On determination and the pursuit of justice.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
So I have an eleven year old and it has
occurred to me something very very sad. I'm not a
big reader. I think I was a big reader when
I was a kid, or I was a reader. I mean,
I somehow I've read all the classics, and I'm sure
I was being tested on them. And I don't think
they had cliffs notes then, but yet they had them.
But we I just that wasn't my gig. But you know,
(00:37):
my daughter doesn't love reading. She likes reading the graphic novels,
which to me or comic strips. So I don't know
if that's really absorbing. I do think that reading anything
is reading, and I am not a big reader. I'm
a big writer, so it's hard for me to talk
about this. But I love that I've read Huckleberry Finn
and all these books and they'll make the kids read them.
But there's just a disconnect in um. You know, people
(00:58):
really aren't reading. And what crazy is that our kids
are on their devices so much. Us too, by the way,
we're on our devices so much that people are watching
Instagram and tick talk and googling and looking at information
about people and watching YouTube, and that's the new television
so just but it's such a different form, meaning we're
(01:19):
just consuming this junk food all the time that matters,
doesn't matter, like there's a bomb somewhere, but you know
something happened with Cardi B. Like everything's blended into one pot.
It's not like when used to sit down and you
waded through commercials and you were chose to be on
a news channel, or you were watching one show and
(01:41):
you watch the whole thing. You weren't. Sort of watching
a show on a streamer that you know you could
rewind in two seconds or watch again, or it doesn't
really matter, or binge watch watch forty two episodes at
the same time, which is like eating a bag of fritos.
You don't even know what you ate. You're not even
sure if you enjoyed it. You're just you're rushing it.
Then sometimes you slow it down by pause. You stop,
you go to the bathroom, you get a snack, you pause,
(02:02):
you do repeat. It could take so long to get
through an episode, which I like because that means we're
not rushing through it. But who the hell cares because
there's another show to go through, and you forget the
shows that you've already been interested in which I've discussed before.
I will sit down with palm, like, wait, what do
we do now? What are we watching next? Like? And
there are forty things that you know you wanted to
watch and you forget. Is it a movie? Is it
a documentary? But I'm I'm what's crazy too, is that
(02:25):
you know you want your kids to read, you know,
sit down and read. It's almost like a punishment. Take
take an hour. I need you to read in addition
to homework, just just we don't need to be doing
something read. And my daughter is not really a device
person compared to children. As a baby, I woke up
my eyes bleeding at six o'clock with her when she
was running around wishing she was a late sleeping baby.
(02:47):
And I didn't throw her in front of the TV.
I did not use TV as a babysitter. Who the
hell knows if it made a difference or not. You
try to do everything right when their kids, and it
probably all doesn't matter because many of the people who
were thrown in front of television at you know three
are now major award winning directors. But I tried to
do what I thought was right. I didn't play Beethoven
in my stomach, but I did not. She wasn't overly
(03:11):
stimulated by TV or after school activities or anything. So
she's not a really bad device kid. I know kids
who have their phone every second, who have their device
every second. It's frankly disgusting. It's not it's just you
know what's wrong. You don't know why, You just know
what's wrong. So you'll say to your kids read. You know,
you want them to read, even if you're not reading.
You want them to read. What's crazy is now because
(03:34):
they're always on their devices, dancing, making videos, tiktoking, I
guess social media besides TikTok. My daughters not, but other
kids telling them Now, you want to tell them to
watch television because that's like the new reading. Sitting Why
you know, why don't you sit down for now and
watch television? Like they look at you, like, what watch television? Like?
What have they just said? To sit down and watch television?
(03:55):
Not just like churning and birning and digesting some content.
So the Banket statement is television is the new reading.
That's certainly not great. Our guest today is Jack Riley,
former d e A agent and one of Chicago's highest
(04:15):
ranking special agents. Lately, he has turned away from a
life of fighting crime to writing crime. He is a
top rated author, known for his book Drug Warriors, detailing
the thirty year hunt for the infamous criminal and drug
lord El Chopo. I've seen him in documentaries and have
been fascinated by his work for a long time. This
is a unique one and I can't wait for you
(04:36):
to hear it. This is something that I just pushed for,
knowing that many of you wouldn't even know his name.
But what an interesting story, and what a badass and
what a fearless man. Grateful that you're here today. I
(04:57):
wanted to know if if you were surprised to hear
from me, you're like, what the hell does she want
to talk to me about? Absolutely? I uh. I mentioned
to a couple of people and they said, this ought
to be good. Let's say what she's got? Well, did
you even know who I was? Absolutely? My my wife
knows who you are. Well that's funny, because yeah, because
(05:20):
if not for her, I was wondering and I looked
up if you were married, and then I thought, all right,
we have a shot of him knowing why I'm asking
him to do this. Um, and I wondered if you
do any or a lot of podcasts at all. You know,
I've done, I've done several. I still do quite a few,
uh documentaries and interviewers from time to time about current stuff.
(05:40):
And uh, they just signed about two weeks ago with
a production company is going to try to make a
movie from based off the book. So that's that's pretty
that's pretty much what I pet up to. Okay, So
I love the show because there's such a wide variety
of people that I interview, and sometimes I don't know
(06:01):
who the people are there pitched to me and they've
done amazing things in science or philanthropy and or entertainment,
and sometimes it's just something that I'm really interested in
that I pitch and I never have any idea if
I'll get the person or you know, if it's the
right fit. So this is something that I asked for.
I wanted to interview you. Um, it's interesting. I recently,
(06:23):
uh reconnected with my mother through my daughter after a
long time, and she told my fiance that when I
was a kid, I watched Scarface a thousand times. She
said she was obsessed with this movie. We kept going
to the video store to rent it. It's not a
normal thing for a young girl to be wanting to
watch and you know, having grown up at the racetrack
(06:45):
with a bunch of unsavory, degenerate characters, maybe I mean not,
maybe that was likely connected. So as an adult, I
watch a lot I like documentaries or something that's you know,
just telling a true story, not fiction or you know,
related to closely related to to to uh to the
true story. So that's how in watching a lot of
(07:07):
these documentaries on Cartel's and the drug industry, I've seen
you and a lot of them, and I was just
interested because in watching the way so many different people work,
and I'm sure you've seen so many different people and
the way they operate. Men, they're all not most of
them are not educated. And these are real businesses, like
(07:30):
very serious, intricate businesses and in many cases brands. And
so I'm curious first about that part of it, Like
you're coming in and there must be a part of
you that it is almost admires it or can't believe
the operation in business they're they're running, you know, legal aside.
(07:50):
I mean absolutely, if if you just look at Chapel Guzman,
for instance, I mean, the guy's a mass murderer in
grand proportion, no doubt about it. But he's one hell
of a corporate ceo. For him to organize, insulate UH,
deal with the corruption issues, all of the security issues,
(08:10):
keep keep his enemy at bay, and then stay out
to jail and make billions of dollars, It's amazing. And
if we now look and we know more about his
inner workings, and he literally had a corporate structure. He
had a security division, he had a personnel division which
actually took UH job applications from people that wanted to
(08:32):
work on behalf. And mostly that was so if if
they cooperated with us, that they would kill the family,
take all their money and all those other things. And
I think they think he did. The most surprised us
was his business plan. And his business plan really revolved
around the addiction habits UH in the US. So if
(08:55):
you look back, if you look back into the nineties
when we really begin see prescription drug abuse take off
in this country, and it was hitting you know, all
walks of life, social, economic didn't matter. Um. He saw
it coming UH. And prescription drugs in general are very
expensive to get. At some point your doctor is gonna,
(09:16):
you know, stop prescribing. You can't steal them from your
grandmother's medicine boxes that runs out and are extremely expensive
on the street. So his plan was slowed down on
the cocaine, begin processing as much heroin as possible because
it's an opioid. And he understood that once the prescription
drug pipeline ran out, they were going to turn to
(09:37):
high potent, cheap Haro one. And that's precisely what Sinaloa
did under his direction. And you really think that it
was a plan, like a chess plan, You think that
that was I mean, you have proof that that's been
spoken about and really mapped out charted. Yeah, it's interesting,
and I'm often asked, well, other than the personal thing
I had with him, how do I know this? Well,
(09:58):
much of what we know about him and is in
of workings both here domestically and overseas, are from wire taps.
So we listened to the bad guys tell us the story.
We didn't make it up and there and there were
i mean hours and hours of collections all over the
world of him and his organization, and it was very
clear that he did have a business plan, He had
(10:19):
a he had a CFO, he had accountancy, he had
security people. There's just no way that he could have
survived for twenty years on top like he did without
this type of organization. So I always say, had he
chosen the right line of work, that probably would have
been a he would have been a CEO in a
legitimate company. Well that's what I want to know about
(10:40):
society with people that are poor and underprivileged that go
towards that route if they were given an opportunity. You
think he's just as intelligent to be running. Uh you
know a fortune? You know Forbes company? What is a fortune? Five? Fortune?
What am I saying? Fortune? There's no Yeah, there's no question. Yeah,
(11:00):
there's no question. I mean. And if you look at
his upbringing, he came up in a place in Mexico
which is desolate. It's kind of a farming community when
it is farming. But he grew up with traffickers, and
there's a little bit different of his education because he
learned how to smuggle before he learned how to traffic narcotics.
(11:20):
And that's what made him so able to move stuff
across the border. We just to call him Alapio because
he could get a load of dope from internal part
of Mexico to l A, Chicago, New York in twenty
four hours. And that's what he was known for. So
he truly was a smuggler and a logistics genius. So
(11:42):
he's the person who's like not he's doing distribution and
marketing and operations, and he's running several aspects of his business.
I guess what I'm getting at is is it harder
to become a billionaire legally or illegally? I think over
the long run, it is clearly illegally. Uh to start
where he started to be able to do what he
(12:03):
did in the environment and with the government that he
was dealing with, and I think at want just to
show you give you an example of the other thing
he had to deal with. At one point, we're fairly
sure that he had about sixty to seventy million dollars
a month going out for corruption at all levels of
the Mexican government, from the military to the police to
(12:27):
possibly right up to the president president's office. So he
was dealing with that and keeping it at bay. And
one of the things I always point to is this
guy survived three presidential transi transitions, which is unheard of.
For organized crime, because usually they lose control, they lose
their their vested interest in the people because they all changed.
(12:48):
But he didn't. He became stronger, so he was in
everybody's pocket um, and that allowed him, I think, to
successfully grow, use the border more, use the military, more
in his behalf, and made it harder for us to
put the handcuffs on him. I know. I mean, I
(13:19):
guess we could say this about somebody who's in a
straight corporation and greed, but there's so much more risk.
I always think when I'm feeling very successful, that the
wolves are at the end of my bed and they're coming.
I mean, these people think they're invincible. So why when
there's so much risk, can you not stop the music?
Because you literally can't get out. It's like a mafia.
You just can't get out because you will get killed
(13:39):
the way the way that it's portrayed. Yeah, there's really
especially at guys at his level, there's really no way out.
Uh it is. You're either going to die by a
bullet from one of your rivals or I'm gonna lock
you up. But there's there's not a good ending. And
I think the interesting thing about him is and I
think you'll find this kind of interesting. It was never
(13:59):
the money with him, It was always the power, always
having control of all of these people, all of this
vast area. You know, Sinaloa is a kind of a
lawless part of Mexico, but it's gorgeous, and he controlled
it um. Everybody there was on the payroll, whether it
(14:20):
was a guy sweeping the street or a commandante from
the local headquarters of the police. And that's what he
truly liked. And I do think, uh, he liked out
smarting us too. I think that was kind of a
personal thing for him. Cat and mouse, like catch me
if you can. It looked like that, and and fame, yes,
(14:41):
and fame, And at the end he got crazy and
that's what got him caught, all right. So we're talking
about you though, So you do you become obsessed with this?
Is it just your job? Is it right or wrong?
Is it personal? Um? And you know, I I watch
a lot and read a lot about this, and you
know they're the ones doing You know, they're they're they're
like the little creatures under your house that have their
(15:04):
own program. You can't see them, so for you, it's
so much harder. They're the ones on the run, like
you don't even know where they're going. So now you've
identified your target, but they've got everybody. A lot of
people aren't listening to you know, everyone's got their own
ship going on, and everyone is there for your plight
in your obsession. So how do you capture our roach
in Manhattan? Right? Well, for me, it was it came
(15:27):
about a little bit different. I was put in charge
of running our Passol Division, which is right along the
border and it covers about a third of the Mexican border.
And at that time, Chapel had really emerged and Wirez,
which was literally right across the border, was a flame.
There were more people being killed in wires and in
Baghdad or Afghanistan, um virtually every day um. And what
(15:53):
happened for me personally is they gave an interview to
a newspaper, UH and come to find out that it
was the sister city, sister paper of a paper in
El Paso, but it was based in Ware's and Chappo
actually owned part of the newspaper his or his people did.
And basically what I said, I was sent down here
(16:14):
to kick Chopplo's ass. That's the way I look at this,
and I'm going to do everything I came to hurt
his organization. Well, what happened then was a few Mexican
counterparts that we were able to trust and work with
called a couple of days later and said, look, they
picked up a bunch of chatter that he just put
a bounty on my head. So us Christ So that
(16:37):
now you know it was me or him? And I
think I was not for a couple of years. And
I didn't tell my boss in Washington because they would
have moved me immediately, and I didn't want to leave
my people down there, and I wanted to kick this
guy's ass. Um So a badass in your life, like
(17:01):
were you tough? You know, is like a badass or
just a nice guy? I was a street agent. I
grew up doing undercover work and I just happened um
to hook up with the right agents as I my
career was progressing, and I made it up to the
number two positions in the agency. But much of that,
uh was basically it's in this job much like the
(17:23):
FBI and a t F. It's reputation if if you're
known as a kick ass work work, hard guy that
makes large cases those are those are the things that
people will follow you. Um, and people take notice, and
the U S. Attorneys take notice, and so are the
bad guys. And that's kind of where this went. So
(17:44):
were you scared? Oh? Absolutely. There were times when a
couple of times I was followed home. Um, I wasn't
sure if I was going to make it. Um, you know,
and it ended up and I talked about it in
the book, but it ended up being a pretty tough
situation on oan on the highway in New Mexico, where
I was to his guys and myself and you know,
(18:05):
I had one pistol with me and it could have
went bad. And I was new to the area. I
didn't even know where I was, so I couldn't even
call for help. Um. So yeah, those things, yes, But
you know what it did is it strengthened my resolve
and I got to make it, you know, clearity, I
didn't do anything by myself. No, I'm sure. Obviously he's
(18:25):
got an army. There's hundreds of dedicated heroic cops and
prosecutors and d e A agents and FBI we all,
but this was a rallying call for for the agency. No,
it sounds like you're organized. You're very organized and delegate
and execute and you know you have to pick a
lane and a decision and go with it. So how
do you do that? How do you organize that when
(18:47):
everyone's scared and it's a moving target and it hasn't
worked every time, and then you keep going. You have
to get the trust your superior So how does that
whole thing go down? Well, you have to get the
right people working for you. And in this particular case,
had we not gained some support of our law enforcement
counterparts in Mexico, we wouldn't have been successful because up
(19:09):
to that point we had a terrible relationship with him.
If we supplied information to them, two things happened, they
would compromise it, sell it well, they wouldn't do anything.
So our relationships to be able to operate within Mexico
were hampered. Now we do have agents full time in Mexico,
UH and they can only do so much without the
help of their counterparts. It's it's like that all over
(19:32):
the world. But our relationships were so bad um it
took us about ten years to build them. And then
we started working exclusively with the Mexican Marines, who are
heroes in my book, and they were. They were incorruptable.
Why that's so interesting because I'm thinking, how you know
people in Mexico. The way it's portrayed is that everybody's
on the take because there's such a terrible way of life,
(19:54):
So why are they not on the take? And why
why are they so who who's who's directing? There? Are
a very small entity within the military apparatus there. But
we trained them, Our special forces trained them, d e
A trained them, we vetted them. Um, so we had
that bond. And at that point, you especially towards the end,
(20:17):
Chapel had escaped twice, which was really a national embarrassment
to them. So when I asked when I was a
second in charge at that point, and I asked the
ambassador for a meeting with the head of the federal police, Um,
we went down there and they said, look, we're gonna
give you anything you want. We got to get this
guy out. We have to get him out and the
(20:38):
organization now and uh so that's kind of how it started. Um,
but you know, to be to be really serious about this,
this is a once in a generation bad guy we
were dealing with. Now, I'm not saying, there's not other
cartel members or organized traditional organized crime people that are
(20:58):
just as dangerous. But this was a guy that built
his business and built it before anybody else could really compete,
and that's why he was so entrenched. Um, and I
really attribute I mean, he's a killer, but he's a
smart son of a gun. Well, that's what you're saying.
I talk about branding and business and infrastructure, and I'm
(21:19):
thinking about your infrastructure because it's certainly people would probably
perceive that it's all muscle. You're on the ground with
a bunch of military guys. I can't imagine what the
preparation was and the organization. And you have to be
surgical because you only get one shot and you're gonna
screw it up and then you can't get the chance again. Right,
And you know the other thing is too and this
is an important thing. We played by the rules and
(21:41):
we have a limited budget. Right, he makes up he
makes up the rules, and he's got an unlimited bunt.
So so those are really important things you have to
work with. The reason we were successful as we stopped
worrying about him and we've concentrated on the people around him.
His doctors, his girlfriends, his cooks, all of those people
(22:04):
who would let their guard down specifically throughout communications. So
we were able to build a pattern of life much
like what they did with Osama bin Laden, and we
were able to kind of get an idea where he was,
what he was doing, who was with him. If if
this doctor was moving, then he was going to meet
up with our guy. So we had to try to
(22:26):
surveil and locate. I mean, we even came up with
an idea that Chopo was having problems with the girls.
He was a little infinite um, so he wanted to
have a pump put in. So we got on the
doctor's phone because we knew at some point they were
going to rendezvous and it was an opportune time, so
we went to that extent um. Well, that's what I
(22:48):
call him business find your way in. So for people
listening who have small businesses a lot of them, you
were working with limited resources comparatively is David and Goliath,
but thinking smart and figuring it out and find in
your way. You know, it's not always the obvious way,
and so I find that so interesting. Yeah, I think
that's why I wanted to speak to you. Because it
just seems like something insurmountable and very frustrating, and you
(23:11):
never even know if you're gonna get there. You could,
God forbid, you could have died without doing It would
have been very, very understandable. And we've had a lot
of agents die in the pursuit of people like this,
not to mention the literally thousands of innocent people in
Mexico that he's killed. Um so this whole and I
think the other thing I attribute to him more than
anybody is he understood from an organized crime point of view,
(23:33):
the role of violence. He knew it was important to
have the threat of violence against against your rivals, against
law enforcements. But the one fundamental thing he never forgot
was if you overdo it, it's bad for business. So
too much violence is bad for business. The government would
then get serious. We when they killed our agent in Mexico,
(23:57):
we shut down the border, so commerce, commerce was effected everything,
And he he understood that. I think that shows a
good corporate leadership. Mind, let's flex our muscles, but let's
not be stupid. Yeah, it's going to hurt us in
the in the in our bottom line. So compare legal
drugs in the United States to illegal meaning I guess financially,
(24:23):
but then ethically, do you think if you saw that,
I mean, yes, obviously the movie Dope Sick Um. Do
you think that it's the same thing. They're effectively knowingly
dealing drugs? Oh, there's no, There's no question about it.
The other thing that d e A does is we
regulate the legitimate pharmaceutical industry and from bad doctors, the
(24:45):
bad pharmacists to big pharma the way they mishandle things.
One of the things that frustrated me as the deputy
director was we had a a diversion case where they
would divert legal pharmaceuticals to the black market on a
major company, and I wanted the c e O s indicted.
(25:06):
I wanted I wanted to see those guys in their
Brookes Brothers suits in the prison yard playing kickball with
some real felons. But what happened was their relationship with
Congress and all of the money that they supply in
the lobby ring. We couldn't thing. Yeah, we could never
get to them. So what did they do? Riley? We're
(25:28):
gonna give you what you want, but no one's going
to jail. But they're gonna pay you guys a hundred
fifty million dollars. That's like a one day's work for
chop out. And and it's still going on today. And
that's the one thing. They just drove me crazy. At
the end, dealing with Congress, I'd have to testify it
was all political part no one. I used to say,
(25:49):
I'm not a politician, I'm a cop. And Obama put
me in that job even though I'm not really a Democrat.
But they just kill you and you see it today
and it it really affects this country's ability to fight
this this epidemic go on now. Well, it's crazy because
when Biden wanted to pull troops out and and it
costs so much money a day. The thing is, it's
(26:10):
the cost of doing business to keep the drug situation
at bay. You have. It's like I can't just not
have insurance in my house. I can't just not have
a fire let you have to have it to keep
your life moving. It's just it's insurance. So it's crazy
because people feel like you can never to treadmill. We're
never going to quote unquote get there. You're just there,
(26:30):
you know, doing security at all times to make sure
you're keeping the problem as at bay as possible. What
is the worst drug you've ever seen, legal or illegal?
And worst sort of drug crisis, worse moment in drugs
that you've ever seen. I think we're going through it
now with sentinel Um. Fentinal is a synthetic It's a
(26:51):
clandestine produced form of heroin. It's forty to fifty times
stronger than street level heroin. It can be absorbed through
the skin or you can breathe it in in small
minute particles and you're dead. So we're seeing mass overdoses.
The Mexicans now are producing fentanyl, uh, and they're putting
it in pillform, So people get on the internet and
(27:12):
they think they're getting, you know, five oxy cottons, they're
getting a lethal dose and fentanyl. So we have about
in this country around two hundred people a day that
are dying from drug addiction. And I just and this
is consistent. I just don't understand why people don't stand
up to this issue. There's so many political connections to it,
(27:35):
you know. And the other thing with d e A.
We don't knock a door down and go in the
basement and arrest the high school kids smoking with a bomb.
That's not what we do. We go after UH organizations
that are transcontinental that affect the security and safety of
the United States, and we do it. We have about
(27:56):
seventy offices around the world because we want to attack
get origin UM and that, and that is something I
think that's one of the reasons we've been successful. We
have the largest overseas presence of any U S law enforcements. Well,
I had an experience knowing someone I did not know
that they had a problem because they're very good UM
(28:19):
hiders of that. And you later put all the pieces together.
But I remember thinking, because it made my eyes open
to this, I'm naive when it comes to two drugs UH.
But when the pandemic started, I was thinking to myself,
if you see people doctor shopping and they're dying, trying
to get pills anywhere they can, and people were taking
pills or taking fifty to a hundred pills a day,
(28:40):
that's not even abnormal, like they can't they can't feed
the beast. So then I thought, in the pandemic, when
they can't get to doctors or they can't get anywhere,
they're trying online, they're gonna are they walking into the streets,
or are they like what's happened, what happened during the
pandemic that changed in this industry with addicts and drugs,
The desperation must have been through. I think it was desperation,
(29:01):
But I also think it goes to the existing addictions
prior to the pandemic, and the way the society and
everybody else kind of shut down there for almost a year.
Now we'll guess who didn't shut down. Guys like Chapel
Guzman didn't shut down, those organizations didn't shut down. You know,
in Chicago alone, there's a hundred and fifty thousand street
(29:22):
gang members, a hundred and fifty thousand street gang members.
And I'm sure in New York has the same issue,
but they largely make their living putting dope on the street.
So those people don't go away, and the addiction grows,
and and I think what you saw is with the
advent of fentnel, the way it's now in pill form,
it's being cut with regular heroin because it's far more profitable.
(29:45):
It can be produced seven. You don't have to worry
about the rain, the sunn the soil to produce the poppies,
to make normal heroin. It is a home run, it's
a whole run. You bring one kilo of it in,
you can make forty kilos street level heroin. And I
bet the emotions of the pandemic though made addictions affected
(30:05):
addictions and wanting to to medicate. I mean, I just
I'm just thinking about what it's been like for this
past couple of years, people being home with their own
thoughts and desperation in many different ways. It seems lethal. Oh,
there's no question about it. I think if you just
look at the liquor sales during the pandemic through the room,
that's the same issue exactly. Um so do you still
(30:27):
work or like you're writing, but these all passion projects?
Is your wife? Is your wife? Like this enough? Now?
If this was over? Like, what what's your Yeah? We yeah,
I was thirty two years, I was transferred thirteen times,
and my son was in three high schools. So we're done.
You know, we're gonna follow this book, hopefully to a movie.
(30:48):
But I speak. I'm asked to speak the law enforcement groups.
I've had a couple of people make runs at me
for running for Congress. You know, what's the book called
A drug Warrior? A drug warrior. Okay, great, every want
to buy a drug warrior. Um. So you're enjoying it
because you're doing what you want. Now you're not and
you're not, But what about you must miss it a
(31:09):
little action? Oh my god, I I tell everybody, the
worst job I've ever had is a retirement. I missed.
I missed the pace of it, I missed the people,
um now, and I missed. What I missed the most,
I think is just having a drive to see something happen,
(31:29):
you know, to do something that's good. When you hook
a guy up and he goes away, that was selling
dope to kids, that's you go home. You feel good
about what you've accomplished. But you also understand this has
to continue or we're going to eat ourselves in this society.
We've got so many things going sideways, and this is
(31:50):
you know, I always say, for as long as we exist,
we're going to be dealing with this. It's how we
choose to confront these people, these bad guys, and we
got we got to stay on them to kick their
ask because nobody else is going to do it well.
I had been watching one of these shows and I
said it to a woman who was doing my hair
who was in a thirty young, pretty fawn, nice girl,
(32:11):
and I said, have you've seen this? She said, of course,
said I've seen every single one. I said, was because
because every single person I know is a drug addict.
I said, what, Like I was thirty, Uh not everybody
that I knew was a drug addict. Like I couldn't
even She just said it like it was nothing. And
she said, because everybody's on oxy and fent and all.
And she said, well, you just said so it's a
real problem. And that's why I'm dabbling. And this that's
(32:34):
why I called you like off on this podcast. I
just find myself in this conversation and you know, think
about the journey it could take um which I think
it is important. I think it is. It's great that
you're still sort of your foot is still your toe
is still in the pool because you can teach other
people to care and to activate even if you you know,
you're not forty five anymore, there are other forty five
(32:55):
year olds and you can. I also, it does strike me,
which is less important than this topic, but it strikes
me that based on all that you've observed and watching
the machinations of a cartel and operation like that from
a business standpoint, that you could speak not only on
this but on actual business like people activating and how
to get organized and underprivileged, Uh, you know, building businesses
(33:18):
with no resources, thinking that it couldn't be them. That
that's what I was sort of trying to get at earlier.
Do you know what? It's so? What you're doing is
so good And here's why, because you hit on something
very few people ask me. And it's the one thing
I think people need to know. How the hell did
we get this way? How did a guy like Chappel
Guzman become who we became, and why did we let
(33:40):
that happen? Um? And no one else thinks about that.
They want to see the gunfights, the dead bodies, the
the you know, the millions of dollars. Okay, that's great,
but that's not the real issue. The issue is how
do we let this happen? And what do we have
to do so it doesn't happen again? And I think
that's why what you're talking about it is wonderful because
(34:01):
a lot of people don't care. They want to watch
those shows. I know it's so funny because I have
on here I wrote, questions are something about Sean Penn
and an actress, like I don't. If it's something interesting
that is that is going to help people, then great.
But I didn't ask it because I don't really give
a ship, you know what I mean, Like, I don't
care what I mean respectfully to Sean Penn who has
done relief work in Haiti and I don't know him,
(34:24):
but I don't. That's not what I care about, you know.
I'm just caring about you and what you're doing and
what you did and how you were able to do
something insurmountable against somebody that is uncatchable, and then him
because right for him to become so successful, something happened.
And maybe if people channel that into legal businesses and
thinking they're good enough and have worth it, they don't
have to go into that, you know. I mean, listen,
(34:45):
we can't change the world, but these conversations can maybe
help a little. It's important. It's so important. It's so
much more important than so many other things. I think
people A lot of people are looking for answers. Yeah,
you know, they wonder about these things. I mean, if
you look at Chapel right now, his tube that with
sons are trying to take over the business, but unfortunately
they're not being very successful. So now we have a
(35:06):
whole new breed of cartel bosses and up and comers
that we're dealing with. In many of them, just like
in the early days of Chapol, we heard, we knew
he was there, we heard about him, but we really
had no idea who he was and what he was
capable of. And I think that opened everybody's eyes. But
(35:26):
you know, the one thing that is good And I
hope they hope people buy and read the book. It's
doing fine, and I hope we make the movie because
people need to see just how vicious these people are.
At the same point, they need to talk about what
you're talking about. They're vicious, but they're pretty damn bright
and they understand the market. And I think that that's
(35:50):
lost right. You may need to you may need to
consult with like a billionaire CEO about how to run
an operation versus just thugs who might not know how
to run an operation. And yeah, we're getting it's the
mind of a mastermind. You gotta game has to meet games, right,
and they all got to work, They all got to
come together because somebody's gotta pull the trigger. Someone's got
to do the transportation, someone's got to break some legs
(36:12):
to get paid. And then somebody's got to take care
of the government officials who are there with their hands
out trying to get bribes. That's a massive undertaking for anybody, right.
The political aspect of it is insane because you can't penetrate.
It's crazy. And that's the same thing with the with
the pharmaceuticals. So it's very similar. It's very very similar.
One is just not as violent, although it probably is
(36:35):
in someone who's making the movie or who's talking about
someone option it. Yeah, Dark Castle Movies, Silver, the Silver Company. Okay, well, um,
hold on the Silver Company. This was so interesting. I'm
so glad I reached out to you. And I was like,
this guy's gotta be like, what the hell is better
frankl calling me for which I do find funny. But
(36:56):
I love curiosity and conversation and business and that you
know the business aspect of that. So there, now that
you're here, I'm sure you see there is a correlation. Um,
And I'm so grateful you took the time and I'm
glad you're at least in your retirement safe because I
was oddly worried about you when I watched you on
some of these shows. I'm like Jesus, that's got to
be so scary. He probably didn't sleep for years. Yeah,
(37:17):
I don't know. I'm an old irishman, so a little
bit of bourbon goes a long way, if you know
what I mean. Rose and thorn of your career. I
(37:38):
forgot that. What's the what was the rose? The high
of your career in the thorn? I think when I
was named the highest ranking special agent in the agency,
when I was a deputy director. The director is a
political appointee. Um. And then the hardest thing is having
to bury people that worked for me um, which I
(38:01):
mean unheard of. And I still talked to all the
families all the time. I support them however we you know,
we can. UM. But it happened on my watch, and
that's one thing I'll never It'll never go away. That
sounds brutal and interesting that anybody would have thought that
your rose would have been capturing al Chopo and it wasn't.
It was something more personal. So that's also telling. Yeah,
(38:23):
it's yeah, it's it is what it is. You know,
I did have a lot of fun though. I had
a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and we
kicked some mass, so in the end it was good.
That's a great line. I had a lot of fun.
That would be your tagline on the Housewives. I had
a lot of fun. Something we did, we did and
we kick some ass. That sounds like my time on
the Housewives. Actually, So tell your wife. I said, hello,
(38:47):
thank her for giving me the personal stamp, and I
appreciate speaking to you today. Well you got a you
got a new fan, that's for sure. I'm all over this.
Oh fantastic. Great. The conversations are always different, but always
somewhat interesting. I hope, thank you, Thank you care. I mean,
I know it's so strange that I sometimes just throw
(39:07):
these people into the podcast that everyone around me is
looking at each other and saying, who, who the hell
is that? Or you know, but I'm so it's so
liberating to be able to just want to talk to
someone and then have a conversation that is, in my opinion,
so important and so interesting. Uh. And that's why I
really love this forum, because if I had a talk show,
(39:28):
this wouldn't play necessarily. It's just It's just a living,
breathing conversation. I really love it. That was unbelievable. That
was so interesting, so many questions answered, and uh, really
good to talk about this crisis because it's an absolute tragedy.
It needs to be discussed. But that man is a
serious hero, courageous American who fought against a mastermind criminal.
(39:51):
I mean that has to have really taken him to
his limit. Jack, that was incredible. I was That was
really unbelievable. Um, So thank you for listening. Remember to rate,
review and subscribe and have a good day. Just Be
is hosted by me Bethany Frankel. Just Be as a
production of Be Real Productions, I Heart Radio and Blue
(40:14):
Duck Media. Are EPs are Morgen Levois, Antonio Enriquez, and
Kara Hit. To catch more moments from the show, follow
us on Instagram at Just Be with Bethany
So I have an eleven year old and it has
occurred to me something very very sad. I'm not a
big reader. I think I was a big reader when
I was a kid, or I was a reader. I mean,
I somehow I've read all the classics, and I'm sure
I was being tested on them. And I don't think
they had cliffs notes then, but yet they had them.
But we I just that wasn't my gig. But you know,
(00:37):
my daughter doesn't love reading. She likes reading the graphic novels,
which to me or comic strips. So I don't know
if that's really absorbing. I do think that reading anything
is reading, and I am not a big reader. I'm
a big writer, so it's hard for me to talk
about this. But I love that I've read Huckleberry Finn
and all these books and they'll make the kids read them.
But there's just a disconnect in um. You know, people
(00:58):
really aren't reading. And what crazy is that our kids
are on their devices so much. Us too, by the way,
we're on our devices so much that people are watching
Instagram and tick talk and googling and looking at information
about people and watching YouTube, and that's the new television
so just but it's such a different form, meaning we're
(01:19):
just consuming this junk food all the time that matters,
doesn't matter, like there's a bomb somewhere, but you know
something happened with Cardi B. Like everything's blended into one pot.
It's not like when used to sit down and you
waded through commercials and you were chose to be on
a news channel, or you were watching one show and
(01:41):
you watch the whole thing. You weren't. Sort of watching
a show on a streamer that you know you could
rewind in two seconds or watch again, or it doesn't
really matter, or binge watch watch forty two episodes at
the same time, which is like eating a bag of fritos.
You don't even know what you ate. You're not even
sure if you enjoyed it. You're just you're rushing it.
Then sometimes you slow it down by pause. You stop,
you go to the bathroom, you get a snack, you pause,
(02:02):
you do repeat. It could take so long to get
through an episode, which I like because that means we're
not rushing through it. But who the hell cares because
there's another show to go through, and you forget the
shows that you've already been interested in which I've discussed before.
I will sit down with palm, like, wait, what do
we do now? What are we watching next? Like? And
there are forty things that you know you wanted to
watch and you forget. Is it a movie? Is it
a documentary? But I'm I'm what's crazy too, is that
(02:25):
you know you want your kids to read, you know,
sit down and read. It's almost like a punishment. Take
take an hour. I need you to read in addition
to homework, just just we don't need to be doing
something read. And my daughter is not really a device
person compared to children. As a baby, I woke up
my eyes bleeding at six o'clock with her when she
was running around wishing she was a late sleeping baby.
(02:47):
And I didn't throw her in front of the TV.
I did not use TV as a babysitter. Who the
hell knows if it made a difference or not. You
try to do everything right when their kids, and it
probably all doesn't matter because many of the people who
were thrown in front of television at you know three
are now major award winning directors. But I tried to
do what I thought was right. I didn't play Beethoven
in my stomach, but I did not. She wasn't overly
(03:11):
stimulated by TV or after school activities or anything. So
she's not a really bad device kid. I know kids
who have their phone every second, who have their device
every second. It's frankly disgusting. It's not it's just you
know what's wrong. You don't know why, You just know
what's wrong. So you'll say to your kids read. You know,
you want them to read, even if you're not reading.
You want them to read. What's crazy is now because
(03:34):
they're always on their devices, dancing, making videos, tiktoking, I
guess social media besides TikTok. My daughters not, but other
kids telling them Now, you want to tell them to
watch television because that's like the new reading. Sitting Why
you know, why don't you sit down for now and
watch television? Like they look at you, like, what watch television? Like?
What have they just said? To sit down and watch television?
(03:55):
Not just like churning and birning and digesting some content.
So the Banket statement is television is the new reading.
That's certainly not great. Our guest today is Jack Riley,
former d e A agent and one of Chicago's highest
(04:15):
ranking special agents. Lately, he has turned away from a
life of fighting crime to writing crime. He is a
top rated author, known for his book Drug Warriors, detailing
the thirty year hunt for the infamous criminal and drug
lord El Chopo. I've seen him in documentaries and have
been fascinated by his work for a long time. This
is a unique one and I can't wait for you
(04:36):
to hear it. This is something that I just pushed for,
knowing that many of you wouldn't even know his name.
But what an interesting story, and what a badass and
what a fearless man. Grateful that you're here today. I
(04:57):
wanted to know if if you were surprised to hear
from me, you're like, what the hell does she want
to talk to me about? Absolutely? I uh. I mentioned
to a couple of people and they said, this ought
to be good. Let's say what she's got? Well, did
you even know who I was? Absolutely? My my wife
knows who you are. Well that's funny, because yeah, because
(05:20):
if not for her, I was wondering and I looked
up if you were married, and then I thought, all right,
we have a shot of him knowing why I'm asking
him to do this. Um, and I wondered if you
do any or a lot of podcasts at all. You know,
I've done, I've done several. I still do quite a few,
uh documentaries and interviewers from time to time about current stuff.
(05:40):
And uh, they just signed about two weeks ago with
a production company is going to try to make a
movie from based off the book. So that's that's pretty
that's pretty much what I pet up to. Okay, So
I love the show because there's such a wide variety
of people that I interview, and sometimes I don't know
(06:01):
who the people are there pitched to me and they've
done amazing things in science or philanthropy and or entertainment,
and sometimes it's just something that I'm really interested in
that I pitch and I never have any idea if
I'll get the person or you know, if it's the
right fit. So this is something that I asked for.
I wanted to interview you. Um, it's interesting. I recently,
(06:23):
uh reconnected with my mother through my daughter after a
long time, and she told my fiance that when I
was a kid, I watched Scarface a thousand times. She
said she was obsessed with this movie. We kept going
to the video store to rent it. It's not a
normal thing for a young girl to be wanting to
watch and you know, having grown up at the racetrack
(06:45):
with a bunch of unsavory, degenerate characters, maybe I mean not,
maybe that was likely connected. So as an adult, I
watch a lot I like documentaries or something that's you know,
just telling a true story, not fiction or you know,
related to closely related to to to uh to the
true story. So that's how in watching a lot of
(07:07):
these documentaries on Cartel's and the drug industry, I've seen
you and a lot of them, and I was just
interested because in watching the way so many different people work,
and I'm sure you've seen so many different people and
the way they operate. Men, they're all not most of
them are not educated. And these are real businesses, like
(07:30):
very serious, intricate businesses and in many cases brands. And
so I'm curious first about that part of it, Like
you're coming in and there must be a part of
you that it is almost admires it or can't believe
the operation in business they're they're running, you know, legal aside.
(07:50):
I mean absolutely, if if you just look at Chapel Guzman,
for instance, I mean, the guy's a mass murderer in
grand proportion, no doubt about it. But he's one hell
of a corporate ceo. For him to organize, insulate UH,
deal with the corruption issues, all of the security issues,
(08:10):
keep keep his enemy at bay, and then stay out
to jail and make billions of dollars, It's amazing. And
if we now look and we know more about his
inner workings, and he literally had a corporate structure. He
had a security division, he had a personnel division which
actually took UH job applications from people that wanted to
(08:32):
work on behalf. And mostly that was so if if
they cooperated with us, that they would kill the family,
take all their money and all those other things. And
I think they think he did. The most surprised us
was his business plan. And his business plan really revolved
around the addiction habits UH in the US. So if
(08:55):
you look back, if you look back into the nineties
when we really begin see prescription drug abuse take off
in this country, and it was hitting you know, all
walks of life, social, economic didn't matter. Um. He saw
it coming UH. And prescription drugs in general are very
expensive to get. At some point your doctor is gonna,
(09:16):
you know, stop prescribing. You can't steal them from your
grandmother's medicine boxes that runs out and are extremely expensive
on the street. So his plan was slowed down on
the cocaine, begin processing as much heroin as possible because
it's an opioid. And he understood that once the prescription
drug pipeline ran out, they were going to turn to
(09:37):
high potent, cheap Haro one. And that's precisely what Sinaloa
did under his direction. And you really think that it
was a plan, like a chess plan, You think that
that was I mean, you have proof that that's been
spoken about and really mapped out charted. Yeah, it's interesting,
and I'm often asked, well, other than the personal thing
I had with him, how do I know this? Well,
(09:58):
much of what we know about him and is in
of workings both here domestically and overseas, are from wire taps.
So we listened to the bad guys tell us the story.
We didn't make it up and there and there were
i mean hours and hours of collections all over the
world of him and his organization, and it was very
clear that he did have a business plan, He had
(10:19):
a he had a CFO, he had accountancy, he had
security people. There's just no way that he could have
survived for twenty years on top like he did without
this type of organization. So I always say, had he
chosen the right line of work, that probably would have
been a he would have been a CEO in a
legitimate company. Well that's what I want to know about
(10:40):
society with people that are poor and underprivileged that go
towards that route if they were given an opportunity. You
think he's just as intelligent to be running. Uh you
know a fortune? You know Forbes company? What is a fortune? Five? Fortune?
What am I saying? Fortune? There's no Yeah, there's no question. Yeah,
(11:00):
there's no question. I mean. And if you look at
his upbringing, he came up in a place in Mexico
which is desolate. It's kind of a farming community when
it is farming. But he grew up with traffickers, and
there's a little bit different of his education because he
learned how to smuggle before he learned how to traffic narcotics.
(11:20):
And that's what made him so able to move stuff
across the border. We just to call him Alapio because
he could get a load of dope from internal part
of Mexico to l A, Chicago, New York in twenty
four hours. And that's what he was known for. So
he truly was a smuggler and a logistics genius. So
(11:42):
he's the person who's like not he's doing distribution and
marketing and operations, and he's running several aspects of his business.
I guess what I'm getting at is is it harder
to become a billionaire legally or illegally? I think over
the long run, it is clearly illegally. Uh to start
where he started to be able to do what he
(12:03):
did in the environment and with the government that he
was dealing with, and I think at want just to
show you give you an example of the other thing
he had to deal with. At one point, we're fairly
sure that he had about sixty to seventy million dollars
a month going out for corruption at all levels of
the Mexican government, from the military to the police to
(12:27):
possibly right up to the president president's office. So he
was dealing with that and keeping it at bay. And
one of the things I always point to is this
guy survived three presidential transi transitions, which is unheard of.
For organized crime, because usually they lose control, they lose
their their vested interest in the people because they all changed.
(12:48):
But he didn't. He became stronger, so he was in
everybody's pocket um, and that allowed him, I think, to
successfully grow, use the border more, use the military, more
in his behalf, and made it harder for us to
put the handcuffs on him. I know. I mean, I
(13:19):
guess we could say this about somebody who's in a
straight corporation and greed, but there's so much more risk.
I always think when I'm feeling very successful, that the
wolves are at the end of my bed and they're coming.
I mean, these people think they're invincible. So why when
there's so much risk, can you not stop the music?
Because you literally can't get out. It's like a mafia.
You just can't get out because you will get killed
(13:39):
the way the way that it's portrayed. Yeah, there's really
especially at guys at his level, there's really no way out.
Uh it is. You're either going to die by a
bullet from one of your rivals or I'm gonna lock
you up. But there's there's not a good ending. And
I think the interesting thing about him is and I
think you'll find this kind of interesting. It was never
(13:59):
the money with him, It was always the power, always
having control of all of these people, all of this
vast area. You know, Sinaloa is a kind of a
lawless part of Mexico, but it's gorgeous, and he controlled
it um. Everybody there was on the payroll, whether it
(14:20):
was a guy sweeping the street or a commandante from
the local headquarters of the police. And that's what he
truly liked. And I do think, uh, he liked out
smarting us too. I think that was kind of a
personal thing for him. Cat and mouse, like catch me
if you can. It looked like that, and and fame, yes,
(14:41):
and fame, And at the end he got crazy and
that's what got him caught, all right. So we're talking
about you though, So you do you become obsessed with this?
Is it just your job? Is it right or wrong?
Is it personal? Um? And you know, I I watch
a lot and read a lot about this, and you
know they're the ones doing You know, they're they're they're
like the little creatures under your house that have their
(15:04):
own program. You can't see them, so for you, it's
so much harder. They're the ones on the run, like
you don't even know where they're going. So now you've
identified your target, but they've got everybody. A lot of
people aren't listening to you know, everyone's got their own
ship going on, and everyone is there for your plight
in your obsession. So how do you capture our roach
in Manhattan? Right? Well, for me, it was it came
(15:27):
about a little bit different. I was put in charge
of running our Passol Division, which is right along the
border and it covers about a third of the Mexican border.
And at that time, Chapel had really emerged and Wirez,
which was literally right across the border, was a flame.
There were more people being killed in wires and in
Baghdad or Afghanistan, um virtually every day um. And what
(15:53):
happened for me personally is they gave an interview to
a newspaper, UH and come to find out that it
was the sister city, sister paper of a paper in
El Paso, but it was based in Ware's and Chappo
actually owned part of the newspaper his or his people did.
And basically what I said, I was sent down here
(16:14):
to kick Chopplo's ass. That's the way I look at this,
and I'm going to do everything I came to hurt
his organization. Well, what happened then was a few Mexican
counterparts that we were able to trust and work with
called a couple of days later and said, look, they
picked up a bunch of chatter that he just put
a bounty on my head. So us Christ So that
(16:37):
now you know it was me or him? And I
think I was not for a couple of years. And
I didn't tell my boss in Washington because they would
have moved me immediately, and I didn't want to leave
my people down there, and I wanted to kick this
guy's ass. Um So a badass in your life, like
(17:01):
were you tough? You know, is like a badass or
just a nice guy? I was a street agent. I
grew up doing undercover work and I just happened um
to hook up with the right agents as I my
career was progressing, and I made it up to the
number two positions in the agency. But much of that,
uh was basically it's in this job much like the
(17:23):
FBI and a t F. It's reputation if if you're
known as a kick ass work work, hard guy that
makes large cases those are those are the things that
people will follow you. Um, and people take notice, and
the U S. Attorneys take notice, and so are the
bad guys. And that's kind of where this went. So
(17:44):
were you scared? Oh? Absolutely. There were times when a
couple of times I was followed home. Um, I wasn't
sure if I was going to make it. Um, you know,
and it ended up and I talked about it in
the book, but it ended up being a pretty tough
situation on oan on the highway in New Mexico, where
I was to his guys and myself and you know,
(18:05):
I had one pistol with me and it could have
went bad. And I was new to the area. I
didn't even know where I was, so I couldn't even
call for help. Um. So yeah, those things, yes, But
you know what it did is it strengthened my resolve
and I got to make it, you know, clearity, I
didn't do anything by myself. No, I'm sure. Obviously he's
(18:25):
got an army. There's hundreds of dedicated heroic cops and
prosecutors and d e A agents and FBI we all,
but this was a rallying call for for the agency. No,
it sounds like you're organized. You're very organized and delegate
and execute and you know you have to pick a
lane and a decision and go with it. So how
do you do that? How do you organize that when
(18:47):
everyone's scared and it's a moving target and it hasn't
worked every time, and then you keep going. You have
to get the trust your superior So how does that
whole thing go down? Well, you have to get the
right people working for you. And in this particular case,
had we not gained some support of our law enforcement
counterparts in Mexico, we wouldn't have been successful because up
(19:09):
to that point we had a terrible relationship with him.
If we supplied information to them, two things happened, they
would compromise it, sell it well, they wouldn't do anything.
So our relationships to be able to operate within Mexico
were hampered. Now we do have agents full time in Mexico,
UH and they can only do so much without the
help of their counterparts. It's it's like that all over
(19:32):
the world. But our relationships were so bad um it
took us about ten years to build them. And then
we started working exclusively with the Mexican Marines, who are
heroes in my book, and they were. They were incorruptable.
Why that's so interesting because I'm thinking, how you know
people in Mexico. The way it's portrayed is that everybody's
on the take because there's such a terrible way of life,
(19:54):
So why are they not on the take? And why
why are they so who who's who's directing? There? Are
a very small entity within the military apparatus there. But
we trained them, Our special forces trained them, d e
A trained them, we vetted them. Um, so we had
that bond. And at that point, you especially towards the end,
(20:17):
Chapel had escaped twice, which was really a national embarrassment
to them. So when I asked when I was a
second in charge at that point, and I asked the
ambassador for a meeting with the head of the federal police, Um,
we went down there and they said, look, we're gonna
give you anything you want. We got to get this
guy out. We have to get him out and the
(20:38):
organization now and uh so that's kind of how it started. Um,
but you know, to be to be really serious about this,
this is a once in a generation bad guy we
were dealing with. Now, I'm not saying, there's not other
cartel members or organized traditional organized crime people that are
(20:58):
just as dangerous. But this was a guy that built
his business and built it before anybody else could really compete,
and that's why he was so entrenched. Um, and I
really attribute I mean, he's a killer, but he's a
smart son of a gun. Well, that's what you're saying.
I talk about branding and business and infrastructure, and I'm
(21:19):
thinking about your infrastructure because it's certainly people would probably
perceive that it's all muscle. You're on the ground with
a bunch of military guys. I can't imagine what the
preparation was and the organization. And you have to be
surgical because you only get one shot and you're gonna
screw it up and then you can't get the chance again. Right,
And you know the other thing is too and this
is an important thing. We played by the rules and
(21:41):
we have a limited budget. Right, he makes up he
makes up the rules, and he's got an unlimited bunt.
So so those are really important things you have to
work with. The reason we were successful as we stopped
worrying about him and we've concentrated on the people around him.
His doctors, his girlfriends, his cooks, all of those people
(22:04):
who would let their guard down specifically throughout communications. So
we were able to build a pattern of life much
like what they did with Osama bin Laden, and we
were able to kind of get an idea where he was,
what he was doing, who was with him. If if
this doctor was moving, then he was going to meet
up with our guy. So we had to try to
(22:26):
surveil and locate. I mean, we even came up with
an idea that Chopo was having problems with the girls.
He was a little infinite um, so he wanted to
have a pump put in. So we got on the
doctor's phone because we knew at some point they were
going to rendezvous and it was an opportune time, so
we went to that extent um. Well, that's what I
(22:48):
call him business find your way in. So for people
listening who have small businesses a lot of them, you
were working with limited resources comparatively is David and Goliath,
but thinking smart and figuring it out and find in
your way. You know, it's not always the obvious way,
and so I find that so interesting. Yeah, I think
that's why I wanted to speak to you. Because it
just seems like something insurmountable and very frustrating, and you
(23:11):
never even know if you're gonna get there. You could,
God forbid, you could have died without doing It would
have been very, very understandable. And we've had a lot
of agents die in the pursuit of people like this,
not to mention the literally thousands of innocent people in
Mexico that he's killed. Um so this whole and I
think the other thing I attribute to him more than
anybody is he understood from an organized crime point of view,
(23:33):
the role of violence. He knew it was important to
have the threat of violence against against your rivals, against
law enforcements. But the one fundamental thing he never forgot
was if you overdo it, it's bad for business. So
too much violence is bad for business. The government would
then get serious. We when they killed our agent in Mexico,
(23:57):
we shut down the border, so commerce, commerce was effected everything,
And he he understood that. I think that shows a
good corporate leadership. Mind, let's flex our muscles, but let's
not be stupid. Yeah, it's going to hurt us in
the in the in our bottom line. So compare legal
drugs in the United States to illegal meaning I guess financially,
(24:23):
but then ethically, do you think if you saw that,
I mean, yes, obviously the movie Dope Sick Um. Do
you think that it's the same thing. They're effectively knowingly
dealing drugs? Oh, there's no, There's no question about it.
The other thing that d e A does is we
regulate the legitimate pharmaceutical industry and from bad doctors, the
(24:45):
bad pharmacists to big pharma the way they mishandle things.
One of the things that frustrated me as the deputy
director was we had a a diversion case where they
would divert legal pharmaceuticals to the black market on a
major company, and I wanted the c e O s indicted.
(25:06):
I wanted I wanted to see those guys in their
Brookes Brothers suits in the prison yard playing kickball with
some real felons. But what happened was their relationship with
Congress and all of the money that they supply in
the lobby ring. We couldn't thing. Yeah, we could never
get to them. So what did they do? Riley? We're
(25:28):
gonna give you what you want, but no one's going
to jail. But they're gonna pay you guys a hundred
fifty million dollars. That's like a one day's work for
chop out. And and it's still going on today. And
that's the one thing. They just drove me crazy. At
the end, dealing with Congress, I'd have to testify it
was all political part no one. I used to say,
(25:49):
I'm not a politician, I'm a cop. And Obama put
me in that job even though I'm not really a Democrat.
But they just kill you and you see it today
and it it really affects this country's ability to fight
this this epidemic go on now. Well, it's crazy because
when Biden wanted to pull troops out and and it
costs so much money a day. The thing is, it's
(26:10):
the cost of doing business to keep the drug situation
at bay. You have. It's like I can't just not
have insurance in my house. I can't just not have
a fire let you have to have it to keep
your life moving. It's just it's insurance. So it's crazy
because people feel like you can never to treadmill. We're
never going to quote unquote get there. You're just there,
(26:30):
you know, doing security at all times to make sure
you're keeping the problem as at bay as possible. What
is the worst drug you've ever seen, legal or illegal?
And worst sort of drug crisis, worse moment in drugs
that you've ever seen. I think we're going through it
now with sentinel Um. Fentinal is a synthetic It's a
(26:51):
clandestine produced form of heroin. It's forty to fifty times
stronger than street level heroin. It can be absorbed through
the skin or you can breathe it in in small
minute particles and you're dead. So we're seeing mass overdoses.
The Mexicans now are producing fentanyl, uh, and they're putting
it in pillform, So people get on the internet and
(27:12):
they think they're getting, you know, five oxy cottons, they're
getting a lethal dose and fentanyl. So we have about
in this country around two hundred people a day that
are dying from drug addiction. And I just and this
is consistent. I just don't understand why people don't stand
up to this issue. There's so many political connections to it,
(27:35):
you know. And the other thing with d e A.
We don't knock a door down and go in the
basement and arrest the high school kids smoking with a bomb.
That's not what we do. We go after UH organizations
that are transcontinental that affect the security and safety of
the United States, and we do it. We have about
(27:56):
seventy offices around the world because we want to attack
get origin UM and that, and that is something I
think that's one of the reasons we've been successful. We
have the largest overseas presence of any U S law enforcements. Well,
I had an experience knowing someone I did not know
that they had a problem because they're very good UM
(28:19):
hiders of that. And you later put all the pieces together.
But I remember thinking, because it made my eyes open
to this, I'm naive when it comes to two drugs UH.
But when the pandemic started, I was thinking to myself,
if you see people doctor shopping and they're dying, trying
to get pills anywhere they can, and people were taking
pills or taking fifty to a hundred pills a day,
(28:40):
that's not even abnormal, like they can't they can't feed
the beast. So then I thought, in the pandemic, when
they can't get to doctors or they can't get anywhere,
they're trying online, they're gonna are they walking into the streets,
or are they like what's happened, what happened during the
pandemic that changed in this industry with addicts and drugs,
The desperation must have been through. I think it was desperation,
(29:01):
But I also think it goes to the existing addictions
prior to the pandemic, and the way the society and
everybody else kind of shut down there for almost a year.
Now we'll guess who didn't shut down. Guys like Chapel
Guzman didn't shut down, those organizations didn't shut down. You know,
in Chicago alone, there's a hundred and fifty thousand street
(29:22):
gang members, a hundred and fifty thousand street gang members.
And I'm sure in New York has the same issue,
but they largely make their living putting dope on the street.
So those people don't go away, and the addiction grows,
and and I think what you saw is with the
advent of fentnel, the way it's now in pill form,
it's being cut with regular heroin because it's far more profitable.
(29:45):
It can be produced seven. You don't have to worry
about the rain, the sunn the soil to produce the poppies,
to make normal heroin. It is a home run, it's
a whole run. You bring one kilo of it in,
you can make forty kilos street level heroin. And I
bet the emotions of the pandemic though made addictions affected
(30:05):
addictions and wanting to to medicate. I mean, I just
I'm just thinking about what it's been like for this
past couple of years, people being home with their own
thoughts and desperation in many different ways. It seems lethal. Oh,
there's no question about it. I think if you just
look at the liquor sales during the pandemic through the room,
that's the same issue exactly. Um so do you still
(30:27):
work or like you're writing, but these all passion projects?
Is your wife? Is your wife? Like this enough? Now?
If this was over? Like, what what's your Yeah? We yeah,
I was thirty two years, I was transferred thirteen times,
and my son was in three high schools. So we're done.
You know, we're gonna follow this book, hopefully to a movie.
(30:48):
But I speak. I'm asked to speak the law enforcement groups.
I've had a couple of people make runs at me
for running for Congress. You know, what's the book called
A drug Warrior? A drug warrior. Okay, great, every want
to buy a drug warrior. Um. So you're enjoying it
because you're doing what you want. Now you're not and
you're not, But what about you must miss it a
(31:09):
little action? Oh my god, I I tell everybody, the
worst job I've ever had is a retirement. I missed.
I missed the pace of it, I missed the people,
um now, and I missed. What I missed the most,
I think is just having a drive to see something happen,
(31:29):
you know, to do something that's good. When you hook
a guy up and he goes away, that was selling
dope to kids, that's you go home. You feel good
about what you've accomplished. But you also understand this has
to continue or we're going to eat ourselves in this society.
We've got so many things going sideways, and this is
(31:50):
you know, I always say, for as long as we exist,
we're going to be dealing with this. It's how we
choose to confront these people, these bad guys, and we
got we got to stay on them to kick their
ask because nobody else is going to do it well.
I had been watching one of these shows and I
said it to a woman who was doing my hair
who was in a thirty young, pretty fawn, nice girl,
(32:11):
and I said, have you've seen this? She said, of course,
said I've seen every single one. I said, was because
because every single person I know is a drug addict.
I said, what, Like I was thirty, Uh not everybody
that I knew was a drug addict. Like I couldn't
even She just said it like it was nothing. And
she said, because everybody's on oxy and fent and all.
And she said, well, you just said so it's a
real problem. And that's why I'm dabbling. And this that's
(32:34):
why I called you like off on this podcast. I
just find myself in this conversation and you know, think
about the journey it could take um which I think
it is important. I think it is. It's great that
you're still sort of your foot is still your toe
is still in the pool because you can teach other
people to care and to activate even if you you know,
you're not forty five anymore, there are other forty five
(32:55):
year olds and you can. I also, it does strike me,
which is less important than this topic, but it strikes
me that based on all that you've observed and watching
the machinations of a cartel and operation like that from
a business standpoint, that you could speak not only on
this but on actual business like people activating and how
to get organized and underprivileged, Uh, you know, building businesses
(33:18):
with no resources, thinking that it couldn't be them. That
that's what I was sort of trying to get at earlier.
Do you know what? It's so? What you're doing is
so good And here's why, because you hit on something
very few people ask me. And it's the one thing
I think people need to know. How the hell did
we get this way? How did a guy like Chappel
Guzman become who we became, and why did we let
(33:40):
that happen? Um? And no one else thinks about that.
They want to see the gunfights, the dead bodies, the
the you know, the millions of dollars. Okay, that's great,
but that's not the real issue. The issue is how
do we let this happen? And what do we have
to do so it doesn't happen again? And I think
that's why what you're talking about it is wonderful because
(34:01):
a lot of people don't care. They want to watch
those shows. I know it's so funny because I have
on here I wrote, questions are something about Sean Penn
and an actress, like I don't. If it's something interesting
that is that is going to help people, then great.
But I didn't ask it because I don't really give
a ship, you know what I mean, Like, I don't
care what I mean respectfully to Sean Penn who has
done relief work in Haiti and I don't know him,
(34:24):
but I don't. That's not what I care about, you know.
I'm just caring about you and what you're doing and
what you did and how you were able to do
something insurmountable against somebody that is uncatchable, and then him
because right for him to become so successful, something happened.
And maybe if people channel that into legal businesses and
thinking they're good enough and have worth it, they don't
have to go into that, you know. I mean, listen,
(34:45):
we can't change the world, but these conversations can maybe
help a little. It's important. It's so important. It's so
much more important than so many other things. I think
people A lot of people are looking for answers. Yeah,
you know, they wonder about these things. I mean, if
you look at Chapel right now, his tube that with
sons are trying to take over the business, but unfortunately
they're not being very successful. So now we have a
(35:06):
whole new breed of cartel bosses and up and comers
that we're dealing with. In many of them, just like
in the early days of Chapol, we heard, we knew
he was there, we heard about him, but we really
had no idea who he was and what he was
capable of. And I think that opened everybody's eyes. But
(35:26):
you know, the one thing that is good And I
hope they hope people buy and read the book. It's
doing fine, and I hope we make the movie because
people need to see just how vicious these people are.
At the same point, they need to talk about what
you're talking about. They're vicious, but they're pretty damn bright
and they understand the market. And I think that that's
(35:50):
lost right. You may need to you may need to
consult with like a billionaire CEO about how to run
an operation versus just thugs who might not know how
to run an operation. And yeah, we're getting it's the
mind of a mastermind. You gotta game has to meet games, right,
and they all got to work, They all got to
come together because somebody's gotta pull the trigger. Someone's got
to do the transportation, someone's got to break some legs
(36:12):
to get paid. And then somebody's got to take care
of the government officials who are there with their hands
out trying to get bribes. That's a massive undertaking for anybody, right.
The political aspect of it is insane because you can't penetrate.
It's crazy. And that's the same thing with the with
the pharmaceuticals. So it's very similar. It's very very similar.
One is just not as violent, although it probably is
(36:35):
in someone who's making the movie or who's talking about
someone option it. Yeah, Dark Castle Movies, Silver, the Silver Company. Okay, well, um,
hold on the Silver Company. This was so interesting. I'm
so glad I reached out to you. And I was like,
this guy's gotta be like, what the hell is better
frankl calling me for which I do find funny. But
(36:56):
I love curiosity and conversation and business and that you
know the business aspect of that. So there, now that
you're here, I'm sure you see there is a correlation. Um,
And I'm so grateful you took the time and I'm
glad you're at least in your retirement safe because I
was oddly worried about you when I watched you on
some of these shows. I'm like Jesus, that's got to
be so scary. He probably didn't sleep for years. Yeah,
(37:17):
I don't know. I'm an old irishman, so a little
bit of bourbon goes a long way, if you know
what I mean. Rose and thorn of your career. I
(37:38):
forgot that. What's the what was the rose? The high
of your career in the thorn? I think when I
was named the highest ranking special agent in the agency,
when I was a deputy director. The director is a
political appointee. Um. And then the hardest thing is having
to bury people that worked for me um, which I
(38:01):
mean unheard of. And I still talked to all the
families all the time. I support them however we you know,
we can. UM. But it happened on my watch, and
that's one thing I'll never It'll never go away. That
sounds brutal and interesting that anybody would have thought that
your rose would have been capturing al Chopo and it wasn't.
It was something more personal. So that's also telling. Yeah,
(38:23):
it's yeah, it's it is what it is. You know,
I did have a lot of fun though. I had
a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and we
kicked some mass, so in the end it was good.
That's a great line. I had a lot of fun.
That would be your tagline on the Housewives. I had
a lot of fun. Something we did, we did and
we kick some ass. That sounds like my time on
the Housewives. Actually, So tell your wife. I said, hello,
(38:47):
thank her for giving me the personal stamp, and I
appreciate speaking to you today. Well you got a you
got a new fan, that's for sure. I'm all over this.
Oh fantastic. Great. The conversations are always different, but always
somewhat interesting. I hope, thank you, Thank you care. I mean,
I know it's so strange that I sometimes just throw
(39:07):
these people into the podcast that everyone around me is
looking at each other and saying, who, who the hell
is that? Or you know, but I'm so it's so
liberating to be able to just want to talk to
someone and then have a conversation that is, in my opinion,
so important and so interesting. Uh. And that's why I
really love this forum, because if I had a talk show,
(39:28):
this wouldn't play necessarily. It's just It's just a living,
breathing conversation. I really love it. That was unbelievable. That
was so interesting, so many questions answered, and uh, really
good to talk about this crisis because it's an absolute tragedy.
It needs to be discussed. But that man is a
serious hero, courageous American who fought against a mastermind criminal.
(39:51):
I mean that has to have really taken him to
his limit. Jack, that was incredible. I was That was
really unbelievable. Um, So thank you for listening. Remember to rate,
review and subscribe and have a good day. Just Be
is hosted by me Bethany Frankel. Just Be as a
production of Be Real Productions, I Heart Radio and Blue
(40:14):
Duck Media. Are EPs are Morgen Levois, Antonio Enriquez, and
Kara Hit. To catch more moments from the show, follow
us on Instagram at Just Be with Bethany
Host
Bethenny Frankel
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