February 15, 2025 • 41 mins
My friend, retired DEA agent and author of the book The Noble Experiment, Dave Gaddis, stops by to discuss Silverbacks, car accidents, arresting bad guys, and the drug epidemic the US finds itself in.
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Dave Gaddis was a Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA, special agent for more than 25 years,
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serving in some of the most dangerous drug enforcement regions around the world.
From Miami to Mexico, Colombia to Nicaragua, he worked investigations against the Mexican
and Colombian cartels responsible for supplying all of the cocaine and most of the heroin
destined for the United States.
Beginning as a criminal investigator in Miami's cocaine cowboys era in the 1980s, he finished
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his career in 2011 as the Chief of Global Enforcement Operations at his DEA headquarters
office overlooking the U.S. Capitol and Washington, D.C. skyline.
I'm Jake Jacobs, and you're listening to What The F—
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Having said all of that, Dave and I were supposed to start our recording this morning at 8
a.m. Central, and in classic What The F— fashion, Dave sends me a text and says, can
we delay about 30 minutes?
My refrigerator just gave out and I'm trying to salvage some food.
So good morning, Dave.
How the hell are you?
Good morning, Jake.
It could be better, but hey, you got to play the card you're dealt, right?
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Yeah, man.
So hopefully you're not going to lose any food.
What happened?
It's just the whole fridge, freezer, everything?
Well let me tell you, I get up this morning with my wife.
As usual, she goes over to make some coffee.
She notices that she's stepping in water in the kitchen because the coffee maker is next
to the refrigerator.
So she lets me know about it, and I go over there and sure enough, there's like a lake
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sitting around in front of the refrigerator and around the refrigerator, and I realize,
oh, WTF.
I've got a whole situation that I got to deal with this morning.
And a little background, I built this house a few years ago and I had custom cabinets
made.
So the width of the custom cabinets to which the refrigerator slides into, and it's a double
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door refrigerator, it slides into, and I mean, there isn't a piece of hair that could fit
on the left or the right of this refrigerator when it's actually stuck in that compartment.
So that's one of the problems.
The second problem is I have to take the handles off the refrigerator to get it fully out so
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that I can get behind it and then unplug it before I start moving it around.
So it's like wrestling a 500 pounds silverback gorilla to get this thing in a position to
where you could find out what's happening.
Well, what was happening was, and this happens with refrigerators all the time, is that the
drain pan gets filled up because a tube gets filled with whatever, right?
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Algae, particles, sometimes it ices over because the ice maker, you know, getting it too cold.
And that's what I had.
So I pushed it out, got the back off of it, looked at it, saw that the pan is completely
full.
So after this, I'll be back at the refrigerator cleaning out the pan and trying to figure
out what the hell I can do to get this refrigerator working.
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But yeah, it was a real mess this morning.
It was definitely a WTF moment.
Hopefully the refrigerator is okay and there's nothing internally wrong with it.
Well this appliance is two years old.
Oh.
Imagine that.
And I've already had to replace a dryer that's two years old because the motor failed.
It's like, don't they make anything that's worth a crap anymore?
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I was rolling this around in my mind this, well actually last night, how I was going
to properly introduce Dave to my audience or to this audience or whoever's listening.
About two years ago, I fancied myself an audiobook narrator and I was going through auditions
and I was mainly doing nonfiction type stuff and didn't really want to do anything that
had, where I had to think about it, where I had to do dialogue and you know, stuff like
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that.
I was doing 10, 15 auditions a day and this one particular day I was, it was at the end
of the day.
I had a little bit of time left.
I could do at least one more.
This audition pops up and it's for a book called the Noble Experiment and I pull up
the audition script and the first thing I see is fucking dialogue.
Like okay, you know what?
I'm just going to, I'm just going to do it.
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And I've told Dave this before.
I didn't give it my best.
I mean, I did it to the best of what I could do that particular day.
I was like, there is no way I'm going to get a call back on this.
I don't know if it was that same night or maybe the next day.
I got an email from ACX and they're like, yeah, the author wants to at least talk to
you or it was something positive.
And then I reached out to Dave and Dave was like, man, I listened to some auditions before
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you, but you nailed it.
And I was like, are you shitting me?
Like that was a what the fuck moment because I had no, yeah.
Perhaps that's the key.
Don't try too hard, right?
Yeah.
Cause the opening line is, Dave, I'm hit.
I've been hit.
Right.
And that's exactly how I read it.
I'll be out to this day.
I remember how I did that.
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So the second part of that was this same time, about a year ago, I had the bright idea of
trying to do a podcast similar to this, but it involved video.
Right?
So Dave and I actually filmed the pilot and we were, you know, we actually had to do it
twice, you know, cause we're trying to figure the video part out of it.
And then life happened.
My daughter was in a bad car accident and things kind of got delayed.
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And then the more I thought about it, I was like, you know, Dave and I are two very handsome
fellas, and I just don't think the world was ready for that yet and it would have created
a paradox and you know, we would have had millions of screaming fans.
It wouldn't have been good for either one of us.
So audio is where it's at, at least for me right now.
So Dave, how the hell are you?
I would like to think that we had faces for video, but this seems to be working out much
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better, don't you think?
So, you know, what kills me is giving a bit of history about us.
It was just so interesting that we had actually crossed paths, perhaps not face to face, but
when you were in service out in the carib, I certainly in around South Florida, I was
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working and hitting the Narcos in the same places at the same time.
Yeah.
Part of my Navy career in the late eighties, I was on a ship, the USS Ainsworth, it was
a Knox class frigate and at least two or three times we went down to the Caribbean for drug
and addiction ops, so we liaison with the Coast Guard and lo and behold, Dave was in
that area at that same time.
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So it's quite possible that Dave and I crossed paths and never knew it.
That's right.
Doing the same thing.
Doing the same thing.
Yeah.
You know, just trying to stop the supplier, let's say slow down the supply of illegal
drugs.
There are a lot of people out then in that theater doing these things.
So who knows?
We may have even complimented each other.
We were sending a lot of Intel to DOD and the Navy was out there doing what they could
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do.
So I just thought that was kind of interesting.
That was.
So other than this morning with your refrigerator, okay.
First of all, let me just say, let's not say that word.
Let's not say refrigerator at all.
We can call it silverback because it's a stainless steel appliance.
And you know, in Africa, I did some kidnap for ransom negotiations after my DEA career.
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And in Africa, there's a saying, when two elephants fight, only the grass dies.
And I can tell you, when I wrestled this silverback today, the floor was the only thing that died.
Well, I can imagine.
Is it going to be safe to say that Dave might be having some lower back issues today?
Dave is going to have a nice cocktail at about seven o'clock tonight.
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He's probably not going to stop until midnight.
I was informed during one of our failed pilot attempts that DEA stands for drinks every
afternoon.
So is that still in play?
Hey, I've heard that too.
And more places than you can imagine.
I was kind of nervous when I was going to talk to Dave the first time.
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I was fucking DEA agent.
Like, this guy's going to kick my ass.
And he's like, no, no, we drink every afternoon.
I'm like, I like this guy.
You know, speaking of the Caribbean, there's a, I did some duty in Georgetown, Bahamas.
There was a little watering hole called the Two Turtles Inn in Georgetown.
And after you're running 36 hours, 48 hours, and you know, you're in Black Hawk helicopters
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chasing aircraft, drug laden aircraft and smugglers and, you know, rolling down behind
them and arresting them.
And then the Bahamian strike force taking them up to Nassau to jail and processing whatsoever.
You would eventually get to the Two Turtles Inn.
And, but you know, you cannot drink, if you're going to be involved with aircraft the following
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day, you cannot drink a drop, a full 12 hours before you enter that aircraft and, or even
get to the airport.
So we would be right there at the Two Turtles Inn.
And then when we knew we were getting up to that 12 o'clock mark, that would be a sprint.
It's a marathon up until then.
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But then when you're an hour, an hour and a half before that 12 o'clock, it's time to
unload man, bring out the shots.
Now you have a long career with the DEA, plus you've had careers after that.
So with the DEA part of your story, what was the first what the fuck you ever had, you
know, as a DEA agent?
Oh, man.
I mean, there are so many.
And many of them are strictly as a result of my stupidity, because when you're young
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and dumb, you just don't think about the next thing to do.
I mean, it's one time I was on surveillance and I happened to be driving the surveillance
van and this was in Miami where they have the toll booths all over the place.
I was on the Dolphin Expressway 836.
So the target of the surveillance goes through the toll booth.
And of course, they're flying, man.
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I mean, that's that's how they do it.
Right.
It's part of their heat runs.
Heat runs are them checking for counters.
You know, they're they're conducting counter surveillance to see if they're being surveilled.
So they would speed up.
They would change six lanes in 50 yards, you know, get into that toll lane, get through
change into another toll lane and then haul ass.
Right.
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And I'm trying to keep up with the other surveillance vehicles, which are all, you know, Chevy Malibu's
or BMW or whatever we had in the collection of seized vehicles.
This particular surveillance van had one of those old timey television antennas hanging
off the top of it, like the V's.
You know, came out like a bird flying.
When I went through that toll booth, I went a bit too fast and ended up hitting a bar
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that was across the toll booth.
Had I gone probably slow and picked the right place to go through it, I would have been
OK.
The antenna was ripped off.
I ended up hitting the side of one of the concrete barrier poles.
So I ended up having to go back after that surveillance and explain to my group supervisor
why the surveillance van had looked like it had been in a tornado.
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I think I had about a month on the job at that time.
Fortunately, I had a great supervisor and he was able to work with me and, you know,
I didn't take too much heat for it, although I probably had to wash his O.G.V. official
government vehicle for about six months after that.
Was that J.A.?
Actually, it was J.A. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
That's right.
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It sure was.
Johnny Arms.
Yeah, Johnny Arms.
Great guy.
Great guy.
One of the best.
And then there were other times when I had involved in another traffic accident.
I was on my way.
I mean, you love the job so much if you're showing a pattern here, Dave.
There's a pattern.
Good thing I don't drive silverbacks.
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But you know, I was I was driving to work one time and again had to do with a toll booth
this time on the parkway.
This is a real pattern now.
Come on.
And I was trying to look.
This was a Monday morning, too, man.
And I'm speeding to go to work because I am so ready for a productive week.
We had a list of tasks and operations to do some surveillance.
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I reached down to quickly look at a report.
You know, we didn't have cell phones back then.
We're talking about 1986, 87.
We didn't have cell phones, but I had a report and some notes that I needed to review.
Of course, I thought that I could review them and drive at the same time.
And I ended up at the toll booth that backs up traffic.
And some guy was sitting there in my lane and boom, I rear end them.
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And totally my fault.
That ended up being another issue with a different supervisor.
That was a few years later.
But yeah, there seems to be a pattern with me and O.G.V.s.
There were others, too, that I'll fail to mention.
But you know, when you're on surveillance, you're doing like six things at once, right?
You're driving, you're looking at your target, you're on the radio communicating with other
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surveillance agents.
You're looking for other people driving that are going to cut you off inevitably and get
up behind you and do what they need to do.
So it's kind of a crazy experience and it develops into a skill.
When you're young and dumb, you can have some accidents.
And many of us did.
These O.G.V.s, what were they?
They were a whole variety of different seized vehicles from the narcos.
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One great thing about DEA, I don't know about currently, but back in the days when I was
on the street, we pretty much didn't cost the government.
We didn't cost the American taxpayer one penny because we ended up seizing so much drug proceeds
and seizing the cars that they were using and other assets that they had like houses
and campers and everything that they used to buy with drug money from their trafficking
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activities, we were able to seize.
So we pretty much just existed on our own and our vehicle inventory was outstanding.
I mean, everything from a 560 SL Mercedes Benz to Buick LaSavre.
And they all matched with whatever vehicles were out in the Miami area at the time.
So it was kind of nice to have a free vehicle, if you will.
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Were you assigned cars?
Like how did that work?
Well, we were permanently assigned cars.
And of course, the senior guys and the guys that were producing the most in terms of their
investigations in their cases, usually got the best cars and they should have.
The younger guys and the guys that were in a support role, they usually got cars that
were more in line with the Buicks and Chevys and Fords and things like that.
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Dodge Neon.
Yeah, thank goodness we didn't have electric vehicles at the time.
I probably would have been relegated to one of them after my second accident.
The book opens literally with a bang with the chapter swords drawn.
Tell us about that day.
Jake, that was the true bottom line, straight up WTF moment.
Yeah.
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You know, when you're looking at a barrel of a gun pointed at your head and rounds are
sailing over your ears, you realize that that is the first thing you think of WTF.
I mean, I'm just doing my job.
What are they thinking?
So we ended up in a firefight in Miami Lakes, Dade County, just a small community just north
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of Miami.
It was a drug trafficker who had come over in the 1980s in the Marial boat lift.
He was Cuban and little did we know at the time, we knew he was trafficking drugs, but
we didn't know that in Cuba and after coming to the US up in New York, he had murdered
several people.
He was a serial killer.
He was a hitman for a drug organization.
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So it all came together in a few seconds and we ended up having to settle it pretty much
mano to mano right there.
My partner, A.D. Wright and myself and this guy in a house in the proximity of about 15
feet.
So I think maybe, let's see, he began shooting and he had a clip with eight rounds in it.
He had an extra clip that he wasn't able to change out and between A.D. and I, we probably
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fired maybe about 14, 15 rounds.
So it was a quick shootout.
It was six months into the job and that was a true WTF moment.
Okay, I'm in it now.
This is real.
Yeah.
So of course, Dave has to pick that exact fucking moment in his book for me to audition
for.
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So yeah, he could have picked anything, but it had to have been that.
With just a little dialogue, right?
Yeah, yeah.
No, but you did great.
You really did.
You knocked it out of the park and you didn't even try.
So I felt like you had, I mean, you do, you truly do have a voice for radio and a face
for movie theaters, but you're really great on radio and I love the way it came out.
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So if anyone's interested, they would probably get much more out of the Noble experiment
by buying the audio version.
It was funny because I think one of the things that you said after we started communicating
after you offered me the job, you were like, Jake, I listened to some auditions.
About a dozen.
Yeah.
He said, I don't know what it was.
There's something about, if you've ever read the book or you listen to the book, there's
some sarcasm here and there, just sprinkled with a little bit.
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And I think Dave and I both are fluent in sarcasm.
And as I was narrating it, I was sensing the sarcasm and I'm a sarcastic guy anyway.
So that's how I was reading it.
Plus I was tired that day.
I wasn't really putting, so I guess all of those conditions combined.
At one point you said, you read my sarcasm the way I wrote it.
It was, I forget how you put it, but that it was something about the sarcasm that I
got.
And you were like, that's it.
That's, that's.
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Yeah.
You picked up on the mood.
You picked up on the mood and the vibe of what I was trying to say, because when I wrote
this book, I, I didn't write it to make money.
I wrote it because my children someday might want to read it.
And, and they already have.
I was going to ask you, have they?
They have, they have.
In fact, my daughter, she works for a, a major distribution company.
She told me that many of her coworkers ended up having it in all of their workstations.
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So that, that made me feel pretty good that someone, you know, 30 years younger than me
would actually have some interest in something I had to say.
Well the dad was a fucking hero.
So of course, yeah.
Oh, come on.
It really was like you said, there was a lot, there's a lot of humor embedded into this
book.
And the reason is, is the stories are about human nature.
And even though people do bad things, they're not always truly bad people.
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The chapter mangoes about me and Chi Chi, my informant who I had arrested.
I got to know this guy and I felt like Chi Chi was really a nice guy that was wrapped
in a lot of bad, bad situations.
A lot of bad things going on in his life.
So we ended up working together and had a lot of fun.
You got to be humorous, right?
I mean, people are funny at good times and bad times.
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If you pick up on the comedy relief part of it.
Well what's cool about the way you wrote that book, Dave, is there were some chapters that,
you know, were just straight drama that there wasn't really a chance to inject any humor
into it.
So you would go through one of those chapters and then the next chapter you'd be laughing
so hard that your stomach hurt.
So that's what I loved about that book.
You would balance the two out.
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In Miami, I actually had an undercover assignment.
It was a case that I was running.
It was a cocaine transportation case where we were negotiating with a Colombian group
out of the Guajira Peninsula up in Northern Colombia to provide us several hundred kilos
of coke.
And we were going to provide the aircraft to go down and pick it up, which we did.
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Well, that organization had a distributor named Chi Chi in Miami.
He was a Cuban.
He had worked many years with the organization.
Incidentally, that organization was headed by a former Colombian congressman who actually
lived in Colombia.
We traveled to Miami all the time.
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So you run into all kinds of people when you're working these cases.
But after we arrested Chi Chi, he went on the run and we couldn't find him for several
months.
We finally tracked him down in Hialeah, a suburb of Miami and myself and Chris Feistel
and Alex Dominguez, A.D. Wright.
We just conducted weeks and weeks of surveillance until we were able to grab this guy.
And we put so much effort into it, not only to put the guy in jail and hold him accountable,
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but to see if we could flip him because while I was undercover with him, we actually got
to know each other quite well.
And we had many, many conversations.
And I realized that this guy could be a guy that we could flip and convince to jump over
to our side.
And that's precisely what he did.
Of course, he was facing 25 to 30 years in prison, but that was probably the greatest
motivation.
But we ended up working with us and he and I, I would take him out of prison and we would
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run around and he would be showing me all the flop houses and the stash houses where
they were keeping their cocaine.
And it was dozens and dozens of places, both in Dade County, Miami area and the county
just north Broward County where Fort Lauderdale is at.
So we were able to do that.
And one day, of course, when you're in prison, you can't get the freshest fruit in the world.
Oh, no.
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Sorry, Bureau of Prisons, but that's probably the case.
And we passed this tree, this mango tree, just a beautiful mango tree.
It was perfectly ready.
Some of the mangoes were dropping.
They were very ripe and he looked up there and he said, stop the car, stop the car in
Spanish.
I need a mango.
I haven't had a mango in two years.
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And I thought to myself, should I let the guy get a mango?
Yeah, let's let him get a mango.
So we pulled over.
He was handcuffed in the front.
And normally, as soon as you arrest somebody, you handcuff them in the rear of their bodies,
right?
It's more secure.
I developed a rapport with this individual so well, and I knew that he wasn't going to
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attack me.
But there was always that chance that he would run, right?
He was still behind bars.
The ruling for reduced time hadn't come yet.
So he really didn't know how much time he was going to have reduced off his sentence
for cooperating.
So I still had him in handcuffs.
Well, I went ahead, took my key out.
I unlocked one of the handcuffs and I said, okay, go get you a mango.
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So I sat in the car while Chi Chi opened up and he walked out and he looked up and he
picked the perfect mango.
He grabbed something, another mango that had fallen and he threw it up about four or five
times.
I was hoping that the owners of the mango tree wouldn't come out and or call the cops
and have us locked up.
That would have been a what the fuck moment.
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Right?
Exactly.
Another WTF.
He ended up hitting his favorite mango.
It fell to the ground.
He grabbed it on his way out.
He scraped up another overripe mango.
He came back to the car and the car door was open and he put the mangoes in his seat.
He stood and he looked down the back of the street in front of the street.
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And at that moment I had a feeling it's like the hairs were standing up on the back of
my neck.
He's going to rabbit.
He's going to take off.
It was that moment, that second when I truly believe that it did come through his mind
to do that.
So I just sat there and watched and then I said, Chichi, Bajacar, no corres, don't run.
If you do, I'm going to shoot you in the back.
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And he just stayed there for another five seconds.
And then he slowly got back in the seat.
I handcuffed him and he enjoyed his mangoes as we went back to prison.
So it worked out in the end and he did a lot of great work.
I was very happy with his cooperation and very proud that he had decided to do the right
thing for us.
That was one of my favorite chapters in the book besides Bahama Malas.
During that we ended up arresting that former congressman and his son who were responsible
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for sending tons, metric tons of cocaine up into South Florida.
There was one chapter in particular.
It involves climbing a ladder and lots of Cerveza being consumed.
I was wondering if you could share that story with us, Dave.
Yeah, when I was a younger agent, less senior, I was being trained.
We didn't have official field training agents, so to speak, like they do now.
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I was working with a more senior agent named Kenny Peterson, who had been on the job at
that time probably 15 or more years.
And Kenny took me under his wing and we ended up opening up a case.
It was a heroin trafficking case based on a referral that Kenny had gotten from an old
Mountie from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
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He was a narc investigator up in Toronto and they had been investigating a heroin trafficker
who was bringing his dope from the Middle East.
They couldn't really put their, they couldn't get close enough to him, right?
They couldn't put their hands on him.
So he had called up Kenny and asked if they could pull together a scenario where Kenny
be a cocaine trafficker from Miami and maybe do a trade of some sort.
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And that introduction was going to occur through an informant that the Mounties had.
So I ended up being involved in that and working with him in an undercover capacity.
My role was, you know, for those who can't see me and you won't see me, I'm a Scotsman,
you know, very Nordic skin colored individual with blue eyes.
I'm obviously not at all looking like a Latino drug trafficker.
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I had an informant before who was a pilot and I had arrested him.
He ended up being a redheaded, blue eyed and light skin colored Canadian.
So I actually parlayed his experiences into what I could pretend and act like I was doing.
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Used him as a brother-in-law and we ended up infiltrating the organization very effectively.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Narcotics Division ended up making one of the biggest
asset seizures that they'd ever made from this guy and they dismantled the entire organization.
So that was kind of a funny story as well.
The title is the Canuck.
The guy we were targeting was his first name was Lenny.
(25:17):
I remember in trial, it's the old UK system right there in Canada.
So you have to stand up in the witness box.
You cannot sit down.
You stand up.
The judge is wearing a white wig.
The prosecutor is wearing a white wig.
It's like something you would expect to see in the 1800s, right?
So I'm up and I testified for the prosecution.
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This guy Lenny, even though he was a heroin trafficker, he was one of the most polite
and most educated individuals I'd ever met.
He was an older man.
It was he and his sons that were involved in the organization.
So once I was excused from the box, I had hammered him in terms of meeting face to face,
talking about the drug deals that he had done, his smuggling activities, the whole ball of
(26:00):
wax.
And I'm walking off the box and I'm walking out of the courtroom and I had to pass him
relatively close to he and his defense attorney.
And as I did, Lenny looked at me and he said, David, from this point forward, you're no
longer welcome into my house.
I can imagine.
Yeah.
Lenny was prosecuted.
He was convicted and he ended up in prison for many years.
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And unfortunately, I was told maybe about five years after his sentence and his incarceration,
he had died of cancer while in custody.
So that's unfortunate for Lenny.
The fact that his sons who were really the true dirtbags, they were the ones that brought
him into it.
But he made the decision to work with him.
So we ended up putting them away, which was the best part of the case.
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Part of that story involves a ladder and a buffalo.
Yeah.
After we had testified, the Mounties took us over to their mess in ESS, which is a cafeteria
bar at RCMP headquarters.
They have a full-size buffalo head.
This thing probably is like eight feet by 10 feet wide, about 15 feet up in the air
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on the wall over the door of the mess.
I was informed that to be totally accepted, they appreciated the work I did, but to be
accepted by the RCMP that I would have to climb up a ladder and kiss the buffalo.
So after about 30 Molson's and blue bats or Blatz Blue or whatever it's called, they ended
(27:30):
up finding a ladder and by golly, I crawled up the ladder and I kissed the buffalo.
I thought I was going to die because you're 15 feet up in the, 18 feet up in the air and
these drunks are holding the ladder.
If they'd have left the ladder alone, I would have been more safe.
I ended up kissing the buffalo and everyone was happy.
The way that you wrote that chapter, parts of it were dead serious.
(27:50):
Then at the end, you brought in the comic relief part.
The way that you were describing the whole ladder scene, there was a couple of outtakes.
I wish I had saved some of that stuff because I was laughing my ass off.
I had to like stop and redo some of the lines because I was just fucking laughing.
It was like laugh out loud shit.
That's how funny this book is.
Thank you.
And that's how it was intended to be.
I wanted anyone who picked up the book to first of all be entertained and second of
(28:12):
all understand that it's not all work and danger and there's a level of humor and entertainment
to any job, but particularly in the DEA.
I wanted to say a young person, male or female, who was interested in law enforcement to read
some of this and see how fun the job and the career really was.
We worked hard and we played hard.
(28:33):
Some guys didn't drink.
Some agents, they would find their relief in other ways, whether it was sports or music
or gaming or whatever they did.
But I decided to talk a little bit about some of those experiences.
There was one particular moment in the book that was really drama filled and it was a
stressful situation doing something undercover and you were being told to partake.
(28:57):
Just the way that you wrote that scene and the way that you overcame that situation.
Blue Mountains, that was our UC in Jamaica.
That was a case where we were in Jamaica in Kingston.
We were meeting with cocaine traffickers who took us up to a stash house that they had
in the Blue Mountains where marijuana was cultivated.
(29:17):
This guy's name was Dreddy.
He took us up, told us to go inside the house.
He would meet us later.
And what we didn't realize is the intention, the true intention by Dreddy was to get us
up in this house and it was more than like a staging house.
It looked like it had been a torture house.
We got in there.
There was only a sofa and a couple of wooden chairs, maybe a fold out chair or two.
(29:41):
No other furniture.
There were bars on all the windows and the doors.
There was no way to get out once we were in.
We were supposed to meet this trafficker, but when we went inside, we realized we were
meeting just four strangers who we never met and they were all sitting in a circle smoking
crack.
So we were being tested as alleged drug traffickers and transporters from Miami.
(30:03):
And he was going to find out whether or not we were real or we were narco agents.
As we were in there and we were talking to these guys, they locked the doors behind us
and we were stuck in that place.
And they said, well, let's go ahead and smoke a rock.
I had a pentasonic recorder in a shirt pocket that was hidden in a pack of cigarettes.
(30:24):
I ended up just basically pulling out a cigarette carefully that I still had in the pack and
told them I was fine.
That's all I do.
And he said, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.
Dread E wants you to smoke one of these.
I said, all right, I guess if I have to, I have to before I do go get a hammer.
(30:44):
And he goes, a hammer, what you need a hammer for?
And I said, well, I'm going to smoke the rock and then I'm going to take that hammer and
knock you upside the damn head.
So we both have the same headache because I'm a recovering drug addict and I cannot
do that.
So let's do that.
I'll hit you in the damn head.
And he looked at me with his bloodshot eyes.
The other three guys looked at me, you know, they had their pistol stuck in their waistband.
(31:08):
One guy had a machete that he was just handling in his lap.
Oh God.
I thought, okay, this is it.
This is where, you know, this is how it ends.
Yeah.
We're going mano a mano to get, you know, and we probably won't win, Chris.
And the guy looks at me with his bloodshot eyes and then all of a sudden he just maniacally
laughs.
He just thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
(31:28):
And the other guys caught on and began to laugh.
And I shook my head, lit the cigarette, took a couple of drags and we just kept talking.
You see, Dave, even hardcore criminals find you funny.
You should be a fucking standup comic.
I guess when you're pressured with death, you might come up with some idea of what to
say that's funny.
But yeah, it's called comedic relief because they were probably a little on edge themselves,
(31:53):
right?
Oh, I'm sure.
Never having met us, didn't know whether we were wired or whatnot.
And the reason I had the Panasonic was because if I had wore a wire, they could have had
an RF detector and they would know that the frequencies were working and they could have
detected that we were bugged and we didn't want that.
And I'm very glad that we didn't do that.
(32:14):
Turns out we got out alive.
We ended up, I'm sorry to say, drink another probably case of Red Stripe and got out and
made the deal happen.
So that Panasonic recorder may have captured you saying, do you have a hammer?
Exactly.
Oh, it did.
It did.
It captured every word.
Yeah.
(32:35):
And then during that time, another one of the guys also bloodshot eyes, he reached over,
he wanted a cigarette.
So he reached over and he grabbed my pocket.
Yeah.
And when he did, I put my hand, I slapped my hand up against him, against my shoulder.
And I said, what are you doing?
He says, I want a smoke, man.
And I said, hey, look, I'll give you one.
So I reached in and I had one left and I pulled it out and I held it up and I said, this is
(32:59):
my last one.
You're a lucky man.
And I gave it to him and he was happy.
And it wasn't long after that we left.
What is or was the DEA's policy on something like that happening?
Had you been forced?
If you had no other choice but to do that, what would happen to you at that point?
Oh, it's quite simple, man.
It's like a stop sign, right?
There's no yellow.
It's not a stop light.
(33:20):
It's a stop sign in policy.
You never do it.
However, if someone had a gun to your head on a human level, you're going to do what
you have to do to survive.
Oh yeah.
And I don't think there would be any ramifications to that.
It would be unfortunate all the way around, but no, I don't think you would be punished
for doing something to save your own life.
It's self-defense at that point.
Yeah, but the stop sign says don't do it.
(33:42):
That's the policy.
You do not do it.
You can't give somebody just a crack.
And if you did, there would be all kinds of excuses as to why people took drugs.
And unfortunately, there have been cases where DEA agents became drug addicts.
We had an agent up in New York who had track marks on his arms.
In the summer, he would wear long sleeve shirts.
(34:04):
Eventually it came out that the guy was a heroin addict.
And that started when he was operating with a particular informant that was a heroin addict.
For some reason, he thought it was a good idea to try it.
Maybe they'd get closer to the organization, but no, you can't do that.
He's no longer in employment with the government.
(34:25):
I can imagine for some people with addictive personalities that when you have a job with
that much responsibility on your shoulders, that's the wrong line of work to be in because
it would just be way too tempting.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, in training, they'll light some good, rich, seized weed and then you will get a
smell of it, an odor of it.
You're not smoking it, but you have to familiarize yourself with what this kind of weed smells
(34:51):
like, what another kind of weed smells like.
It's all part of the training.
And of course, the real training happens when you get out on the street.
I remember one time in Miami, in Miami Beach, we were called to meet somebody.
Myself and Kenny Peterson, we went out, met with the informant, which was maybe a 40-ish,
40-something year old female, Colombian national.
And she surprised us with a gram of coke.
(35:13):
She says, hey, I just got this and it's really good.
I just tried it.
It's awesome.
Go get it checked out.
And we were like, good grief.
Now we have to open up an actual file because we have drugs to register.
It was like the last thing that we wanted to do on a Friday afternoon, three hours of
paperwork.
What are you going to do?
We took the gram, we took it back, we processed it.
(35:36):
And they throw you curve balls, these informants, they throw you curve balls all the time.
You talk about addictive personalities.
And I think that is such an important point to remember why our country is in the position
that it is.
Forgive me for changing directions, but if you look at the drug abuse levels pretty much
(35:59):
across our nation, reflected by the number of overdoses that have occurred in recent
years because of this fentanyl component that has been added to the drug consumption equation.
How many people in the USA are overdosing and many dying every year from fentanyl overdose?
(36:20):
Even though they didn't even realize that they were ingesting fentanyl.
They thought they were ingesting Adderall or Percocet or some kind of relief agent.
That looked like a Skittles candy.
I think it's over a hundred thousand a year that we've been consistently losing over the
past three or four years.
That's an entire generation.
(36:40):
So I think the addiction personality does play a role in that.
And it's something that we as a society and certainly reflective in our government need
to closely closely examine and maybe create some kind of mental health organization specific
to the reduction of drugs in our country because it's just off the hook.
(37:03):
It's way, way too serious and it's killing an entire generation of our own society in
America.
You know, we can't let that last.
We have to find a way to stop it.
And this is not to mention the family members loss, right?
So if you've got a 16 year old who thinks he's taking Adderall to study a little bit
harder and get good grades and please his parents and his teachers, and then he dies,
(37:26):
we've got the parents, the extended family members, the brother, the sister, you know,
the teachers, the people who love this young person.
And it's happening way too often.
So how, you know, that's a WTF issue.
How are we letting our society kill itself in droves like that in hundreds of thousands
of people.
And we have to come up with a national drug abuse strategy.
(37:48):
Forget national drug control strategy because we have that in place now, but we have no
national drug abuse strategy that needs to be talked about and readily put into place
because we need to start saving these lives, man.
I would say one of our most serious Achilles heel in this country is drug abuse.
And I'm not talking about somebody who may light a joint once a week, you know, on a
(38:12):
Friday evening.
And I said in the book, the Noble Experiment, I don't think it's a federal issue simply
because we don't have the time to deal with it.
We have fatter fish to fry.
That's not what we're talking about here.
We're talking about the fentanyl poison that's infecting our entire society.
I do feel that the state should be in charge of it.
I mean, let the states decide what the states want to do.
(38:34):
And if they want to enforce cannabis laws, let them enforce cannabis laws.
It's their state to manage.
For those that don't, let them do what they want to do.
If there's middle ground, medicinal purposes, things like that, then that's fine too.
But I just don't think it's a federal issue any longer.
We have too many serious issues that we have to deal with.
You know, the abuse of pharmaceutical drugs is off the hook and has been for many years.
(38:59):
At one point, I would say around 2006, 2007, Vicodin was the number one abused drugs in
the USA.
I remember that.
Yeah.
WTF.
There's a purpose for it, a medical purpose is what causes people who feel they're so
stressed out to crush it up, oxycodone, oxycotton, same thing, right, and have this intense high
(39:21):
effect and euphoric effect as opposed to, you know, drinking a couple of beers, you
know, or doing whatever else they wanted to do.
It's just, it's a WTF for me.
I wish we could figure out and we can, but it's going to take a generation or two.
Look, when's the last time you were in your car?
Less than 12 hours ago.
Did you put your seatbelt on?
I did.
I always put my seatbelt on too.
(39:42):
You know, your father and grandfather never put a seatbelt on even when they had them.
It wasn't in the, in the mentality.
You didn't need it.
You didn't think it was important.
So you just didn't take the second to wrap it around you.
Right.
And even when I was younger, I mean, I'm 63.
So when I first started driving, I didn't use a seatbelt.
I was told I needed to, but I didn't use it.
(40:03):
Now everybody uses a seatbelt.
Why do you use a seatbelt?
Because you know that eventually there's a chance something bad could happen and that
seatbelt might keep you a little safer.
Right.
So we need to change that whole mentality about the need for diverted pharmaceutical
drugs or just using out and out, you know, hardcore legal drugs like methamphetamine,
(40:26):
cocaine, heroin, the array of other drugs like that.
It's something that I hope we can change because people are dying every day and that's sad.
It's something that we will definitely have to change.
And I hope we can fortify and create, develop some kind of robust system that addresses
addiction, and addresses the cause of addiction.
(40:46):
And I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, the daily stresses that people involve
themselves into.
And if they can just figure out ways to deal with it other than taking a chance, rolling
the dice and popping a pill that they know nothing about or its origin or where it came
from, we could go a long way.
To follow up with such a serious subject like that, you mentioned a few moments ago about
(41:07):
wearing a seatbelt.
Part of the reason that I do it, if I don't do it, my car has a fucking idiot alarm that
will go off until I put the motherfucker on.
That's a what the fuck.
And I bet you, I bet the WTF comes in your mind every time you hear that whistle or that
bell, right?
I'll put them, oh, all right, just to get it to shut up.
(41:28):
No, that's great.
That's a beautiful, beautiful send off.
And I appreciate again, very much.
I appreciate the time to talk to you.
I love catching up.
We only need to do this.
It doesn't have to be a podcast.
It could just be talking and catching up someday, man.
I'm proud of you and I'm happy that things are going well for you.
Dave Gaddis was a Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA, special agent for more than 25 years,
(00:06):
serving in some of the most dangerous drug enforcement regions around the world.
From Miami to Mexico, Colombia to Nicaragua, he worked investigations against the Mexican
and Colombian cartels responsible for supplying all of the cocaine and most of the heroin
destined for the United States.
Beginning as a criminal investigator in Miami's cocaine cowboys era in the 1980s, he finished
(00:27):
his career in 2011 as the Chief of Global Enforcement Operations at his DEA headquarters
office overlooking the U.S. Capitol and Washington, D.C. skyline.
I'm Jake Jacobs, and you're listening to What The F—
(00:48):
Having said all of that, Dave and I were supposed to start our recording this morning at 8
a.m. Central, and in classic What The F— fashion, Dave sends me a text and says, can
we delay about 30 minutes?
My refrigerator just gave out and I'm trying to salvage some food.
So good morning, Dave.
How the hell are you?
Good morning, Jake.
It could be better, but hey, you got to play the card you're dealt, right?
(01:13):
Yeah, man.
So hopefully you're not going to lose any food.
What happened?
It's just the whole fridge, freezer, everything?
Well let me tell you, I get up this morning with my wife.
As usual, she goes over to make some coffee.
She notices that she's stepping in water in the kitchen because the coffee maker is next
to the refrigerator.
So she lets me know about it, and I go over there and sure enough, there's like a lake
(01:36):
sitting around in front of the refrigerator and around the refrigerator, and I realize,
oh, WTF.
I've got a whole situation that I got to deal with this morning.
And a little background, I built this house a few years ago and I had custom cabinets
made.
So the width of the custom cabinets to which the refrigerator slides into, and it's a double
(02:00):
door refrigerator, it slides into, and I mean, there isn't a piece of hair that could fit
on the left or the right of this refrigerator when it's actually stuck in that compartment.
So that's one of the problems.
The second problem is I have to take the handles off the refrigerator to get it fully out so
(02:21):
that I can get behind it and then unplug it before I start moving it around.
So it's like wrestling a 500 pounds silverback gorilla to get this thing in a position to
where you could find out what's happening.
Well, what was happening was, and this happens with refrigerators all the time, is that the
drain pan gets filled up because a tube gets filled with whatever, right?
(02:46):
Algae, particles, sometimes it ices over because the ice maker, you know, getting it too cold.
And that's what I had.
So I pushed it out, got the back off of it, looked at it, saw that the pan is completely
full.
So after this, I'll be back at the refrigerator cleaning out the pan and trying to figure
out what the hell I can do to get this refrigerator working.
(03:08):
But yeah, it was a real mess this morning.
It was definitely a WTF moment.
Hopefully the refrigerator is okay and there's nothing internally wrong with it.
Well this appliance is two years old.
Oh.
Imagine that.
And I've already had to replace a dryer that's two years old because the motor failed.
It's like, don't they make anything that's worth a crap anymore?
(03:30):
I was rolling this around in my mind this, well actually last night, how I was going
to properly introduce Dave to my audience or to this audience or whoever's listening.
About two years ago, I fancied myself an audiobook narrator and I was going through auditions
and I was mainly doing nonfiction type stuff and didn't really want to do anything that
had, where I had to think about it, where I had to do dialogue and you know, stuff like
(03:52):
that.
I was doing 10, 15 auditions a day and this one particular day I was, it was at the end
of the day.
I had a little bit of time left.
I could do at least one more.
This audition pops up and it's for a book called the Noble Experiment and I pull up
the audition script and the first thing I see is fucking dialogue.
Like okay, you know what?
I'm just going to, I'm just going to do it.
(04:13):
And I've told Dave this before.
I didn't give it my best.
I mean, I did it to the best of what I could do that particular day.
I was like, there is no way I'm going to get a call back on this.
I don't know if it was that same night or maybe the next day.
I got an email from ACX and they're like, yeah, the author wants to at least talk to
you or it was something positive.
And then I reached out to Dave and Dave was like, man, I listened to some auditions before
(04:36):
you, but you nailed it.
And I was like, are you shitting me?
Like that was a what the fuck moment because I had no, yeah.
Perhaps that's the key.
Don't try too hard, right?
Yeah.
Cause the opening line is, Dave, I'm hit.
I've been hit.
Right.
And that's exactly how I read it.
I'll be out to this day.
I remember how I did that.
(04:57):
So the second part of that was this same time, about a year ago, I had the bright idea of
trying to do a podcast similar to this, but it involved video.
Right?
So Dave and I actually filmed the pilot and we were, you know, we actually had to do it
twice, you know, cause we're trying to figure the video part out of it.
And then life happened.
My daughter was in a bad car accident and things kind of got delayed.
(05:18):
And then the more I thought about it, I was like, you know, Dave and I are two very handsome
fellas, and I just don't think the world was ready for that yet and it would have created
a paradox and you know, we would have had millions of screaming fans.
It wouldn't have been good for either one of us.
So audio is where it's at, at least for me right now.
So Dave, how the hell are you?
I would like to think that we had faces for video, but this seems to be working out much
(05:43):
better, don't you think?
So, you know, what kills me is giving a bit of history about us.
It was just so interesting that we had actually crossed paths, perhaps not face to face, but
when you were in service out in the carib, I certainly in around South Florida, I was
(06:04):
working and hitting the Narcos in the same places at the same time.
Yeah.
Part of my Navy career in the late eighties, I was on a ship, the USS Ainsworth, it was
a Knox class frigate and at least two or three times we went down to the Caribbean for drug
and addiction ops, so we liaison with the Coast Guard and lo and behold, Dave was in
that area at that same time.
(06:26):
So it's quite possible that Dave and I crossed paths and never knew it.
That's right.
Doing the same thing.
Doing the same thing.
Yeah.
You know, just trying to stop the supplier, let's say slow down the supply of illegal
drugs.
There are a lot of people out then in that theater doing these things.
So who knows?
We may have even complimented each other.
We were sending a lot of Intel to DOD and the Navy was out there doing what they could
(06:46):
do.
So I just thought that was kind of interesting.
That was.
So other than this morning with your refrigerator, okay.
First of all, let me just say, let's not say that word.
Let's not say refrigerator at all.
We can call it silverback because it's a stainless steel appliance.
And you know, in Africa, I did some kidnap for ransom negotiations after my DEA career.
(07:09):
And in Africa, there's a saying, when two elephants fight, only the grass dies.
And I can tell you, when I wrestled this silverback today, the floor was the only thing that died.
Well, I can imagine.
Is it going to be safe to say that Dave might be having some lower back issues today?
Dave is going to have a nice cocktail at about seven o'clock tonight.
(07:30):
He's probably not going to stop until midnight.
I was informed during one of our failed pilot attempts that DEA stands for drinks every
afternoon.
So is that still in play?
Hey, I've heard that too.
And more places than you can imagine.
I was kind of nervous when I was going to talk to Dave the first time.
(07:50):
I was fucking DEA agent.
Like, this guy's going to kick my ass.
And he's like, no, no, we drink every afternoon.
I'm like, I like this guy.
You know, speaking of the Caribbean, there's a, I did some duty in Georgetown, Bahamas.
There was a little watering hole called the Two Turtles Inn in Georgetown.
And after you're running 36 hours, 48 hours, and you know, you're in Black Hawk helicopters
(08:14):
chasing aircraft, drug laden aircraft and smugglers and, you know, rolling down behind
them and arresting them.
And then the Bahamian strike force taking them up to Nassau to jail and processing whatsoever.
You would eventually get to the Two Turtles Inn.
And, but you know, you cannot drink, if you're going to be involved with aircraft the following
(08:35):
day, you cannot drink a drop, a full 12 hours before you enter that aircraft and, or even
get to the airport.
So we would be right there at the Two Turtles Inn.
And then when we knew we were getting up to that 12 o'clock mark, that would be a sprint.
It's a marathon up until then.
(08:55):
But then when you're an hour, an hour and a half before that 12 o'clock, it's time to
unload man, bring out the shots.
Now you have a long career with the DEA, plus you've had careers after that.
So with the DEA part of your story, what was the first what the fuck you ever had, you
know, as a DEA agent?
Oh, man.
I mean, there are so many.
And many of them are strictly as a result of my stupidity, because when you're young
(09:18):
and dumb, you just don't think about the next thing to do.
I mean, it's one time I was on surveillance and I happened to be driving the surveillance
van and this was in Miami where they have the toll booths all over the place.
I was on the Dolphin Expressway 836.
So the target of the surveillance goes through the toll booth.
And of course, they're flying, man.
(09:40):
I mean, that's that's how they do it.
Right.
It's part of their heat runs.
Heat runs are them checking for counters.
You know, they're they're conducting counter surveillance to see if they're being surveilled.
So they would speed up.
They would change six lanes in 50 yards, you know, get into that toll lane, get through
change into another toll lane and then haul ass.
Right.
(10:00):
And I'm trying to keep up with the other surveillance vehicles, which are all, you know, Chevy Malibu's
or BMW or whatever we had in the collection of seized vehicles.
This particular surveillance van had one of those old timey television antennas hanging
off the top of it, like the V's.
You know, came out like a bird flying.
When I went through that toll booth, I went a bit too fast and ended up hitting a bar
(10:26):
that was across the toll booth.
Had I gone probably slow and picked the right place to go through it, I would have been
OK.
The antenna was ripped off.
I ended up hitting the side of one of the concrete barrier poles.
So I ended up having to go back after that surveillance and explain to my group supervisor
why the surveillance van had looked like it had been in a tornado.
(10:50):
I think I had about a month on the job at that time.
Fortunately, I had a great supervisor and he was able to work with me and, you know,
I didn't take too much heat for it, although I probably had to wash his O.G.V. official
government vehicle for about six months after that.
Was that J.A.?
Actually, it was J.A. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
That's right.
(11:10):
It sure was.
Johnny Arms.
Yeah, Johnny Arms.
Great guy.
Great guy.
One of the best.
And then there were other times when I had involved in another traffic accident.
I was on my way.
I mean, you love the job so much if you're showing a pattern here, Dave.
There's a pattern.
Good thing I don't drive silverbacks.
(11:31):
But you know, I was I was driving to work one time and again had to do with a toll booth
this time on the parkway.
This is a real pattern now.
Come on.
And I was trying to look.
This was a Monday morning, too, man.
And I'm speeding to go to work because I am so ready for a productive week.
We had a list of tasks and operations to do some surveillance.
(11:53):
I reached down to quickly look at a report.
You know, we didn't have cell phones back then.
We're talking about 1986, 87.
We didn't have cell phones, but I had a report and some notes that I needed to review.
Of course, I thought that I could review them and drive at the same time.
And I ended up at the toll booth that backs up traffic.
And some guy was sitting there in my lane and boom, I rear end them.
(12:16):
And totally my fault.
That ended up being another issue with a different supervisor.
That was a few years later.
But yeah, there seems to be a pattern with me and O.G.V.s.
There were others, too, that I'll fail to mention.
But you know, when you're on surveillance, you're doing like six things at once, right?
You're driving, you're looking at your target, you're on the radio communicating with other
(12:37):
surveillance agents.
You're looking for other people driving that are going to cut you off inevitably and get
up behind you and do what they need to do.
So it's kind of a crazy experience and it develops into a skill.
When you're young and dumb, you can have some accidents.
And many of us did.
These O.G.V.s, what were they?
They were a whole variety of different seized vehicles from the narcos.
(13:00):
One great thing about DEA, I don't know about currently, but back in the days when I was
on the street, we pretty much didn't cost the government.
We didn't cost the American taxpayer one penny because we ended up seizing so much drug proceeds
and seizing the cars that they were using and other assets that they had like houses
and campers and everything that they used to buy with drug money from their trafficking
(13:23):
activities, we were able to seize.
So we pretty much just existed on our own and our vehicle inventory was outstanding.
I mean, everything from a 560 SL Mercedes Benz to Buick LaSavre.
And they all matched with whatever vehicles were out in the Miami area at the time.
So it was kind of nice to have a free vehicle, if you will.
(13:44):
Were you assigned cars?
Like how did that work?
Well, we were permanently assigned cars.
And of course, the senior guys and the guys that were producing the most in terms of their
investigations in their cases, usually got the best cars and they should have.
The younger guys and the guys that were in a support role, they usually got cars that
were more in line with the Buicks and Chevys and Fords and things like that.
(14:07):
Dodge Neon.
Yeah, thank goodness we didn't have electric vehicles at the time.
I probably would have been relegated to one of them after my second accident.
The book opens literally with a bang with the chapter swords drawn.
Tell us about that day.
Jake, that was the true bottom line, straight up WTF moment.
Yeah.
(14:28):
You know, when you're looking at a barrel of a gun pointed at your head and rounds are
sailing over your ears, you realize that that is the first thing you think of WTF.
I mean, I'm just doing my job.
What are they thinking?
So we ended up in a firefight in Miami Lakes, Dade County, just a small community just north
(14:49):
of Miami.
It was a drug trafficker who had come over in the 1980s in the Marial boat lift.
He was Cuban and little did we know at the time, we knew he was trafficking drugs, but
we didn't know that in Cuba and after coming to the US up in New York, he had murdered
several people.
He was a serial killer.
He was a hitman for a drug organization.
(15:09):
So it all came together in a few seconds and we ended up having to settle it pretty much
mano to mano right there.
My partner, A.D. Wright and myself and this guy in a house in the proximity of about 15
feet.
So I think maybe, let's see, he began shooting and he had a clip with eight rounds in it.
He had an extra clip that he wasn't able to change out and between A.D. and I, we probably
(15:34):
fired maybe about 14, 15 rounds.
So it was a quick shootout.
It was six months into the job and that was a true WTF moment.
Okay, I'm in it now.
This is real.
Yeah.
So of course, Dave has to pick that exact fucking moment in his book for me to audition
for.
(15:54):
So yeah, he could have picked anything, but it had to have been that.
With just a little dialogue, right?
Yeah, yeah.
No, but you did great.
You really did.
You knocked it out of the park and you didn't even try.
So I felt like you had, I mean, you do, you truly do have a voice for radio and a face
for movie theaters, but you're really great on radio and I love the way it came out.
(16:17):
So if anyone's interested, they would probably get much more out of the Noble experiment
by buying the audio version.
It was funny because I think one of the things that you said after we started communicating
after you offered me the job, you were like, Jake, I listened to some auditions.
About a dozen.
Yeah.
He said, I don't know what it was.
There's something about, if you've ever read the book or you listen to the book, there's
some sarcasm here and there, just sprinkled with a little bit.
(16:40):
And I think Dave and I both are fluent in sarcasm.
And as I was narrating it, I was sensing the sarcasm and I'm a sarcastic guy anyway.
So that's how I was reading it.
Plus I was tired that day.
I wasn't really putting, so I guess all of those conditions combined.
At one point you said, you read my sarcasm the way I wrote it.
It was, I forget how you put it, but that it was something about the sarcasm that I
got.
And you were like, that's it.
That's, that's.
(17:01):
Yeah.
You picked up on the mood.
You picked up on the mood and the vibe of what I was trying to say, because when I wrote
this book, I, I didn't write it to make money.
I wrote it because my children someday might want to read it.
And, and they already have.
I was going to ask you, have they?
They have, they have.
In fact, my daughter, she works for a, a major distribution company.
She told me that many of her coworkers ended up having it in all of their workstations.
(17:26):
So that, that made me feel pretty good that someone, you know, 30 years younger than me
would actually have some interest in something I had to say.
Well the dad was a fucking hero.
So of course, yeah.
Oh, come on.
It really was like you said, there was a lot, there's a lot of humor embedded into this
book.
And the reason is, is the stories are about human nature.
And even though people do bad things, they're not always truly bad people.
(17:50):
The chapter mangoes about me and Chi Chi, my informant who I had arrested.
I got to know this guy and I felt like Chi Chi was really a nice guy that was wrapped
in a lot of bad, bad situations.
A lot of bad things going on in his life.
So we ended up working together and had a lot of fun.
You got to be humorous, right?
I mean, people are funny at good times and bad times.
(18:12):
If you pick up on the comedy relief part of it.
Well what's cool about the way you wrote that book, Dave, is there were some chapters that,
you know, were just straight drama that there wasn't really a chance to inject any humor
into it.
So you would go through one of those chapters and then the next chapter you'd be laughing
so hard that your stomach hurt.
So that's what I loved about that book.
You would balance the two out.
(18:33):
In Miami, I actually had an undercover assignment.
It was a case that I was running.
It was a cocaine transportation case where we were negotiating with a Colombian group
out of the Guajira Peninsula up in Northern Colombia to provide us several hundred kilos
of coke.
And we were going to provide the aircraft to go down and pick it up, which we did.
(18:54):
Well, that organization had a distributor named Chi Chi in Miami.
He was a Cuban.
He had worked many years with the organization.
Incidentally, that organization was headed by a former Colombian congressman who actually
lived in Colombia.
We traveled to Miami all the time.
(19:15):
So you run into all kinds of people when you're working these cases.
But after we arrested Chi Chi, he went on the run and we couldn't find him for several
months.
We finally tracked him down in Hialeah, a suburb of Miami and myself and Chris Feistel
and Alex Dominguez, A.D. Wright.
We just conducted weeks and weeks of surveillance until we were able to grab this guy.
And we put so much effort into it, not only to put the guy in jail and hold him accountable,
(19:39):
but to see if we could flip him because while I was undercover with him, we actually got
to know each other quite well.
And we had many, many conversations.
And I realized that this guy could be a guy that we could flip and convince to jump over
to our side.
And that's precisely what he did.
Of course, he was facing 25 to 30 years in prison, but that was probably the greatest
motivation.
But we ended up working with us and he and I, I would take him out of prison and we would
(20:04):
run around and he would be showing me all the flop houses and the stash houses where
they were keeping their cocaine.
And it was dozens and dozens of places, both in Dade County, Miami area and the county
just north Broward County where Fort Lauderdale is at.
So we were able to do that.
And one day, of course, when you're in prison, you can't get the freshest fruit in the world.
Oh, no.
(20:25):
Sorry, Bureau of Prisons, but that's probably the case.
And we passed this tree, this mango tree, just a beautiful mango tree.
It was perfectly ready.
Some of the mangoes were dropping.
They were very ripe and he looked up there and he said, stop the car, stop the car in
Spanish.
I need a mango.
I haven't had a mango in two years.
(20:45):
And I thought to myself, should I let the guy get a mango?
Yeah, let's let him get a mango.
So we pulled over.
He was handcuffed in the front.
And normally, as soon as you arrest somebody, you handcuff them in the rear of their bodies,
right?
It's more secure.
I developed a rapport with this individual so well, and I knew that he wasn't going to
(21:07):
attack me.
But there was always that chance that he would run, right?
He was still behind bars.
The ruling for reduced time hadn't come yet.
So he really didn't know how much time he was going to have reduced off his sentence
for cooperating.
So I still had him in handcuffs.
Well, I went ahead, took my key out.
I unlocked one of the handcuffs and I said, okay, go get you a mango.
(21:29):
So I sat in the car while Chi Chi opened up and he walked out and he looked up and he
picked the perfect mango.
He grabbed something, another mango that had fallen and he threw it up about four or five
times.
I was hoping that the owners of the mango tree wouldn't come out and or call the cops
and have us locked up.
That would have been a what the fuck moment.
(21:50):
Right?
Exactly.
Another WTF.
He ended up hitting his favorite mango.
It fell to the ground.
He grabbed it on his way out.
He scraped up another overripe mango.
He came back to the car and the car door was open and he put the mangoes in his seat.
He stood and he looked down the back of the street in front of the street.
(22:10):
And at that moment I had a feeling it's like the hairs were standing up on the back of
my neck.
He's going to rabbit.
He's going to take off.
It was that moment, that second when I truly believe that it did come through his mind
to do that.
So I just sat there and watched and then I said, Chichi, Bajacar, no corres, don't run.
If you do, I'm going to shoot you in the back.
(22:32):
And he just stayed there for another five seconds.
And then he slowly got back in the seat.
I handcuffed him and he enjoyed his mangoes as we went back to prison.
So it worked out in the end and he did a lot of great work.
I was very happy with his cooperation and very proud that he had decided to do the right
thing for us.
That was one of my favorite chapters in the book besides Bahama Malas.
During that we ended up arresting that former congressman and his son who were responsible
(22:56):
for sending tons, metric tons of cocaine up into South Florida.
There was one chapter in particular.
It involves climbing a ladder and lots of Cerveza being consumed.
I was wondering if you could share that story with us, Dave.
Yeah, when I was a younger agent, less senior, I was being trained.
We didn't have official field training agents, so to speak, like they do now.
(23:19):
I was working with a more senior agent named Kenny Peterson, who had been on the job at
that time probably 15 or more years.
And Kenny took me under his wing and we ended up opening up a case.
It was a heroin trafficking case based on a referral that Kenny had gotten from an old
Mountie from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
(23:42):
He was a narc investigator up in Toronto and they had been investigating a heroin trafficker
who was bringing his dope from the Middle East.
They couldn't really put their, they couldn't get close enough to him, right?
They couldn't put their hands on him.
So he had called up Kenny and asked if they could pull together a scenario where Kenny
be a cocaine trafficker from Miami and maybe do a trade of some sort.
(24:08):
And that introduction was going to occur through an informant that the Mounties had.
So I ended up being involved in that and working with him in an undercover capacity.
My role was, you know, for those who can't see me and you won't see me, I'm a Scotsman,
you know, very Nordic skin colored individual with blue eyes.
I'm obviously not at all looking like a Latino drug trafficker.
(24:33):
I had an informant before who was a pilot and I had arrested him.
He ended up being a redheaded, blue eyed and light skin colored Canadian.
So I actually parlayed his experiences into what I could pretend and act like I was doing.
(24:53):
Used him as a brother-in-law and we ended up infiltrating the organization very effectively.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Narcotics Division ended up making one of the biggest
asset seizures that they'd ever made from this guy and they dismantled the entire organization.
So that was kind of a funny story as well.
The title is the Canuck.
The guy we were targeting was his first name was Lenny.
(25:17):
I remember in trial, it's the old UK system right there in Canada.
So you have to stand up in the witness box.
You cannot sit down.
You stand up.
The judge is wearing a white wig.
The prosecutor is wearing a white wig.
It's like something you would expect to see in the 1800s, right?
So I'm up and I testified for the prosecution.
(25:39):
This guy Lenny, even though he was a heroin trafficker, he was one of the most polite
and most educated individuals I'd ever met.
He was an older man.
It was he and his sons that were involved in the organization.
So once I was excused from the box, I had hammered him in terms of meeting face to face,
talking about the drug deals that he had done, his smuggling activities, the whole ball of
(26:00):
wax.
And I'm walking off the box and I'm walking out of the courtroom and I had to pass him
relatively close to he and his defense attorney.
And as I did, Lenny looked at me and he said, David, from this point forward, you're no
longer welcome into my house.
I can imagine.
Yeah.
Lenny was prosecuted.
He was convicted and he ended up in prison for many years.
(26:23):
And unfortunately, I was told maybe about five years after his sentence and his incarceration,
he had died of cancer while in custody.
So that's unfortunate for Lenny.
The fact that his sons who were really the true dirtbags, they were the ones that brought
him into it.
But he made the decision to work with him.
So we ended up putting them away, which was the best part of the case.
(26:46):
Part of that story involves a ladder and a buffalo.
Yeah.
After we had testified, the Mounties took us over to their mess in ESS, which is a cafeteria
bar at RCMP headquarters.
They have a full-size buffalo head.
This thing probably is like eight feet by 10 feet wide, about 15 feet up in the air
(27:08):
on the wall over the door of the mess.
I was informed that to be totally accepted, they appreciated the work I did, but to be
accepted by the RCMP that I would have to climb up a ladder and kiss the buffalo.
So after about 30 Molson's and blue bats or Blatz Blue or whatever it's called, they ended
(27:30):
up finding a ladder and by golly, I crawled up the ladder and I kissed the buffalo.
I thought I was going to die because you're 15 feet up in the, 18 feet up in the air and
these drunks are holding the ladder.
If they'd have left the ladder alone, I would have been more safe.
I ended up kissing the buffalo and everyone was happy.
The way that you wrote that chapter, parts of it were dead serious.
(27:50):
Then at the end, you brought in the comic relief part.
The way that you were describing the whole ladder scene, there was a couple of outtakes.
I wish I had saved some of that stuff because I was laughing my ass off.
I had to like stop and redo some of the lines because I was just fucking laughing.
It was like laugh out loud shit.
That's how funny this book is.
Thank you.
And that's how it was intended to be.
I wanted anyone who picked up the book to first of all be entertained and second of
(28:12):
all understand that it's not all work and danger and there's a level of humor and entertainment
to any job, but particularly in the DEA.
I wanted to say a young person, male or female, who was interested in law enforcement to read
some of this and see how fun the job and the career really was.
We worked hard and we played hard.
(28:33):
Some guys didn't drink.
Some agents, they would find their relief in other ways, whether it was sports or music
or gaming or whatever they did.
But I decided to talk a little bit about some of those experiences.
There was one particular moment in the book that was really drama filled and it was a
stressful situation doing something undercover and you were being told to partake.
(28:57):
Just the way that you wrote that scene and the way that you overcame that situation.
Blue Mountains, that was our UC in Jamaica.
That was a case where we were in Jamaica in Kingston.
We were meeting with cocaine traffickers who took us up to a stash house that they had
in the Blue Mountains where marijuana was cultivated.
(29:17):
This guy's name was Dreddy.
He took us up, told us to go inside the house.
He would meet us later.
And what we didn't realize is the intention, the true intention by Dreddy was to get us
up in this house and it was more than like a staging house.
It looked like it had been a torture house.
We got in there.
There was only a sofa and a couple of wooden chairs, maybe a fold out chair or two.
(29:41):
No other furniture.
There were bars on all the windows and the doors.
There was no way to get out once we were in.
We were supposed to meet this trafficker, but when we went inside, we realized we were
meeting just four strangers who we never met and they were all sitting in a circle smoking
crack.
So we were being tested as alleged drug traffickers and transporters from Miami.
(30:03):
And he was going to find out whether or not we were real or we were narco agents.
As we were in there and we were talking to these guys, they locked the doors behind us
and we were stuck in that place.
And they said, well, let's go ahead and smoke a rock.
I had a pentasonic recorder in a shirt pocket that was hidden in a pack of cigarettes.
(30:24):
I ended up just basically pulling out a cigarette carefully that I still had in the pack and
told them I was fine.
That's all I do.
And he said, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.
Dread E wants you to smoke one of these.
I said, all right, I guess if I have to, I have to before I do go get a hammer.
(30:44):
And he goes, a hammer, what you need a hammer for?
And I said, well, I'm going to smoke the rock and then I'm going to take that hammer and
knock you upside the damn head.
So we both have the same headache because I'm a recovering drug addict and I cannot
do that.
So let's do that.
I'll hit you in the damn head.
And he looked at me with his bloodshot eyes.
The other three guys looked at me, you know, they had their pistol stuck in their waistband.
(31:08):
One guy had a machete that he was just handling in his lap.
Oh God.
I thought, okay, this is it.
This is where, you know, this is how it ends.
Yeah.
We're going mano a mano to get, you know, and we probably won't win, Chris.
And the guy looks at me with his bloodshot eyes and then all of a sudden he just maniacally
laughs.
He just thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
(31:28):
And the other guys caught on and began to laugh.
And I shook my head, lit the cigarette, took a couple of drags and we just kept talking.
You see, Dave, even hardcore criminals find you funny.
You should be a fucking standup comic.
I guess when you're pressured with death, you might come up with some idea of what to
say that's funny.
But yeah, it's called comedic relief because they were probably a little on edge themselves,
(31:53):
right?
Oh, I'm sure.
Never having met us, didn't know whether we were wired or whatnot.
And the reason I had the Panasonic was because if I had wore a wire, they could have had
an RF detector and they would know that the frequencies were working and they could have
detected that we were bugged and we didn't want that.
And I'm very glad that we didn't do that.
(32:14):
Turns out we got out alive.
We ended up, I'm sorry to say, drink another probably case of Red Stripe and got out and
made the deal happen.
So that Panasonic recorder may have captured you saying, do you have a hammer?
Exactly.
Oh, it did.
It did.
It captured every word.
Yeah.
(32:35):
And then during that time, another one of the guys also bloodshot eyes, he reached over,
he wanted a cigarette.
So he reached over and he grabbed my pocket.
Yeah.
And when he did, I put my hand, I slapped my hand up against him, against my shoulder.
And I said, what are you doing?
He says, I want a smoke, man.
And I said, hey, look, I'll give you one.
So I reached in and I had one left and I pulled it out and I held it up and I said, this is
(32:59):
my last one.
You're a lucky man.
And I gave it to him and he was happy.
And it wasn't long after that we left.
What is or was the DEA's policy on something like that happening?
Had you been forced?
If you had no other choice but to do that, what would happen to you at that point?
Oh, it's quite simple, man.
It's like a stop sign, right?
There's no yellow.
It's not a stop light.
(33:20):
It's a stop sign in policy.
You never do it.
However, if someone had a gun to your head on a human level, you're going to do what
you have to do to survive.
Oh yeah.
And I don't think there would be any ramifications to that.
It would be unfortunate all the way around, but no, I don't think you would be punished
for doing something to save your own life.
It's self-defense at that point.
Yeah, but the stop sign says don't do it.
(33:42):
That's the policy.
You do not do it.
You can't give somebody just a crack.
And if you did, there would be all kinds of excuses as to why people took drugs.
And unfortunately, there have been cases where DEA agents became drug addicts.
We had an agent up in New York who had track marks on his arms.
In the summer, he would wear long sleeve shirts.
(34:04):
Eventually it came out that the guy was a heroin addict.
And that started when he was operating with a particular informant that was a heroin addict.
For some reason, he thought it was a good idea to try it.
Maybe they'd get closer to the organization, but no, you can't do that.
He's no longer in employment with the government.
(34:25):
I can imagine for some people with addictive personalities that when you have a job with
that much responsibility on your shoulders, that's the wrong line of work to be in because
it would just be way too tempting.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, in training, they'll light some good, rich, seized weed and then you will get a
smell of it, an odor of it.
You're not smoking it, but you have to familiarize yourself with what this kind of weed smells
(34:51):
like, what another kind of weed smells like.
It's all part of the training.
And of course, the real training happens when you get out on the street.
I remember one time in Miami, in Miami Beach, we were called to meet somebody.
Myself and Kenny Peterson, we went out, met with the informant, which was maybe a 40-ish,
40-something year old female, Colombian national.
And she surprised us with a gram of coke.
(35:13):
She says, hey, I just got this and it's really good.
I just tried it.
It's awesome.
Go get it checked out.
And we were like, good grief.
Now we have to open up an actual file because we have drugs to register.
It was like the last thing that we wanted to do on a Friday afternoon, three hours of
paperwork.
What are you going to do?
We took the gram, we took it back, we processed it.
(35:36):
And they throw you curve balls, these informants, they throw you curve balls all the time.
You talk about addictive personalities.
And I think that is such an important point to remember why our country is in the position
that it is.
Forgive me for changing directions, but if you look at the drug abuse levels pretty much
(35:59):
across our nation, reflected by the number of overdoses that have occurred in recent
years because of this fentanyl component that has been added to the drug consumption equation.
How many people in the USA are overdosing and many dying every year from fentanyl overdose?
(36:20):
Even though they didn't even realize that they were ingesting fentanyl.
They thought they were ingesting Adderall or Percocet or some kind of relief agent.
That looked like a Skittles candy.
I think it's over a hundred thousand a year that we've been consistently losing over the
past three or four years.
That's an entire generation.
(36:40):
So I think the addiction personality does play a role in that.
And it's something that we as a society and certainly reflective in our government need
to closely closely examine and maybe create some kind of mental health organization specific
to the reduction of drugs in our country because it's just off the hook.
(37:03):
It's way, way too serious and it's killing an entire generation of our own society in
America.
You know, we can't let that last.
We have to find a way to stop it.
And this is not to mention the family members loss, right?
So if you've got a 16 year old who thinks he's taking Adderall to study a little bit
harder and get good grades and please his parents and his teachers, and then he dies,
(37:26):
we've got the parents, the extended family members, the brother, the sister, you know,
the teachers, the people who love this young person.
And it's happening way too often.
So how, you know, that's a WTF issue.
How are we letting our society kill itself in droves like that in hundreds of thousands
of people.
And we have to come up with a national drug abuse strategy.
(37:48):
Forget national drug control strategy because we have that in place now, but we have no
national drug abuse strategy that needs to be talked about and readily put into place
because we need to start saving these lives, man.
I would say one of our most serious Achilles heel in this country is drug abuse.
And I'm not talking about somebody who may light a joint once a week, you know, on a
(38:12):
Friday evening.
And I said in the book, the Noble Experiment, I don't think it's a federal issue simply
because we don't have the time to deal with it.
We have fatter fish to fry.
That's not what we're talking about here.
We're talking about the fentanyl poison that's infecting our entire society.
I do feel that the state should be in charge of it.
I mean, let the states decide what the states want to do.
(38:34):
And if they want to enforce cannabis laws, let them enforce cannabis laws.
It's their state to manage.
For those that don't, let them do what they want to do.
If there's middle ground, medicinal purposes, things like that, then that's fine too.
But I just don't think it's a federal issue any longer.
We have too many serious issues that we have to deal with.
You know, the abuse of pharmaceutical drugs is off the hook and has been for many years.
(38:59):
At one point, I would say around 2006, 2007, Vicodin was the number one abused drugs in
the USA.
I remember that.
Yeah.
WTF.
There's a purpose for it, a medical purpose is what causes people who feel they're so
stressed out to crush it up, oxycodone, oxycotton, same thing, right, and have this intense high
(39:21):
effect and euphoric effect as opposed to, you know, drinking a couple of beers, you
know, or doing whatever else they wanted to do.
It's just, it's a WTF for me.
I wish we could figure out and we can, but it's going to take a generation or two.
Look, when's the last time you were in your car?
Less than 12 hours ago.
Did you put your seatbelt on?
I did.
I always put my seatbelt on too.
(39:42):
You know, your father and grandfather never put a seatbelt on even when they had them.
It wasn't in the, in the mentality.
You didn't need it.
You didn't think it was important.
So you just didn't take the second to wrap it around you.
Right.
And even when I was younger, I mean, I'm 63.
So when I first started driving, I didn't use a seatbelt.
I was told I needed to, but I didn't use it.
(40:03):
Now everybody uses a seatbelt.
Why do you use a seatbelt?
Because you know that eventually there's a chance something bad could happen and that
seatbelt might keep you a little safer.
Right.
So we need to change that whole mentality about the need for diverted pharmaceutical
drugs or just using out and out, you know, hardcore legal drugs like methamphetamine,
(40:26):
cocaine, heroin, the array of other drugs like that.
It's something that I hope we can change because people are dying every day and that's sad.
It's something that we will definitely have to change.
And I hope we can fortify and create, develop some kind of robust system that addresses
addiction, and addresses the cause of addiction.
(40:46):
And I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, the daily stresses that people involve
themselves into.
And if they can just figure out ways to deal with it other than taking a chance, rolling
the dice and popping a pill that they know nothing about or its origin or where it came
from, we could go a long way.
To follow up with such a serious subject like that, you mentioned a few moments ago about
(41:07):
wearing a seatbelt.
Part of the reason that I do it, if I don't do it, my car has a fucking idiot alarm that
will go off until I put the motherfucker on.
That's a what the fuck.
And I bet you, I bet the WTF comes in your mind every time you hear that whistle or that
bell, right?
I'll put them, oh, all right, just to get it to shut up.
(41:28):
No, that's great.
That's a beautiful, beautiful send off.
And I appreciate again, very much.
I appreciate the time to talk to you.
I love catching up.
We only need to do this.
It doesn't have to be a podcast.
It could just be talking and catching up someday, man.
I'm proud of you and I'm happy that things are going well for you.
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