mon on the modern economy. sunday, or live coverage continues as governors look at the u.s.-mexico trade agreement. at 11:45, governors look at education policy. watch the national governors association winter meeting live this weekend on c-span, c-span.org, or listen with the free c-span radio app. host: jack riley is on your screen. he is a retired drug enforcement administration special agent and author of the new book "drug warrior: inside the hunt for el chapo and the rise of america's opioid crisis." mr. riley, in the acknowledgments page, you say you are compelled to write this book because of the "glorification of el chapo and the drug crisis." what do you mean by that? guest: good morning. i was somewhat troubled about

all the time so many heroic dea agents and policeman and prosecutors spent to bring chapo to justice. if you go along the border of central and south america, in some cases he is revered as a robin hood figure. the attention he was getting, even in this country, was really getting my attention. but if you connect that to his responsibility for much of the opioid problem we have today in this country specifically when you are talking about importation of heroin and other more deadly form of fentanyl, el chapo is front and center on that. host: did you see that glorification continue through his trial and his conviction last week? guest: i somewhat did, but i have to tell you what i really -- first of all, let me make it clear. i knew the evidence, i knew the prosecutors, and i knew the agents, and i knew he was going to get convicted. but i did take away from the

trial that i thought was somewhat positive was i think the american people got a glimpse into just how nasty and vicious and cunning these major drug cartel leaders are. i think chapo, other than osama bin laden, i think he is the number one bad guy of our generation. responsible for thousands of deaths. his organization as it stands today is still responsible for killing people. host: when did you first hear the name el chapo? guest: it was in the early 90's, 1990, 1991. i was attached to a special operations division and we began looking at mexican methamphetamine traffickers, which chapo had a piece of. but what really got my attention was his ability in terms of logistics. he is a mass murderer of grand proportions, no doubt about it. he is also one heck of a corporate ceo.

in the way that he managed -- he was innovative. he did research on the u.s. market to make sure his organization could supply the demand. we saw that come to fruition at the end when the opioid crisis spread. so in the early 1990's in particular we were concentrating still on columbia with the cartels. we were beginning to piece together the evolution of the mexican cartels. quite frankly, up until that point the cartels in mexico were really not cartels. we used to refer to them as the federation. they were loosely tied smugglers, not necessarily narcotic traffickers. they would smuggle anything they could to the border for profit. illegal chili peppers, counterfeit blue jeans, you name it. chapo honed his teeth in his early days as a marijuana smuggler. he was extremely attuned to the logistics of the border. and how to satisfy the u.s.

market. host: the passage reads, "crime families in the united states knew violence through unwanted attention to the illicit activity, but guzman never shied away from that attention and had no scruples about killing innocent people to achieve his goals. he built terror into his business plan." can you talk about how you saw that when he worked around the country in chicago and el paso? guest: absolutely. when i was the boss for dea in el paso, it was 2006, 2007, and if you looked at juarez, the sister city a stone's throw away, was a battlefield. some said it was more dangerous than baghdad or kabul where we were embroiled in military operations. hundreds of people were killed. it was all because chapo was at war with the remnants of two other cartels struggling to control a corridor into the united states.

i saw on a daily basis and it's seared in my mind the deaths that occurred on the streets of juarez. the threat that posed along the border. and then moving on to chicago a number of years later as the boss up there in my hometown, i saw what the prescription drug problem became when it first got attention and how chapo changed his business practices and stockpiled cocaine and increased his supply of cheap, potent heroin. for the first time, we saw it was smoked and snorted. that's an important distinction. we saw different user groups become addicted and get involved in it. it's an evolution he recognized long before many others. when you are addicted to prescription drugs, either through bad prescribing from a physician or pharmacist, or you

acquire it on the street or steal it out of your grandmother's medicine cabinet, at some point it becomes too expensive. but you're still addicted to opioids. what happens at that point and it happened for many people in the city and the affluent suburbs is you take the long road down to using heroin. i saw that take hold in chicago. the other thing chapo did was he formed a toxic alliance with the nearly hundred thousand documented street gang members in the chicago area who really were his unwitting salesman. they did not realize they were working for him but they were putting the heroine and the drugs on the street. they were the ones that were responsible for the spike in violence and homicides and shootings as they began to protect their area. chapo was pulling the strings from his mountain hideout. for me, i just cannot stand by

and do nothing. it started in the early 1990's. my kind of push to make sure we kept an eye on him because i knew what he was capable of. i was afraid if we did not do something what he would become. 2007 was a tough year. i was in el paso. i had just gotten there. i had naively given an interview to a local newspaper. one of the things i said was i am here on behalf of the american people and we are going to go after chapo and do whatever damage we can and hopefully we will apprehend him. he evidently took notice of it and heard it and shortly after that some of our mexican counterparts contacted us and said they had developed information that chapo put a hit on me. he wanted my head cut off, and i think was for $100,000, which is pretty cheap. at that point for me, even until last week, it was almost an obsession.

it was my personal hunt to make sure he saw justice, not in mexico but in the united states. host: jack riley is a retired dea special agent and former acting deputy administrator of the dea and is with us until the top of the hour. we invite you to join in on this conversation. phone lines are different. eastern and central time zones, (202) 748-8000. mountain or pacific time zones, (202) 748-8001. also a special line if you have been impacted by the opioid crisis that is a big part of this book and the work that jack riley has done. (202) 748-8002 is the number. mr. riley, you were about to get there with the story about the price on your head. can you talk about how you began this book that night on the road home from el paso to las cruces? guest: you know, it is unfortunately -- that is why i

am just so proud of the dea and the agents that have come before me now and will come after me. it is somewhat of a dangerous job. you kind of get numb to the fact that bad guys would like to see you hurt. in your pursuit of bringing them to justice. that was a strange time in 2007. you had to pay attention. you could not blow it off. shortly after we got the information that he may have put a hit -- you can never really verify these things -- i was on my way home late one night. we lived in las cruces, about 40 miles up interstate 10 outside of el paso. as i was getting on the road i noticed a couple of cars sitting in a closed down fast food restaurant. i was getting on the interstateg in a closed down fast food restaurant. it was late at night and they were parked driver to driver. my first thought was they look like a couple of undercover cops waiting for a call or doing

their job. as soon as i got on the ramp their lights came on and away we went. that led me on a 40 mile hide high speed trying to get away from them. i ended up at a schoolyard playground south of las cruces where i thought at that point i was in real trouble. at the last minute they pulled off and drove away. i don't know if it was intended to scare me or if they were carjackers, i have no idea. it is too coincidental. that woke me up. it made me concerned not just for my safety and my family's safety for our employees, not just gun carrying agents but civilians who are just as in orton tower operation. many of whom live right on the border. we had some that commuted off in order warez.

about how we mind really have to attack these organizations. we also have to put safety first. warrior: inside the hunt for el chapo and the rise of the american drug crisis." mike is in california. go ahead. caller: it strikes me that drug prohibition is a full list replay of alcohol prohibition causing all the same social problems. , the el chapos of the worlds are being provided with billions of dollars. it has been four decades now that we have been pursuing this so-called war on drugs. things thatther occurred to me recently is that come profoundly contrary at war with america's founding principles, may i have your

comment please? i will48-8001 -- guest: say one thing. when i hear the term war on drugs it drives me crazy. end is a beginning and an -- that the notes a beginning and an end. i don't know if there will be in end to people misusing drugs. certainly the people that profit from it. i tend to have changed my mind over the years. as a younge told you asian running the streets of chicago that we can arrest -- as a young agent running the streets of chicago that we can arrest our way out of this. i think it is important to have a robust law enforcement resin domestic and -- presence domestic and foreign. talk about the rule of law and and places building that can affect the security of the united states.

i want to make sure you understand that i think we have to rethink a lot of things we are doing in the whole context of the drug issue. i think the way we are doing education needs to be refocused on the most at risk groups. it gets me when a lot of people think the only thing waiting for jolly local send a policeman in a uniform to a third grade school. important but we need to work on our out risk groups. especially with opioid considerations that come from illegal and legal sources. so that we attack the people and get to the people that are most at risk. our young adults, high school age college kids, people who are finding themselves in the grips of addiction. we need to follow up with i think universal treatment for those who wanted and needed.

maybe it is not available and they can afford it. i'm not talking about violent offenders. i think those problems need to be taken care of. with our correctional institution. some of the best drug treatment programs are in prisons. differently but i don't think regardless of what we do with the legalization thing. told congress many times i am a cop, i don't make the law. i took an oath to enforce the law. that is up to our governing bodies to change that. i don't think it would eliminate the black market. we are beginning to see that even with domestic marijuana. >> you mentioned talking to congress. testifying as the acting deputy administrator of the dea before congress. you can go back to our archives and watch that testimony. those is on the line for

who of an impacted by opioids from massachusetts. no ahead. >> hi how are you today. >> good. >> i'm a little nervous so give me a minute. i have been personally impacted i the opioid crisis. it got to my level soul. i only used heroin for a small amount of time. , myuse of prescriptions doctors overprescribed me because of my tonsils being taken out. i knew a friend that was selling carol went and he told me it would take the pain away. i did note i knew it want to take it anymore but my body needed it, my mind needed it.

that i had the family and friends i did. recovery and i have been andecovery for three years i have a great relationship with my daughter and my parents. because i hadback a great people in my life hold me back from that addiction. >> mr. riley? first of all congratulations. what you have been through is a living hell. the way you have emerged really gets my attention. the massachusetts new hampshire area, all of the east coast has really been for me ground zero for the opioid problems. there are some really innovative programs going on in that card of that part of the country where we are really starting to see community efforts to accept

crimes an illness not a and to make sure we use all the resources we can to get people back who want to come back. my hat is off to you. you did great. 's your book is about el chapo network but how much blame for the opioid crisis do you place on overprescribing doctors, on pharmaceutical companies and pill mills? >> a couple of years ago i was talking to somebody from the american medical association. he said for years physicians going through their medical training were given maybe eight to 10 hours of pain management instruction throughout the whole training. if you look at a veterinarian school, they received 40 to 80 hours on how to treat animals with pain. i think there is an issue clearly with the medical profession. i know they have done a lot in the

last several years to try to provide training for physicians to use alternatives to opioid-based drugs. i think that has to continue. you bring up an important thing and it's kind of eeve of mine. i think the cozy relationship that congress sometimes has with big pharma, the big pharmaceutical companies, is really something we need to examine. far too often it dea -- at dea the great work of the agents and investigators will look at these large companies and in my opinion i wanted them -- the executives to be prosecuted criminally when appropriate and send them to jail, like the drug dealers i believe they are. but far too often we had to settle for civil fines. when you're suing a $1 billion corporation and you win a civil fine of $100 million, that's like taking a truckload of narco dollars from chapo. it has very little effect. it is

built into the bottom line and it is the cost of doing business. if we took one of those ceos who knowingly and repeatedly violates regulations and repeatedly violate laws and regulations and we prosecuted criminally, i can guarantee you a millionaire ceo and a brooks brothers suit will not do too well playing kickball in the prison yard real felons. if we -- it would send a message across the industry that we are serious about it. i think it is something we have to work on. i think we have to work on education and treatment and bring it into the realm of this is part of society's fabric and we have an obligation to help those who want help. >> to alabama, bob, good morning. let me see if you are familiar with this. back a few years ago they ran a documentary on -- about the pill mills in west virginia. the dea

was right on top of those people. millione selling 15 opioid pills and a county that had 7100 population in the whole county. obama told the dea when they were fixing to foster them and barack obama shut the dea down and he'd done it because he was getting kickbacks money from the dam drug dealers. he was a conspirator. he was involved in drugs. 70,000 people in this country a year he shut it down. >> mr. riley, is that anything you know about? >> i know about the

investigation and west virginia. there is a more striking larger one that we took care of in south florida where we had roving pain management clinics that would move from spot to spot to spot. we would have people from all over the country traveling down there to get opioids and returning home and selling them. pill mills and pharmacies that bitdoing this are -- every a guilty as the guy with pistol and an ounce of heroine standing on the corner. we have to do a better job legislatively to make sure we have the ability to go after them and shut them down quickly. that wehe criticisms took was we did not move quick enough. within the move constraints of the law and legislation. i think that is something we should look into.

>> i want to come back to el chapo and his undoing. a passage from his book. mucheople knew how information we had collected about el chapo over the years. we knew so much about him, his habits and inner circle, his favorite food and entertainment. ande does and -- burritos porn did him in. >> he was an old-school trafficker who stayed off the radar. for the most part he stayed in -- ran his business from there and moved from place to place. then he started making mistakes. he would come down to more highly populated resort type areas, cabo san lucas is one in particular. he began thinking he was invincible. he had a security apparatus that was probably as good as many mid-level city police departments in terms of visibility to collect information and move around.

towards the end he did have a zest for women and certainly other entertainment. he made some mistakes. i think what is important about that part of the book and what we did was we really targeted the people around him. in terms of the way they communicated. his doctors, his lawyers, his girlfriend. all those things really important for us to build a pattern of life on this guy so we have a better chance of zeroing in and working with our mexican counterparts to try to hook him up. we were able to do that twice. >> what happened after the first time? >> he did what he had been doing for 20 years. he used all his money influence

and corruption and dug a tunnel and wrote a motorcycle out. the worst day of my life. >> how did you find out? >> there is a funny story there. he had been out for about an hour and a half. it was 2:30 in the morning. my son called me and he said, dad, chapo is out. there is no way. i turned on the cable news and there it was. obviously we started -- i called our command center. they called the chief of operation and the mexicans had not even notified our guys in mexico for several hours, which i was not happy about. i think they thought they could apprehend him or they were trying to figure out what to do for damage control. several months before that, i had traveled to mexico city for a meeting. i had an opportunity to speak to the head of the federal police. about too much before he -- two months before he escaped, we were hearing some chatter and information he might be

tunneling out. i took the opportunity to tell the head of the federal police at the meeting. he looked at me like i was from mars. how dare i tell them how to do his job? several months later out the tunnel he went. i found it strange that they cap tim in the same cell the whole time he was incarcerated on the first floor. if you put two and two together of chapo's history, it was not a good move on their part. >> are you concerned he will escape again? >> not in this country. he is where he belongs. i'm sure i am sure there will be callers are people who will say what has this done to sineloa, and we can talk about that. the point is we were not only able to capture him once, the build trusting relationships with some of our mexican counterparts which was a tough thing to do and took years and

years to do. and to extradite him, have him face justice in the united states and hopefully get a life sentence. he iso to a place where going to have the rest of his life to think about it. i think it is worse for him then taking a bullet from one of his rivals. what he is about to endure. for me personally, i like where he is sitting. -- massachusetts is next, brian, good morning. caller: there is so much i would love to say. i first was going to mention going back to the 1800s and the dutch and american robber barons and the opium wars in china. and how many people profited slum that -- from that. just like prostitution. the other thing i want to

mention is that the pendulum swings one way. obamafrom alabama blaming in tennessee as a drug dealer. how much is you kind to help people with chronic pain. it makes me think of the story when we were afghanistan a pakistani guy who had 10 children and had them carry water to the well was addicted to heroin and how heroine is different from any other drug and how it inspires addiction. choiceot like a physical that this person made, i need that drink or i need to snort that cocaine. it is something that happens that is no control and no choice. if you are in chronic pain and you take the opioid for more than a week or two your mind chemically changes to need that drug.

that is up to no doing of any person, any class, any color. i wonder if you could speak to that. like ascobar seemed robin hood loved by his people. mentione was i going to ? >> i think you have a good point there. that is why for me the heroine , it is and fenton all synthetic heroin so there is no growing season sunshine or water and the planting process can be produced 24/7. it is also produced in china as well. >> i do agree with the collar. this is the worst addictive drug i have ever seen. much liken it everybody ruin and decimate

communities. the important thing here is to understand. it is now in every corner of our country. it doesn't matter the city small or large rural or urban. it is a major problem. we as a country have to stand up and take responsibility at all levels. not only law enforcement, it is policy makers and educators. everybody parents obviously. everyone has to take a role in educating everybody about this and doing what we can do as communities to help the people that are caught in it. >> south carolina is next, hank, good morning. i want to ask about all these enablers of trump. they made him out to be some big hero. them andeople look to

think, well, they are hanging around with him he is a good guy. can you talk about that? >> definitely. i think that is an important part of how we find ourselves where we are. say hollywoodu to could make great movies but they don't need to show people snorting coke and shooting heroin. it sends a very conflicted message, almost as if it is being glamorized. i do agree. there is a part in the book about my buddy sean penn and how because of what he and his actor friends did a meeting with chapo put many good hard-working mexican law enforcement and to some extent u.s. agents who were helping them in peril, in jeopardy. these are safety issues.

i was very vocal at the time. i thought they should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice. he claimed, and -- whyhy weren't toda weren't they?> >> the powers that be said he was there as a journalist and therefore should be protected. i don't understand. what i was worried about is what the caller is talking about. it was not really him. it was the message he sent by being allowed to do that and writing what i consider to be a worthless article in rolling stone. it said nothing new. his interview of chapo was such a softball. truever asked him is it that you murdered 10,000 people and are murdering people today and you torture them and cut their heads off and put the bodies in acid and you have young girls for your own pleasure. these are the type of people these guys are.

to even connect that with legitimately is a real mistake. >> joseph in new jersey, good morning. >> i have a question for mr. riley. -- ie his take on the would like his take on the legalization of marijuana. this drug is considered illegal as far as the federal government is concerned. passing theirates own laws legalizing consumption of marijuana. the government nor the dea do anything about it. i would like to know his take on that. >> that is a great question. it is a frustrating one. let me clarify something. it is widely misunderstood. the dea has nothing to do with whether it is legal or not legal. that is done by other agencies. all we do is enforce the

regulations congress imposes on us. i do agree with you. i'm a firm believer that the cartels are still vastly involved in marijuana. at 1.i think it was their number one cash crop. i don't think that stop. as these states begin to russell with their own version of marijuana, i think they are under the false delusion it will generate long-term tax benefits for the states. in reality, they are just starting to see the overall effect. maybe they were able to collect a billion dollars in taxes, for what they are seeing in social services, emergency room admissions, loss of productivity, car accidents in colorado are becoming more and more people driving impaired because of marijuana. and then the other side of it. the edibles, the oils taken, the thc extracted and is extremely potent. all of these things are byproducts of our decision at the state level to make these

laws and make marijuana available. i think it is a slippery slope. i certainly hope that if it is going to be done, it is done with proper regulations and services required to keep it consistent with the law. for me, federally, we have criteria. we still go after marijuana traffickers. don't think we don't. i think there has always been a misconception that the dea guys are looking for guys in the parents basement with a bong. we go after the major organizations involved. the states i think will have to struggle with their decisions for some time to come.

>> 15 or 20 minutes left with jack riley. continue to call in on phone lines. eastern or western's time zones. -- eastern time zone (202) 748-8000 mountains (202) 748-8001 if you haven't impacted by the opioid crisis (202) 748-8002. the book is called drug warrior." his 30 years of fighting drug cartels. your thoughts on what president trump had to say last week when he declared his national emergency on the border, his comments about how illegal drugs are moved into the country? >> a big majority of the big drugs don't go through big ports of entry. they can't go through ports of entry. you have people, some very capable people. the border patrol, law enforcement looking. you can't take human traffickers of women and girls.

you can't take them through ports of entry. you can't have them tied up in the backseat of a car or truck or van. they look. if they can't see through women's tape on their mouths or three women whose hands are tied they go through areas where you have no wall. everybody knows that. nancy knows that, chuck knows it. they all know it. it is a big con game. you don't have to be very smart thenow you put up a barrier people come in and that is it. they can't do anything unless they walk left or right and they find an area where there is no barrier and they come into the united states. >> mr. riley? >> let's make it clear i am not a politician. i am just a 30 year dea agent who spent time at the border.

the statistics show the majority of the drugs, herrell heroin, cocaine marijuana come through our existing checkpoints. it does not make business sense for large cartels to move the volume of drugs through isolated unwalled areas. the wall will have an effect on illegal alien migration. and i am hoping the president does this. ande enhance our technology manpower at our checkpoints i think we can make a difference. three weeks ago i wanted r check points the largest fentanyl seizure occurred and it was in the compartment in the floor of a truck. it we not been able to x-ray would probably would not have caught it. sense thatusiness was put together.

we are only searching up to inor 40% of vehicle traffic the thousands of trucks buses and cars that go in and out of the country every day. always searching that percentage. if you're a business man you think there is a pretty good chance if i sent 10 cars through in one day i might get six or seven through. you only have about 300 to get into the baseball hall of fame. once you clear the checkpoints you then have access to major highways. it is how you can take stuff down the road. i'm not saying portions of drugs don't come through wild areas. from a business perspective and from all of our investigations all the informants we have talked to come all the cooperating defendants and even wiretaps where we are listening to bad guys talk too bad guys telling us what they arelients -- airplanes.

when they crashed, they would

turn around and buy the middle east them. these guys are working here now on connections from canada to miami. that is what it is about, the dollar. how much they can get. guest: i think he is exactly right. that is why i think on the immigration issue, yeah, much of the border already has walls and barriers. i think there are ways to do it but i don't want to dismiss enhancing the checkpoints with technology and manpower. i think he has a very good point along the border. one of the things i was worried about the short time i was the boss in el paso was spillover violence. things that really scared me were a number of cartel people who happen to be on our side of stopped byand where a lonely deputy sheriff in the

middle of nowhere everybody just going to write a speeding ticket. lowered the hold, you are dealing -- low and behold, you are dealing with these guys. that is the fear we have across the border. i do think law enforcement in general in many isolated areas has got a tough job. host: nicolas from pikeville, maryland. caller: i wanted to speak about over prescription of drugs. i understand it is the policy makers that have scaled back the ability of doctors to prescribe various certain quantities of these pain medications. i suppose if the patient needs more, they will have to go back to the pharmacy or the doctor for a prescription. i think this model could be used for many other drugs. i believe the tremendous over prescription of drugs -- a lot of pharmaceuticals are wasted.

nce the patient is given the prescription and it is filled, he cannot return any unused medications to the pharmacy. there is a tremendous waste. perhaps the model we're seeing in the pain medications can be withinross the board reason and save a tremendous amount of money. riley?r. guest: