intensifies, as the US intelligence agencies and the military all get involved in this desperate chase to finally find Pablo Escobar and bring him to their form of justice. But Gordon, but if listeners, want to engineer their own escape from the dreary blackness of their lives to the luxurious

prison of more episodes of The Rest is Classified. You don't have to wait for that future. You can go and join the Declassified Club at the Rest is classified.com. We hope you do. That's right, David. I'd like to imagine that if there is a modern day Pablo Escobar in their semi-open prison, that they too could have internet access and be able to subscribe so they can work out what's happening. And also, one more thing. I'm reminded. that for members of the club, there's going to be the second half of our interview with former CIA director, General David Petraeus, which is going to be there for the club members this Friday. But for everyone else, we will see you next time. See you next time.