vice president under control. >>. [laughter] the other piece of advice i loved was ken duberstein's, he was reagan's final chief and he's a great storyteller.and anyway, he looked very bravely at ron and said never forget. when you open your mouth,it's not you speaking but the president of the united states. to which ron said all black . and that brought down the house. >>. >> hello everyone. >>. >> hi. >> hello everyone.>>.

>> hello, my name is mama, and politics and prose. >> bradley graham and lisa, i like to welcome you all to politics and prose. if you haven't already, please silence your cell phone then your noisemaking devices and we ask that the question and answer session that you please use the microphone, just the one right over there and another right by the door. >> finally, we appreciate by the end you folding up the chair and leaned, thank you. >> with that i'm pleased to welcome jill died to politics and prose. a gripping tale about josc trevino a humble family man and miguel trevino. a violent criminal organizations criminal

activities with the mexican-american border. these books are richly detailed and rendered accounts which will be the downfall, and on the finest horses in the united states. all with money from miguel's drug empire. >>

tonight he will be in conversation with terrence mccoy, a reporter at the "washington post." please join me in welcoming joe tone and terrence mccoy. [applause] >> hello. hi, terry. hello, terrence. thank you everyone for coming. you off to him and okay? to talk about the exciting and gripping and terrific new book, "bones," and it is a book you woulever asked for from a hollyd script. it has hardcharging drug cartels dirk it as an unassuming bricklayer, for crying out loud, and it has, joe tied altogether the makes an appearance about

three fourths of the way through the book. it all comes together very well and as the president says, there's a lot of bad hombres. i most want to talk to joe about how this came together for him and also the processes he went through reporting about that isn't quite difficult to report. anyone who has reports of drug and tells can being able to verify facts, not get yourself killed, all these things are not easy to do when you are reporting on people like this. first i want to talk to joe about how really he just came to hear about this story and how it all started. what happened first? >> the first thing i was editor of the dallas observer answer every morning i would get up and look for stories. i was getting up really early at the time because the child over there was a tiny and waking me

up. so i would go in and just go to the newspaper and always looking for things i could tear out or story online that i can chat with one of my reporters. i came across this one and it was jose trevino face on the cover of the times. he was there with a smile, they cat and and a big trophy. i started to read the story, they get with this is about and this was a guy who'd been a bricklayer for 30 years in dallas about 20 minutes more i lived i'd had risen to prominence in this niche world of horse racing, quarter horse racing which is popular in the southwest but i did know much about it because i'm from california. i just was immediately like this is a story, this is something. the story in the times was great but we're always looking for a way to turn something into sort of fully realized story. i ripped it out, was totally

going to give it to one of my reporters and that i just kept it for myself. but then three years went by. there wasn't much to do with it in that moment. the fbi agents raided a ranch in oklahoma, and so there wasn't much to go on in terms of course records or anything like that. nobody was talking. certainly not the government, not the players, nobody was talking. lawyers would talk you off the record but that's about it. >> but that changed. >> eventually i would essentially gather it slowly. i withhold records and that sort of gives you tips about okay, who the players are, who the agents were and that was one of the early breaks was there was a court record, basically first test me from irs agent, and so he was based not far from right was in dallas cycle of the irs. these government agencies that work counter-narcotics generally

don't love to talk what to do, particularly before all the dust is settled. the irs doesn't get a ton of credit for this i think they were excited to hear from me and just said we will talk. that sort of got the ball rolling. >> you obviously went on to find out about these two brothers. what is named magill, the other is josé. living, couldn't be living in a different lives on either side of the border. what first. to this? was a kind of the shakespearean nature of this contrast between these brothers? what was it you saw the major recognize their something more threatening about it? >> that's exactly what it was. i thought about it before and i thought just the notion that this man had lived and worked not far from me, again is a naturalized american citizen eventually in dallas, texas, laying bricks, while his, not only miguel but another brother, omar, and other brothers at the

various places had all arisen to prominence into drug trafficking business and miguel in particular brick miguel was eventually became the leader of the cartel, notorious communist big and powerful but it is best known for being just fallaciously violent. it really was just that question of like how do you live that life and how do you sort of continue to make the choice that just be a bricklayer everyday lawyer brothers have amassed ridges and power right across the border. when you layer in the fact that the turn, the choice at some point to get involved in some way was through this bizarre world of quarter horse racing, which is sort of a no-brainer. >> when you see about quarter horse racing, what was it that

you think for a man like jose trevino on one side of the border, total life you've been nothing but a bricklayer, what was it about horse racing that made him want to finally get involved with if not the most, one of the most murderous drug cartels in mexico? >> the tribune of him had grown up in northern mexico right across the border -- the trevino family -- early on there in the outskirts and a father worked on the ranch and all grew up around cattle and horses. throughout northern mexico,, quarter horse racing is really popular. both in an informal setting they are one-to-one match races where one guy from the ranch to significant from a range bring your horse and we'll put someone on the line and have some peers and race. that's a passion of a lot of people in northern mexico just like it is in texas, oklahoma and new mexico.

i think that was the draw for it was something that he knew. i eventually saw like as he built it come he was more or less building what his dad might've been able to build a fist added in a affordable opportunities, but doing it in the united states. >> when you first get into it, how does he himself change as he gets deeper into this world that he had not known? >> he starts off, he gets his toes in the water a little bit and stays a humble bricklayer. in time he starts i think enjoyed the success of the levit, and become sort of more of a public face about it. they win some races and had some success and -- >> that. >> well, he changes it. he wore a white habit as soon as he started, at first he were a ball cap and then when he got into quarter horse racing and

started showing up at the race and stuff he wore a white hat and later on in the story, and i don't know why but at one point, it was right with the time when his brother was just really becoming a huge problem in northern mexico kidnapping and killing. really indiscriminately. outside of the already horrible bounds of the drug war, the change to a black hat briefly. i think it was a coincidence but he did do that. >> and so he gets deeper into this and he starts wearing this hat, so he takes on more of a flamboyance to this. and the cartel despite the fact were more or less laundering money through horseracing, something you think you try to be more subtle about, they weren't at all, where they? >> that's what it thinks interesting about this story is about miguel trevino and the

cartel in general and especially under his leadership starting the sort of been an break the unwritten rules of the drug wars. we know them also from the mob wars, phuket when you you need to kill. when someone is interfering with your business, you don't mess around with american law enforcement, particularly the feds because that would draw too much attention. you keep a low profile. and miguel really started to kind of plot those rules turkey started with the horses, the cartels in northern mexico have an interest in verses and love races horsing -- racing horse long time. it would buy them in the training, ring them to mexico and would occasionally bring them into, back into the united states and race of them. they all we did a very quite lithic miguel didn't want to do that. he starred in drink them into some of the biggest races. he of his inner something into races in his brothers name which

drew attention to his family. the most flaunting he did was he ordered his guys to basically go to the american quarter horse association in amarillo texas and have an change all the names of their horses from the traditional horse names that honored the size and games of the reading into names like number one cartel, 40 force was his name, miguel, names like that. the industry new and the industry has now that there's drug money involved and that's one of the interesting things about this to if they for many years welcomed it because they like the money. but they didn't ever really know exactly who it was, and he helped make it clear. >> so joe's book does a good job of doing the micro and macro, the micro being the sort of page

turning narrative of what happens to this brother when he gets into acting with the drug cartel and with horseracing. but there's a much bigger picture to this, and the fact is this is a result of a lot of times of policies, and the result of it and how this affects families on either side of the border. what with the big ideas in the big picture that you drew away from after reporting and writing this book? >> in the quarter horse racing it is in this story particular were a great window into it. nothing that was particularly surprising to me. it was essentially we have a system of drug laws that is more or less designed to extend people of color and to immediately protect or at least give a pass to white people and in particular wealthy white people. this story was good at that. the quarter horse racing industry which i just mention, drug money for years and

probably to this day touches every aspect of that industry and its a multicultural industry. you up wealthy white ranchers and other businessmen who own the racetracks, on the breeding farms, on some of the best horses. you have white traders all throughout the interest, insurance brokers. and yet people of color who do a lot of the same jobs in also obviously are jockeys and trainers and are in the barnes. everybody in the industry is just like our country, drug money is sort of part of the broader life. these people in particular making a choice all the time of whether or not to do business with that money. they generally all make the same choice, but the result in this case shows it, is give a penny who they are. 18 indictments, everybody was mexican or mexican-american. so i think that's a great, that

shows you what we dealing with. and josé come his story is interesting. there's a character in the book named tyler who is a young, wealthy white ranger in central texas, and is just trying to get his feelings of ranch in trying to bring back his fathers stud farm. if you want of a good state farm you need a stud. he gets an opportunity to possibly breathe the source that is owned by the set is and is the same horse that draws josé into the business. you have a middle-aged bricklayer from mexico and jeff are wealthy white ranger. they both want to sink the they want to create wealth of him and make a go of it in the family business and do everything that we all want to do. they both have the same horse is right there for them to do it. his name is tempting dash but in mexico they were very skinny and they raced him and his name

bones which is where the title of the book comes in. they both make the same choice like yes, probably drug might but th this horse is my ticket o ride. as soon as they make that choice, the moment they both are public facing in the business the government shows up. the fbi gets a tip and the government says that's interesting. what do they do? they let josé bengal for a while and to let them keep going in this business and building his business and building his business, and eventually they show up at his doorstep. for tyler graham, the visitor show up with a form that says, you know, they won his cooperation. so they show up literally with paperwork that says that you can keep doing this as long as you help us out. and that's how it works. it's like they literally show up with a form that says hey, we will help you out. they look upon industry and those two guys in particular as

one person is a sort of partner in helping take down the bad hombres, and the other person is the bad hombre. in that particular case his family ties were a big part of that, but if you look at the broader industry, they didn't need family ties. all they needed was country origin. >> it also showed this investigation, it wasn't a victimless investigation. someone ended up dead for their cooperation. could you tell us about what happened? >> a couple people at least ended up dead because of their cooperation in this story, but there's a particular young man who was a horse broker for the zetas, essentially would travel around the united states and by horses for the cartel, and eventually various government agencies have doubts about that they start hearing about in in wiretaps and then they catch up

with hi them and want to talk wh him and he doesn't have much of a choice so he starts cooperating with the government. it's unclear what happened but at some point 40 found out he was cooperating, or suspected he was cooperating and if people know, if you read about this world, there's nothing worse that you could do then snatch. they eventually came for him. >> to writing stories about crime, about killing, about drugs are great for a lot of reasons. you know, it's really great material to be writing about this stuff. it keeps readers interested but it's also very difficult when you are the reporter because people don't want to talk. people who are indicted a lot of times don't want to talk because they are worried about what a come of that. joe and i were talking about that right before i came out

about the pluses and minuses of writing a story like this. access can be difficult thing sometimes and joe also encountered some issues of access. can you tell us about that? >> i mentioned my first break was getting to the government, and that's great. i was telling terry that sometime sees government agency don't want to talk but once one does the dominant source to fall. the iressa told all about the work in this case and the fbi's like okay, we will talk to you. it really did seem to work this way. none of them would ever acknowledge it but it's like the irs and then the fbi and that it went to the dea entities of the kaiser telling us about this important work that they did in the area force racing, and all sort of felt, so that's great but that's the governments perspective. its narrow, it's not know but it's one side basically. although they all hate each other. then of course you start to have

to try to get to the other people involved. i reig ran into some big stone , those two characters i just told you i changed my entire story buckham either with talk to me, was a or tyler graham. josé just have got to the point where he felt comfortable sharing his story i guess, and tyler graham, he never would even tell me. >> a lot of reporters and editors would even counsel would say someone is not giving access. at some point where people are just a i ha got to move on and write something else. you soldiered on. what made you to want to keep going? >> fear of failure mostly. my editor and i never really, book editors are debrecen newspaper editors which we can talk about later. they never really ask. essentially i had promised a book that were delivered this story and is guided to show up with one way or another. i hope to get to one of those two guys or both of those two guys, or some of the other

people that i didn't get to. but i didn't. the flipside is, is that on this case which was a multiunit desiccation. there were two separate trials because of some appeals that happen. there were mounds and mounds of records, and, including testimony from some of a lot of people in fall. in the case of acoustical there's never any testimony. you don't hear from a lot of these people but over the course of two trials we got long testimony from key players. so you could hear their voice and see it from the perspective. and look, i would always take talking to somebody, but there's something to be said for the records don't lie, and there are definitely people in this story who wanted i have loved to talk to but i, i don't know they would've told me the truth. so would've been great because what have helped me understand why there are coming from a little bit and just hear them talk bu but i may also into the having to rely on the records anyway.

>> you are able to stitch together from voluminous records and lots of different sources what can read very cinematically and very vividly. can you talk about that? what was your process as far as taking what can be thousands of records and distilling it into a 340 page book? >> ye out. funny, it starts with reporting of just amassing all that stuff and not stopping. it can be frustrating because you can go on long sort of journeys for reporting that in that being a sentence or two in your book, and judges have faith is going to all at of to a book. that's the first up is just don't stop amassing it and don't undervalue something that you might have to drive to san antonio to get like for pieces of paper, or i can, there was a

document that is put into the last draft of the book that was the result of a year and a half of developing a source that was kind of a pain in the butt for a year and a half. didn't give me that much, always talk about give me a lot, never came through, long conversations on the phone. but at the very end he called me and said hey, i had this document. i don't know it would be interested. it was kind of a crucial think about miguel tribune owes childhood. you just kind of stay with it and keep amassing and then you write way too much and then once you write that kind of tells you what else you need to fill it in and then you keep reporting and you get that and just a matter like cutting back and making the. >> at any moment during a big project, a big story there comes a moment when the writer is like screw this, what am i doing with my life right now.

when did that happen to you? [laughing] >> pretty early on actually. i was about three months in to what into the bank three your process. i had the newspaper my whole life. now if you're at a weekly used to publish every day. i was the editor so we publish three times a day so if i want to take credit for 30 things i could. i took credit for like four, but you have that you everyday of like putting stuff out into the world and the audience is just one to it and make you feel important. it's just for your ego mostly, entirely probably. but three months in, not only was the point in the world but i didn't have anything on paper. i was just reporting of people would ask me everyday when i would drop like itself, i was your book? i would say fine, but i was thinking like what book? i don't have a book. and so it really was, is

difficult and that was three months in, i remember it, and i basically just started writing and that really helped. i don't do enough but to start running the worst of all i realize i do have a lot. second of all, i realized i enjoy this and it doesn't matter if anybody is sitting at. it doesn't matter if anybody ever reads it. it kind of matters, people should read it for sure, but i had to come to the realization that i actually liked his work in a process of doing it is fulfilling, whether or not i get three comments on in the afternoon or whatever. once i realized that it helps me breakthrough it. >> let's talk about voice for a second. your voice is a clear joe tone piece of work. there's love giveaways to write this story, very dispassionately, just in the fax type mayhem type of weather joe

injected a lot of life into these pages that want to talk to you about that. when you think about how you're going to write this story and voice shook when you as because in one edge of writing about people who died but then you're ready about horseracing. you can also be very light and funny like. someone naming a horse number one cartel. how did you strike that balance? >> i started by just trying to get a could embody the charactr i was writing about, and one of the things that makes this book easy is it does tend to jump from character to character, and each side a little condensed scene focuses, zeroes in on one particular person, or tries to tell her from their perspective to the extent that i can come often with people whom i've never met. that was kind of the starting point of time to figure out whose story is a slow bit of it and how do they talk? because there's some really

colorful people in this story. in both of these worlds. so that was kind of the first thing. and then what you mentioned is really important is trying to understand what is this seemed about what's the tenor of the scene, and can't i capture some of the ironing that exists in this horse racing world, or does it need to be more somber and just being really beautiful about knowing sort of where i am in the story? and then later on there were places where i worked hard with my editor was great on this but injecting some sort of some attitude into it and try to make sure there was an argument that's kind of, we are trying to sort of hide in plain sight in the book really. >> i'd like to open up to any questions that people might have. >> anderson microphones. it's been recorded. there's one here.

there's just one microphone, a single microphone. who is going to lead us off? >> did you ever feel threatened to physically at any time during this? >> no, i didn't. i appreciate you saying that. i get asked that question quite a bit in different ways. sometimes i get asked were you ever scared? and the answer is yes, because i scare super easily. but no, i never felt threatened nor did i really have any reason to feel threatened. i think there is a theme in the book that helps explain that, which is i talk early on about the sort of rules of engagement of the drug war, and one of the rules is, it's a very dangerous to report on the drug cartels in mexico, and to an extent along the border. mexican journalists are threatened, kidnapped, killed at alarming rates, and it's getting worse kind of fast.

so honestly every time somebody would ask me that or i would start to think like, do i need to be -- i would member that and think no. it's almost disrespectful of them to feel scared because what i was doing, reporting after-the-fact about what for the cartel was a sort of minor part of their business, although it was a big investigation, but in terms of you out the launder it wasn't that big of a deal. and it was all in the united states. i a white guy in dallas. there was really no reason for me to feel threatened i think. >> do you speak spanish? >> i don't speak spanish. >> 95% of people in the valley give. >> yes, and i don't. it was a challenge. >> i speak dirty spanish. did you change names? >> there's one fbi agent who asked for her name to be changed. >> where other running tracks? ice in the quarter horses are

going in to the running tracks. >> the quarter horses race at thoroughbred tracks so they were at the same tracks the thoroughbred meets. there is a track in brownsville i think that these races all happened at tracks in major cities. the ones that take place in the book. lone star in dallas, orange county california. >> okay. and the drug people as i understand it were driven out of florida and came into the rio grande valley and before that there was no drug problem. >> in the valley. that is part of the history that the colombians traditionally smuggled their cocaine through florida and actually around the time of the advent of the dea, the dea really sort of closed that down. when florida was shut down, the

colombians essentially start looking for a way to move their cocaine into the united states. at the same time you had the crack epidemic in the u.s. the mexican drug cartels, which traditionally dealt in heroin and marijuana wanted a way to get into the very lucrative cocaine business so the colombians, the mexicans teamed up. basically the colombians would take the cocaine to mexico and the mexicans and mexican cartels would smuggle it in for them. so it became a partnership for them. it's called the mexican traveling. >> what appeared if years are you talking up? >> busily covers 2008 or nine, to 2012 and 2013. >> thank you. >> you're welcome.

>> i have a three-part. when you say your reporting, we actually researching or using it synonymous, every day you are writing about what you are finding out? >> i was not writing about it everyday, but when i see reporting, i mean their traditional tools of journalism being anything people on the phone and in-person, going to the courthouse and getting documents. >> gathering information. >> yes, gathering information. then there is more traditional research in terms of reading books. >> if you were reading it for the firs first time what would e your favorite part of the book? >> that's a good question. so good. you know what? i'll tell you, there are three of four chapters in the book. i'm going to answer your question although indirectly.

there are three or four chapters of the book that sort of jumped out of the narrative and are a bit more contextual history. there's one about the history of quarter horse racing, one about the way the drug money moves back to mexico. when we think about strugglin se think about when the drugs come into the united states. perhaps more interesting is what goes back to mexico and the what happens to it when it's there. there's a couple like that that don't have anything to do with anything with these characters we're talking about. they were all my editors ideas. they didn't exist in my first draft of the editor said you're trying to cram all this context into your book and in you this cool narrative but it is slowing it down. what easy to stop telling the story and just tell these chapters? i thought it was a horrible idea and i wrote it in protest and the second i will like the first half of the first what i showed to what benches like that's really cool because it just feels different. and i love those chapters now.

>> are you going to read any to us? >> i wasn't going to read any to you. >> would you? >> i could read something, if we have time. the cameraman just nodded. what do you think about that? are you all right without? >> is the audience okay? >> i haven't made any from this yet at all, but i mentioned the help of my wife. she helped me flag apart that she thought would be good, so i will read from that and you know exactly where it is. jose trevino, bricklaying, bricklaying, brick lane, all of a sudden the cartel had this horse in the united states who is ready to run in the united states, and had run really well in mexico, had run while in some qualified and so then he shows up at this tracking data and is going to run in a big race, and all of a sudden josé who nobody

knows who he is is the owner of the source, and the scene takes place the night of the race, which i know because it starts tonight at the risk of hose a walk in to his first public act of the owner of tempting dash. he wore blue jeans over shiny boots, and the bulk of the meeting look less like a winning horse owner more like a career mason. he worked his final day as a brick layer a few weeks before leaving the best changeup he had in years because last week which i could come to more than $500 for three just a bricklaying. if this was what he would make 445 granta goza wrist. after 15 years a the fed trader he was a lease score to get that taken ownership of tempting dash in middle of the horses hot streak. it was packed with owners. if he did when they were trying to leverage his naïveté to take advantage of the is a might've grown up around horses but this was his first foray into the

business of america horseracing and while the film mexicans grew more influential teacher, particularly in the saddle and in the training bards, the industry was still controlled by savvy old white guys right there in the middle of the saddling paddock, one of them walked up and offered to buy tempting dash. he is not for sale. the trainer let tempting dash out of the stall. posey followed their trusted jockey poisons of up and trotted source back to the grandstand and onto the track. it goes on from there. it gets better. [applause] >> there's been some amazing literature written about the borderland and two-thirds the way to the book, and i think this book stands shoulder to shoulder with -- >> thank you. >> and howard campbell and folks like that. so we had this amazing narrative

of rich literature about the borderland, which doesn't seem to be having any influence on developing rational public policy. [laughing] so notwithstanding the richness of this literature, how do we take these stories and use them to inform public policy that's rational? if that's possible. >> it's hard for books to do that when you have a president who doesn't read books. >> that's a really great question. i get the first, the first thing is you've got to keep writing them. because people read them and you hope has a sort of trickle-down effect into who we vote for and the way resort of direct our policymakers. i think it would help, and this

is possibly ironic, i think it would help if we continue to support our news organizations and our news organizations continue to hire diverse staff and diverse storytellers. i think i could out because, frankly, there are people who know the world better than i do might even speak spanish. i do think that would help him, but i think it's just like buy books at independent bookstores to keep writing, keep reading and keep supporting the sort of institutions, both the media institutions and bookstores and all the things that keep that te conversation going. as it relates, that's what we had to do and then just vote smart. >> the right candidates, a lot of the no what to do it we just need to get them in power. the switch of attorney general is set a great example.

you had an attorney general under obama said it wasn't a a whole lot of do but only said to prosecutors, find a way to prosecute people on these drug charges way to don't serve the statutory maximum. now we have new attorney general who says essentially the opposite. >> what do you see as the future of, you know, in a book that's filled with a lot of death and killing and drugs and horses, what do you see as a way to be able to find our way out of this? >> it's pretty bleak, man. i think he keeps going to what i was just talking about, just sort of being smart, active voters and continue to sort of push progressive candidates who are going to support

decriminalization, spending much more money on treatment and less on trying to prosecute. i think training, one of the things we get into the book a little bit, i wrote it, i can say i, indie book is the nature of bias in policing. and i think there was a move under the previous justice department as well to do biased training for agents that the justice department and i don't believe that's happening. hopefully it will one day, but just giving our police agencies and federal agencies to eliminate their own biases as the prosecute these kinds of cases, or look at these kinds of cases i think would be really crucial. but when any of that is going to happen, i don't know.

>> i have a smaller question and the related a large window when you first described the two men who ended up on either side of the fbi's investigation, taylor or tyler and jose trevino, you mentioned both of them had gone after tempting dash. i wasn't sure whether was relation to an auction versus joint purchase. >> hosea i guess hadn't got after them except as much as yet sort of had an opportunity and it's really unclear to the state sort of ho active a choice thats or if your brother was a drug lord comes around and says hey, you own the source to where the nut you just said yes. there's no evidence that he was compelled to do but there's also no evidence that he stood up and volunteered. so that was interaction with tempting dash as the owner of tempting dash and eventually the owner who was breeding them. tyler under breeding farm and so

he needed to essentially recruit stallions for his breeding farm. and tempting dash was one of the stallion that he very aggressively recruited by courting hosea essentially. they went hunting together. tired a and sensitized to hang t and provide services to josé soho they would eventually stand his dad at tigers farm. >> okay. and what do you wish that perhaps tyler had been indicted for? >> actually it's an interesting question. i don't think tyler broke the law. people, when i make that case about josé and tyler, or just the inequities here, i think often people think, i've had the question of like, the other day, who are the white people who should've gone to prison? that's not quite how i feel about it. tither didn't break the law, but

when he first stepped into this business i don't think at the fbi doesn't think, he basically, some people came along and asked him to do some things. the fbi immediately identified in and basically offered him a lifeline. so there's no way to know what tyler would've done if three months down the line it became very obvious that he was being used to launder money. we just don't know what choice he would have made. so my idea as relates to that is there are people like tyler throughout the industry who were indicted, so i think were making basically the same choice is simple when it offered that lifeline who honestly i don't know that, and you are examples of some of the who were eventually either acquitted or convicted by a jury and then their appeal was thrown up by an appeals court that said wait a second, he wasn't laundering money, he was just training horses. he didn't know where the money

comes from necessarily, and a lot of them actually require you to even if you do know, that doesn't mean you are laundering the money. so yeah, i don't want to indict tyler. >> so what did the agent think of the book? >> that's a good question. he's the lead fbi agent in the case, and he texted me, was very cooperative, and but we had some conversations that were not tense at all. they just never were, that when we disagreed, particularly around some of these ideas of bias in policing was there bias in this investigation, and he texted me and said he really liked the book. he didn't agree with everything that i wrote or my take on everything, but felt like i got it right to the extent that i told the story correctly and he really liked it, which i don't know, what do you think?

that's about as good as you can ask for, right? >> i love it. i love it. >> okay. but i thought i was good. i could respond. >> you got along really well? >> we got along. it was just one of those people i could sit and talk to for a long time, although that is not true necessarily of me. i think that actual is true of him. one of the things i think that makes him a successful cop an agent is h seeking to talk to everybody. >> so that was kind of a key break though in the whole art of this, was the fact that one day, the fbi said it's crazy. but you get a message and he does want to talk. so that was, so describe my cat that happened. i guess how you felt. were you surprised? how rare that is. does it happen often or --

>> it feels pretty rare to meet to get an fbi agent with a case that fresh. it wasn't ongoing. you would never get an fbi agent who wants to talk to on the record when a case is ongoing. i think there may be a rule within the agency that have to wait 18 months until the case was resolved. that could be sort of read different ways depending on and stuff. so the was that barry. i still think a threat to get an agent, to get the agency does it okay, and did 11 agent who is interested in doing it. and then two of the agent just have a personality and have a sort of emotional availability to tell you the story in a way that you start to think of him as a possible character in a story rather than just an agent who is citing facts. there was a huge break. the moment he called me and certain of the moment we first sat down was when i started to think, this could be a book because he just offered me away

into this story. >> that was a perspective no one else has. >> nobody else had that perspective. he knows the sort of big picture of the story, and then his own nitty-gritty in a way that really nobody else has or can talk about it. i talked to the prosecutors, other agents involved, but he sort of understood but also it lived a lot of the more interesting moments because he was surveilling horse races and auction houses and tailing people around the board and do it all the stuff that i knew was going to propel the story. >> on a scale of one to ten, how much did you know about horseracing before you started this? >> i guess, i mean, i suppose there are people who know less. maybe a three i guess. i've never been to a horse race. i had never been. just like everybody else, watched the kentucky derby maybe, if it happens to be on or

if i'm invited to a party. i would never bet on it. i knew very little about it. it turns out i have family who were expert horse breeders of show horses, but i never was just have to ask him about it. i did anything about it. not quite a one but almost. >> so was at the most enjoyable part of the research? what was a part that you just thought this is like, this is great what you are finding? what was the information you found that blue you away? >> the horseracing, i mean, i enjoyed it but but i did not be a horseracing fan. that piece of it was not my favorite kind reporting. this is like going to a place where you are not comfortable, you are not especially welcomed and it's a credit and are expected to just walk up to rain the people and say tell me about horseracing. that's not my back. so no, i think for me it was more, there was some former,

hopefully former drug traffickers who was able to connect with, and i can think of a couple of meetings with those guys that just, that has direct access to world that is really hard to access. you can read testimony about it. you can read books about it but to hear a guy explain how all this stuff works was really interesting. >> what makes someone, one of the cool things about this book is its predicate on people making choices and where they go with their life. on one side he has miguel who made his choice to join one of the most murders people in the drug cartel. what is it that makes someone who are they? what is the psychology? what makes them do what they do? what makes them think this is something that it's something

they can go after? >> i can't speak for all them obviously. i only talked to a handful and i think everybody is different. a lot of times they didn't have a choice. they grew up in poverty on one side of the border or both. in this case i can think of one particular guy who had been in the business, got out of the business. this is around across from eagle pass, texas. the zetas just rolled into tent and pick people up. they knew he had experience in and said you work for us now. there really wasn't much of a choice. there are a handful of characters throughout the book for whom that's true. you know, i think oftentimes that's what it is. there are towns, where they are from, their lies are devoid of other meaningful opportunity,

and this is way that doesn't have a negative impact on their community. well, of course notice about with violence but there was a time when smuggling, the smugglers in denver sort looked upon as people who are bringing money back in to the community and would fix things up into things like that. a lot of the impact was on the american side and they figured if all the americans will do the drugs, we will move to make some money. >> what was at the about horseracing you think that made them think that this i this is t way to launder money? >> i would say probably, i don't know if they ever thought is a great way to launder money. the best way is to large global banks. drug cartels and other criminal organizations have laundered hundreds of millions, billions through banks and the banks have systems in place to stop it, but they don't work or they don't want them to work because they can do that without fear of prosecution, one of the great

things about being a banker. so i don't know that he thought is going to be a great money laundering device as much as they wanted to win horse races. once they started making money, thought if we're going to make this month in the united states, let's slide it over to my american brother so that i have some essentially clean cash going to my american family. >> do you think miguel cared about josé? >> yes, i do. i mean, i don't know, no journalist ever talk to miguel but that's a very close knit family. i think they all loved each other, love each other. >> what you think his feelings were toward his family? >> every indication is that he was a really loyal family man, and loved his family. he would sort of disavow his brother when he could passionately in terms of saying

like that's not me, but there's no, he stayed in touch with large number of the people in this ailment and cross all the ported to see them including his brothers that were in the drug business. he just, he would say that he didn't like that choice, but was always a famine and. >> what was going on in his life, in his world? the moment when he makes the decision to do this and he goes from making not a lot of money bricklaying to being able to make a lot of money. you point out it comes, it's good money, but it comes with risks. what was happening in his life? what led him to the choice? >> it's hard to say exactly what but when i think lucy had kids getting older one going to college. he laid bricks for like 30 years and was still living in the same small house in a poor working-class neighborhood outside of dallas.

now his kid is going to college and addenda for all that time and there were probably places where if you do that and you're in the union you make more money and more money and your opportunity to save but he was certain get a job, lose a job, get a job, get a different job. towards the end, i said 500 bucks or whatever, so it's easy to see it being a matter of i'm done this for all this time, i haven't really gone anywhere. time is running short to sort of solidify my family financially, and now i have kids that are making something of themselves as a first-generation american in the family and will go to college, and how do i provide for them? >> you have a lot of stories threat your career about a lot of crazy things. what made it decide that this is going to be your first book? >> i was looking for a book.

i just sort of made that choice. that was definitely a part of it. i don't know, i just come it just smacked me in the face when i saw it and it never let me go. even when there were times when there's nothing really going on from the reporting standpoint i didn't have any sources, there wasn't new, there were not new documents. i would always go back to it. that to me was a sign that there was something more to it. then in working with my book agent, one of the things he likes to do is go write a story you like and then that story was, i wrote a story for 6000, 7000 words for the newspaper. the book is 100,000 words, just give you some skill. go write that story and finish it and see how you feel. do you want to keep doing this for another two years or whatever? for whatever reason i did. >> more books? >> more books for sure. i don't know when or what about.

do you have any ideas? [laughing] but for sure. i also wouldn't mind, i've been in newspapers forever, i wouldn't mind getting back into that bite, particularly today. that feels like it would be fun. >> okay, do you have any jobs. [laughing] there's a great story in this sunday's previous "washington post" about the rise of white nationalists, would that be fair? >> thank you. >> books, more reporting, and we're trying to make a movie out of this one. so we will see. one more question. how are we on time? what time is it? the camera is like let's do it. >> obviously you have thoughts,

not surprising, the movie potential of this really exciting story, but one option would be a documentary. documentaries like eating in my opinion more sort of exciting but another would be sort of something that isn't entirely factual. so which way are you going? >> i option the book to accompany, a great production company. they were heavily involved in spotlight and in the revenant and in some other great stuff. they are really smart, thoughtful people. there's a screenwriter who is working on a script for a feature film who worked on the bridge for effects and is written a couple of exit spanish-language films. so he's hard at work at a scripted we're talking about it. his station for it is incredible. you hear authors talk about this processing sort of a nightmare,

and it very well may come to it. it's too early to say it has not but so far it's been really cool and it's important because there are real people. the appeal to doing a a documentary is you have that sort of faithfulness to the real people in the real story which the journalist is very attracted to the appeal to a future film is that people will watch it. although your point is well taken that more and more people are excited about documentaries. that's the route we are going and who knows what will happen. >> i didn't fully understand the answer. it sounds like the -- >> fictionalized i guess for sure. but the idea is to try to stay as true to the real characters and the real straight as possible. thank you so much. thank you, guys. [applause]

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