The Underworld Podcast - The Nazi Fugitive Who Created The Modern Cocaine Cartel & Befriended Escobar

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

When Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon”, escaped Europe at the end of the war and fled to Latin America, he didn’t follow his fellow Nazis into hiding. In fact, Barbie remained on the books of western spy agencies, including the CIA, and reaped enormous wealth, power, and protection. Barbie then hooked up with the fascists and druglords of Bolivia, christened a death squad called the “Bridesgrooms of Death” — and took the country in a brutal coup backed so far to the hilt by marching powder, that Bolivians still call it the “Cocaine Coup”. But Barbie’s work wasn’t done there. As reporters and Nazi hunters uncovered his true identity, the fugitive mass-murderer connected Bolivian “King of Cocaine” Roberto Suarez Gomez with the cartels of Colombia, birthing the modern-day blow industry. And he would even become friends with nascent narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. It's July 17, 1980, in the Bolivian capital city of La Paz. And a brutal coup d'etat has sputtered into life. Hooded paramilitaries dressed in civilian clothes, are racing through the streets in jeeps and ambulances,

stopping to execute dissidents and seize state buildings. The group raids warehouses and loot stores in a frenzy. Some of them have European accents and swastika armbands on their shirts. The mutilated bodies of leftist politicians are burned and left to char in the city's streets. The gang storms La Pazza's prison and turns its drug traffickers loose. Pandemonium. citizens scatter. Policemen and soldiers cower in their barracks.

Nothing can stop the gang now. The city ransacked. The murderists make their way to the Bolivian Workers' Centre, headquarters of the nation's trade unions. 35 unionists and lawmakers are inside, drawing up emergency plans against the same narco-fascists who are now bursting through the doors, 20 of them in total,

with 30 more standing guard outside. The victims barely have time to think. 18 of those inside the building escape, but the gang shoots some dead and kidnaps others, dragging them back into their hijacked vehicles. They'll soon be introduced to a new life of captivity, beatings and electro-shock torture, all at the hands of a regime led by bitter and violent military despot,

Luis Garcia-Mesa. But Garcia-Mesa is only the front man for this terrifying year-zero. Paying for it all is one of the world's biggest drug kingpins, a man they call Ere de la Cocainea, the king of cocaine. Roberto Suarez Gomez was a rubber baron at a cattle rancher, before he realized there was far more cash supplying the cartels of Colombia with Bolivian coca paste. Now he's the foundation of an enterprise worth billions, fueling the rise of another narco-terrorist, Pablo Escobar. This blood-soaked July morning is Suarez is doing.

Little wonder, Bolivians will come to know it as simply the cocaine coup. But neither Suarez nor Garcia-Mesa could do any of this without the help of those hooded men, the ones with European accents and swastikas on their arms. These are the nobios de la Merte, the bridegrooms of death, a cabal of fugitive killers and war criminals. Their SS veterans, Rhodesian mercenaries, Frenchmen on the run from a failed plot to kill them. Charles de Gaulle and Stefano Derechiali, the world's most notorious right-wing terrorist,

wanted for his role in a Bologna bombing that just weeks earlier had killed 85 people. But there's another guy, short and slight, with a round-faced, thinning hair and dark flint eyes. Locals know him as Klaus Altman, a German businessman living in La Paz with concerns in timber, medicine and shipping. Alkman is rich. That much is clear. And he's been tight with Suarez and Bolivia's far right for years. That's because Alkman isn't Alman at all. He's Klaus Barby, a former Nazi who escaped Europe after the war with Washington and the Vatican's help.

Barbie was a Gestapo chief in occupied France, and his work torturing, murdering and dispatching Jews and French resistance fighters to the death camps had earned him the moniker, the butcher of Leon. It's Barbie's electro-shock torture the cocaine coup leaders will use to terrorise their opponents. And it's his interrogation skills Garcia Mesa's men will employ, as they install one of the most repressive states in Cold War Latin America. For Barbie, whose identity has just been revealed by two of the world's most prominent Nazi hunters, the coup isn't just his chance to escape justice for good,

It's part of a dream to revive the Fuhras vision, almost four decades after the Allies thought they destroyed it for good. Should that dream mean slaughtering dozens of Bolivians, quarterbacking the global cocaine industry and backing Pablo Escobar, Barbie thinks, so be it. And on this day, the dream has never seen closer. This is the Underwark podcast. Hello, Gooden Morgan, Buenos Aires, and welcome to the weekly organized crime podcast that shows you just so. how awful the human race is, why nobody should procreate or say anything positive about mankind. Ever. I'm Sean Williams, a writer and investigative reporter in Wellington, New Zealand, and I'm joined by the talented, the wonderful and uncancelable Danny in New York City.

Felice annual Nuevo, Danny, you're going to watch the ball drop in Times Square tomorrow? I mean, I'm hopefully not in New York right now when this airs. Like, the city from post-Christmas through April is just a nightmare hellscape. I wouldn't wish on anyone. Yeah, I mean, you've made it through Santa Claus. right, that's dreadful. I don't know what comes after that, but I say tomorrow, I think I mean in a few days, because we're not actually recording us on December 30, we're recording the weekend before Christmas, which means I'm still in Wellington, looking ahead to a Christmas week in Melbourne with the fam, test match at MCG, sunbathing, all of which has happened because the listeners

are in the future and we're in the past and podcasting is a circular industry, and I'm confused already, please send help. You know, the commenters seem to really love that you've started doing journal entries before every episode kicks in, by the way. Everyone's really big fans of that. I'm extremely glad. Yeah, I'm sure it gets a lot of downloads. Now, I know we're past Christmas that we're not, but you are. But the best gift you can give us is to follow, subscribe, review, and perhaps even for us

a few bucks a month for the Patreon exclusive interviews, a monthly stash house organized crime review to go with it. Yeah, Patreon.com slash anewal podcast or Spotify, iTunes, and all that good stuff. Yeah, and given it's two days before the new year or a day or whatever it is, you've got any new year's resolutions you like to commit to, Danny? I mean, perhaps you could play them back around this time next year. I'm pledging to stay fit enough to play competitive football past the age of 40, which should be doable, given my entire personality now,

it's just playing sport and this podcast. Oh, and I want to sell a screenplay to Hollywood, which is going to be easy, right, because we're going to sell the Cornbread Mafia movie. You know, people like that episode, but I don't think it's kind of not our script to write, so we'll see how that goes. I don't want to culturally appropriate Kentuckians. No, I don't mean like that. I mean, someone else really wrote the book on them, so it's not like, you know, it is what it is.

That's true. Well, we can still that. Now, I can't promise you many uplifting thrills and spills from today's show. I mean, you read the title, you listened to the cold open. You know we're going to get into some extremely dark stuff, but I can promise you what I genuinely believe this is the craziest story I've ever researched for the pod. I mean, it's so crazy. In fact, I'm going to split it into two parts. So today's is going to dive into the history of Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Leon,

how he became a black marketeer in the ashes of the war, and then got smuggled out of Europe by American spies, Vatican bishops. But rather than fade into the scenery, like so many Nazis who escaped to Latin America during the time, Barbie actually used his experience in the Gestapo to set up fascist desks, prop up dictators, and yes, this is not overblowing it, help found the modern cocaine industry going so far. as to meet and befriend El Patron himself, Pablo Escobar. And that's just today's show, right?

In a couple of weeks, we're going to go into the life and crimes of Roberto Suarez Gomez, the king of cocaine. He's probably the biggest drug lord that you've never heard of. More coups, the Medellin cartel, a deal with the castros of Cuba, and with Oliver North and his mad Iran contraplan. Oh, and Barbie's Downfall, which could be its own Hollywood movie alone. I mean, honestly, there are so many insane parts of this story. I had to check to make sure they weren't conspiracy theories.

But trust me, I'm a journalist and everyone trusts journalists. They're not. This is an actual real-life Barbie Heimer. Can I say that? You know, you kind of blew the whole crazy, fascinating story thing with that terrible joke there, bud. Thank you very much. Thank you. But here is the story of Klaus Barby.

And it begins on October 25th, 1913 in Gordesberg near Bonn in the Rheinland of Western Germany. For a lot of this, by the way, I'm using the book, The Devil's Agent, The Lifetimes and Crimes of Nazi Klaus Barbie by Peter McFarren and Frederique Iglesias, which is comprehensive, if a little confusing at times. I think I've said this before about a few books, but listen to the show. Also, this episode, comprehensive, a little confusing at times, but trust me, it's worth it. Thank you so much. It's Christmas.

It's tough to concentrate. That's true. There's a lot of parties and family stuff. Anyway, Klaus Barbie's path towards infamy begins right upon his own. birth because his school teacher, mother and father don't marry until three months after the boy arrives, and that's a big no-no in a culture where bastards, in the purest sense of the word, and the other are to be questioned and will never inherit their family's wealth. So Barbie's father returns from the trenches of the Great War, disabled physically and mentally broken

by the Saarland region where he then grows up, which is taken by France after the war, is a place of constant political turmoil and protest against French. French occupation. Barbie's father is a savage man. He's a heavy drinker and he doesn't spare his kids the rod. Barbie is remembered by friends and neighbours, however, as a kind, unassuming boy, punctual, I mean, they love that, don't they? And so reliant. But now we're at 1930, and that's where the Nazi party are making in rows across Germany, attacking Jews and communists everywhere. Barbie buys up Nazi literature, including, of course, Mime Kampf. And in 1933, age 19, Klaus Barbie joins the Hitler Youth, and he becomes an enthusiastic card-carrying National Socialist.

Barbie wants to get into academia, but this requires cash. And because he's technically a bastard, Barbie's grandfather won't give him any of the family's cash. So instead, he joins the Nazi Zishahitstein, the intelligence wing of the SS. See, nowadays, instead of joining the SS, he would just, you know, start a YouTube channel or a podcast or yell at people like me on social media to, you know, get his... message across. So more options I guess nowadays, but, uh, you know, still not great. Yeah, I'm, I'm not giving you a lot to work on, but that was pretty good. Yeah, we can lighten the mood of a Nazi. I'm going to, I'm going to keep trying, but it's going to be a tough battle here

with this one. It is a little bit. Now, God knows there's enough, well, a worrying amount of information about the SS and the functions of the Nazi. So you can head elsewhere for that, but basically Barbie climbs its ranks, lives for a while in occupied Holland, Belgium, and in May 1942 he's assigned to Leon, France. Now that's only a few months after the official formulation of the final solution. The war is now in full bloom and Barbie's role in Leon is to expose and dispatch Jews, communists and French resistance fighters to the death camps. Now you don't need me or anyone to tell you how awful this is, but Barbie by 1944 is an officer in the so-called Geheimers-Stats Politsai, better known as the Gestapo, the secret police of the regime. And that

April, he leads a raid on a Jewish children's orphanage in the village of Izir, outside Lyon. The men force all 41 children and 10 adults onto trucks and deport them to Auschwitz-Beerkanal, where only one child is spared the gas chamber on arrival. Deport them or shoot them, writes Barbie, adding, quote, it's the same. You know who else survived Auschwitz? My grandmother, shout out Bobby Merah, rest in peace. How's that for breaking up and lightning up the episode right there? She said, we're going to, wow, I don't even know what to say.

Yeah. And if she hadn't survived that, then you wouldn't be hearing this story. And that's the thing that really matters, is it? We just got to keep going. Barbie also hunts French resistance members with a joyful sadism. He's not a very nice guy, this guy, tortures them by beating them almost to death with a blackjack, which is a small carchel baton.

Then he pushes them in a freezing bath to wake them back up and injects acid into their body. On one occasion, a French resistance fighter recalls Barbie hanging people in front of them while playing music in the background, while another remembers seeing bodies piled in cells, quote, literally swimming in a sea of blood, having been torn apart by machine guns. The most famed of all French resistance heroes is Jean Moulin, a federal-wearing civil servant who unites cells nationwide under Charles de Gaulle. He's arrested at a meeting on June 21, 1943, when the now Oberfure, or Piers, or

paramilitary leader, Barbie, storms in. Mulan is tortured in a horrific variety of ways I'm not even going to get into here, and he dies a couple weeks later in Berlin. For all of these reasons, Barbie is unsurprisingly known as the Butcher of Leon. Says one Frenchman he tortured, quote, he liked to hit people. I had never in my life seen such a sadist. As the Allies push back the Nazis at D-Day and Sweet Free France, Barbie then gets into the thriving black markets across all of Europe. We've gotten into these kinds of illicit networks in our shows about the Yakuza, whose early godfather Joshua Kadama made millions off of steel and other stuff in occupied China. You've got Victor Boot and others profiteering off the firearms and other weapons lying around

when the Soviet Union falls. This ain't new, probably as old as the Sumerians, but it's going bonkers at the end of the Second World War. Economies collapsing, U.S. soldiers selling to locals, gangs selling to soldiers, locals going underground with everything from bread to looted art. effects. Yeah, I mean, I've mentioned Naples 44 a few times, I think, on the show, and that deals more with while the war was still going on, but the occupation of Italy, but it kind of gives a fascinating look into, into some of this stuff, too, just the underground economies. I'm actually reading Tokyo Underworld right now, which I assume you used for the Yakuza episode, it was so long ago, but it really goes into that sort of post-occupation, underground economy stuff, too.

It's just what happens when, like, you know, countries collapse and there's a vacuum of power, and there's really nothing on the ground. Like it's bound to everyone's poor. Yeah, it's just, it's pretty crazy. I mean, Germany too, what, it was split into four, four quarters, right? Yeah, all of them have their own underground economies and just craziness when it comes to black market stuff and everything like that. Yeah, yeah.

And this guy is like thick. He's right in the middle of all of this. He's running lines all over the country, right? Hamburg to Western Germany, Berlin, everywhere. I mean, he's actually captured twice during. in this time, but he escapes both of them. And even in 1945, when Hitler does the honorable thing, Germany is defeated and the Allies learn the full horrors of the Holocaust,

Barbie's name is among 70,000 wanted for torture and murder. They know who he is, this is key. But rather than face the gallows, his story now takes a pretty weird and scurrilous twist. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing.

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Book direct at storeshills.com. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Because as we've gotten into about shows on this period, neither the Americans nor the Soviet Union had too many qualms about bringing Nazis into their

chief scientific programs, even in the bonus I did recently about a conmaning. in Ghana. The capital Accra was then a hotspot for Nazis, just chilling out with British consent after the end of the war. Right. The Americans had Operation Paperclip and the Soviet one was Oso Aviakim, I think. Operation Osso Abiyakim. It's an acronym, but that's what it was called. Yeah, I mean, and this was the chief like, you know, rocket scientists and nuclear scientists and that kind of stuff. But also, I mean, both sides, but the Americans for this show, specifically the counterintelligence courts or CIC, which is a Cold War era intel group later swallowed into the army, they are also very keen on anybody who, A, knows how Europe works, and B, hates commies. So guess who falls into both these categories? Yep, that's right, Nazis. And not only does Klaus Barbie know his way

around Europe's network of leftists, because he spent the last few years hunting and killing them, but he can tell the CIC all about Europe's gangbuster black markets in weapons, drugs, jewelry, because he's been deep in that too. I mean, it's a bit like finding a chicken coup torn to ribbons by fox and thinking, what we need now is someone who's a menace and hates chickens. I know, a fox. Except the metaphor doesn't really work, does it? Because no one cares about chickens and Klaus Barbie is despised.

Even for a Nazi. So Barbie convinces a CIC guy in Augsburg near Munich that he's better use alive than dead. And he's taken on as part of something called the Pedersen Network, which is basically a bunch of former Nazis now working as spies with the Allies. Incredibly, Barbie is then put to work tracking down French socialists. So he basically goes back to the same job he had just a couple years previous. And once they've hired him, the Americans kind of have to keep him, right?

Because now the US is worried they'll not only squeal about the moral ambiguity, shall we say, of hiring him, but also about their top secret missions holding back the tide of global communism in Paris, Leon and Marseille. And they pay him a lot to do this stuff. 1700 bucks a month in 1947 or about 23 grand a month today. And keep Marse in mind too, by the way, because that's going to come up later. Anyway, this entire time, the French authorities are piling on the pressure for their American counterparts to hand over Barbie so he can face trial, for the orphans, of course, for the resistance fighters, and for Jean-Moulin, who's become and still is a French national icon.

As late as 1950, the CIC is telling the French, it has no idea where Barbie is, even though he's working directly for it. By 1951 though, the heat is getting too much for the Americans to take, so they decide to smuggle Barbie out of Europe via the so-called rat lines to South America. Now, these usually go one of two ways, either via Franco's Spain or Italy, with the help of Catholic leaders sympathetic to the Nazis, and that, by the way, is a surprising number of them. It's this Italian ratline that Barbie takes, but they're a far higher-ranking in Germans who flee Europe this way, most notably Adolf Eichmann and Joseph Mengler, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz. Another SS commander to take this route is Walter Ralf, who gets into the

Americas via Kito before being hired by the Bundes Nachigden Dinst, or the BND, which is the West German CIA. Remember, Germany is divided now. Rolf then does intelligence work for get this, the Mossad, before get this too, returning to Germany to pick up his Nazi pension, and then, then getting recruited into the military intelligence of Chilean fascist dictator Al-Husto Pinochet. So you actually got that a little backwards. He goes to Syria. And this is actually related to stuff that's happening right now. He goes to Syria, I believe, in 47 or 48, where he serves as a military advisor to the Syrian leader at the time when they're fighting a war against the 48 war, when there's a war between them and Israel.

And then there's a coup and he somehow gets let out of Syria. He commits them he wasn't a big commander. And then he is basically a double agent and the Mossad uses him for information out of Syria, I believe, to get information on their governments. But then later on, I think that was in 49. So it was before 1950. And then I think 20 years later, there were attempts to kill him when they were going after Eichmann and stuff in like 79 and 80. But I think he was in Chile then. but I think it was unsuccessful.

But the reason I say it's relevant until today was, if you've been following the news, you know, the mass industrial prison torture, murder plays in Syria, Sainaya. There's another Nazi, Alois Brunner, who was Eichmann's right-hand man, who fled to Syria, ended up in Syria, and he was basically the guy who helped develop and advise and teach the Syrian Ba'athist party, Assad's party, how to torture their prisoners. Yeah, the comparisons with Nazism

for that are pretty fair enough given all these guys were working for them. And I think a few more of them actually worked for the Iranian regime at some point as well. Nazis really, they really got around after their 45. Wow, we. They were all over the place, those guys.

Really just filtered out. I think Walter Rao's big thing was making mobile gas vans that could go around. executing people wherever they were, which is, wow, what a, what a cool invention. So I was going to say they, um, the, when they were trying to kill him, they actually had a letter that was supposed to be delivered to the press in Chile, I believe it was, that mentioned that that's why he was killed because of the mobile gas fans in like 79 or 80,

but I think it was unsuccessful for, I don't remember the specific reasons. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. We're going to like get into a tiny bit of this in this show, but the way that they managed to keep evading justice. all these guys, even when they were living right out there in the open, it's pretty insane. Anyway, he's going to come into this story later. On all different sides, too. It was like they were all over the place.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they really did get around. If at this point, by the way, you're wondering, probably like Danny is, hey, Sean, you handsome guy, aren't we strained a bit from organized crime? To which my response is, what, you mean my show that I make that you listen to for free? That show. I actually, I actually, I tell you this, I feel like every third episode, I'm like, dude, what does this have to do with organized crime? And I'm like, here we are. Let's do a hideous story about a slaughter in some country in Latin America.

And you're like, cool, that sounds like a really uplifting show. But second, I'm giving you this history because it makes Barbie's work for Western intelligence and his role in Bolivia and the drug trade all the crazier to grasp. So no, guys, we're totally in the wheelhouse here. Bear with me. We'll get into the drugs soon enough. You guys. Anyway, Barbie gets out of Italy, thanks to a crazy.

bishop, who's an avowed fascist wanting for war crimes himself. These are all really lovely guys. And in 1951, Barbie hops on a plane from Genoa to Buenos Aires with his wife and two kids under the name Klaus Altman, which he's adopted from a German rabbi killed in Auschwitz. I told you you couldn't make this stuff up. The CIC actually wants Barbie to work from Argentina, which is the prime destination for tons of these Nazi fugitives. It should be mentioned, by the way, that in addition to around three,

300 Nazis, Argentina took in 460,000 Jewish refugees, which is more per capita than any other nation bar Israel. But Barbie doesn't wind up in Buenos Aires. He, through the Croat priest, meets another Catholic missionary tirelessly preaching the word to indigenous people in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba. So he travels 1,500 miles north to La Paz. Barbi is still only 37 years old, and he immediately spots in Bolivia, a nation whose politics he can channel through the lens of Nazi Germany. Here's Magnus Link later in his book, The Nazi Legacy, quote, here on one side stood the rulers,

committed to the same ideology of force and order in the name of a nation that Barbie had long since made his own. There on the other side was sullen masses, generally of inferior race, their cause supported by international communism. It was simple. In South America, there was a job to be done, and Barbie knew how to do it.

At first, Barbie sets himself up working with indigenous Bolivians, however, in the Junga-Sug tropical region, and this is one of the country's prime coffee and, more importantly, coca-growing regions. But Barbie's not interested in that just yet. He lives with his family in a wooden shack near the village of Chulamani. He learns the lumber business pretty quickly, and he becomes close friends with a prominent empressario and neo-Nazi, named Alvaro de Gis. Castor, who will become his confident for decades to come. Barbie himself actually paints swastikas on the walls at the sawmill, which is owned by a German Jewish emigrant. But when somebody calls him out, he's like, oh, those, they're just markings for the wood going out. Barbie makes a good

living in Chulamani before he moves to La Paz in 1954. He sets up a logistics firm called Transmaritima, and despite the US knowing his full identity, he makes several business trips to the States. Barbie himself rises the ranks and cozes up to right-wing leaders vying for control of Bolivia. Here's Peter McFarron and the devil's agent again. Quote, it was not unusual to see Señor Altman or Don Klaus, as he was called by his friends, wearing a sweater or high-necked jersey, walking along the Paceo del Pado with De Castro or eating saltenyas at lunchtime in the terraces of the bars in La Paz, or dressed in a suit and tie on his way to embassy receptions where he hobnobbed with ministers and diplomats.

The fashion information, it seems a little unnecessary, but it's good detail. Yeah, I'm guessing roll next. Don't go that well with the humidity there. But yeah, I don't know. Barbie managed this to keep his true identity under wraps, until it is, he has a few drinks. Typical, typical. Yeah, exactly. And he does this a lot. At one point, DeCastro says, quote, after the fourth drink, He became a Nazi again.

I can see him even today. The euphoria took over. Barbie sang hymns and praises to national socialism. A lot of this occurs at the club Alemann, the German club in La Paz, where allegedly there are Nazi flags, eagle motifs, and Hitler statues hidden away in the basement.

I was going to say maybe that's every German club, but yeah, maybe it is, whatever. At one point, Barbie causes a scene when he starts praising the Fuhrer in front of the German ambassador to Bolivia, who gets mad and storms out. And it causes quite a bit of a diplomatic stir. But Barbie's too in the loop to suffer any major consequences.

Klub Alemann, yeah, it's still going by the way. It's got a rather fancy website too. And the Germans can hardly be surprised there are full-blown Nazis hanging out in South America. According to an internal report, around 200 members of the BND, a former Nazi intelligence officers during the time, including Barbie and Ralph.

Even into the 70s, it's estimated that up to 30% of BND staff had Nazi backgrounds. So the denatification of West Germany is gold-plated BS. Always was, don't get me started. Anyway, the CIC has already got Barbie on the books, making sure Bolivia doesn't turn communist. And in the 60s, the BND has him too. So he's a gopher between them and the military dictators ruling Bolivia. They give him the code name Adler, or Eagle. and he delivers them at least 35 reports, all the while he's turning more and more to smuggling,

not least in a thing called quinine, quinine, out of Vietnam, which is a medicine needed to treat malaria. Writes link later, quote, Barbie's career in South America began as it had in the ruins of post-war Germany with crime, larceny, fraud, forgery and blackmail, then spread into the more profitable trades of arms dealing and freelance espionage. before launching into the jungle of high politics. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right?

But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Minas Durfer. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history. from killer cannibal brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times.

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All of this comes to a head in 1966. That year, the Argentine Guerrera leader Anestorce Guevara arrives in Bolivia to leave what he hopes will be a peasant revolution against the military. That's kind of half-ass, really. The CIA cacks its bridges at this time, and it turns to Barbie, who in turn, provides information. leading to Chez's capture and death by firing squad in a mountain village outside of La Paz. Now, Barbie's also closely involved in weapons trafficking from Germany to Latin America

via a right-wing front company called Medix AG, AG meaning acting gazo shaft or publicly traded, basically. Merix, again, could be an entirely separate show. It's set up by 1963 and headed by CIA Asset and former SS weapons expert, Gerhard Mertens. Mertins is actually one of the guys who busted Mussolini out of prison in 1943 and officially he works for Volkswagen. But he's actually traveling the world for Merricks, trafficking shells and firearms via Spain and members of the Corsican mafia, the so-called French connection, to right-ring regimes in Peru, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, even the Shah of Iran. A lot goes through the US and also CIA-backed arms dealer Sam Kemp.

Cummings, who you might have heard of before. Barbie, of course, is their man in La Paz, using Transmaritima as a cover for arms shipments. And he makes a fortune out of it, using his neo-Nazi friend Di Castro as the front man. But even more powerful in this illegal arms shipment firm Medics is a man named Auguste Josef, Record, a Corsican mobster from Marseille. Remember I told you we'll come back to there. Record is a heroin trafficker and conveyor. victed Nazi collaborator who had constructed heroin labs all over his hometown to help fund the Nazi fight against Jean Moulin and the French resistance. Recore, too, could be a whole other show, but he flees Europe after the war. He's arrested in 1968 after Robin de Buenos Aires

bank with two other exiled Corsican heroin kingpins. He then heads to Assumcione, Paraguay. He's arrested in 1972, sent to the US, and he spends 10 of a 22-year sentence for drug trafficking before being sent back to Paraguay and dying soon after. So at this point, Klaus Barby must have barely believed how good he had it. He's living like a king in La Paz wearing his roll necks. He's close to all the country's fascist movers and shakers. He's making millions from queen iron shipping foreign exchange and even illegal arms. He's in touch with fellow Nazi scumbags, hiding from justice in Latin America.

He's on the payroll of West Germany and the US, and he never even had to give up his Nazi affiliations. Things begin to get a little tougher, however, later in 1966. Sure, Barbie's riding high after helping ship in Che Guevara. But that summer, West Germany lost the World Cup final to England in Wembley, and perhaps because of that, perhaps not, the B&D decides to ditch the Adler. More likely, they're worried he'll be unmasked by the press,

or even worse, by the Stasi, the intelligence corps of socialist East Germany. Barbie's handler meets him shortly after Christmas that year in Madrid, Spain, and tells him he's being let go because of budget constraints before paying him a thousand Deutsch marks as hush money, and that's around $38,000 today. This guy just keeps falling up. Soon after, Barbie moves to Peru to extend his business interests with the support of a German man named Friedrich Schendt,

who, like Barbie, earns his keep for a combination of arms trafficking, extortion, fraud, blackmail, and the selling of state secrets. He also happens to be a Nazi too, and a master counterfeiter at that. I'm 100% going to do a show on this in 2025, but Schent was the mastermind of something called Operation Boundhart during the war, which was a plan to drop around 300 million fake pound notes over Britain to cripple the economy, possibly the largest counterfeiting operation of all time. Wrights McFarron, quote,

Schent was the perfect business partner for Barbie, and together the two men established a lucrative trade in arms, as well as selling stolen Bolivian government credentials. So he's really playing all sides here. However, Barbie no longer has the backing of the West German intelligence apparatus, and in 1971 he and Schvent attempt to extort a fellow German called Herbert John, who's working for prominent Peruvian industrialist Luis Banchero Rossi. Problem is, John also moonlights as an important.

investigative reporter, so Srent and Barbie's efforts to swindle him backfire spectacularly. John is able to find out that Klaus Altman is Klaus Barbie, and he sends Shrent's address to Bata and Serge Klausfeld, two of the most famous Nazi hunters in the world. This is huge news, of course. In December that year, Biazza Klaus Feld determines that, yes, Klaus Altman is the wanted butcher of Leon, Klaus Barbie, and she devises a plan to extradite, or even kidnap him to stand trial in France, which has already sentenced him twice to death and absentia, by the way. A few days later, that industrialist Banchero Rossi,

he's murdered at his weekend home near Lima, supposedly by his gardener who spent seven years in jail before being exonerated. The B&D then runs interference for Barbie, worried the truth will come out about his involvement with Dem and the West German state, not to mention the US and the Vatican. The class fells right an op-ed, in a French newspaper, alongside John's photos of Barbie uncovering his identity. His response? Quote,

I have never changed my name, and the only thing I can say is that I was a member of the German army and held the rank of lieutenant in an assault commando. I am not that ex-Gaistapo chief in Lyon. I am a former soldier and nothing more. Now I am manager for Transmaritima Bolibiana. The most important thing for me is peace for me and my children. Nonetheless, Barbie is summoned to the Peruvian Ministry of the Interior to explain himself. Barbie maintains his only humble millionaire Klaus Altman,

but by the time Bata-Claasfeld arrives in Lima four days later to grab him, he's fled to the Bolivian-Peruvian border near Lake Titi Karkar with his family. Word gets packed to La Paz, and Barbie is arrested upon his arrival, but he's got friends in all the right places, and Bolivia is a rogue dictatorship. So the Klausfelds, France and the world are made to wait for their man. He has become the epitome of the phrase justice delayed is justice denied, because, writes Der Spiegel quote,

of the interests and perhaps moral blindness of the US and West German intelligence agencies that Barbie served. Barbie has gotten away with it. And living under state protection in La Paz, Don Klaus reaps on his network of Lancy Powers, attempted to bring them together under one evil banner. This network is loosely known by the phrase Odessa, or Organizatio Maligan SS Anguhrigan,

which translates as organization of former members of the SS. This is your specter, your uncle, your black order, and by this point some of the guys are backed by the US and dictators in Argentina, Brazil, Padagway, Bolivia and elsewhere. Barbie formalises some of his gang into the bridegrooms of death, naming them for a wing of the Spanish Foreign Legion. And they really are a gaggle of evil bastards. Over the year, they're fought to have a hand in many of the changes of power in Bolivia, suppressing leftists and promoting whoever has the worst political views, and the deepest pockets, of course.

And by the mid-1970s, these tend to be men deep into Bolivia's thriving cocaine trade. and at the top of this trade sits Roberto Suarez Gomez. Now we're going to get into Suarez properly in the second part of this show because it deserves more time. But by the late 1970s he controls the lion's share of the world's coca production, a lot of which comes from poor indigenous growers in the youngest, that region Klaus Barby had first lived in in the 50s. From 1971, Bolivia has been run by a raw-bone military general named Hugo Banzer,

who actively encourages coca production to boost his country's ailing economy. He also hires Klaus Barby as a, quote, special security aid, i.e. the torturer in chief. That's interesting, just kind of like how Brunner was with the Syrian Baothas party. Yeah, and there were others in Chile and elsewhere as well. I can't remember their names right now, but they were, yeah, they really did like a Nazi torturer. It's pretty, pretty rough. Banzer introduces the two men at Suarez and M. Barbie and they hit it off. Suarez needs muscle for his business, which is seems he's increasingly

under threat from Colombian cartels and rebel groups, and that is when the Nazi narco alliance in Bolivia really kicks off. So now we have Barbie and Lapaz, working with both Banzer, the dictator and Suarez, the narco, offering his and the services of the bridegrooms of death and making sure that whoever's in power will keep the classfelds off his back. But in 1978, this harmony is thrown out of whack by Jimmy Carter, US president. Banser is clearly running a narco state, empowering the nascent Medellin cartel in Colombia, and he's leading such repressive tactics against opposition in Bolivia that locals know the time as the Bancerato. So, Rare Washington W in this story, Carter forces Banser to agree to a democratic poll, and guess what, he rigs it,

beating leftist Hernan Silasso with the help of 200,000 votes more than there are actual voters. I mean, this is so embarrassingly obviously bad that Banzer has to declare the election void. And then his parties say he's trying to steal power from them, so they instigate a coup, which itself is countered by a coup. I mean, how many coups do you think Bolivia's had since independence in 1825, Danny? Seven. Yes, you guessed it. A hundred and 90. One-90.

What the actual heck? In 1979, Jimmy Carter's like, nah, come on, guys. Seriously, just do an election. But when the winner of that vote is sworn in, he's cooed by another general who just days earlier had been seen dining with Barbie and Suarez in La Paz. So violence is creeping up this entire time,

especially from the military to trade unionists and others who are clamoring for free and fair elections. I mean, let's be honest. The trade unionists don't really care about that half the time either. They're like on the communist side. And all the while, the power of Barbie, Suarez, and Bolivia's narco dollars is getting out of control. A CIA agent stationed in Bolivia at the time recalls flying over a, quote, jungle-based cocaine manufacturing complex containing laboratories,

heavy armaments, radio communications, and landing fields that could accommodate a modern jumbo jet. He concludes that the Suarez Barbie faction, are seeking to use the drug trade as the backbone of a, quote, military industrial setup right out of the West Point textbook. It's unbelievable. The CIA still have Barbie as an asset at this point, content to let him wreck havoc on Latin America so long as he smashes anything resembling communism.

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Michael Levine is an undercover DEA agent from New York, living in Buenos Aires and posing as a Sicilian mobster when he meets Suarez's people, learning that over 90% of Bolivian coca paste is sold to Colombians to be turned into cocaine. He doesn't think the CIA cares about his opt though. In fact, Levine says, the CIA think the DEA are just bozos. Here's Mike, quote. Their main asset for control of the Bolivian military at this time was Klaus Barbie. He was one of several ex-Nazi assets they had working in South America at the time.

Klaus Barbie was key in that bloody action as the right-hand man of the CIA. In 1979, Levine persuades Suarez and several other narcos to sell him over a thousand keys of blow for $9 million. I feel like that's a pretty good deal, I would expect better back then, but maybe it was their responsibility to move it into the U.S. In which case, it's a great deal. I think it is, because it's just him working on his own as far as I can. So that's an amazing deal.

Good for him? Yeah, maybe he should have got into another line of business, Mr. Levine. On May 24th, 1980, a Conver cargo plane loaded with the drug leaves a jungle airstrip in Benny, which is a remote Bolivian state border in Brazil, heads for Florida. At the same time, two Bolivians are arrested inside a Miami bank when they receive payment for the deal. Here's an excerpt from a fantastic feature at Nuevo Socied by the excellent late Bolivian reporter Boris Miranda. Mike, as everyone calls the New Yorker, believed that his daring operation represented the biggest drug bust in history. He had finally succeeded in criminating the Bolivian bigwigs.

He was very wrong. His government covered up the case and released the deal. detainees. The drug laws in Bolivia were far from losing their influence with the US special agencies. Levine details this and way more in his explosive book The Big White Lie. But if we're to believe him, and the evidence is convincing, the CIA at this point, in May 1980, helps get Suarez, Barbie and the bridegrooms of death off the hook, scuppering Levine's massive drug operation and allowing some of the most dangerous criminals in Latin America to keep forging ties with Medellez. regime and Colombia.

And that's likely because, just a few weeks later, the cocaine coup begins, soaking La Paz in blood. Garcia-Mesa, the general was about to take control of the country, has been paid an alleged million dollars by Suarez and his cartel, which thanks to its Italian connections, some dubbed the coca nostra. Nice. This is the first time in history that an entire country has been handed to active drug traffickers, hence why the CIA, which caused it, so thanks guys, calls Bolivia the world's first

true narco state. The following year, Roberto Suarez Gomez hosts his 49th birthday party at a villa in a wealthy suburb of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia's largest city, and his seat of power. At it, are members of Bolivia's ruling Hunter, of course, but also a young Pablo Escobar and his right-hand man Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, aka El Mexicano. It's there at that Fiesta that Escobar meets Klaus Barbie, future Nazi and NACO death squad leader for the first time. And it's there that we'll leave this tale for now. Oh, interesting. I wanted to do an episode on Gacha. I haven't like saved on a list, so that'll be, that'll be interesting. Yeah, I don't know a huge amount about him, but he's got his, he's got a whole different story. I can barely remember it from Narcos. But, uh, yeah,

This is like, I can't really ever state this. It's like really is the inception of the Latin American drug trade as we know it today. The founding fathers, man, put them on the Mount Rushmore of cartel guys, right? And I actually, I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know anything about Gomez either. I knew nothing about him, but his life story is pretty fascinating. And we're going to get into it in the next show in what, a couple of weeks, I guess. Yeah, so hopefully that will be less deeply unpleasant than this one. It cannot not be, right?

Yeah, happy New Year, guys. Thanks for, thanks for tuning in. Happy New Year. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Own it all.

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