Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Book Spectrum as a show where we focus
on books written not always by seasoned authors, but by
those whose professional careers tend to lie in other areas
across the spectrum. I'm Chris Cordany. With politicians fighting over
how to solve the US fentanyl problem, grabbing headlines at
times and telling us a new law or some more
(00:27):
money that we give them will fight the crisis. We
don't always get to hear from people who have actually
had to do the work, whether it be apprehension or
going undercover to get the information and the recon and
get all of this done, and we don't get to
hear who really they're up against. My guest, John Medinger,
wrote a book called Lethal Dosis. He's a former undercover
(00:50):
agent for several bureaus and special agent with the US
Department of the Treasury. He gives us a real perspective
from the inside in this book. He's written about some
of his other experiences previously in the memoir Going Under, Kidnapping, Murder,
and a Life Undercover. John, Welcome to Book Spectrum.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, thanks for having me on us. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I want to talk about your experiences and what you
wrote in the book here and how you kind of
prepare for these things. But first let's all get a
handle on the background of the fentanyl problem. A lot
of people hear the headlines, a lot of people kind
of know a little more than others. We get that,
But this is a drug that's being distributed across the border.
It's being lacedned to other drugs, killing people. Not that
(01:35):
I recommend taking these things in the first place. There's
a lot of danger involved in that. Ventanol is also
a life saving pharmaceutical when used properly, but a devastating
destroyer of families otherwise.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah. Fenol was originally developed in nineteen sixty by Johnson
Pharmaceutical as a surgical anesthetic, and it was used throughout
the seventies and the eighties as really in surgery, mainly
(02:10):
like heart surgery. It's indispensable. Heart surgeons say that you
couldn't do a lot of the surgeries that they perform
bypass surgeries and those types of things without it. It's
short acting, it comes, it brings the patient out of
surgery real quickly, and it doesn't depress blood pressure like morphine.
(02:30):
So it's got a lot of value as a medicine.
In fact, it's so valuable that the World Health Organization
has it on its list of essential medicine, so it's
something that you know, people really should be grateful to
have it. Now, the problem is is that it's also
a narcotic, similar to heroin or morphine, and it causes
(02:51):
all the same problems that you have with those drugs.
It causes addiction, it causes, you know, the dependency on
the drug, and it causes the overdose is if it's
taken in excess, and in excess in the terms, in
fentanyl terms, it's more than two milligrams, So we're not
talking about a lot of stuff here. We're talking about
(03:12):
very very small dose will be fatal, which is why
originally you wanted to have an anesthesiast standing next to
your head while you're taking it. That would be the
best way of taking fennel. And unfortunately, starting with the
guy that was the character in my book, it is
the character in my book, the first person to get
(03:34):
fennel out on the street. Since then, it's kind of
taken over the narcotics market in the United States.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
You had to get close to one of the more
notorious people in the fentanyl world. His name is George
Eric Markquart. I shouldn't even say one of the more notorious.
He's way up on that on the hierarchy there. He
was known as the godfather of fentanyl. But you had
to do this as an uncover undercover agent, and that
requires you getting recon and kind of getting close to
(04:04):
the guy.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah. I originally met him in nineteen seventy six, so
almost fifty years ago now hard to believe. He was
an informant for the Oklahoma Bear of Narcotics and we
were planning an undercover operation that would have involved him
helping us out with clandestine chemists, which we had a
(04:27):
big methamphetamine probably in Oklahoma at the time, and this
metham fetamine labs were pretty common. In fact, that was
what he was arrested for in nineteen seventy eight by
Oklahoma Year of Narcotics meant making methamphetamine. So he was
going to be sort of my guide, tutor, mentor in
(04:49):
the undercover operation that we had and that was that
lasted for about five or six months, and any took
off and did what he did, which was go back
and continue to make narcotics, make methampheta mean, mostly it
was what he was doing. So it was this that
(05:13):
was originally how I met the guy.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Well, this guy Mark Wart was, as I understand from
the book, from your book Lethal Doses, is something of
what we call a genius. He was. He was making
drugs as a minor. You're saying, right, yeah, he was.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
He started making illegal drugs although someone weren't actually illegal
at the time. When he was fourteen years old. He
was solicited by a family friend, his family doctor, who
had a drug problem, and it was very common with
especially back in the fifties and sixties it still is today.
(05:52):
Actually a problem in the medical community for doctors to
be addicted. They had better access to narcotic drugs and
that it was a problem. His doctor solicited him to
make heroin, and he said, well, I can do it.
I can make it out of opium, which is the
(06:14):
stuff that heroin's derived from. They needed to find some.
They found some old opium in a basement of a
pharmacy in Waukeshaw, Wisconsin, and he converted that into three
ounces of heroin, and then when the doctor needed more,
he converted tailanol with codeine tablets into heroin. So he
(06:41):
had a lot of a build. This is when he's
fourteen years old.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Now fourteen, one of these kids are trying to figure
out how to date. When they're fourteen years old. This
guy is putting together complex chemicals and making nir conics.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
He was, Yeah, he definitely was. And when he was
didn't get any money for this. He wasn't doing it
for the money. Was doing it for the love of
chemistry that he had.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
And he was a fun hobby you say, right.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
It was, Yeah, it was. And he only discovered that
there there was actually money to be made a little
later on, when he was about eighteen or nineteen, he
discovered LSD. At the time, it was still a legal substance.
It was manufactured legally. There were no LSD labs anywhere,
(07:30):
but he was able to make that and he used
a laboratory that he took over at at Marquette University
in Milwaukee and to make LSD and he also made
mescaline and DMT psilocybin silacen. He sent a batch of
(07:50):
LSD to Timothy Leary. I don't know if you remember
Timothy Leary, but he was a big dealery. Yeah, he
was a big promoter of LSD. In the sixties early sixties,
went to jail for Harvard fired him. He was a
Harvard professor.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
He's not to be confused with Tim Leary, who used
to pitch for the Mets and Yankees.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
No, I don't think. I don't think Mark Wark. I
don't think Mark wart knew anything about baseball at all.
He was totally focused on chemistry. That was his uh
and he made He made l s D. At a
later time, he went out to San Francisco and made
LSD for The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin. So he
(08:29):
got around. He was making he was making rights. He
called himself. He testified to this in court. He said,
I'm a clandestine chemist. I don't think I've ever had
an occupation other than being a clandestine chemist.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So he's the go to guy for for the rock stars.
He was the drugmaker to the stars, if you will.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, you know, people, people, a lot of people compare
him to Walter White, and they make that comparison from
Breaking Bad, and you know, it's a good that's people know,
isn't it? Clandestine chemistry?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
World for from your book though, just just here, just
a little bit here, Walter White, if I didn't see
this show at all. So from whe together, Walter White
was a was a teacher who lost his job and
had to I believe this is the way it worked.
He had to do it at a necessity or something
like that. I don't know if he lost the job,
but there's a money issue and he had to do
this at a necessity. Well, you're saying Mark Wort was
(09:20):
doing this because, well he can do it, and it's
fun and and and he realized he can make money
into doing it afterward.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
He liked the challenge. He liked he liked the the
idea that he could do something that that other people
couldn't other even other chemists couldn't. He he looked.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
At it like.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Can I can I? He wanted to make money from it.
He wanted this to be his because it paid for
his hobby basically. But but it wasn't about the money
for him, It really it really wasn't Walter White. It
was all about the money, especially after he started making
piles and piles of it.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
But he had a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
But the but the big difference, Yeah, you gotta pay
for those. The big difference between the two of them
was that Walter White he's stuck with with methamphetamine. That
was his thing. He made blue meth and that was
his deal. Squeak Mark Art. He would make anything that
interested him. So, I mean just about every I said,
(10:24):
he made, every drug in the book from from amphetamine
has opened him and and he pretty much did. I mean,
that's pretty much, uh, pretty much his thing. And he
he liked fentanyl because I don't know, not not too
many people really understand about fendel, but fennyl has has
(10:48):
the fentyl molecule can be modified in by by attaching
chemicals to it or other other molecules to it, and
you can create what they call analog or they're sort
of like chemical cousins to fentanyl. And some of these
things are really really powerful, and some of them are
basically less powerful, or there's a few that have no
(11:11):
narcotic properties at all. So he liked the idea that
this was endlessly fungible, that you could change it and
modify it and fool around with it. They estimate now
that there are four different what they call routes to
get to fentanyl through plant through chemistry, including the original
(11:35):
Jansen or Johnson method which he started out using, and
then the second one, which is called the Sigfreed method,
which he developed, and there's two other ones and they
estimate between those four routes or methods to get to fentanyl,
(11:57):
there may be three to four billion impossible compounds that
you could make. And he liked that because every time
he made a new one, it was a new everest
to climb, and he was the first person not only
to climate but the first person to discover it. So
he was you know, he was he liked ventanyl for
(12:18):
that reason. It was it offered a real challenge for him.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
With me on book Spenchrum as John Mattinger, John Manninger,
he is the author of Lethal Doses, a former undercover agent.
We're talking about his uh infiltrating and getting and going
under cover within the world of fentanyl. And this is
my problem with with with fentanyl you talked about I
have a lot of problems with fenanyel. But here I'm
a business perspective. Strictly from a business perspective, the idea
(12:45):
is Eric Mark wore George Eric Markcourt made LSD for
rock stars and for people in the sixties, and people
liked LSD. That'd come back in bed trips and up,
and they'd come back and they keep want wanting more fentanyl,
at least the degree to the degree right now, it
kind of doesn't make itself friendly to what we call
the repeat customer and business you want repeat customers. So
(13:08):
what what kind of motivation does it take for somebody
to make a drug that basically kills people rather than
a drug that you keep that forces people to be
addicted to make them come back.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Well, yeah, that's it's a really good question. And the
reason that fentanyl has taken off. I mean, it's not pharmaceutically,
it's not pharmacologically, it's not the best narcotic. It's not
doesn't give as a good or as long a high
as heroin. The advantage that causes feminal to be a
(13:42):
problem today is that it completely eliminates the entire opium
two morphine to heroin, to diluted it on the street
to give to addicts process, which is internet. You know,
you have to go to you know, some opium producing
(14:05):
country life like Afghanistan harvest poppy. You have to convert
that to opium. You have to take that and convert
it into another lab to morphine. Then you have to
do another conversion to heroin the French connection that was
developed back in the late nineteen fifties nineteen sixties. You
(14:27):
had to go from Turkey to Lebanon, to Sicily, to France,
to the Canada and the United States. You know, it's
a long drawn out process with fennol, especially with Mark Bart.
He had a lab in Witchtok, Kansas, and he cranked
it out and gave it to some guy who took
it to New York and it was over was on
the street. So you've cut out the entire sort of
(14:50):
historical distribution operation for the United States and replaced it
was something that's pretty simple. You know that he did
it in a six hundred what's six and twenty square
foot house in which talk Kansas. I mean, that's it
doesn't get too much easier than that. If you've got
a talented chemist and who's got the chemicals. You know,
(15:12):
he had the only operating fentyl lab in the entire country. Nowadays,
you've got the precursor chemicals, the chemicals that you need
to make fentanyl. Those are coming from China mostly but
also India, and those go to being shipped to Mexico
and that's where the fentyl labs are all located, and
(15:33):
then it comes across the border from Mexico, so it's
a lot shorter process. It doesn't require as many people,
doesn't require as much opportunity for people like me to
find it in in transition. So that's, you know, that's
the sort of logic behind it. You can sell it
for the same amount that you get for heroin, put
(15:55):
it in a dime bag. As long as you cut
it properly, you know it won't kill people. It has
a pretty narrow range between what they call the effective
dose and what's going to take to get you high,
and the lethal dose, which is the amount that's going
to kill you. It's kind a fairly narrow range, and
(16:20):
it they you know, he can't be managed. It took
these guys a little while to get the dose down
properly to where they can sell it and not kill everybody.
The first weekend though that they got it out, they
didn't have that down and they didn't know and he
(16:42):
had told his confederacy, I have no idea how this
is going to work with people. I don't know how
it's going to affect him. But you know, he gave
him his best estimate and they've screwed up the the
process and thirteen people died in three days. And that
was just from one batch, fairly small batch that went
(17:05):
out to New York City and I was distributed in
New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut. And you know,
after that, they sort of got they knew they had
to dilute it further and cut it better, and they
sort of got it down where it wasn't killing you know,
the majority of your customer. But you're right, I mean,
narcotics was a repeat business. You've got a product that
(17:27):
creates its own demand, you know, because it's addictive, and
you take that you're hoping that you're going to get
those same people back for another another purchase.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Once again. John Bedinger is my guest on book Spectrum
Lethal Doses is the name of the book. We dove
into the in the world of fentanyl here and the
you had to gain the confidence of George Eric Markquart
and you're you're an under You're an undercover guy for
a long time. This is an occupy patient that has
been glorified by Hollywood for decades because there is glamor
(18:06):
to it. There is interest, there's intrigue, but one exactly.
And let's give our audience some perspective on this as well.
What does it take to go undercover, whether it be
on the smaller ran to bust the street gangs run
drug running, or to take down mafia members, or perhaps
going deep inside too a higher level to infiltrate in
international drug making, criminal enterprise, or at least weighing the
(18:27):
confidence of somebody like Mark Quark.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Well, it's I mean, it involves changing your personality a bit.
I mean, I'm not a drug trafficker in real life,
but I've played one, and so you know, you have
to alter your personality a little bit to conform to
what the expectations are the people that you're dealing with.
I didn't work a lot of deep cover assignments, long
(18:55):
term deep cover assignments. The one I was going to
work with Mark Art never worked out, but that would
have been a long term assignment, and that that I
think is more stressful and difficult and short term where
you go in and buy buy drugs undercover and uh
one or two contacts with the person and then you
(19:15):
the person's arrested and you move to the next guy.
So those were I think easier assignments than the long
term undercover operations that some of them are doing today.
When I did it, it was well back in the
seventies and eighties, it was I mean, I don't want
(19:37):
to say I was like some kind of hero or anything,
which was I don't see myself that way, but it
was extremely dangerous. It was we did we didn't. We
didn't have the kind of controls and precautions that they
take today. The undercover agents today are back stopped really well.
There's very little chance that they're going to be you know,
(19:59):
burnt in the case, I got burned several times, and
you know, it's not a good feeling. And they've managements
in all of the law enforcement agencies is come around
to the idea that hey, this is really a high
risk proposition. We only want to use it in the
cases where we might get a high reward. That's kind
(20:23):
of what we want to do here. And so it's
gotten a lot more more rigid, it's gotten a lot
more they're taking a lot more precautions to make sure
that the undercover doesn't go home in a body bag,
which I think they appreciate, but it did kind of
(20:45):
take the fun out of it. Actually, they had an
undercover guy in the case against Mark Ward in ninety three,
they enterested Dea introduced an undercover. This guy's really interesting
individual and he has been interviewed on TV. His name
(21:10):
was Herman Blanco. He was actually a Colombian born in Mediine, Colombia,
and moved when he was a kid to the United
States and became a d age And he was the
only Colombian born d age and at the time, I
don't know if they have any now, but he was
(21:31):
mostly working cocaine cases, cartel Pablo Ascobar type cartel cases
in Colombia, and they signed him to this case because
they wanted a South American individual to cook up with
the people that were selling the federal He was. He
(21:53):
was terrific, great, great undercover.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
John. Something you do in the book that others tend
not to when writing about special undercover operations. You offer
us readers a tour into not only what you were doing,
but Mark Part's and of course not only what he
was doing his mindset. Though we talk about his upbringing,
now you talk about your conversations with him about those things,
his relationship with you, and other confidence confidants, if you will,
(22:23):
as well as how a man and we talked about
that before, who could have been quite successful at several occupations,
went into international crime, which has this huge risk factor,
if you will. But this is what made you, what
insides you inspired you to share these experiences and offer
us a perspective on the mind of Mark Art in
(22:47):
this book Lethal Doses Well.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
I think a lot of it for me was that
that Fetnah has taken off and that he was the
person that read put it out on the street for
the first time, and so I wanted to tell that
story in the context of a fennal problem that we
have today. I also wanted to tell people about him
(23:13):
because he was such a unique character. He was so
different from He was different from any criminal, other criminal
I ever met. An insanely intelligent guy. Far had far
more knowledge about science and chemistry and physics than anybody
(23:34):
else I've ever met, any Curtly, every criminal. And he
had this sort of really weird for criminal, what you
called moral compass or moral ethical standards. He believed that
he took responsibility for everything that he did. His philosophy,
(23:54):
I act the first time I met him I said,
you know, how do you justify this to yourself? How
do you you know, you kill people, but with the stuff,
you you injure them, you addict them, you get you
get them hooked on this stuff, and it destroys families,
it destroys society, right, and he was just like. His
(24:17):
response was, they pay their nickel and they take their chances,
just like I do. I know the consequences if I
get caught. I know the consequences that things that can
happen to me. If you know I manufactured these drugs,
I could get blown up or burned up or or
poisoned by this stuff. And I understand that and I
(24:40):
accept that risk because it lets me do what I
want to do. And that was his philosophy toward everything,
was that hey, you're you're take you understand what you're
what risks you're taking on, and you accept that, and
you know, whine about it when they happen to you.
And he he didn't worry about it as soon as
(25:02):
the soonest opportunity he could get. He pled guilty to
when he was caught and went to prison and didn't
complain and got out and did it again. And that
was his that was his approach toward things, very very unique,
the most honest crook that I've ever met.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
John, thank you for being here with us on a
book Spectrum. Where can our listeners find more out about
you and your book.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Well, the first place they can go is to Fox Nation.
It's the documentary that's based on the book called The
Godfather of Fennol is on Fox Nation streaming. Now they
want to find more about it and actually meet Mark Art.
He's on the he's on the show. Uh, he's since
(25:48):
passed away, but he's I made a bunch of audio
and video recordings so you can you can meet the
man and virtually on the on the TV show. You
can go to my website which is John Mattinger dot
com or Godfather of Fenol dot com and I have
a lot of more a lot more information, or buy
(26:09):
the book Lethal Doses Wild Blue Press. You can get that.
That pretty pretty much tells the whole story, my background,
his background.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And of course there's a link to the book in
John's website in the description and on our website book
spectrum dot com. John, once again, thank you and thank
you all for joining us here on book Spectrum. The
book is Lethal Doses by John Menninger. I'm Chris Cordeny.
This is book spentrum, and keep turning those pages.