welcome to sophie and co me sophie shevardnadze two decades of undercover work among the world's most wanted drug lords and criminals in fla trading gangs and hiding out in the jungle like the hill but is live on the line every minute of every day and lives to tell the tale as well where because most experienced anti-drug agencies experience to inside dealings of mexico and colombia and cartels first hand so how is it an undercover war on drugs played out we're joined today by the former head of international operations for the d.n.a. undercover agent michael the. drugs winning battles between. those and the. traffickers sniffing out drug stashes these are

pretty well still these crime syndicates love the thrill of the chase may become an addiction for crime fighters is there a way out for those who've done their time on the front line and with cartels always finding new ways to smuggle drugs in and immediately taking place of those who are brought to justice is the drug battle old some of the future. mike they hail former head of international operations for the da welcome to the show it's really great to have you with us now mike you have captured some of the most wanted drug lord do you fear for your life mean fear that somebody will come for you in the middle of the night want to be perfectly. candid with you i really was afraid when i was there when the job. at this point in time certainly not afraid for my lai. i understand that you know through my committee with the drug and. for as many administration i made

a lot of enemies through the capture of major drug lords in latin america but you know i refuse to live in fear that that is just not in my genetic makeup but you have spent twenty years undercover alongside drug dealers cold blooded murderers under the constant threat of being exposed one wrong move and that's it you're next to death why did you put yourself on the frontline like that what was it that drove you well actually i looked at my work with them that the day as a total adventure at the same time i wanted to do something for my country and for other countries around the world in trying to stem this horrific issue of the of illegal drugs and as you well know you know you legal drugs

have really cause the major problem in many countries we're currently have being a major problem here in the united states with opioids you know to include heroin so as a public servant i want to do something that would be beneficial to my country thank you have sat that if any of the drug dealers found out that you were nervous you could be kilt negotiating with a group of dangerous armed drug lords in mexico brazil colombia and you can't break a sweat did you have some kind of special tricks some techniques to keep you calm. well by my mere nature very calm individual and you're absolutely right when i was working undercover it you had to be extremely careful of you know not be

nervous because drug dealers by their psychological makeup are very very suspicious you know there are they suffer from paranoia and they passed you constantly they ask you questions and they want to see how you're going to answer them so you have to maintain calm because if they notice anything that you did that you said you know that you fidget you act nervous you know that was enough for them to kill you so how did you deal with it i mean did you have special exercises like breathing exercises or meditation or i don't know do you have a mentor that guides you through it i mean teach me something to sometimes i'm nervous before the injury and i'm glad i'd love to control that well what i did to control any type of nervousness is i expunged from my mind that

i was a d.e.h. and and psychologically i transform myself into a drug lord. i was one of them i dressed like i pods like. i could not afford to think like law enforcement and i did law enforcement for so many years but i had to completely completely remove that from my mind and it was a transformation very much like an actor and does before he plays a role in the movies or on television however. in this case you were playing a deadly game of cat and mouse any minor mistake that you made and you weren't that great so from what you're saying in essence you were an up true drug

dealer during this time right the dalles you wait did you give them all up to the da or keeping your cover and establishing credibility was more important. basically i maintain my cover but any drugs for example that i purchased in developing the case against these drug dealers i would take and i would you know provide them to that the laboratory for analysis them for safe keeping on till the investigation was complete in the event that we had set them up for a major their leverage of cocaine heroin or whatever the drug was then at that point in time we would make a movie and make the arrest and at the same time the drugs would be maintained by the drug enforcement administration as evidence and subsequent legal proceedings

well i'm interested in is how far did you have to go to keep up your act i mean he said that this drug dealers trusted you understood you could be just as ruthless as they are. i played the role of a very ruthless drug trafficker. i never committed any acts of violence obviously but they totally believed the fact that i would just as ruthless as they as they were because i acted in that way i taught that way and many times they trusted me you know with their lives they trusted me to deliver drugs to me and i'm under cover capacity but make no mistake about it my life was always in danger and your life is always an danger any time that you are working undercover because the last thing that they want

is to go to jail and by posing as an undercover agent you know they will kill you to avoid going to prison. so when you set up a drug exchange a meeting with narco traffickers how does the capture happen is there a group of agents at the scene do they wait for your signal. when i used to work undercover and i would set up a situation for a rabs from let's say for example i would order a large quantity of drugs i want to have agents for example conducting surveillance if i was working in mexico or colombia i would also have a hose country national police agents doing the surveillance prior to meeting with the drug traffickers i would set up a signal for example opening up the trunk from there the pretense of getting their

money out of the trunk or the or i don't take it off my sunglasses taking off i had you know any signal that they could see fortunately in some situations they were unable to get close enough and could not see the signal and there were many times when they would start to move in. prematurely or after the fact and i was caught between a crossfire between my own people and the drug traffickers with bullets flying and bouncin them front to me and behind me how do you explain to gangsters that you were the only one not arrested after a bust i mean that that's look a little shady doesn't it when i set up these drug deals for an arrest for example you know a large quantity of drugs were to be delivered to me. and then really

matter if i was not arrested you know it and you know at that point in time they were taken into custody so it really mattered very little however if there was an informant or informants that i wanted to protect so that these traffickers would not send others after them then my people would also pretend to arrest me to try to take heat away from the informant so it all depend then on the investigation who was involved and basically certain objectives that i wanted to comply with. you know there are of course steroids have that drug cartel members that they're impulsive gold loving trigger happy cocaine snorting facts at the same time the cartel us very efficient so cold blooded it's so organized how do they pull it off while drug trafficking organizations are very

sophisticated and they function very much like a global corporation you know they have different components they have components that engage in money laundering and force men you know the killeen security forces the killing of them forman's you know they have by individuals that are in charge of logistics getting drugs into for example mexico and then into the united states so it's highly structured and they operate in many countries around the world a lot of the drug lords have very little education but you know they're very intelligent and at the same time they hire experts in many areas to help them grow their cartels so cartels are very sophisticated and as

a result of that you know they're very resilient and it takes a lot about for it to be able to effectively dismantle them unfortunately these cartels generate a lot of violence because they have to protect their financial empire and at the same time you know they kill politicians they killed journalists so it is a much cian violence that basically constitutes a national security threat for most countries around the world all right mike we're going to take a short break right now when we're back we'll continue talking to a drug war veteran. and former had of international operations for the day the hail .

it is one of the basic instruments to drive. lead to tragedy. and. many have been broken since. the banks going to. the banks didn't think of the. people seen the future bad things happen you know you become ill. your relationship breaks down you become a casualty. of

. our back to discuss america's war on drugs with the former head of international operations for the day undercover agent michael d. hey welcome back mike how did your every day undercover work go down i mean say you're in the middle of securing a deal with the cartel and they want to see the money do you have a million bucks to hand out to make them believe you did you have those kind of resources to do your job. times i did however that was rare or so it was

a matter. to come to make the drug delivery without seeing any money in one situation for example i was working against libyan drug traffickers or residing in the country of brazil. i was negotiating for half a ton of cocaine then to have any money i had about three hundred dollars in my wallet and they demanded to see the millions of dollars that i was going to use to pay for the cocaine the negotiations continued for about two weeks i was you know back and forth back and forth and i finally come van's one of the principal drug traffickers to lie to his associates and tell them that he had seen the money and the way i then it finally is i told them look if you don't want

to deal with me i'm going to go someplace else and you're going to lose millions of dollars so you know it's you know the ball is in your court so a few days later they delivered in a twin engine aircraft to a small ranch on the outskirts of pablo it was the largest seizure in the history of brazil so you have to use a lot of ingenuity you have to think on your feet you have to be able to know. how to manipulate them psychologically to come vence them that you are a legitimate drug dealer at times i would meet with drug traffickers and then have the money again so i would take a lot of one hundred dollar bills and then caught one dollar bills in the metal tape them to my ankles so that they want want to count the money and i was able to get the delivery van the arrest accomplished so again you know you just have

to really know what you're doing and i gan you cannot afford to make any mistakes mistakes are a way of life everybody makes mistakes when you're working under cover those cannot happen years. cannot afford to make any errors otherwise you're gone so i'm not a drug cartels can get very creative in finding ways to smuggle drugs to the united states including using homemade submarines for instance do these innovations work well or are there conventional methods like human and car smuggling that are more effective while a lot of times you know they use maritime ships they use what they called semi-submersibles which flow in underneath the surface of the water they use submarines they use crown for example to smuggle the drugs from the source

countries and south america primarily colombia into central america or direct into mexico or into the united states but at the present time most of the cocaine for example is going into mexico and then finding its way into the u.s. consumer market once it gets into mexico they'll use maybe aircraft but for the most part the ground transportation to get it through the border and then once it's on the border they have tunnels they can drive in certain border areas across into the united states so they are very ingenious in terms of the tactics that they use to smuggle and to transport drugs. does the fact that the d.a.'s funding is much less than any cartels are knowing cripple the agency's efforts or does it have resources that are

more important than money. we have a lot of dedicated agents you know we are very good at what we do but you know we also use force multipliers for example if we're working in a foreign country you know we work with the host country security forces you know sometimes the military sometimes national police and it's the same way here in the united states we work with you know other federal agencies we work with state and local agencies so it's a combined effort of resources and manpower that we use in combat in this situation now with mexico's government even the army and law enforcement infiltrated by drug money you said yourself that the drug lords don't know which corrupt officials to bribe so how can it win against the cartels well one of the

things that we do in mexico is doing as well is there are trying to weed out the corrupt officials because drug money creates corruption in literally every country you know there is a certain sense of corruption and that's something that we have to weed out mexico has been working towards a rusty in a lot of these corrupt politicians that protect the cartels. you know cartels try to take over government get is on their turf i mean they dispose justice provide welfare to the people maintain order is there a danger that cartel territories will actually become de facto mini states no i think that the cartels you know there's a certain cartel leaders for example like pablo escobar and your own chopper was

mom in mexico that played the role robin haud and in many communities you know they did provide a lot of fun mean they build schools they build churches they gave money to the poor however the states or the nations as a whole recognize that these going to pelz are generating a lot of violence you know they're corrupt be not public officials and it is a threat to the moral fiber of their countries so they speak out against it it's a campaign that is very complex because here in the united states for example we have very adequate laws in dealing with drug trafficking but there is a lot of countries around the world that need to do to do more in terms of passing legislation that want adequately address money laundering corruption and drug

trafficking sentencing guidelines so there is a lot of work to be done and it's not only you know just attacking the courthouse but it's also developing the infrastructure as a lot of countries around the world in order to allow them to effectively address illegal drug trafficking you know there's a whole popular culture spring in our on drug cartels are investing in regular business to whitewash our cash there's a music scene. dedicated to the exploits of narcos how do you eradicate their popular appeal. i would say that you eradicate the popular appeal by educating the youth of our country and the youth of other countries as to the fact that drug trafficking is wreaking havoc in their country

a lot of people are dying from drug overdoses and you're absolutely right there is a narco culture that is popping up where you know not a cool corner hugo's or a narco ballads are very popular you know in mexico and other parts of the country but they are not super popular where they dominate you know the culture for example in the united states in other areas you know there is pockets of that type of culture but i think that most people recognize the fact that drug dealers are very treacherous they're very violent and drug trafficking is not good for anybody some drug gang territories like the favelas in brazil's rio would be cleared for awhile like before the olympics and then quickly go back to being a no go zone for the police once to spot light moves on shoot such sad backs just

be accepted instead of wasting lives trying to regain territories again and again. i think that we have to do a better job in these foreign countries the foreign countries have to establish a presence in a lot of these rural areas isolated areas because one of the phenomenons that i see is that when you don't have a government presence in certain areas who moves in the area but the drug traffickers the drug traffickers go in there because they you know they're not going to be hindered by law enforcement and they're going to be free to come back their criminal enterprise one of the experiments that we did in colombia for example plan colombia we provided a lot of plundering and the colombian government has been able to move into a lot of these isolated areas that were basically come trolled

by even subversive organized a sense such as the arm revolutionary force of columbia the fark and that is basically what drove the fork and to a peace treaty with the colombian government. so i have an example of philippines president rodriguez and he's taken a tough line battling the criminal drug gangs in his country i mean pretty much killing them on spot but his war on drugs has left thousands dad and his methods have been condemned and nationally is this war out of control or are these measures effective no the measures that are being taken in undertaken in the philippines i think are very disastrous because to target the. as empowered his security forces to kill anybody suspected of drug trafficking and there is no rule of law there are innocent individuals that are being killed

because they were suspected wrongly drug trafficking so these type of drastic measures will never work. and i think that. is basically causing a lot of major problems and eroding the democracy that current currently exists in the philippines all right mike thank you very much for this interesting insight way really enjoyed talking to you we've been talking to former head of international operations for the d.a. undercover agent mike the hill author of deal in a deadly game of working undercover was giving his rare inside look into america's war on drugs that's it for this edition of so think i'll see you next time.

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. in the us a child can choose an army course in school. with retired officers as teachers we don't. recruit will says to if the cadet is interested in going in the military but we don't recruit ourselves. the pentagon is funding a program to boost interest in the military among teenagers your chance to step up to an apollo so that quite comfortable with yourself and things you are yourself you can't go wrong to do it or it's a great stepping stone for whatever career you want to do but some veterans are willing to tell enthusiastic children a little more they ask me call of duty is very popular first year video game log

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